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[German Version] (Apr 29, 1904, Tailfingen – Feb 1, 1975, Bonn). After studying at Tübingen, Marburg, and Princeton, Bizer became a pastor in Tailfingen in 1934. He entered the army in 1942; as a prisoner of war, he served as director of the theological school in the prison camp at Montpellier. In 1947 he became professor of church history at Bonn (D. Theol. B…

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[German Version] Human seducibility comes with with human freedom of action (Gen 1:28; 2:15) and linguistic competence (Gen 2:19f.); misjudging its extent in the “vertigo” of possibilities (cf. Kierkegaard, 60), it flirts with the impossible (Gen 3:6). People allow themselves to be seduced when they seek to realize the impossible possibility of being like God (Gen 3:5), so that even the presupposition of creaturely trial and error that is part of freedom of action is ca…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Systematic Theology I. Religious Studies In the religious studies context, gifts are usually not understood in terms of a present, and such an idea is ¶ based on a misunderstanding (M. Douglas, preface to Mauss, VII). Each gift is one part within a system of reciprocities between those giving and those receiving at the time. Participants in this system may belong to various levels: closer or more distant groups or individuals among the living of varying generations, the dead (ancest…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Practical Theology I. Dogmatics A legal challenge involves retroactive nullification of a declared intent by means of a later declaration. Religious ¶ and theological usa…

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[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics – IV. Ethics I. Philosophy Until G.W.F. Hegel, otherness is a basic provision of finitude. The concept “otherness = the other” acquires a specially personal and anthropological significance for the predecessors of “I-thou” philosophy. In a letter of 1781 to J.C. Lavater, F.H. Jacobi discovers the meaning of the other, or “thou,” for the human development of the solitary “I” subject: “I open eye or ear, or I stretch out my hand, and in that very instant I feel inseparably: thou and I, I and thou.” And in 1785 he writes: “Without a thou, the I is impossible.” In 1843 L. Feuerbach takes up Jacobi’s idea, but circumvents its correlation of the earthly and the heavenly thou by offering an anthropological substitute for the concept of God: “Human being with human being – the unity of I and thou – is God.…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism – III. New Testament – IV. Dogmatic/Ethics – V. Islam…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Bible – IV. Judaism – V. Christianity – VI. Islam …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Church History – VI. Dogmatics and Ethics I. Religious Studies Humility is an attitude of conscious abasement (Humiliation) and submission. Some modes of expressing humility, such as postures or gestures, can be traced to biological roots; others are conventional, for example a “humble glance” or foot washing. In many cases we encounter an inversion of what is culturally normal, for example nakedness in the poverty (IV) movements of the Middle Ages. Basically, a distinction must b…

[German Version] Lament I. Religious Studies – II. Bible – III. Systematic Theology – IV. Practical Theology – V. Judaism I. Religious Studies Lament has its roots in human experience; it gives voice to suffering and mourning, in ritual, poetic, or informal form. Its end is not theoretical, like theodicy, but practical: people reac…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. General Suffering is a concept that needs to be approached constructively in comparative religious study as it takes fundamental negative human experiences to a comparative level. On this interpretive level, suffering is und…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Examination of repentance from the perspective of religious studies must confront…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. Church History – V. Philosophy – VI. Philosophy of Religion – VII. Dogmatics – VIII. Ethics – IX. Sociology, Politics, and Law I. Old Testament 1. The concept of political freedom, which originated in the Greek polis (City cult), first appeared in Hellenistic Jewish historiography. The Stoics' concept of freedom, which contrasts inner freedom and outward constraint, has no counterpart in the OT. The OT is rooted in an internal mythological cultur…