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[German Version] The term universals refers to general concepts (see also General/Particular) or predicates. They can be defined purely formally by saying that they are subsentential expressions that leave the pragmatic content of an expression unaltered if a substitution of the corresponding expression can take place asymmetrically (Brandon, 527) and therefore constitute a sentence frame. Unfortunately a substantial definition is impossible without addressing the question of the reality status of u…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Dogmatics I. Church History The 1828 programmatic announcement of the journal Theologische Studien und Kritiken ( ThStKr) in 1828 by G. Lücke in cooperation with K. Ullmann, F.W.K. Umbreit, J.K.L. Gieseler, and K.I. Nitzsch used the term Vermittlung, “mediation.” The theologico-political controversies of the Vormärz period coined mediation theology as a polemical term to attack this school of theology, which followed in the footsteps of F.D.E. Schleiermacher but clearly went back to Melanchthon. The linkage…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion The importance of the insig…

[German Version] I. Natural Sciences – II. Philosophy of Religion I. Natural Sciences A model (from Lat. modulus, “measure,” “standard”) is commonly understood to represent something othe…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Dogmatics – VI. Philosophy of Religion …

[German Version] in religions – that which lies before ( pro) the temple ( fanum) – is the opposite of sacredness. It r…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology I. Philosophy 1. Formal logic While signs are determined within the context of a signifying act (semiosis) by their relationship to the sign-users (pragmatic dimension), to the signified…

[German Version] Economic Trinity refers to the relationship of the triune God to the world in salvation history with respect to creation, atonement, and perfection, as already formulated by Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertullian. Immanent Trinity designates the mutual relationship of the three consubstantial hypostases or persons (IV): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; it is initially described, for instance in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, as the relationship established by the birth (…

[German Version] I. Church History 1. General. The term Neo-Lutheranism…

[German Version] (Feb 27, 1880, Hannover – Jul 16, 1945, Zürich), professor of philosophy and pedagogy (1931) in Zürich, who was occupied with “critical philosophy,” a combination of epistemology and ethics: in the conceptual-methodical activity within philosophical systems, science and culture, sought-after “truth” and knowledge are a projection of the interpreting subject, or the “inner,” based on the efforts of the egoity to cope with the world. They basically fall short of “reality” as a trans…

[German Version] For Luther the problem of praedicatio identica was a central issue in understanding the Eucharist (III, 1.a). A praedicatio identica de diversis naturis…

[German Version] I. Philosophy A value judgment is a judgment by which something is assessed as valuable or valueless. In contrast to the judgment of fact, which constitutes a descriptive statement of facts with a claim to scientifically verifiable objectivity, the value judgment in the sense of a normative (prescriptive) assessment constitutes the act of recognizing or revocating a validity, mostly in practical respects (also indirectly). Where it is not directly meant to guide actions, it contains…

[German Version] (also called generationism) in the broad sense is the doctrine that not only the body but also the soul of a particular individual is created through the procreation of his or her parents. It includes dimanatistic traducianism, in which the soul of the begetting father is the efficient cause generating the soul of the begotten child, and emanatistic traducianism or traducianism in the narrow sense, in which the begetting soul is the root ( tradux) of the begotten soul, which it passes on through a seed. Traducianism contrasts with (a) Origenist pre-existentialism (Origen Princ. II 9.6f.…

[German Version] Fiducia, or trust, is the basic Protestant designation referring to justifying faith. Luther generally speaks of faith that seizes Christ ( fides apprehensiva Christi, WA 39, 1. 45) but also makes references to fiducia, here understood as the substance of the human heart, as t…

[German Version] Tritheism, a polemical term used like polytheism (Monotheism and polytheism) to stigmatize certain historical doctrines of the Trinity (Trinity/Doctrine of the Trinity), which cannot be categorized under a single heading. At the third Council of Byzantium in 680/681 (Constantinople: IV, 3), for example, the charge was lodged against John Philoponus, who interpreted the relationship between person and substance on the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian model of form and matter. In the Middle A…

[German Version] Immanentism in the wider sense is employed as an external designation of conceptions of reality that deny any reference to transcendency. Immanentism in the strict sense is classified by the Catholic Church (encyclicals Pascendi dominici gregis [1907] and Humani generis [1950]) as one of the objectionable forms of modernism alongside pragmatism, idealism, and existentialism (philosophy), and refers to efforts, undertaken under the infl…

[German Version] I. Meaning – II. Old Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Ethics I. Meaning Love of one's neighbor is the love of creaturely persons, for other concrete creaturely persons (“neighbors”) as being in the image of God; it includes love of enemies (Matt 5:44 = Luke 6:27; Enemy,). The Reformers believed that the twofold law of love (Mark 12:29–31 parr.), expressive of a well-ordered creation, embodies all the demands of the law (cf. Luther, BSLK 586). The love of one's neighbor required by this twofold law is beyond human reach after the fall and before justification; it is therefore not the same as humanistic benevolence. This is clear in Luther's exposition of the so-called golden rule (Mark 12:31 parr.): love your neighbor as you now wrongly love yourself (WA 56, 518.4–10). The real relationship of believing trust (Fiducia,), through which the love of the Trinitarian God for humankind is received unconditionally, is a sufficient condition for realizin…

[German Version] I. Literary Criticism – II. Philosophy – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Fundamental Theology – V. History of Art I. Literary Criticism Metaphor (Gk μεταφορά/ metaphorá, “transfer,” from μεταφέρω/ metaphérō, “to transfer”) is a figure of speech in which, by means of a linguistic image, that is, in a figurative sense, reference is made to an object. The semantic analysis of metaphor, its distinction from other tropes, and discussion of the effectiveness and comprehensibility of poetic metaphors are some of the more difficult tasks of literary criticism. Defini…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion and Fundamental Theology I. Philosophy A statement that is simply incredible is described in philosophy and logic as a paradox, if, in spite of its “unbelievability,” it seems nevertheless to be correctly deduced from acceptable premises. An example of this kind is the Socratic paradox stating that action against better knowledge is impossible (cf. Plato Prot. 351b–358e). From the prima facie plausible pragmatic theory assumption: (1) “People always freely do what seems best (for them),” the statement se…

[German Version] In medieval theology, “fides” is an overriding term under which various phenomena to which different degrees of salvific relevance are attributed are delimited by means of various distinctions. For example, the Summa Halensis (Alexander of Hales) makes a double distinction, distinguishing between, on the one hand, faith acquired through hearing scripture or through reason ( fides acquisita) and, on the other, infused faith ( fides infusa). The latter can then be further subdivided into faith without works ( fides informis) and faith with works ( fides caritate for…