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[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Church History – V. Dogmatics – VI. Judaism…

[German Version] I. Science Natural laws express regular connections between natural phenomena, with the ideal aim of potential mathematical modeling. Depending on whether the connection is unconditionally valid, or merely describes probabilities, a distinction can be made between deterministic and statistical natural laws. In…

[German Version] I. Origin and Spread – II. Doctrine – III. Islamic Philosophy – IV. Islamic Art (Architecture and Book Art) – V. Islamic Studies – VI. Christianity and Islam – VII. Judaism and Islam – VIII. Islam in Europe – IX. Islam in North America – X. Political Islamism I. Origin and Spread …

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[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, perfection, infinity, immutability, omnipotence, all-goodness and personality (Personality of God), are ascribed to him. On the other hand, rational religious criticism calls attention to the fundamental problem of human discourse about God and his attributes. In L. Feuerbach's succession, the attributes ascribed to God are “exposed” in “anthropological reduction” as huma…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. History of Dogma – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Philosophy of Religion – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam (cf. Present and Future Eschatology, Consistent Eschatology) I. Religious Studies 1. The Problem of Terminology Eschatology (“discourse” or “doctrine” [Gk λόγος/ lógos] concerning the “last things” [Gk ἔσχατα/ éschata]) is a neologism that was introduced in the late 18th century in the con- text of the definition of the “last things,” i.e. of the …

[German Version] (Abū Ḥāmid al-Gazzālī; 1058–1111 ce) from Ṭūs in northeastern Iran, the Algazel of the Latin Middle Ages, was one of the most important and, to date, most influential scholars in Islam. From a religious family, he first studied the traditional Islamic disciplines and taught law and theology from 1091 on in the leading Sunni academy in Baghdad. Simultaneously, however, Gazzālī sought to engage wi…

[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 ( ibid., 82–85); texts from India often count five “souls”: the power of breath ( prāṇa), the power of speech ( vāc), the power of sight ( cakṣus), the power of hearing ( śrotra), and the power of thought ( manas); collectively these are usually called prāṇa ( …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. History of Religions – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Art History I. Religious Studies …

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. History of Theology – VI. Creation and Preservatio…

[German Version] (Lat. form of Abū aʿAlī al-Ḥusain ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā; c. 980, Afšana near Buḫārā – 1037, Hamadān), a comprehensive scholar, outstanding physician and philosopher, whose thought has exerted lasting influence on later Islamic intellectual history, but also on European scholasticism. Avicenna developed his philosophical doctrines in dialogue with Aris…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Human destiny. The human experience of existence holds both positiv…

[German Version] I. Bible 1. Old Testament and early Jewish apocalypticism. Predestinati…

[German Version] The Muʿtazilah was a school of major importance in the development of Islamic theology; it emerged in the first half of the 8th century through the teaching of Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ; in the early 9th century, it rose to become the dominan…

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Fundamental Theology – III. Islamic Theology I. Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of religion deals with the problem of the quest…

[German Version] I. Philosophy The term skepticism denotes an attitude informed by doubts regarding certain beliefs. In the realm of philosophy, these doubts have to do primarily with the existence or knowableness of the external world and the knowableness or motivating force of moral norms. Since ancient Greece, a distinction has been made between academic skepticism and Pyrrhonian skepticism. The former was cultivated at Plato’s Academy (I) and used against the defenders of dogmatism; it argued the impossibility o…

[German Version] I. Philosophy Neoplatonism takes the system constructed by Plotinus as its starting point. Important representatives are Amelios, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Theodore of Asine, Emperor Julian the Apostate, Plutarch of Athens, Syrian, Proclus, Damascius, and Simplicius. Pagan Neoplatonism ends institutionally with the closing of the Academy by Emperor Justinian I in 529 …

[German Version] (c. 1105, Wādī Āš, Spain – 1185, Marrakech), physician and Islamic philosopher. Ibn Ṭufail supported Averroes and became known as the author of the novel Ḥaiy ibn Yaqẓān [The living, son of the wakeful one]. In this novel, Ibn Ṭufail describes the path to recognition of a person named Ḥaiy, who grew up alone on a solitary island from his birth. Ḥaiy deciphers his environment step by step, grasps the laws of logic and of physics, gains insight into the cosmic order, and recognizes the necessity of a creator.…