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Structureless, Life-Threatening Space 1. In all societies explicitly rooted in tradition, a division of reality into a habitual, familiar component and an unaccustomed, strange, threatening one—or the contrariety of cosmos and chaos—has doubtless provided the most elementary orientation. Beyond the familiar, reliable world begins the wilderness—another world, of ghosts, demons, the spirits of the dead, and all manner of unknown, ominous beings. The concept of chaos (Gk., ‘precipice,’ ‘abyss,’ ‘chasm’), then, has possessed telling elements of religious meaning…

The Question of Origins in Myth and Philosophy 1. A concern with the origins of the human being and the world—a concern with anthropogony and → cosmogony—is characteristic of all societies rooted in tradition. As early as the Indian Upanishads, the question is posed as to the origin of all—the ultimate, total ground, from which the multiplicity of phenomena has emerged. Interpretations of the origin of the world are found in the cosmogonic myths of all of the peoples of the earth. Enuma Elish and the Gilgamesh epic can be cited as myths of origin from the Mesopotamian culture. In…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Bible – IV. Judaism – V. Christianity – VI. Islam I. Religious Studies In the context of rational Christian metaphysics, the knowability of God is assumed and God-talk is substantiated in such a way that certain attributes, such as holiness (Sacred and profane: V), eternity, …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Bible – III. Dogmatics – IV. Education and Ethics – V. Law I. Religious Studies Emphasis on the phenomenon known as obedience varies among religions, but wherever human beings are understood as hearers of a divine or sacred word obedience plays an important role as the claim of a higher, transhuman power on human beings. The religious will to obey presupposes prevailing over one’s own self-will for the sake of God or what is holy. The Enlighten-¶ ment, which calls human beings to autonomy, led to a crisis of the religious concept of o…

[English Version] I. Religionswissenschaftlich Der P. geht aus von der unauslöschbaren Vielheit (Einheit/Vielheit) der Welt, während der Monismus die Einheit der Welt voraussetzt und diese Vielheit lediglich als Vorstufe auf dem Weg zur »letzten« Einheit oder als Täuschung betrachtet. Von der klassischen Religionsphänomenologie wurde der rel. P. im Anschluß an R. Otto als Ausdruck unterschiedlicher Erscheinungsformen des einen Heiligen in verschiedenen Rel. gedeutet (Otto; Gantke, Begriff). Diese F…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Pluralism arises from the ineradicable diversity (Unity and diversity) of the world, whereas monism presupposes the unity of the world and views this diversity as nothing more than an illusion or an antecedent stage on the road to “ultimate” unity. Classical phenomenology of religion, following R. Otto, considered religious pluralism to reflect diverse manifestations of the singular Holy in various religions (Otto; Gantke, Begriff). This form of religious pluralism presupposes a common basis of all religions. Today’s plural…

[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…