Volume 55, Issue 2

It is only through hearsay, ramified and lasting over thousands of years, that we have knowledge of God, neither through a clue of reason nor through a form of intuition or feeling. Therefore, separateness from the finite subject belongs to the one who or which is called God. Especially because of that, the question whether God exists is the paradigm of a truth that is not verified by coherence of opinions but only by actual correspondence. This, from the beginning, connects philosophy, insofar as it is concerned with the guiding star of truth, with the question of God. Particularly, there are three rational guidelines that have always drawn the philosophical attention to the question of God: (1) the comparision and putting into contrast of the mortal with the immortal; (2) the attempt to sufficiently reason what is in need of reason; (3) God as a kind of speculative subjunctive of philosophical reflection. With regard to all these three guidelines, both positive examples from the history of philosophy and possible sceptical reserves shall be exercised.

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel argues for a critical inclusivism that measures the religions using the concept of religion which underlies them. According to Hegel, the two sides of religion, the religious consciousness and God, as content of this consciousness, are inextricably linked. The concept of religion may therefore be developed in two ways, either starting from religious consciousness or starting from its content. From 1827 onward, Hegel consistently follows the second way, which avoids the misconception that God would be conditioned by something else and would therefore have the position of a mere result. Both ways show that religion is the representational consciousness which the absolute spirit has of itself through the mediation of the human mind. From this conception of religion it follows that religion can only be realized by different religions. The religions are the stages of a history that is structured by the concept of religion, and in which the absolute spirit receives an increasingly adequate consciousness of itself. The transition from one religion to another results from the contradiction between the limited representation of God which a religion has, and the concept of religion which is expressed in its other representations. Hegel's assumption of a universal history of religion, which follows from his concept of religion, is compatible with contemporary accounts of the chronology and the genealogy of the religions, if two levels are distinguished from one another: the uniform history of religious consciousness, which is geographically realized in multiple ways, and the determinate religions, which constitute the regional interruptions of this history.

Beginning with an examination of both the empirical results and different ontological evaluations of neuroscientific research on the phenomenon of the will, this inquiry asks whether human will is to be described as bound or free, and whether an appropriate understanding of human will is to be seen in either a deterministic or an indeterministic understanding of the world. A reexamination of Luther’s anthropological claims about the problem of will and the present theological debate leads to the main theses: Given the understanding of the human person as a particular, eschatically constituted whence-and-whither- being in process possessing either a misplaced or a reconciled self-disclosedness, human will has to be understood as being bound to different factors to both internal and external determinants, as well as to internal and external contingency. Human will, therefore, is always bound, meaning that one has to opt for a form of compatibilism. However, this compatibilism must be conceived as being compatible with both determinism and indeterminism. The paper concludes by introducing suggestions about the experience of free will under the conditions of an ontologically bound will and a brief reflexion on the concept of responsibility.

Both preferences and limitations in different theologies of the Trinity, which make for differences in theologies of the church, are grounded in different hermeneutical priorities. Such priorities affect not only one’s theological or philosophical orientation but also one’s mentality. This essay seeks to explore the history of theology in both Eastern and Western churches, as well as examples of current theological perspectives among the various ecclesial confessions in order to show how different hermeneutical priorities have developed; it also seeks to identify how these priorities influenced different Trinitarian theologies and, subsequently, different ecclesiologies. The essay will also examine how the Neo-Nicean-Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity, which informed the Council of Nicaea-Constantinople (381), provides a common hermeneutical basis for theologies of revelation, Trinity and church. Such an exploration provides insights and distinctions that can help resolve the Filioque controversy and that can lead to common perspectives on trinitarian theology. These perspectives render it possible to overcome the basic ecumenical differences about the nature of the church and about church offices.

This paper argues that The Consolation of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius and Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard bear certain striking similarities in their content, form, arguments, and in the way key ideas are expressed. It proposes that the explanation for this similarity could be causal dependency: The Consolation impacted Kierkegaard, consciously or unconsciously, in the development of Either/Or. Regardless of whether this is correct or not, it further proposes that the correlation between these two works is close enough that an intertextual reading is valuable for the comprehension of both The Consoluation and Either/Or. This paper seeks to prove this by executing such a reading. Zusammenfassung Dieses Referat argumentiert, dass die Consolatio Philosophiae von Ancius Manlius Sverinus Boethius und Entweder - Oder von Søren Kierkegaard auffallende Ähnlichkeiten in Bezug auf den Inhalt, die Form, die Argumente und die Weise, in welchen die Schlüsselideen ausgedrückt werden, aufweisen. Es schlägt vor, dass die Erklärung für diese Ähnlichkeiten in der kausalen Abhängigkeit liegt: Kierkegaard wurde bewusst oder unbewusst von dem Werk »Der Trost« in der Entwicklung des »Entweder/Oder« beeinflusst. Ob man diese Annahme nun für korrekt oder inkorrekt hält, sie schlägt vor, dass diese zwei Werke eine so nahe Beziehung aufweisen, dass eine intertextuelle Lektüre wertvoll für das Verständnis beider Werke ist. Mittels einer solchen Lektüre versucht das Referat, diese These aufzuzeigen.

Language games can be opening and narrowing. On the base of this double sense my paper compares the language game of divine love according to Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Barth. They were contemporaries not only regarding their early publications. Both discovered revelation in the face of liberal theology which regarded it as a problematic, mythological concept. However, this similarity is contradicted by difference, based in the Christological dogma which can have a tendency to narrow the common basis of the two authors’ theological language game. There is also an anachronism, brought about by Rosenzweig’s anticipation of the concept of analogy which Barth came to years later. The emphasis of my paper lies on the question how the opening function of theological language games can be promoted. In Rosenzweig’s “speaking thinking” there can be found a trace to an answer. Zusammenfassung Sprachspiele können eine öffnende oder verschließende Funktion haben. Auf der Basis dieser doppelten Bedeutung werden die Sprachspiele der göttlichen Liebe bei Franz Rosenzweig und Karl Barth verglichen. Diese Autoren waren Zeitgenossen nicht nur hinsichtlich ihrer frühen Publikationen. Beide entdeckten die Offenbarung im Angesicht einer liberalen Theologie, die diesen Begriff als problematisch, mythologisch ansah. Diese Ähnlichkeit muss aber auf einen Unterschied bezogen werden, der im christologischen Dogma gründet, welches tendenziell die gemeinsame Basis der theologischen Sprachspiele beider Autoren beschränkt. Zudem hat Rosenzweig die Denkfigur der Analogie schon vorweggenommen, die Barth erst Jahre später entwickelte. Es geht mir um die Frage, wie die öffnende Funktion theologischer Sprachspiele begünstigt werden kann. In Rosenzweigs »Sprachdenken« findet sich die Spur zu einer Antwort.

In the science-religion debate, both scientific and theological approaches suffer from an abstract conception of time and history. This is epitomised by evolution theory and by theological trends trying to match it with biblical and Christian doctrines. On the one hand, thinking in millions of years voids time of any sensible meaning; on the other hand, thinking Darwin and the Bible together compromises both in regards to history. The notion of the “imaginary”, drawn from Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, helps to circumscribe some of the hermeneutical gaps involved, and enables a more nuanced assessment of the respective claims made in the debate. The “Imaginary” points to the necessity of reflecting on the status of one’s own thought in regard to the past. In that sense, both evolution theory and evolution theology are confined to what one may call the “modern imaginary”. An example of the mismatch between evolution theory and Christian doctrine is found in Alvin Plantinga. As the debate largely hinges on hermeneutics, this contribution is part of a broader endeavour to redefine hermeneutics as an ethics. Zusammenfassung In der Debatte um Wissenschaft und Religion kränkeln wissenschaftliche wie theologische Ansätze an einem abstrakten Zeitverständnis. Das zeigt sich sowohl in der gängigen Evolutionstheorie wie in theologischen Bewegungen, welche den Evolutionsgedanken mit biblischen und christlichen Vorstellungen zu verbinden suchen. Einerseits ist es sinnleer, in Millionen von Jahren zu denken; andererseits kompromittiert der Versuch, Darwin und Bibel zusammenzudenken, beide gleichermaßen. Der Begriff der »imaginary«, entliehen aus Charles Taylors A Secular Age, erlaubt eine Erfassung der hermeneutischen Kurzschlüsse sowie eine ausgewogenere Einschätzung der jeweiligen Behauptungen und Argumente in der Debatte. »Imaginary« verweist auf die Notwendigkeit der Reflexion über den Status des eigenen Denkens im Verhältnis zur Vergangenheit. In dieser Hinsicht sind sowohl Evolutionstheorie wie Evolutionstheologie am modernen »imaginary« gebunden. Ein Beispiel der Knoten, die daraus entstehen, bietet eine Stelle aus Alvin Plantinga. Da sich die Debatte vorwiegend um Hermeneutik dreht, ist der Beitrag ein Ansatz zu einer Neubestimmung der Hermeneutik.