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[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Judaism – IV. Law – V. Ethics I. Old Testament The death penalty in the Old Testament has three causes: 1. blood revenge as a direct legal reaction by a family damaged by a homicide; 2. cultic law involving severe violations of religious taboos such as witchcraft, sodomy and apostasy (Ex 22:17–19); 3. family property rights (Ex 21:12, 15–17) with violations against the authority of the parents, kidnapping and killing a family member. From the beginnings of the history of its literature and law onward, the protection of life is of such importance to the OT that it assigns the death penalty to homicides within a family and, unlike other legal systems, is not satisfied with only performing a ritual purification in order not to double the harm to the family. As the Book of the Covenant demonstrates, local courts took jurisdiction over family law in the pre-exilic period (Judicial system in biblical Israel), which introduced the death penalty to the local courts although it continued to be closely associated with violations of family law such as adultery (Deut 22:22; Lev 20:10) and rebellion against parents (Deut 21:18–21). Procedural rationale, with its differentiation between murder and bodily harm resulting in death (Ex 21:12–14; Deut 19:2–13*), between adultery, seduction and …

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[German Version] Indebtedness differs from guilt/debt, which refers generally to an ethical circumstance as the omission or transgression of a duty, as a concrete, unfulfilled duty or a specific transgression of a requirement. In this regard, one thinks, first, of debts in the economic realm incurred through private, national or international borrowing. The term itself…

[German Version] I. Philosophy Objectively, probability is the measure of the chance that a particular event will take place (ontological probability); subjectively, it is the measure of the certa…

[German Version] Faithfulness is an attribute of God (Divine attributes); it is what makes God God – truth and authenticity (Mal 3:6). In the Old Testament, trust is directed toward God's covenant (II) with humans. It describes God's faithful stance toward man (Hos 2:14–21). He is the one whose words do not pass away (Isa 40:8). The reference to God's covenant, preserved by his faithfulness, points to the trustworthiness of God's pledge which endures forever as the basis of human trust, irrespecti…

[German Version] “Luxury” is derived from Latin luxus, luxuria and was first used as a German term ( luxus) by Paracelsus in 1529. On the basis of its Latin root, luxury denotes wastefulness, pomp, and immoderate expenditure exceeding the respective social norm (Veblen). Luxury is a concomitant phenomenon of the history of humanity (Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. L. Moland, vol. XX, 1967, 16). Because it is defined in relation to the respective social norm, however, this descriptive concept of the conduct of life (Lifestyle/Conduct of life) is als…

[German Version] is a term related to human action (III) and denotes the circumstance that an action may result in harm (Damage), but also in positive consequences. ¶ Derived ultimately from Italian risco…

[German Version] I. Terminology The growing popularity of the term spirituality and its equivalents in other Western languages in religious and theological literature is a 20th-century phenomenon. Although the adjective spiritalis (or spiritualis) appeared in early Christian Latin, translating Pauline πνευματικός/ pneumatikós (1 Cor 2:13–3:1, etc.), along with its antonym carnalis (for σαρκικός/ sarkikós) and rapidly became common, the noun spiritualitas did not appear until the 5th century and then only sporadically. In the 12th century, it began to app…

[German Version] generally denotes the relationship of two unrelated adults living together unmarried as a household with or without children. Structurally, cohabitation does not represent a new and novel way of life. Traditionally it was known as concubinage. What have changed, however, are the conditions that encourage cohabitation, the subjective significance assigned to it, and its biographical position. As late as the beginning of the 20th century, it served…

[German Version] The notion of security or safety in the technological context must always consider two aspects simultaneously – the assurance of attaining its goals inherent in th…

[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Aesthetics – III. Christian Theology I. Terminology The term conduct of life was already used in the Early Church (Jerome) for the view that an individual's personal life may differ from the lives of others. It is not destined to be at the mercy of the individual's own natural and social development: he or she experiences his being as a being to which he can relate, which he can actively shape in freedom and responsibility. This presupposes that human life is a form of ex…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion The term trust or confidence (Lat. fiducia, Gk πίστις/ pistis), has embodied, since ancient Rome and Greece, both aspects essential to the concept of trust, namely certainty and faithfulness on the one hand, and faith and hope on the other. Cicero saw both as being based on an assured self-confidence, which he assigned as a secondary virtue to bravery ( De inventione, 2.163). Trust, where it is firmly held onto as a fundamental attitude towards life, is quite rightly placed among the virtues. However, it may not be con…