Volume 49, Issue 1

When approaching the doctrine of sin there are two standpoints from which one may proceed: the first begins with the individual experience of sin and highlights the unsettling reality of a guilty conscience. Here the conception of Julius Müller (1801–1878) can be seen as an example for this approach. The other approach begins with the self-revelation of God; this revelation is understood to account for the radical nature of sin, for without this revelation the full understanding of sin would be inaccessible to the individual consciousness. Here the conception of Karl Barth (1886–1968) can be seen as an example for this approach. On closer examination it appears that both conceptions assert an elementary concern of the doctrine of sin, which cannot be recovered by the other conception. Furthermore, when held in isolation from one another, both dispositions appear to be deficient for they depend on a complementary endorsement; however, they cannot integrate this complementary endorsement into their own scheme. The irreducible contrast between the doctrines of Müller and Barth thus implies the need of a »double accounting« in dogmatics.

Can Luther still teach us to pray? In his allegory of a “golden thurible” ( gulden reuchfasß ) he develops typological associations with traditional prayers, such as the Lord's Prayer and the psalms with the censer, thanksgiving prayer with the coals, and petition with frankincense. During the recital of the advised order of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Our Father, emerges, as B. Stolt showed, a surplus value: God establishes a relation, which man then confesses trinitarily, and thereafter addresses the founder of the relation as “father”. In order to meditate these steps (Dreischritt) Luther mentions especially doctrine, thanksgiving, confession, and petition. These aspects comply to the four sides of a square pattern of interpersonal communication according to F. Schulz von Thun: matter, relation, self-revelation, and appeal. The “hermeneutic tetragon” (“hermeneutisches Viereck”, M. Oeming) and “four basic types of literary criticism” (G. Schunack) are also suitable to this model. Therefore, we may see not only the adequateness of a modern model, but even more of the basic deepness, by which Luther plumbed prayer as real communication with God. In spite of differences in times, gestures, and postures of prayer, Luther remains, therefore, still an inspiring teacher on the subject of talking to the trinitarian God today.

This paper offers a contribution to theological anthropology. It investigates the anthropological meaning of discourse on powers within the context of Luther's understanding of the power of God. The interpretation is based on selected writings by Luther from the period from 1519 to 1525. The outcome suggests that as beings-in-relation human beings are themselves in their striving for self-fulfilment the entrance gate for powers over which they have no control. Among these are the power of images and the power of recognition. Their disempowerment depends on a change in the understanding of fulfilment. The paper attempts to offer a contribution towards the topic of enlightenment and demythologization on the basis of the gospel.

The protestant polemic is vivid when it comes to fides implicita . But what does the concept really mean? What sorts of patterns of understanding have been developed in the past? The attempt at reconstructing the term will include an analysis of the specific functions that fides implicita have had in history. Taking it out of the context of catholic eccelsiology allows for a protestant understanding, namely that fides implicita is about trust in God, which already implies knowledge per se , whether it is intuitive or anticipatory or even intellectually limited: It is not yet knowing, on the one hand, and implies already knowledge, on the other hand. In faith we find a very special perception of knowledge that arrives at certainty directly rather than discursively. This is the challenge of fides implicita .

This article examines the actuality of Hegel by showing that many contemporary systematic theologians work with a Hegelian basic structure. The basic structure consists in the absolute mediation of different moments and is the organizing principle of a whole number of doctrines of the trinity developed in the 20 th century. Normally, these theologians are unaware of their Hegelian heritage, so that the phenomenon may be called an “implicit Hegelianism”. It is the thesis of this article that the implicit Hegelianism has to be rejected, because Hegel's basic structure is fraught with grave problems. To argue for this thesis, the article begins with an exegesis of Hegel, followed by a theological and a philosophical critique. Then these observations are used for a hermeneutics of a contemporary theologian. The doctrine of the trinity developed by Gisbert Greshake will be shown to be implicitly Hegelian and criticised accordingly. Finally, the starting point of a doctrine of the trinity will be sketched which is shaped by a alternative basic structure to the one of Hegel.

With Schelling's later philosophy, the rationality in German idealism bids a farewell to the attempt of its last justification. In the reality of an absolute reason, rationality cannot affirm its own reality. Rationality indeed achieves the aim of being linked to an absolute, but whose reality as a creative freedom eludes the conceptualising reaching out of the rationality (“negative philosophy”). However, the possibility of this rationally ungraspable reality, as understood by rationality, liberates to create a theoretically non-enforceable change of perspective (“religion”), which is nonetheless not to be denounced as irrational. Afterwards, the “unlocked” rationality is able to diagnose the world in the view of the creative freedom of the absolute (“positive philosophy”). This is what Schelling's later philosophy demonstrates: a theory of the absolute can create scope for uncertainty, which is expressed in phenomena such as ambivalence, coincidence and indecipherability. In so doing, Schelling anticipates what the ‘modern’ likes to lay claim to in its self-characterisation, which is, indeed, contrary to the theological and absolutist theoretical considerations of German idealism. Different, however, from other representatives of post-idealism, Schelling locates ‘the other’ of rationality not strictly as being on the other side of rationality (danger of irrationalism) but links the insight into the other of rationality with the self-enlightenment of rationality. The other of rationality is its absolute reason. This reason is original creativity and creative freedom: the freedom from and through which everything is.

Richard Schaeffler stands in the forefront of distinguished Catholic religious philosophers of the present time. He deliberately understands his new compendium in three volumes as “philosophical practise in theology” and not as “basics”. By a masterly re-vision of his methodology Schaeffler elaborates the traditional doctrine of the “fourfold meaning of scripture”. In his transcendental and hermeneutical reflection he points out criterias for an objective understanding of religious experience by which all fundamental theological subjects ( demonstratio religiosa, christiana, catholica ) are reconstructable. The history of the faith of Israel can be comprehended as a “school of belief” that forms decisive criteria for an adequate or inadequate relation to God. Thus, the history experienced by Israel is constitutive for a proper understanding of the repletion of salvation in Christ as well as for the self-conception of the ecclesiastic testimony.