Volume 78, Issue 6

This contribution offers a retrospective on the events of the year 2017 in Germany from the perspective of the Special Envoy for the Reformation Anniversary (of the EKD). It highlights individual climaxes such as the Kirchentag or the World Exhibition of the Reformation in Wittenberg and appreciates the spirit of ecumenical openness and the global horizon of the celebrations. It also discusses some challenges for present-day Christianity, namely preaching in an environment that is both secular and multi-religious. According to the author, it will be decisive to keep the impact of the anniversary alive in the local church communities beyond the year 2017.

Differently from the 95 Theses, Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation explores his central objec­tive as a professor of theology a reformulation of university theology in view of scholastic aberrations. His new concept is inspired and informed by Paul, Augustine, and medieval my­sticism. His success among students and magisters shows that with his criticism of the rather helpless attempts to base the Christian faith in philosophy, he had the finger on the pulse. To the young intellectuals whom Luther inspired about the issue of the reformation in Heidel­berg, the old way of doing theology seemed no longer plausible. Luther by contrast offered a theology inspired by Paul and mysticism with new possibilities of expression that promised to be existentially relevant.

In September 2017, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Trier was celebrated ecu­menically. It is within this context that this contribution discusses central traits of Luther’s theology of the cross based on the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation and the 1519 Sermon on Preparing to Die (Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben). It then identifies important conse­quences of Luther’s focus on the cross in Christology, his understanding of the Lord’s Supper, and in ethics, and draws reception-historical lines to modern Lutheranism. At the end, consi­derations as to the ecumenical relevance of the theology of the cross are presented.

At present, the historiographic classification of the Protestant reformation is changing from the concept of an epochal turning point towards the notion of a systemic, complex process. The reformer Johannes Bugenhagen, who was a central character in shaping the Protestant church, was also inspired by traditions deeply rooted in the Catholic church. His programmatic 1525 Pastoral Letter to the Hamburgers (Sendbrief an die Hamburger) features mystic images and motifs that can be traced back to Bernard of Clairvaux, the leading figure of Western mysti­cism. This theological setting helps Bugenhagen to develop a succinct alternative vis-à-vis the Erasmian humanism that has not lost its credibility until today. Modern church theories that are no longer characterized by hermetic isolation but oriented towards a systemic integration into the larger social context, are free from any zeitgeist - instead they are based on the core of reformatory ecclesiology.

This essay relates the Lutheran idea of the inner coherence of faith and good works to the central surah of the Qur’an, al-‘Asr, which addresses faith and doing good works as well. By means of different interpreters of the Qur’an, especially Faḫr ad-Dīn ar-Razīs and Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s commentaries, the semantic space of this small surah is illuminated: Due to the ambivalence of practice, faith and good works always need to be accompanied by self-critical, interpersonal communication-reminiscent of old Arabic afternoon balancing discussions.