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[German Version] The Cologne Declaration was drawn up by an initiator group in Cologne on Jan…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Concept. The word revelation echoes the Greek ἀποκάλυψις/ apokálypsis (“uncovering”), which was translated into Latin as revelatio and then borrowed into most European languages. The literal meaning already indicates that revelation involves a reality, content, more specifically a message hidden from mortals. Revelation is important: it is relevant religious knowledge necessary for salvation, for finding meaning, and for dealing with everyday life. It is knowledge that peo-¶ ple do not already possess by nature, and their religion says they cannot attain it by themselves. This aspect received increasing emphasis in the course of the modern era and revelation came to function as a key theological concept, which also served to distinguish theology from religious studies (Wiedenhofer), but this term with its Christian background also came to be used in the context of non-Christian religions. More recent academic reference works have tended to use the term more narrowly…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Examination of repentance from the perspective of religious studies must confront the problem that the term itself has no culturally neutral meaning. Many of the phenomena in other religions that Christians tend to call repentance appear in a different light when viewed in the context of different anthropological presuppositions, ¶ so that due weight must be given to the religious anthropology in question. Generally speaking, it is true to say that in almost all non-Christian religions the notion of repentance carries less weight than in Christianity. If we keep this fundamental difference in mind, we can speak more freely of repentance in non-Christian religions as well. From the perspective of religious studies, we can point to structural analogies in other religions without prematurely suggesting identification. …