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[German Version] I. Church History 1. Germany and Europe. Protestantism is a synoptic term for all the Christian churches and groups with roots in the 16th-century Reformation. The term embraces the Lutheran and Reformed confessional churches (Lutheranism, Reformed churches) that emerged directly from the Reformation as well as the Anabaptist movements, the Anglican Church (with some qualifications), and the churches and Free churches associated indirectly with the Reformation that came into being later …

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion The concept of natural religion has more than one sense. Its primary sense was fixed during the European Enlightenment (II, 2). Natural religion is opposed to revealed religion. It is a religion based on human reason alone, in contrast to a religion whose essential principles can be known only because they have been com…

[German Version] I. Bible – II. Philosophy – III. History of Theology and Dogmatics – IV. Ethics – V. Law – VI. Social Politics, Social Ethics – VII. Missiology – VIII. Islam I. Bible 1. Ancient Near East and Old Testament The concept of justice in the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible is basically one of connectivity. It designates the positive relation of the king to the gods and to his people, of the individual to the various collectives ranging from the family to the entire nation, of the deed to the doer's well-being,…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Human destiny. The human experience of existence holds both positive and negative events. Personal and structural processes involving violence and suffering are constants. The “…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of religion Self-sufficiency is the characteristic “a se,” to be self-caused or self-existing and is therefore regarded against the background of the aseity of God. To speak of God’s self-sufficiency is to say that his being (Divine essence) and his characteristics (Divine attributes) do not have an external reason or cause. In modern philosophical debate the view that God is self-caused, i.e. he is the necessary requirement of his own existence, is understood to follow from the notion…

[German Version] I. Church History Pelagius was an ascetic and theological writer from Britain. Before 410 he taught in Rome, and in 411/412, following the capture of Rome by the Goths, went to Palestine after a short stay in North Africa. His teaching, according to which the possibility of sinlessness was an essential part of human nature, provoked the criticism of Augustine and Jerome. This teaching had its setting in the pastoral care of members of the Roman elite. Pelagius stated that when one re…

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