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Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie

Edited by: Johannes Zachhuber
In cooperation with: Lubomir Batka , Philippe Büttgen , Christine Helmer , Shao Kai Tseng , Grant Kaplan , Johanne S. T. Kristensen , Cornelia Richter , Hartmut von Sass , Robert Vosloo and Simeon Zahl

Languages: German, English

First published: January 1, 1959

Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year

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The New Journal of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion is a scholarly publication covering the full range of topics in systematic theology and the philosophy of religion. Although established in the Lutheran tradition, the journal today offers an ecumenical and international forum for the discussion of pressing issues raised by the most current research. Articles, which can be submitted in English or German, are published quarterly. On occasion, the journal publishes Special Issues based on a thematic focus. Proposals may be sent to the editor in chief.

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Covenant, Sacrifice, and Familial Relationships

September 25, 2025

Sarah Stewart-Kroeker

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In the Hebrew Bible, various instantiations of “covenant” are accompanied or established by various forms of sacrifice. Significantly, these sacrifices are tied directly or figuratively to the importance of generational succession in the reproduction of the bloodline. This indicates a symbolic nexus between covenant, sacrifice, and reproduction. Given this nexus, it is perhaps unsurprising that covenant is analogized to human relational bonds of marriage, the first and oldest instance of which is found in the book of Hosea. In this paper, I trace certain thematic continuities between the association of covenant with sacrifice, the reproductive-familial significance of these sacrifices, and the ethical implications for the association later made between covenant and marriage. I argue that a covenant paradigm should not be applied to marriage for several reasons, notably the potentiality of violence inherent in the covenant-sacrifice-reproduction nexus and the radical asymmetry between God and humans which makes covenant definitive and all-encompassing. My analysis of how the covenant-sacrifice-reproduction nexus functions further nuances the enduring difficulty that Hosea acutely encapsulates for feminist readings of that text as well as covenant paradigms for marriage more broadly.
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„Ertöt‘ uns durch dein Güte“ – Das Werk Christi nach Martin Luther

August 21, 2025

Angelika Michael

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Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag untersucht die Auffassung des Wirkens Christi in der Theologie Martin Luthers und dokumentiert die existenzielle und praktische Dimension seiner theologia crucis . – Für Luther ist Christus Deus vivificans . Der rechtfertigende Glaube aber, in dem der Mensch das Wort der Verheißung ergreift und Christus seinen Herrn und Gott sein lässt, ist in der Theologie Luthers nichts anderes als die Aufhebung der Abkehr von Gott und somit das Ende des „alten“ Selbstverhältnisses, das „Sterben“ des „alten Adams,“ der über sich selbst und alle Dinge der Welt eigenmächtig verfügen will. Das Eins-werden mit Christus impliziert für Luther die freie Zustimmung zum „Gesetz“ der Schöpfung bzw. zu dem in den Zehn Geboten formulierten göttlichen Willen für das Lebensverhalten des Menschen. Das Sich-halten an Christus wirkt je neu die Distanzierung vom eigenen naturalen Streben und die Überwindung des quaerere quae sua sunt. Das Leben des Christen ist damit für Luther eine ständige Buße, in welcher der alte Adam von Christus „vertrieben“ und der Geist gegeben wird. Der dreieinige Gott wirkt also das Heil durch Christus im Heiligen Geist, indem er „tötet und lebendig macht.“ Wenn der Prediger Luther Jesus Christus ausschließlich als den Deus vivificans verkündet, spricht er gewissermaßen per synecdochen vom Ziel des göttlichen Wirkens.
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Selbstverständigung, Selbsterkenntnis und Religion

June 21, 2025

J. Winfried Lücke

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In recent years, there have been several noteworthy attempts to understand Hegel’s doctrine of “absolute spirit” as a theory of cultural practices in which human self-understanding is formed, cultivated, and critically examined. This essay explores a number of theologically significant conclusions that can be drawn from this assumption. In doing so, I address central questions concerning the subject, content, and goals of the practice. My main thesis is that, for Hegel, there is a complex interplay between religious or metaphysical beliefs about the structure of reality as a whole and the successful formation of self-knowledge. In particular, these relations form an important basis for the critical evaluation of the cultural practices themselves and their social dimensions. I argue that these characteristics tend to be overlooked in contemporary interpretations.
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Christus Victor revisited: A proposal for a thoroughly dramatic view of atonement

June 21, 2025

Mikael Stæhr Brorson

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When Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén published his influential work on atonement, Christus Victor , he termed what he took to be the classical view of atonement “dramatic.” This article enters into critical dialogue with Aulén in order to discuss the necessary conditions for a thoroughly dramatic view of atonement. The article shows that Aulén’s conception of atonement in Christus Victor is not dramatic in a technical sense, but that this increasingly becomes the case in the later The Drama and the Symbols . Furthermore, the article proposes three necessary preconditions for a thoroughly dramatic view of atonement: (i) dramatic dimensionality between author, actor, and director; (ii) drama’s character of event ; and (iii) drama’s genre . Lastly, the article outlines a proposal for a thoroughly dramatic view of atonement.
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Humor und Glaube

June 3, 2025

Dietz Lange

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The article seeks to counter the common impression that the existential seriousness of religion and the playfulness of humor are incompatible. It does so by arguing that humor is actually a form of resilience. It distinguishes between two forms of such resilience: “eschatological” humor informed by God’s grace overcoming both sin and death, and natural humor, defusing everyday adversities by a sense of comic. The former kind is viewed as the fulfillment of the latter, made possible by the ultimate victory of Jesus’ death of atonement.
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The Meaning of History According to the Covenant

May 27, 2025

Martin Kavka

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This essay describes a problem for covenant theology and proposes a solution. The problem is that the suffering of a covenanted people exists and is not always deserved, and that such suffering would also seem to constitute falsifying evidence against any and every claim that a covenant between God and a people is in force. The solution is for the covenant theologian to write differently, to be self-consciously fallibilist when representing the content of the covenant between God and a people. That attempt aims to produce a consensus that simply is a utopian view of a covenanted community. Instead, covenant theologians should accept disagreement, that members of communities fight to verify their senses of what a covenant with God entails. In those conflicts, a community that sees itself in relationship to God sees itself in and through the relationships between its members, and covenant theology takes concrete shape in the human order in which, and through which, the content of the covenant with God is mediated.
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Bound to be free?

May 20, 2025

Christophe Chalamet

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The theme of covenant leads us to think simultaneously about both God’s freedom and God’s binding to creation. It may thus help us gain a deeper understanding both of the freedom God enjoys and the kind of necessity that ensues from God’s decision to be “God with,” rather than merely God a se , in se , and pro se . In the Scriptures, we see different “models” of covenant – some reciprocal and mutually conditioned, others unilateral and eternal. Rather than systematize these various models by unifying and homogenizing them, discerning their distinctive features may be a better avenue for a covenant theology today. In the New Testament too, we find different ways of presenting the newness of Jesus Christ in relation to the covenant(s) as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The final section of the paper seeks to show how, in the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel, God’s committed freedom, God’s free commitment, is exercised through this newness, not as replacing or as abrogating ancient traditions, but as fulfilling them: the point is to render witness to the renewing of the one covenant, not to present a “new” covenant in the sense of a “second” covenant.
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Der große (Pan-)Theismusstreit der deutschen Religionsphilosophie: Sentimentalisten gegen Idealisten

April 18, 2025

Vsevolod V. Zolotukhin

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Kritik der gefühlsgläubigen Philosophen (der religiösen Sentimentalisten F. H. Jacobi, K. A. Eschenmayer, J. F. Fries, F. L. Bouterweck) an den spekulativen Projekten von Fichte und Schelling (also dessen Identitätsphilosophie), die sie als Pantheismus betrachteten. Dieser Streit war eine Fortsetzung der Spinoza-Kritik in der deutschen Aufklärung (Chr. Wolf) und eine Vorbereitung auf die Hegel-Kritik durch die Spätidealisten (Imm. H. Fichte und Chr. H. Weisse). Die Sentimentalisten waren nicht mit jenem Weltbild einverstanden, nach dem das höchste Ziel der Persönlichkeit in der intellektuell-mystischen Vereinigung des Menschen mit dem Absoluten bestand. Für sie war die Beziehung zu Gott im Wesentlichen dualistisch und dialogisch. Deshalb war es für sie entscheidend, in ihrer philosophischen Theologie die aristotelische Logik mit ihrem Verbot des Widerspruchs zu bewahren. Ein Vergleich mit der früheren Kritik am Spinozismus zeigt, dass die Vorwürfe des Immoralismus dabei in den Hintergrund treten, obwohl sie von Jacobi aktiv aufrechterhalten wurden. Vielmehr tritt die Schwierigkeit des Verhältnisses zwischen dem Einen und den Vielen in den Vordergrund. Der Status der Wirklichkeit, der Status der Welt der Vielen, ist die spekulative Schwachstelle, mit der es Jacobi gelingt, Fichte vom subjektiven Monismus abzubringen. Eschenmayer gelingt es, Schelling einen Impuls zur Modifikation der Philosophie der absoluten Identität zu geben. Infolgedessen wird Eschenmayers Idee, dass Gott über dem Absoluten steht, von Schelling aufgenommen und von ihm in seiner Freiheitsschrift und bis zu den Vorlesungszyklen zur Offenbarungsphilosophie fortgeführt. So formiert sich der Spätidealismus dialektisch aus theistischen und „pantheistischen“ Ideen.
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Vom Blaming zum Shaming

April 10, 2025

Ulrike Peisker

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Zusammenfassung Der Artikel erhebt die Problematik der Kommunikationsphänomene des Blamings und Shamings in den (sozialen) Medien und führt sie einer theologisch-ethischen Kritik zu. Dazu werden Blaming und Shaming unterschieden und die These aufgestellt, dass es sich beim Shaming um eine radikalisierte und totalisierte Form des Blamings handelt, die auf der Fokusverschiebung von der zu kritisierenden Handlung einer Person beim Blaming hin zur Verunglimpfung der handelnden Person beim Shaming durch eine Emotionalisierung und Moralisierung der entsprechenden Kommunikationsakte beruht. Da sich der bestehende theologisch-ethische Ansatz einer Kritik an Shaming -Phänomenen auf der Grundlage der Unterscheidung von Person und Werk als nur bedingt tragfähig erweist, wird alternativ eine Kritik des Shamings auf der Grundlage der protestantischen Sündenlehre vorgeschlagen.
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Promises’ Limits, Covenant’s Promise

April 4, 2025

Toni Alimi

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The Bible sometimes presents divine covenants as involving a promise. This gives us reasons to study promises as a way of generating a clearer understanding of these sorts of divine covenants. This paper argues for a set of features an ideal promise must have and argues that only something like a divine covenant could have all such features. Understanding some divine covenants as involving a promise helps explain how the human partners in the divine covenant can be entitled to demand and expect God to be faithful to his covenants. It also rules out certain models for divine covenants. This paper’s method suggests avenues for analyzing different types of divine speech as idealized versions of ordinary social practices.
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Hermann Cohen’s Shadow Dialogue with the Ritschlian School on Atonement

March 4, 2025

Daniel M. Herskowitz

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The present study examines the conceptual relationship between the Jewish neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen and the Ritschlian school, the dominant school of Protestant theology of his time. Its point of departure is that much can be illuminated in Cohen’s late work Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism [ Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums ] by reading it in the context of contemporary Protestantism. It argues that Cohen’s notions of “reconciliation” or “atonement” [ Versöhnung ] and forgiveness of sin conduct a shadow dialogue with the Ritschlian school, and that they are formed, framed, and formulated with constant awareness of the prevalent Protestant stance, particularly as it is conceived by Albrecht Ritschl, the school’s so-called “father,” and Wilhelm Herrmann, Ritschl’s student and the school’s unofficial “founder.” It is suggested that the presence of the Ritschlian school in Religion of Reason is more extensive than what would be suggested by the sum total of explicit mentions of the relevant theologians’ names, and that this school serves both as a source from which Cohen draws and a foil against which he develops his own position.
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The Art of Retrieval and the Science of History, or How to Think Ressourcement Historically

January 1, 2000

Grant Kaplan

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This article takes up Peter Hünermann’s treatment of historicist thinking and its potential to help, in the words of Bernard Lonergan, “get history into theology.” It does so as a way to avoid both a withdrawal from thick ressourcement and a “new ressourcement” that, in its zeal to find common cause with Thomism, sees historicist thought as a danger to the preservation of theological truth.

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Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie publishes special and thematic issues focussed on important and emerging topics in the field of study. The journal has established a rigorous process to ensure that any special issue manuscripts follow the same high-quality standards and peer review processes as regular manuscripts. For further information on the journal’s peer review policy please see the "Instructions for Authors".

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Edited by

Johannes Zachhuber, Oxford

In Collaboration with

Lubomir Batka, Bratislava
Philippe Büttgen, Paris
Christine Helmer, Chicago
Shao Kai Tseng, Zhejiang
Grant Kaplan, Saint Louis
Johanne Stubbe T. Kristensen, Copenhagen
Cornelia Richter, Bonn
Hartmut von Saß, Berlin
Christiane Tietz, Zurich
Robert Vosloo, Stellenbosch
Simeon Zahl, Cambridge

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eISSN:

1612-9520

ISSN:

0028-3517

Languages:

German, English

Publisher:

De Gruyter

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First published:

January 1, 1959

Publication Frequency:

4 issues per year

eISSN: 1612-9520

ISSN: 0028-3517

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