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[German Version] (May 3, 1912, Garut, Indonesia – Jun 26, 1975, Long Island, USA) was a Dutch ecumenical and missionary theologian. He taught at the University of Utrecht (1953–1965) and at Union Theological Seminary in New York (1965–1975). His theology is characterized by the insistence that the church can be no more than a function of God's work for worldly shalom, and by an effort to take the secular world seriously as the field where kerygma, koinonia, and diakonia appear as references to the coming kingdom. Although suspicious of emerging forms of liberation theolog…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Systematic Theology – III. Liturgical Importance – IV. Missiology – V. Ecumenical Importance I. Religious Studies While the concept of inculturation is on the point of becoming a standard term in missiology (see IV below), the field of religious studies uses it to refer to the fundamental cultural-hermeneutical problem of determining a significant difference between culture and religion, this being a particularly relevant issue for the articulation of identity in the co…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. Religious Studies 1. Preliminary Considerations. “Atheism” is a Lati-nized term, current since the end of the 16th century, meaning disbelief in God. It derives from Gk ἄθεός/ átheós (alpha privative), literally “without God.” This historical background with its specifically European connotation must be kept in mind in any …