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[German Version] ( permissio) in the doctrine of providence emphasizes God’s effective role, especially in gov-¶ ernment ( gubernatio) – as distinct from the modes of hindrance and restriction ( impeditio and determinatio), and direction ( directio) – in recognizing the independence of his creatures, even when this is a possible basis for evil, sin, and suffering, including the risk of claims to independence of God (Ps 81:13; Rom 1:24, 28). Permission is lin…

[German Version] This expression denotes God's creative cooperation (or “concurrence”) in the relative acts of creatures (Free will) against the background of the noetic distinction between being and action. With the emergence of Aristotelianism in the 13th century, the term, which originated in Roman civil law (“coincidence of multiple claims”), was applied to the philosophical/theological problem of cooperation between causa prima and causae secundae (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, q. 105, a. 5); it was an important issue in the complex differences between the approaches of Scholasticism, Lutheran orthodoxy, and Reformed orthodoxy in defining boundaries wtih deism and pantheism, determinism and autonomism. From the time of early Protestant orthodoxy, concursus Dei ( generalis, specialis, specialissimus; praevius, concursus, succursus) was considered the middle term between conservatio and gubernatio, in the doctrine of providence. Here the aporetic nature of the causa schema in dealing with the “how” of evil becomes evident.…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Certainty is a fundamental human need. The answers given by religions to unsettling experiences cover a broad cultural spectrum. The issue is (1) to foresee fate as much as possible, (2) to integrate it into a cosmology, and (3) thus to master it. In general terms, we can identify four ways of containing the unforeseeable. 1. Being at the mercy of natural events. When they are powerless, people feel at the mercy of a powerful, threatening fate. Archai…

[German Version] is the theological term for the way God sustains the being of creation through time (Creatio continua). Despite human sin, God sustains his creation faithfully and patiently until redemption comes with the advent of Christ. …