Search

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Dogmatics I. Religious Studies In the study of religion, the term “monism” denotes concepts that relate the whole of reality to a single principle, and understand diversity and plurality as an all- unity. Monism, from the Gk μόνος/ monos (“alone, single”) is thus also in religious studies to be understood first in opposition to all dualistic concepts (Dualism); this was also the case when this concept was originally defined in the German Enlightenment (C…

[German Version] (Aug 23, 1773, Barby – Aug 10, 1843, Jena), a philosopher in the circle of so-called German Idealism, a physicist and mathematician, the founder of Friesianism (Ernst Friedrich Apelt) or neo-Friesianism (Leonard Nelson; R. Otto). From a Herrnhuter family, Fries attended the school in Niesky together with F.D.E. Schleiermacher, with whom his thought in the philosophy of religion has affinity, and studied with Ernst Platner, among others, in Leipzig and with J.G. Fichte in Jena, whe…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies S. Freud claimed credit for discovering the unconscious as a key concept for psychoanalysis, but much older concepts of the unconscious are found in religious and philosophical systems: (a) in the works of Plato(ἀνάμνησις/ anámnēsis as the unconscious condition for conscious mental activity) and Plotinus, (b) in Indian Vedānta and Buddhism ( avidyā, “ignorance,” inducing māyā), and (c) in the medieval Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart ( Seligkeit) and the 14th-century English mystical text The Cloud of Unknow…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Since time immemorial, the use of the term spirit has been influenced by Christian usage, especially by the concept of the Holy Spirit, including connotations of Latin spiritus and Greek πνεύμα/ pneúma. Spirit has a wide range of meaning; it can denote both a spiritual and a mental attitude, dynamic, or quality ascribed to an individual and a projection of such phenomena into the external world. An anthropomorphic concretion of such projections can then refer to “beings” that in earlier times might have been called “trolls” or the like. 2. In religi…

[German Version] (Gk ἀποκατάστασις πάντων) or the redemption/restoration of all is the eschatological notion that all human beings (things, creatures) without exception will be received into eschatological salvation (the kingdom of God). One the one hand, apocatastasis conflicts with the more common eschatological notion of a “double outcome,” which envisions an…

[German Version] As the opposite of election or salvation by God, and in divergence from common linguistic usage in dogmatics, rejection must be distinguished from damnation in so far as it is not necessarily associated with eschatological consequences in terms of definitive exclusion from salvation (Kingdom of God: IV). The apostle Paul’s struggle over the fate of the chosen people of Israel, in the face of their widespread non-acceptance of the new covenant of God with all humankind in Jesus Chr…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion I. Philosophy Etymologically, the word “absolute” means something separate from and independent of everything that is only relative. In this sense, the absolute can be understood ontologically as substance, logically as principle. If the absolute is taken as a singulare tantum, then it refers to something apart from which there is nothing that exists independently. This raises the question of how to conceive the …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy – III. Fundamental Theology I. Religious Studies The term “boundary” is used spatially, temporally, and metaphorically. Spatially, a boundary separates localities and territories, signaled by boundary markers (cf. OE mearc, “boundary, landmark”). In certain cases, boundaries must not be crossed; in sacred sites onl…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics I. History of Religions As a theological category, damnation belongs primarily in the context of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The etymology of the term itself connotes a local and a judicial dimension: the punishment of expulsion to a real or imaginary place as an exclusion from …

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion Especially in the tradition of theologia negativa, unavailability (or inaccessibility, Ger. Unverfügbarkeit) char­acterizes divinity, the unconditioned (Absolute necessity), and the absolute, which is divorced (Lat. absolutum) from all relationships and conditions and thus is not available and accessible in any natural, material intramundane referential context. In categorial distinction from that context, it is implicit and premised as the (metaphysical or transcendental) ground of …

[German Version] Against the background of the existentialism (theology) of R. Bultmann ( Neues Testament und Mythologie, 1941; ET: The New Testament and Mythology, 1941), existential interpretation refers to a hermeneutics (III; V, 2) of biblical, especially NT, texts, specifically grounded in existential analysis (Dasein) as a counterpart to the program of demythologization. It assumes the foreignness of the biblical …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. History of Dogma – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Philosophy of Religion – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam (cf. Present and Future Eschatology, Consistent Eschatology) I. Religious Studies 1. The Problem of Terminology Eschatology (“discourse” or “doctrine” [Gk λόγος/ lógos] concerning the “last things” [Gk ἔσχατα/ éschata]) is a neologism that was introduced in the late 18th century in the con- text of the definition of the “last things,” i.e. of the novissima of medieval theology (death, …

[German Version] Especially in the context of an apocalyptic theology of history (History, Theology of), premoni-¶ tions of the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ (Parousia) as judge and savior based on portents and omens are described and interpreted by initiates by virtue of special revelations and visions. Against the background of the delayed Parousia and God’s apparent abandonment of the world, such signs are intended to impart confidence. The painful discrepancy between belief and experience …

[German Version] Existential theology is less a unified theological position or method than a particular theological attitude in the sense of a polemical and appellative corrective. It acquires its specific profile through the critical rejection of a domesticated and self-satisfied Christianity, but also of a theology that has a bias toward the ideal of objective science. For S. Kierkegaard ( Sygdommen til Døden, 1849; ET: The Sickness unto Death, 1983; Christelige Taler, 1848; ET: Christian Discourses, 1997), the inaugurator of what came to be …

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion Given the substantially diverse notions of salvation and redemption in the philosophy of religion (including realization and fulfillment of essential potentiality, reunion of what is separate, identity, and essentification), universal salvation can be understood as a metaphysical, ontotheological, or transcendentally grounded soteriological conception for comprehending the unity of everything real both qualitatively (intensively) and quantitatively (extensive…

[German Version] The distinction between present and future eschatology as the doctrine of the “last things” can be derived from the ambiguity of the term “last.” On the one hand, “last” may be understood qualitatively, or in terms of value, as what is ultimately valid; on the other hand, it may be understood temporally or chronologically as the final culmination. The first understanding is a theme in eschatology oriented to the present, or beyond time, the second in eschatology oriented to the fu…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. History of Religions – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Art History I. Religious Studies All cultures have concepts of a hereafter or beyond (“the next world”), although they are extremely diverse. They involve a realm of existence different from the visible earthly world but nevertheless thought of as real. Concepts of the hereafter are part of cosmology and therefore are related to the real world: the hereafter may be localized above or below the earth, in inaccessib…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Dogmatics I. Philosophy of Religion Future is relevant to the philosophy of religion, first, in relation to the analysis of existence (Existentialism [Philosophy], Existentialism [Theology]). According to this, future is the content of approaching time that lies before us and is ultimately inaccessible despite all planning (Unavailability). This content reveals its importance for the understanding of human existence in contrast to other beings that are subje…

[German Version] The term imminent Parousia expectation refers in the first place to the primitive Christian expectation, in the context of an apocalyptic conception of the world (Apocalypticism), of the imminent return (Parousia) of the crucified and risen Lord for the final establishing of the kingdom of God still in the lifetime of the first generation of Christians (cf. 1 Thess 4:17; Phil 4:5; 1 Cor 7:29). This eschatological (Eschatology) orientation (ἐλπίς/ elpís) resulted from the liberating (Liberation) experience of having overcome life-threatening and ungo…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics I. Dogmatics While the term liberty (Lat. libertas) denotes the state or property of being free, liberation describes the process through which liberty or freedom is achieved. Liberation is the conscious praxis of freedom to achieve freedom from oppression (Freire). In the New Testament, ἐλευθερόω/ eleutheróō denotes the process of being set free through the work of Christ from the dominion of sin (V), death (VI), and decay (Rom 6:18, 22; 8:2, 21; John 8:32, 36). Enslavement and captivity are the objec…