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“Patripassianism” (not to be confused with “theopassionism,” which is a synonym of theopaschitism: see Theopaschites) is a term of abuse referring to theological views that identify God the Father and God the Son so strongly that they seem to imply that Pater passus est (“The Father suffered”). Tertullian ascribed this position to a certain Praxeas and Hippolytus of Rome to Pope Zephyrinus, Pope Callistus, Noetus of Smyrna, Epigonus, Kleomenes, and Sabellius; all of these “patripassians” were active in Rome in the late 2nd and early…

Theopaschitism (from θεός [“God”] and πάσχειν ["suffer”]) is a Christological term denoting the view that God the Logos incarnate has suffered on the cross. Early theopaschite expressions like, for example, “they crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Cor 2:8), “God’s blood” (Ign. Eph. 1.1), and the “crucified God” (Greg. Naz. Or. 45:29) served to express that in Jesus (Christ, Jesus, 01: Survey) it was really God who suffered on the cross. In the West, which tended to distinguish more strictly between the human and the divine in Jesus than the Ea…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Fundamental Theology – IV. Dogmatics – V. Ethics – VI. Practical Theology and Psychology of Religion I. Philosophy Feeling or sense (Lat. sensus, Fr. sentiment, Ger. Gefühl) is the direct sensate awareness of an inward state, in which a unique access to reality is articulated. Until well into the modern era, the term encompassed without distinction both sensory perceptions and emotions (affects, passions, moods). During the 18th century, feeling came to be defined more precisely in its cognitive, expressive-¶ ev…

[German Version] I. Religion – II. Philosophy – III. History of Theology and Dogmatics – IV. Ethics I. Religion Talk of happiness refers to a deeper level of experience than enjoying oneself or feeling good. Happiness denotes success in life; the pursuit of happiness is a universal element in human life and thought. The hope of happiness may take ritual forms, especially in connection with rites of passage when a change of social position and status makes life uncertain, for instance at birth and weddings. The…

[German Version] Middle knowledge is so called because it is located between two types of knowledge attributed to God in the Middle Ages. On the one hand, God possesses scientia simplicis intelligentiae (complete knowledge of God's own nature and the whole range of possibilities, also called scientia naturalis). On the other hand, God possesses scientia libera (knowledge of everything, past, present, and future, that happens as the result of an act of God's free will, by which God decides what possibilities will be realized). God's natural knowledge…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics I. History of Religions As a theological category, damnation belongs primarily in the context of the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The etymology of the term itself connotes a local and a judicial dimension: the punishment of expulsion to a real or imaginary place as an exclusion from …

[German Version] I. History – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics and Ethics – IV. Practical Theology – V. Treatment in Education I. History Hitler assumed power in Germany on Jan 30, 1933. From this date onwards, racism and Antisemitism/Anti-Judaism became central components of the Nazi system (National Socialism). During the first months the NSDAP instigated anti-Semitic riots and campaigns of terror that climaxed on the Apr 1, 1933, with a country-wide boycott on Jewish shops and professionals. In additi…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In archaic cultures, the wellbeing of the community is determined by a fatal power that can be influenced by religious rituals but is ultimately incalculable. In the context of advanced early urban cultures, however, there emerged religious worldviews in which universal concepts of order played a central role. In this historical context, a “functioning world order” (Klimkeit) became the structural principle for models explaining the world. The connection between …

[German Version] General. Over the centuries, the term sensation (Ger. Empfindung, Lat. passio corporalis, sensatio) has taken on many different meanings. As a result, it has the reputation of being extremely slippery and has fallen somewhat out of use. If we ignore its use as a synonym for feeling, it has two related meanings: (a) sensory perception and (b) physical sensation. Physical sensations (e.g. feelings of warmth, pain, itching) provide information about the present state of our own bodies and need ¶ not be associated with particular organs. Through sensory perceptio…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Fundamental Theology – IV. Ethics – V. Practical Theology I. Philosophy To speak of the meaning of a linguistic utterance is ambiguous from a systematic point of view. The various ¶ semantic concepts correspond to various levels of understanding (comprehension of meaning). The first three levels belong to the field of semantics: (1) If the spoken sentence P is free of lexical and grammatical ambiguities in the language of the speaker, then the interpreter understand…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Dogma I. Philosophy ἀπάθεια/ apatheia, “freedom from affects,” is a central concept in Stoic ethics. As did the competing Epicureans (Epicureanism) and Pyrrhoneans (Skepticism), the Stoics saw happiness, regarded as the telos (goal), in inner peace, in the calm and balance of the soul. In their view, the affect, an “overdeveloped urge,” escaped from the control of reason, threatened these qualities (SVF 3,378). I…