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[German Version] I. Sociology The popular idea of a town or city is primarily a densely populated and heterogeneous collection of buildings having various uses, provided with specific rights, and always having a market place. The “European city” is however principally understood as being also the arena of city society. Sociology has studied the development of urban societies for about 150 years, because towns are places of close-knit economic growth, social diversity, and innovations and conflicts. To modern sociology the town was simply the laboratory of society. Today in Europe …

[German Version] The term “city” indicates an area of concentrated inhabitation ranking, usually in size but sometimes more in status, as superior to the “town.” Exact definitions vary: in Germany a Großstadt is any town of more than 100,000 inhabitants, while in the UK the designation “city” is dependent on the status of a town as an episcopal seat with a cathedral, and in the US a city is a “town… incorporated and governed by a mayor and aldermen” (Webster). A city of one million inhabitants or m…

1. Biblical Aspects 1.1. General Biblical history includes a rich theology of the city, which we might see as a parable of all human history and destiny in its vertical relation to God. From the first narratives in Genesis (4ff.) to their counterpart in Revelation (17ff.), the city is a central locus of the development of sinful humanity and of the drama of God’s action both in a response of judgment and in an initiative of grace and salvation. 1.2. Negative Only when the age of innocence in the garden (Genesis 2) ended with disobedience and expulsion (chap. 3) did the history of the city be…

1. NT 1.1. Term The word “congregation” has become established alongside “church” as English translations of the central NT word “ecclesia” (Gk. ekklēsia, originally meaning “assembly, gathering”). In modern theology a distinction is seen that is materially, though not semantically, based on the NT but that raises ecumenical problems. The congregation is the specific local assembly, whereas the church is the people of God as a universal entity and in its extralocal forms of organization. 1.2. Beginnings In its beginnings, emerging Christianity was mostly organized loca…