German Theologian Research Articles

The secular outlook: in defense of moral and political secularism

Introduction: The Secular Outlook. 1. Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism. The Alpha Privative. Atheism and Liberal Concepts of God. Atheism as an Unpopular Position. A Definition of Atheism. Motives for Atheism. Atheist Values. Spiritual Excellences and the Liberal Decalogue. Agnosticism. The History of Agnosticism. Huxley and Russell. Pascal s Wager. Pascal s Insight. Atheism or Non-Theism? 2. Freethought I: Criticism of Religion. Ecrasez l Infame . Religion and Evil. Religious Violence. Father and Daughter. How to Discover a Relationship between Religion and Violence. Ramadan v. Hirsi Ali. Religion per se . Textual Relativism. Can Translation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Can Interpretation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Why Are Moderates so Reluctant to Criticize Religion? The Bible on Apostasy. Biblical Terrorism: The Story of Phinehas. Biblical Violence and Modern Legal Practice. The Book of History. Some Objections. 3. Freethought II: Freedom of Expression. Mill on Liberty. Khomeini v. Rushdie. Fukuyama Giving Up on the Arab World. The Limits of Free Speech. The Deontological and Utilitarian Justifications for Free Speech. Clifford on the Duty to Critique. Freedom of Speech and Philosophers on the Index. Intolerance not Restricted to Islam. Giniewski v. France. Freethought under Fire. People Are not Being Insulted for Having a Religion. Racism without Race. Social Criticism not Identical with the Urge to Provoke. Flemming Rose on Why He Published the Danish Cartoons. The Theory of Evolution: Too Controversial to Defend? Is There Another Way to Discover the Truth than by Free Discussion? 4. Moral and Political Secularism. Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles Creed. Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe? What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism. Divine Command Theories. Abraham and Isaac. The Story of Abraham in the Qur an. The Story of Jephtha. Adherents of Divine Command Theory. Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics. Kierkegaard and Mill. Kohlberg and Moral Education. Religious and Secular Ethics. Worship. Kant s Struggle with Moral Autonomy and Free Speech. Kant s Legacy in Nineteenth-Century German Theology. Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics. Armstrong s Plea for Liberal Interpretation. A New Way to Look at the Sacredness of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books. Violating the Integrity of the Text. Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam Secularization-Resistant ? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. Selected Reading. Index.

Historiography of Antisemitism versus Anti-Judaism: A Response to Robert Morgan

Responding to Robert Morgan’s plaidoyer for Christianity by claiming a distinction between theological anti-Judaism and modern, racial antisemitism, this article demonstrates that the texts of pro-Nazi German Protestant theologians integrate race and religion with a fluidity that obviates a sharp distinction between the two terms. Antisemitic propaganda produced by Christian theologians during World War II leaves the strictly theological realm in its use of Nazi language and concepts, even when framed in a Christian context, and demands a different kind of conceptualization by historians. Why a group of theologians—professors, instructors, students, pastors and bishops—sought the dejudaization of Christianity during the Third Reich requires attentiveness by historians to the affinities these theologians thought they recognized between Christianity and the claims of modern racial theorists. General historians of Nazi social history will benefit from greater awareness of the racialization of significant sectors of the Christian community in Germany, and students of postwar German theology will benefit from considering the legacy of the pre-1945 Nazification of certain university theological faculties as well as Nazi-era racial tendencies in certain strands of theological scholarship.

Cornerstones in Ulrich Bach's Work on Theology and Disability

This article outlines the theological cornerstones of Ulrich Bach, a German theologian in the field of theology and disability. The present text aims at offering a general approach to Ulrich Bach's work for the English-speaking world by considering the christological, soteriological, and ecclesiological themes of his work. Moreover, this article includes some of the central passages of his work in translation.

Redeeming the penultimate: discipleship and Church in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There are striking parallels between the theologies of discipleship advanced by the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard and the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer's notion of ‘costly grace’ closely resembles Kierkegaard's critique of the misuse of the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. After the publication of Cost of Discipleship, however, Bonhoeffer's view of discipleship moves in a different direction from that of Kierkegaard. Whereas Kierkegaard takes discipleship to mean that the Christian must be in irrevocable conflict with the world, Bonhoeffer sees discipleship as living in the world and cultivating a ‘worldly holiness’. This article tracks the reasons why their initially similar theologies of discipleship result in Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer developing different understandings of Christian discipleship and church. The discussion is organised around the distinction Bonhoeffer makes in his Ethics between the ‘ultimate’ and the ‘penultimate’. Kierkegaard emphasises the ultimate to such an extent that the penultimate is virtually eliminated and the Christian disciple is called upon to live in a state of constant eschatological opposition to the world. For Bonhoeffer on the other hand the penultimate is not to be condemned but to be transformed in the light of the ultimate. The article argues that the differing notions of discipleship advanced by Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer arise from the different political contexts in which they were living and writing. Whereas Kierkegaard's historical situation prompted him to affirm the ultimate by confronting his contemporaries with New Testament Christianity's radical opposition to the world, Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazi régime prompted him to reflect on how the ultimate can be integrated into the penultimate and how the Christian disciple can engage with the world without being of the world.

Rehabilitating Johann Adam Möhler's Sacramental Insights

AbstractThe sacramental and liturgical propositions of the German theologian Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) have been neglected in theological inquiries thus far. This article attempts to rehabilitate them. Having established a particular perspective on the reading of Möhler's liturgical and sacramental insights, we present each dimension of them separately in order to arrive at a ‘dialectical’ sacramental model. This rereading is an intrinsic possibility stemming from Möhler's theological works themselves. In addition, it is also possible to rehabilitate these insights in interplay with some contemporary developments in liturgical and sacramental theology. In his symbolical understanding, Möhler anticipates the Realsymbol of Karl Rahner, and his understanding of the actual presence of the person and sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist anticipates Odo Casel's Kultmysterium. Therefore, the rehabilitation of Möhler's sacramental insights exhibits its full meaning as the anticipation of a more accurate notion of Symbol.

“None Are Like You, Shulamite”: Linguistic Longings in Jewish American Verse

In 1924, the German theologian and philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, completed his translation of the Hebrew lyrics of the medieval Spanish poet, Yehudah Halevi. Reflecting upon his achievement, which included wrestling with the decision to “ introduce foreign rhymes into German,” Rosenzweig provocatively declared: “All Jewish poetry in exile scorns to ignore this being-in-exile.” That is, Jewish poetry, by definition, necessarily occupies an estranged relation to the world of which it is a part. This estrangement is especially acute in Jewish American poems which orient themselves toward Jewish languages (Hebrew and Yiddish) that are at a distance from the poet’s own native tongue.

Repensando a Decadência e a Validade da Ideia de Progresso Hoje, a Partir do Pensamento de Paul Tillich: Incitações e Problematizações Introdutórias

Paul Tillich, German theologian of twentieth century, let to us a great legacy by his theology of culture. Already in his last years, he decided to make a lecture about the decadence and the validity of the idea of progress, which we referred constantly in this article. In that lecture, besides classifying the types of progress, Tillich proposes an alternative to the same ones. Our objective is to lift subjects to rethink theologically the idea of progress today.

<i>Ius est idem quod dominium</i>: Conrado Summenhart, Francisco de Vitoria y la conquista de América

En este artículo se argumenta que la concepción que Francisco de Vitoria formula acerca de la Conquista de América se basa en nociones que provienen de varias fuentes de los siglos XIV y XV. Una de las más importantes es el Opus septipertitum de contractibus del teólogo alemán Conrado Summenhart a quien Vitoria cita con frecuencia. Al contrastar ambos autores se pone en evidencia que la bases terminológicas para asir los problemas relacionados con el derecho a la propiedad, el dominio, surge en buena parte del debate del maestro salmantino con Summenhart.

Becoming Responsible in Christian Ethics

The works of H. Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr provide an appropriate starting point for renewed attention to the idea of responsibility in Christian ethics. While responsible choice and ‘the responsible society’ were important themes in ecumenical Protestant ethics in Britain and the US from the 1930s to the late 1950s, the idea has been neglected in recent decades. German theology, however, has considered Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wartime writings on the ‘venture of responsibility’ and a biblical theology of judgment and responsibility in light of a growing literature in philosophy and social thought that structures the moral life around a technological society’s responsibility for the human future. These different ways of thinking about responsibility invite further theological and ethical reflection on their history, their disagreements, and their possibilities for the future.

E. B. Pusey and Holy Scripture

E. B. Pusey was so strongly identified with the Tractarian movement that it was often referred to as 'Puseyism' and he became the unrivalled leader of Anglo-Catholicism. Although low-church Protestants in the Victorian age often asserted that Anglo-Catholics did not have a strong commitment to the authority and centrality of Scripture, this assumption is not borne out by a study of Pusey's life and thought. This article seeks to recover Pusey as a Bible man. In particular, it explores the nature and impact of his biblical commentaries. Pusey himself saw commenting on Holy Scripture as at the core of his life's work and Christian ministry. Nevertheless, his biblical commentaries have been ignored by scholars, who have instead maintained a consistent preoccupation with his youthful volume on German theology. Pusey's Daniel the Prophet was actually an extremely thorough and formidable piece of scholarship. Indeed, even English critics unsympathetic to his defence of a traditional date for the book of Daniel uniformly found its substantive arguments unanswerable. Pusey's commentary on the Minor Prophets was part of a larger plan he had for providing a new, popular commentary on the Bible, a project which he saw as his primary response to the challenges of the modern age.

Liberal values: Benjamin Constant and the politics of religion

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Part I. Constant's Education: the French, Scottish, and German Enlightenments: 1. Childhood 2. Edinburgh 3. Paris 4. Protestantism and the Enlightenment 5. Brunswick 6. Mauvillon, the new German theology and the idea of progressive revelation 7. Constant's 'The Spirit of Religions' 8. Madame de Stael Part II. The Crucible of the Directory Years: 1. The see-saw policy of the directory 2. Catholicism and the need for 'Republican Institutions' 3. Catholic counter-arguments 4. Constant during the Directory 5. Critics of the Directory's Religious Policies 6. The second Directory and the renewed campaign for Republican institutions 7. Theophilanthropy 8. Lessons of the Directory: William Godwin and Des circonstances actuelles Part III. Napoleon, or Battling 'the New Cyrus': 1. Napoleon and the Catholic Revival 2. Enlightened responses and the plan to 'Protestantize' France 3. Charles de Villers 4. Bonaparte's decision 5. Portalis on the Utility of Religion 6. The Concordat and the Organic Articles 7. Friends and foes of the Concordat: from the Genie du christianisme to Delphine 8. Constant's trip to Germany 9. The Sentiment/Form Distinction 10. Return to Paris (December 1804) and the Debate on a National Religion Part IV. Constant becomes Constant: From the Principles of Politics (1806) to the Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814): 1. Constant's Political Principles in 1806 2. 'Private judgement' in Protestant Polemics 3. Book VIII: On Religious Freedom 4. Constant's 'Corner of Religion': from the 'Letter about Julie' to the Correspondence with Prosper de Barante, a. The 'Letter about Julie', b. Adolphe and Cecile, c. Correspondence with Prosper de Barante 5. De l'Allemagne (1810) 6. Constant's return to Germany 7. The spirit of conquest and usurpation (1814) Part V. Politics and Religion during the Restoration (1814-24): 1. Keeping Political Liberty Alive 2. Keeping Religious Liberty Alive Part VI. The 'Protestant Bossuet': De la religion in Political Context (1824-30): 1. De la religion, volume I (May 1824), Reviews of volume I 2. Charles X and 'the invasion of priests', Constant's article 'Christianity', Professions of Protestantism 3. De la religion, volume II (October 1825) 4. The Problem with Industrie: Constant and religion seen from the Left 1. Saint-Simon's 'New Christianity' (1825) 2. Auguste Comte, Le Producteur, and the search for a new 'spiritual authority' Part VII. Constant's Legacy: 1. The Revolution of 1830 2. Constant's declining reputation.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE THEOLOGY OF DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Abstract.The German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not widely known for engaging with scientific thought, having been heavily influenced by Karl Barth's celebrated stance against natural theology. However, during the period of his maturing theology in prison Bonhoeffer read a significant scientific work, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's The World View of Physics. From this he gained two major insights for his theological outlook. First, he realized that the notion of a “God of the gaps” is futile, not just in science but in other areas of human inquiry. Second, he felt that an infinite universe, as considered by science, would be self‐subsistent and could exist as if there were no God. Bonhoeffer replaced Barth's radical critique of religion with the even more extreme view that it is a mere passing phase in history that grown‐up humanity can dispense with. At the same time Bonhoeffer began an important critique of Barth's reaction, namely, the latter's retreat to a “positivism of revelation.” While Bonhoeffer did not go quite as far as one might like, his approach opened up hopeful avenues for an answer to “the liberal question” and even a revived place for some kind of natural theology.

Beyond Experience. The Contribution of System Theory in German Theology

Beyond Experience. The Contribution of System Theory in German Theology

Editorial: German Theology in Contemporary Society

Editorial: German Theology in Contemporary Society

Uma pastoral integral, igreja-cidade: em diálogo a eclesiologia de Jürgen Moltmann e a pastoral de José Comblin

The article brings up a proposal for dialogue Moltmann- Comblin order to unite two concepts, the ecclesiology of Jurgen Moltmann and the pastoral of Jose Comblin taken to the cleaners. As the main text of the German theologian, theology of hope, suffers from practical reasoning, Jose Comblin taken to the cleaners can contribute to a pastoral church-inclusive city. Based on the concepts of pastoral theology, the article brings up a ministry that sees challenges and dilemmas of the city besides offering support for full pastoral activities.

QUESTIONING SCIENTIFIC FAITH IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract.The late nineteenth century was not only a time in which religious faith was questioned in light of increasing claims of natural science. It is more accurate to see the familiar Victorian crisis of faith as but one aspect of a larger historical phenomenon, one in which the methods of both religion and science came under scrutiny. Among several examinations of the status of scientific knowledge in the waning decades of the century, the treatment of the subject by the German theologian Wilhelm Herrmann and philosopher Hans Vaihinger rejected its objective nature and denied that either scientists or theologians had access to the truth of nature. Although this stance regarding the nature of science, religion, and their relationship was limited to intellectuals in German society at the time, it foreshadowed developments in our own day in which the traditional search for truth has been problematized.

The Holy as an Epistemic Category and a Political Tool: Ernst Cassirer's and Rudolf Otto's Philosophies of Myth and Religion

In giving a philosophical account of the rise of National Socialism in early- and mid-twentieth-century Germany, many philosophers have pointed to myth as an explanatory feature. The work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment is renowned. This essay confronts Horkheimer and Adorno's argument with the less-celebrated work of the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, whose functionalistic concept of myth as a symbolic form enables him to give detailed philosophical analyses of myth as a long-established form of life and as an artificial weapon in the service of modern politics. Cassirer's concept of myth was inspired by the German theologian Rudolf Otto and his use of phenomenological description of the transcendent experience of the holy.

<i>The Victorians and Germany</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Victorians and Germany Michael Ledger-Lomas (bio) John R. Davis , The Victorians and Germany (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 419 pages, illustrated, paperback, £45 (ISBN 978-3-03911-065-0) DOI: 10.3366/E1355550208000210. 'It is of Prussia that I write, but it is of England that I think!' Edward Bulwer's exclamation, which concludes his review of Prussian education in England and the English (1833), might serve John Davis as an epitome of The Victorians and Germany. In it he argues that the interest shown by the Victorians in Germany was uniquely intense and motivated by a desire to reform their own society. His book is offered primarily as a synthesis of existing research on the manifold forms this interest took, which 'only injects new and original research where it is felt that it is needed' (19). Interlinked chapters examine interest in and borrowings from German literature, religion, historical scholarship, art and music, education and social policy. After a lively chapter on travel, Davis examines British reactions to German unification, ending his book with a cursory assessment of relations between the Victorians and Imperial Germany. Indeed, despite its title, the book mainly concentrates on patterns of cultural exchange in the mid-nineteenth century, bookended by assessments of their roots in the long eighteenth century and survival into a new context of economic and strategic rivalry. [End Page 147] The Victorians and Germany has considerable virtues as a survey of the 'German idea'. It goes some way to fulfil its aim of drawing connections between previously unrelated fields of research, showing how impressions of German mysticism formed, say, by reading German poetry could spill over into assessments of German theology (384). Davis draws perceptive parallels between the enthusiasm for Nazarene art and German music (237) and rightly draws attention to cultural fixers like the Prussian ambassador Bunsen, who was simultaneously active as a diplomat, patron of the arts, ecclesiastical politician and controversial philologist. Davis has some interesting reflections on the persistence of interest in Germany. He sees the Victorians as a people in thrall to 'modernisation' who were intent on importing the 'goods' – a doctrine of history, artistic styles, or whatever – which could help them harmonise economic and social rationalisation with the spiritual and the ideal (22–3). The goods in demand changed over time too, from fantasy to facts. Romantic infatuation with the land that harboured the last enchantments of the Middle Ages mutated into envious appreciation of hard scientific and industrial achievement (98). Davis has a keen eye for detail, noticing everything from Victorian queasiness at the German predilection for smoking and social kissing (327–8) to Dickens's lampoons on the bluff opponents of German schooling, who consider that the 'man ought to be knocked down who ruminates' (279). Yet this book is ultimately neither sophisticated or daring enough in its analysis of an extremely important and complex phenomenon. Its chief failing is methodological. When examining the interaction between Victorian Britain and other cultures, it is doubtful whether it is either valid or profitable to speak of the 'Victorian mind' (9). As previous historians of Anglo-German intercultural transfer have rightly emphasised, it is tempting but overly simplistic to think of this process as a natural flow of information from one homogenous national culture to another, or to berate those who opposed that flow for ignorance or misunderstanding.1 One must rather concentrate on the British networks that formulated perceptions and transferred information about other countries and ask what domestic objectives they followed in doing so. When they either held up ideas or institutions as liable to improve, or conversely as repugnant to, national character, they were not so much voicing an existing consensus about what Victorian Britain was as attempting to reshape it through loaded comparison with or borrowing from other countries. To his credit, Davis recognises the importance of this approach. Although he often resorts to a simplistic model of cultural osmosis, [End Page 148] in which German ideas are 'soaked up' by Britain (192) or in which 'Victorians were ready to drink in the new ideas and methods being produced by the Germans' (161), he also wants to concentrate our attention on...

Bonhoeffer in South Africa: Role model and prophet

Dietrich Bonhoeffer , arguably more than any other European theologian, influenced the way in which South African Christians, clergy and laity alike, have come to see their role in the struggle against apartheid. In his article the author describes the manner in which the German theologian was accepted as a role model by many, and evaluates his influence in the theological and ethical debates in the country. The aim of the article is to determine whether Bonhoeffer – who was born a hundred years ago, in 1906 – still has a message for us today, in a different time and under different circumstances. The author’ s conclusion is in the affirmative: Bonhoeffer’ s message is as powerful as ever . The basic principles in his teaching are as important to us today and tomorrow as they have been in the past. The author refers to five principles: 'Confessing Christ here and now’, ‘Putting a spoke in the wheel’, ‘Learning to see things from below’, ‘Acknowledging our guilt’, and ‘Becoming a church for others beyond privilege’.

Christian Ethics between Spirit and Zeitgeist: Alfred Dedo Müller's Forgotten Ethik Christelijke ethiek tussen Geest en tijdgeest: Alfred Dedo Müller’s vergeten Ethik

The German theologian Alfred Dedo Müller (1890–1972) has become known for his crucial contribution to the establishment of practical theology as an independent discipline. He is also known for his commitment to religious socialism and for his involvement in new liturgical movements. However, none of the historical accounts about this important theologian has paid attention to his Ethik, published in 1937. In that study Müller explicitly expresses sympathies for Nazi-conceptions about Volkstum, the Jews, the Führer-state, the need for racial hygiene, and the Nurnberg laws. Although he advocates the killing of innocent humans in no way, he may be criticised for failing to identify the dangers of Nazism, for not speaking up more loudly, and for de facto providing the Nazis with theological justification of their politics. After World War II, Müller expresses regret about the deceptions and the crimes of Nazism. However, he neither makes any reference to his own role nor does he see reasons to alter his theological method of ‘radical realism’.