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1. Term What is called natural theology is not an independent theme but an ongoing, urgent problem in Christian theology relating to the question of truth. Natural theology wants to show that God is self-evident and that he does not serve merely as a deus ex machina in the world. It thus claims the adjective “natural” in two ways. The first reference is to …

1. Biblical The dogma of the state of innocence represents an attempt to develop systematically what the Bible has to say about the creation of humanity according to (or “in”) the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27; 1 Cor. 11:7). It shows that the emergence of sin was the decisive event in human history that triggered the events of salvation history (Rom. 5:12–21). It also presents the standards set up with creation that enable us to interpret both sin and regeneration or renewal (Eph. 4:24). Despite their dissimilarity, the two motifs—the historical and the anthropological (Anthro…

[German Version] I. History – II. Church Law – III. Dogmatics – IV. Ethics – V. Missiology I. History 1.…

[German Version] The theologi…

[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Historical Development – III. Results I. Terminology Covenant theology or federal theology (Ger. Föderaltheologie), an old Reformed doctrinal system whose origins are to be sought in Zürich, Heidelberg and Herborn, is the broad attempt to comprehend and portray as a unity the history of God with humanity attested in the OT and NT by means of the biblical covenant concept (Covenant). Correspondingly, the whole substance of dogma, from the creation…

[German Version] According to Augustine of Hippo ( De haeresibus 83; MPL 42, 46), the notion of a sleep or death of the soul was already current among the “Arabs” in the time of Origen. Th…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Phenomenology Western, Christian connotations of the concept of the soul, imposed on the religio-historical evidence by outside studies, must be generally excluded if the soul is understood as the principle of manifestations of life that are perceptible (or culturally considered to be perceptible), although they are rarely categorized under a common umbrella term. It is therefore reasonable to speak of a multiplicity of souls – for example four among the Ob-Ugrians (Hasenfratz, Einführung, 38–41), five among the Proto-Germanic peoples ( ib…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics In general, the term synergy denotes theological conceptions that consider spiritual or ethical cooperation of the human will with divine grace a causal factor in human salvation (Pelagius/Pelagians/Semi-Pelagians). The Reformers followed Augustine of Hippo in rejecting synergism, seeing justification based solely on God’s free grace ( sola gratia) as the only foundation of salvation. Despite the 1999 Joint Declarationon the Doctrine of Justification…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion The notion and theme of “natural the…

[German Version] In the mirror of Lutheran denominational polemics, the term designates a Reformed doctrinal decision concerning Christology which can already be identified in Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter Lombard, and …

[German Version] I. Bible 1. Old Testament and early Jewish apocalypticism. Predestination refers traditionally to God’s foreordained final de…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Dogmatics – IV. Judaism I. Old Testament Election, especially in compounds such as doctrine of election, election idea, election tradition, is a term from biblical theology based on the theological use of the Heb. verb בחר/ bḥr, especially in Deuteronomy, which has become established since K. Galling's monograph (1928). It has become the comprehensive term for the foundation of Israel's existence and involves “the philosophy of history, or better, the theology of history” in the sense of a salvation-historical worldview (Galling 93). The textual witnesses with …

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Fundamental Theology I. Dogmatics The terms infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism designate the alternate positions in the 17th-century dispute between the various schools of Reformed theology regarding the understanding of predestination. The controversial issue was: who is the eternally chosen or damned human being? The yet to be created and fallible person (thus supralapsarianism: T. Beza, F. Gomarus, in certain respects already Calvin) or the already created and fallen human being (thus infralapsarianism: A. Polanus von Po…

[German Version] (“continuous creation”) aims to express the idea that the created world is dependent at each moment in its temporal existence on the active presence of God for its maintenance and subsistence. ¶ The term interprets the conservatio and at the same time shifts it in the closest conceivable proximity of the concept of initial creation (VI): “For God, creation and maintenance are one and the same thing” (Luther). If creation is not to remain a speculative idea, of no consequenc…

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[German Version] I. Bible – II. Dogmatics …

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III.  Christianity – IV.  Judaism – V. Islam I. Old Testament In the OT, fear of God occurs in various reactions to the encounter with God. Fear of God encompasses both the immediate reaction of a person gripped by horror before the holy God (the numinous) and the behavior of the pious person toward God in the form of obedience and praise. Consequently, fear of God can also designate veneration of God and piety (religion). The scope of the fear of God corresponds to the breadth of the concept of God (God: II). The God of Israel is not only a …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies…

[German Version] The doctrine of the testimonium was formulated by Calvin ( Inst.I 7) and included in various Reformed articles of faith (I, 3; Confessio Gallicana 4). It means that the unimpugnable validity and authority of Scripture (Holy Scriptures) does not depend on the judgment of the church (in the form of an agreement or consensus) but on the testimony of the Spirit (Spirit/Holy Spirit). J.H. Alsted honored it as the foundation of all theology. It does not mean that the “self-evidence” of Scriptur…