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[German Version] (Jan 10, 1610, Nancy – Aug 13, 1686, Paris). In 1626 Maimbourg entered the Societas Jesu (Jesuits) and worked as a preacher and teacher. After anti-Jansenist (C.O. Jansen, Jansenism) polemics, from 1673 he published historical writings which championed the authority of the Catholic Church and glorified Louis XIV. After works on Arianism (Arius), the iconoclastic controversy (Veneration of images: VI), the Crusades and the fall of the empire, in 1680 and 1682 he published general accounts of Lutheranism (answered by V.L. v. Seckendorf, Commentarius de Lutheranismo,…

[German Version] Because Scotland maintained its allegiance to the Avignon pope Benedict XIII to the bitter end during the Great Western Schism, it was impossible for Scots to study on the continent. In 1410 the bishop of St. Andrews founded the oldest Scottish university (theology, canon law, the artes). Successor bishops added additional colleges. St. Leonard’s College was a gateway for Reformation theology in Scotland, but …

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[German Version] Scotland, the northern portion of the main island of Great Britain, together with the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, and the Shetland Islands (78,764 km2), comprises the northern Highlands and the southern Lowlands. Only some 20% of its area is arable farmland. The name recalls the Celtic Scotti, who came from Ireland and formed tribal alliances with Picts, Britons (Britain), and Angles (see also Anglo-Saxons) as they expanded southwards. Scotland’s capital is Edinburgh. Since 1707 Scotland has been part…

[German Version] This polemical neologism means “fighter against (absolute) monarchy,” and was defined by William Barclay in his De regno et regali potestate (1600). The terrorism that reached its peak in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre raised among French Protestants (Huguenots) the question of the limits of the duty of obedience and the right of resistance (Resistance, Right of) in relation to tyrannical monarchs. François Hotman, T. Beza, L. Danaeu, and Stephanus Junius Brutus (probably a pseudonym for P. du Pl…

[German Version] The term ἐξομολογεῖσϑαι/ exhomologeísthai and its derivatives, adopted …

[German Version] (Chevalier Ramsay; 1686, Ayr, Scotland – May 6, 1743, St. Germain en Laye, near Paris), son of a baker, Ramsay was repelled while still a youth by the controversy between presbyterianism (Presbyterians) and Episcopalianism. As a student he tended towards Deism, but also formed links with mystical and spiritualist circles, which he intensified while a private tutor in London. He was on the continent from 1710, first with P. Poiret in Rijnsburg. Then he worked as secretary to F. Fén…

[German Version] The period between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I saw ongoing ¶ debate over the structure of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Those involved were primarily theologians and jurisprudents. – A group around F.D.E. Schleiermacher, combining collegialist …

[German Version] (in Welsh Cymru), a hilly peninsula jutting out into the Irish Sea (together with Anglesey 20,763 km 2), is bordered on the north by Liverpool Bay and on the south by the Bristol Channel. From 1536 it formed part of the kingdom of England, but since 1998 Wales has its own regional parliament (capital Cardiff). In 2001 it had about 2.93 million inhabitants, of whom about 575,000 speak Welsh (Cymraeg), a Celtic language. In 2001, 72% of the inhabitants described themselves as Christians, 22,000 as M…

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[German Version] (Jun 21, 1860, Gnadenfrei, Silesia – Sep 27, 1929, Göttingen). From a Brethren background (Bohemian and Moravian Brethren), Mirbt gained ¶ his Habilitation in 1888 in Göttingen as a student of H. Reuter and obtained a non-tenured professorship in church history in Marburg in 1889, a tenured position in 1890, followed by a professorship in Göttingen in 1911, where he attained emeritus status in 1928. He achieved initial prominence with studies on the Investiture Controversy ( Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII. of 1894 is the standard work on the topic), …

[German Version] These 100 rhymed Latin hexameters were first attested in 1693 and became better known in the early 18th century. They were attributed to the Cistercian monk Hermann von Lehnin in Brandenburg (c. 1300). The verses describe suggestively the Brandenburg rulers beginning with the house of Askani…

[German Version] (Chursdorf near Küstrin [Kostrzyn]) – Dec 17, 1731, Rudolstadt). The last in the line of Reformed Metternichs from Chursdorf, Wolf de Metternich probably studied law; he began his career in the service of the margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth (delegate to the imperial diet), which he left i…

[German Version] (1607, London – Dec 11, 1681, London), son of a grocer. Pordage studied medicine and theology at Oxford, while pursuing interests in alchemy and astrolo…

[German Version] (Nov 25, 1556, near Bern – Sep 5, 1618, Paris). Born to a Norman Huguenot family in temporary exile, Du…

[German Version] (Pierre de la Ramée; 1515, Cuts, Picardy – Aug 28, 1572, Paris), came from an impoverished aristocratic family; he attended the Collège de Navarre in Paris from the age of 12, and gained his M.A. in 1536. His polemics against Aristotelianism caused a sensation; in 1544 King Francis I prohibited him from teaching and publishing on philosophical subjects. Until this ban was lifted in 1547 by King Francis II, Ramus devoted himself to mathematics. From 1551 he ¶ held important administrative posts at the University of Paris. From the early 1560s he was a Protes…

[German Version] (probably died in England in 1698). Not until years after his death was Souverain identified as the author of Le Platonisme dévoilé, ou Essai touchant le verbe Platonicien, published by the Unitarian S. Crell in 1700, supposedly in Cologne but in fact in Amsterdam. Souverain, probably from Languedoc, was removed from his office as a Reformed preacher on grounds of heresy shortly before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Huguenots: I, 1), whereupon he moved to the Netherlands. When he offended the Dutch …

[German Version] (Nov 15, 1751, Nürtingen – Aug 31, 1833, Göttingen). After going through the normal course of theological education in Württemberg, Planck began teaching at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart in 1781. Appointed to a chair at Göttingen in 1784, he remained there as professor of theology and holder of other high academic and ecclesiastical offices until his ¶ death. He set out to design a new theological system reduced to the essential content of Scripture ( …

[German Version] (Sep 27, 1696, Marianella, near Naples – Aug 1, 1787, monastery at Nocera de' Pagani, near Salerno). Liguori, the son of a naval officer, earned his doctorate in law at the age of 16; in 1714 he began to practice law, but left the profession in 1723 after losing a case. As a priest, he conducted popular missions. On Nov 9, 1732, he founded the Congregatio Sanctissimi Redemptoris (Redemptorists; approved in 1749 by Benedict XIV, Pope), with a ministry of preaching and pastoral care…

[German Version] (Sep 3, 1852, Langenburg, Württemberg – Feb 10, 1940, Tübingen). After theological training in Württemberg, Müller developed into a historian, making his mark as a medievalist with works on Louis the Bavarian, the Franciscans and the Waldenses. He gained his habilitation In Berlin in 1890, became an assistant professor there in 1882 …

[German Version] (1656, Nay, Béarn – Nov 25, 1727, London). Educated in Huguenot academies (Huguenots), Abbadie was an important leader of the refugee community in Berlin from 1680 to 1689. As a field chaplain, he participated in the Ireland campaign of William III of England, and lived…

[German Version] (Quintomonarchi…

[German Version] (Mar 3, 1792, Petershagen, Minden – Jul 8, 1854, Göttingen). Shaped and nurtured at Halle by A.H. Niemeyer and J.A.L. Wegscheider, Gieseler worked from 1812 to 1819, interrupted by the Wars of Liberation, in higher education; in 1819, he became professor at Bonn, in 1831 in Göttingen. He established his academic reputation with a monograph on the synoptic question (1818), proposing that all the synoptics utilized an essentially uniform oral tradition (tradition hypothesis). Active as an editor of journals ( ThStKr) since his time in Bonn, he was also intensel…

[German Version] (1641, Alençon – 1717, London). After his studies Allix made his name as a scholar and …

[German Version] (Dec 25, 1686, Stuttgart – Nov 19, 1760, Giessen). After theological education in Württemberg and some travel, Pfaff was made professor of theology by ducal fiat in Tübingen; in 1720 he became chancellor of the university. In 1756 he was obliged to relinquish these offices, and worked in Giessen as professor, chancellor of the university, and general superintendent. An infant prodigy and a brilliant …

[German Version] I. General – II. Church I. General …

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[German Version] I. Comparative Religion – II. Biblical – III. Church History I. Comparative Religion …

[German Version] I. Early Church – II. Middle Ages – III. Reformation – IV. Modern Perio…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics – III. Philisophy – V. History – VI. Mission I. Dogmatics Freedom of religion, as generally understood, combines freedom of belief, of conscience, and creed, as well as freedom to practice one's religion (cf. German Basic Law, art. 4, §§1, 2), in one fundamental right. Dogmatics needs to clarify the relationship between religious certainty and freedom. A statement consonant with Reformation belief would run as follows: If Christian certainty, as certainty about the …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Dogmatics – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Tolerance and intolerance must be defined in terms of their relationship to respect, coexistence, indifference, acceptance, and prejudice. In the public context, they ¶ correspond to the presence or absence of freedom of religion. They originate in the claim to exclusive religious truth or else collide with it. Tolerance requires insight into the human ability to err and into the limits of human cognition with regard to faith, whereas intolerance rejects this insight. Following Gerlitz,…

[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 c…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Bible – III. Church History – IV. Systematics – V. Practical Theology – VI. Law – VII. Judaism – VIII. Islam I. History of Religions The term confession refers to various phenomena, including the confession of faith and of sin. A confession of faith can be understood as an officially sanctioned, formulaic summary of the central doctrines of a religious or a confessional community (“denomination”). Recited in cultic procedures and/or in everyday piety, i…