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[German Version] Family devotions are the locus where personal and communal piety is observed and practiced in daily life. In the evening and morning (and at midday), the household community (House/Household) pauses and reaffirms its existence before God. Hence family devotions represent worship occasions outside regular Sunday worship (Ministerial offices, Liturgy: V) through which Christians exercise their universal p…

[German Version] I. Eastern Christianity – II. Western Christianity I. Eastern Christianity The prayerful remembrance of the deceased is regarded as a central praxis pietatis in all eastern Orthodox churches of the two, three, and seven ecumenical councils. All eastern liturgies include prayers for those who have died in the faith in the anaphora, that is in a central position in the service. In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy (VI), prosphora are offered from which pieces are taken in memory of the deceased and mixed with the eucharistic gifts after Communion to signify the union of the deceased with the “Lamb of God.” Traditionally…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Dogmatics – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. Religious Studies Confession and absolution, expressive of the substantiality of guilt (I) and the impact of the spoken word with its magico-ritual power, are among the “most widespread means of structured confrontation of the ego with itself” (Hahn & Knapp, 7). They appear already in tribal societies (Kikuyu, Nuer, Acholi in East Africa) as part of purificati…

[German Version] I. General – II. Practical Theology I. General Devotion (Lat. devotio) is the concentration of one's thoughts or energies on the divine. The corresponding German term Andacht derives from Middle High German andâht, whose root is the same as that for “to think,” albeit not in the sense of theoretical considerations or instrumental problem solving, but in the sense of “concentrating one's thoughts on a single object.” This includes not only the …

[German Version] (c. 1450, Altkirch, Alsace – Sep 20, 1503, Basel). After studying at Basel, he moved to Paris in 1468, where he was influenced by J. Heynlin of Stein and his combination of Scholasticism and Humanism. In 1472 he became parish priest of Sankt Theodor in Kleinbasel; in 1479 he was appointed to teach canon law at the University of Basel, where he served four terms as rector. Surgant, Heynlin, S. Brant, J. Wimpfeling, J. Geiler von Kaysersberg were among the outstanding representatives of Upper German and Alsatian Humanism and its understanding of a reformatio of the church a…

[German Version] Christian letter-writing is as old as Christianity itself. (The non-Christian literature of consolation, as in the works of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, significantly influenced the letter-writing of the Early Church, esp. stylistically.) Whether we are thinking of Philemon or the extensive correspondence of Basil the Great, the corpus of Luther’s letters (which also m…

[English Version] I. Osten In allen östlichen orth. Kirchen der zwei, der drei und der sieben ökum. Konzilien gilt das betende Gedächtnis der Verstorbenen als zentrale praxis pietatis. Alle östlichen Liturgien enthalten in der Anaphora, d.h. an zentraler Stelle, Bitten für die im Glauben Entschlafenen. In der byz. Göttlichen Liturgie (: VI.) werden Prosphoren dargebracht, denen Partikeln entnommen werden, die dem Gedächtnis der Verstorbenen dienen und nach der Kommunion den eucharistischen Gaben be…

[English Version] Surgant, Johann Ulrich (um 1450 Altkirch, Elsaß – 20.9.1503 Basel). Studium in Basel, ab 1468 in Paris, dort geprägt durch Johannes Heynlin von Stein und dessen Verbindung von Scholastik und Humanismus. 1472 Leutpriester von St. Theodor in Kleinbasel, Lehrer für Kirchenrecht an der Universität Basel (1479), deren Rektor er viermal war. S. gehört neben Johannes Heynlin, S. Brant, J. Wimpfeling, J. Geiler von Kaysersberg u.a. zu den markanten Vertretern des oberdt./elsässischen Human…