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Monotheism in general means an understanding of “the divine” (or the transcendent, the numen, the metaphysical first cause), in which its mysterious nature is represented as personal, accessible to prayer, essentially one, whose being is only remotely similar and comparable to the beings of the world. This description of monotheism stems from the historical forms it took in the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, where we find a notion of God which is expressed most explicitly and clearly in monotheistic terms…

Part of Religion: 1. Concept of Religion 2. Science of Religion 3. Theology of Religions A. The Plurality of Religions The fact that after vigorous discussions Vatican II on 28 October 1965 voted a Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to the Non-Christian Religions represents a very important event in the history of the Church. In view of the past history of the Church’s attitude to these religions (which cannot be gone into here), which for dogmatic, psychological, social and cultural reasons had been ent…

Colonization must be distinguished from colonialism. The term colonization is often, though not invariably, applied to the ambitions which Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Phoenicia, Macedonia, and Rome had to rule the world, and also to the activities of medieval Christendom in Eastern Europe. Here it is used in a good sense, to mean civilizing and “developing” a territory. But it would be misreading history to ignore the many negative aspects — political, religious, and psychological — of “…

Part of Missions: 1. Church and Mission 2. Salvation of the Non-Evangelized 3. Theological Problem of Adaptation 4. Non-Christian Missions 5. Missiology 1. Adaptation is not a notion of which the theological content has been definitely established. But it is concerned with the relationship of the Church, of its theology, and of Christians to their vis-à-vis, or partner in history, to what is extra ecclesiam, to “the other”. Adaptation will be understood in terms of the theological significance given to “the other” in the one history of God’s dealings with ma…

Individualism can stand for a large number of highly divergent views and attitudes, of which the highest common factor is the effort to make the individual stand out in bold relief against the background of society, community, group, collectivity and general setting. The meaning of individualism in any given case must be sought in the actual context. There is no systematic philosophy of individualism which the representative upholders of individualism possess. It is rather a matter of individual…