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1. Definition Theodicy (“justification of God” in the face of the physical and moral evil he created and reigns over in the world) is a coinage of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1697, based on Rom 3:4 f. and Ps 51:6 and disseminated throughout Europe by his  Essais de Théodicée (1710; “Essays on Theodicy,” subtitled “On the Goodness of God, Human Freedom, and the Origin of Evil”; see 3. below) [6]. In an essay on theodicy (1791; see 3.1. below), Immanuel Kant defined it more precisely as “a defence of the highest wisdom of the world-author against the charge that…

1. Introduction 1.1. Continuity, diversity, and changeBy virtue of their historical impact, and of certain practices for dealing with them, death and dying comprise a  longue durée phenomenon in European history. As a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, this phenomenon confronts people far beyond the context of religious history (see below, 4.), and in all periods it demands many social and cultural responses. There is a continual confrontation and reflection in literature, art, philosophy, and theology on the alteration of life t…

1. ConceptPalingenesis (Greek palingenesía, Latin  renascentia, German  Wiedergeburt, literally “rebirth”) in the early modern period was mostly the Christian metaphor for the (singular) process of a spiritual birth of a person comparable to their physical birth, that is, second birth, a prerequisite for eternal life. The origins of the concept in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (Jo 3) were remembered, and like the Pauline formula of “new creation,” it was from the outset associated with the act of …