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[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism – III. New Testament – IV. Dogmatic/Ethics – V. Islam I. Old Testament The direct statements of the Old Testament about mercy as a loving and helping approach to others who had fallen into need or guilt are crystallized in Hebrew around the root רחם ( rḥm). The situation is complicated by overlapping of content with the root חנן ( ḥnn, “to be gracious”; Grace: II). Moreover, the OT deals with mercy itself without using the roots חנן or רחר, for example, in the description of God in the primordial history (Gen 1–11). An etymologi…

[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. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Church History – VI. Dogmatics and Ethics I. Religious Studies Humility is an attitude of conscious abasement (Humiliation) and submission. Some modes of expressing humility, such as postures or gestures, can be traced to biological roots; others are conventional, for example a “humble glance” or foot washing. In many cases we encounter an inversion of what is culturally normal, for example nakedness in the poverty (IV) movements of the Middle Ages. Basically, a distinction must b…

[German Version] Lament I. Religious Studies – II. Bible – III. Systematic Theology – IV. Practical Theology – V. Judaism I. Religious Studies Lament has its roots in human experience; it gives voice to suffering and mourning, in ritual, poetic, or informal form. Its end is not theoretical, like theodicy, but practical: people react to the experience of situations perceived as mentally, physically or socially painful and process these experiences individually or collectively. The prototypical occasion for mournin…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. General Suffering is a concept that needs to be approached constructively in comparative religious study as it takes fundamental negative human experiences to a comparative level. On this interpretive level, suffering is understood as one of the fundamental experiences of human life. What people experience as suffering depends on their particular interpretation of the world and hence on their religious system for interpreting the world. The point at which religi…

[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…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. Church History – V. Philosophy – VI. Philosophy of Religion – VII. Dogmatics – VIII. Ethics – IX. Sociology, Politics, and Law I. Old Testament 1. The concept of political freedom, which originated in the Greek polis (City cult), first appeared in Hellenistic Jewish historiography. The Stoics' concept of freedom, which contrasts inner freedom and outward constraint, has no counterpart in the OT. The OT is rooted in an internal mythological cultur…