Die Untersuchung geht von dem im christlich-jüdischen Dialog erreichten hermeneutischen Konsens aus. In einer theologischen Grundlagenreflexion werden ausgehend von der Erkenntnis, dass die Bibel Israel das gemeinschaftlich geteilte Erbe ist, das Judentum und Christentum verbindet und zugleich der Ausgangspunkt zweier religiöser Überlieferungen ist, die das Erbe auf verschiedene Weise rezipiert haben, vertiefende hermeneutische Kriterien entwickelt. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Konzeptionen von Brevard S. Childs, Rolf Rendtorff und Erich Zenger, die mit der Fokussierung auf den Kanon und die Christologie, auf die gemeinsame christlich-jüdische Lektüre und die lesetheoretisch begründete Hermeneutik der „kanonischen Dialogizität“ exemplarische Positionen abdecken. Die Untersuchung kommt zu folgenden Ergebnissen: In Anknüpfung an rezeptionstheoretische Überlegungen ist die Hermeneutik des Alten Testaments im christlich-jüdischen Dialog erstens als spezifisch christliche Leseweise zu definieren, die zugleich auf das Gespräch mit der gleichrangigen jüdischen Lesart angewiesen bleibt. Sie ist zweitens als theologische Auslegung zu entwerfen, die auf den Kanon aus Altem und Neuem Testament bezogen ist. Dabei trägt sie der Vielfalt der biblischen Stoffe Rechnung, indem sie von Zengers Konzept der kanonischen Dialogizität ausgeht. Als Beitrag zu einer „Theologie nach Auschwitz“ wird sie drittens keinen neutralen Standort einnehmen können. Viertens wird sie an die christologische Interpretation anschließen und sich dabei von Childs’ Verständnis des christologischen Bezugs als pneumatologisch qualifizierter Ausdehnung leiten lassen. Indem sie schließlich fünftens an das Textdenken Jacques Derridas und dessen Verständnis des Ereignisses anknüpft, das von ihm als messianischer Einbruch verstanden wird, kann sie aus theologischer Perspektive das Verstehen nur als pneumatologisch qualifiziertes Ereignis der Offenbarung Gottes begreifen, das methodisch nicht sicherzustellen ist. / The starting point chosen in this work is the hermeneutic consensus achieved in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. Reflecting upon some of the fundamental aspects of theology, the study develops more in-depth hermeneutic criteria based on the insight that the Bible of Israel is the shared common heritage that both establishes a link between Jews and Christians and is the point of origin of two religious traditions that have interpreted the heritage in different ways. It primarily deals with the conceptions held by Brevard S. Childs, Rolf Rendtorff and Erich Zenger who cover paradigmatic positions, ranging from a focus on the canon and on christology to a common Jewish-Christian reading and to a hermeneutic approach of “canonical dialogism”. The study yields the following results: Firstly, building on considerations embraced by the theory of reception, Old Testament hermeneutics within the Jewish-Christian dialogue have to be defined as a specifically Christian reading that, at the same time, continues to depend on the dialogue with the equal-ranking Jewish reading. Secondly, this hermeneutic approach has to be designed as a theological interpretation that relates to the canon of the Old and New Testament. This involves taking into account the diversity of the biblical material by using Zenger’s concept of canonical dialogism as a starting point. Thirdly, as is makes a contribution to “post-Auschwitz theology”, this reading will not be able to adopt a neutral standpoint. Fourthly, it will expand upon the christological interpretation and, in doing so, it will go by Childs’ concept of the christological relation being an extension conceived in pneumatological terms. Fifthly, by adopting Derrida’s deconstruction and his notion of the “event” as a messianic irruption, this hermeneutic approach can only conceive the act of understanding as an event where God is revealed, an event to be described in pneumatological terms that can not be warranted by any methodological effort.

German text / This dissertation is a selective literary investigation (25 items) by a qualitative social research. It aims on the pastoral training and pastoral care of the Swiss theologian Eduard Thurneysen (1888-1974). His conception of pastoral care was directive within the 20th century in the German speaking Protestant church. In front of this background the pneumatological and spiritual elements are investigated that shape the pastoral approach of Thurneysen, both in theory and in practice. The research design for doing this is an adapted document analysis. For data collection, processing and analysis four different protocols are developed and for each item collected (attachement). In pneumatological and spiritual regard the main results are that Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt shaped and influenced Thurneysen fundamentally. He has been his lifelong example. Thurneysens pastoral approach is analogically characterized by continous prayer and longing for Holy Spirit. In the conclusions of the research results there are fourteen reflections on e. g. sustainability, finality or the ongoing discussion with the social sciences concerning a biblically oriented pastoral care. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

This thesis examines the traces of theological and broader religious discourses in selected works of three major twentieth-century poets. Each of the texts examined in this thesis encodes within its poetics a distinct, theologically derived conception of the ontological status of the self in relation to the Absolute. Yeats primarily envisions the relation as one of essential identity, Jones regards it as defined by alterity, and Eliot depicts it as dialectical and paradoxical. Critics have underestimated the impact on Yeats’s late work of his final and most sustained engagement with Indic traditions, which issued from his friendship and collaboration with Shri Purohit Swami. Though Yeats projected Theosophical notions on the Indic texts and traditions he studied with Purohit, he successfully incorporated principles of Classical Yoga and Tantra into his later poetry. Much of Yeats’s late poetics reflects his struggle to situate the individuated self ontologically in light of traditions that devalue that self in favor of an impersonal, cosmic subjectivity. David Jones’s The Anathemata encodes a religious position opposed to that of Yeats. For Jones, a devout Roman Catholic committed to the bodily, God is Wholly Other. The self is fallen and circumscribed, and must connect with the divine chiefly through the mediation of the sacraments. In The Anathemata, the poet functions as a kind of lay priest attempting sacramentally to recuperate sacred signs. Because, according to Jones’s exoteric theology, the self must love God through fellow creatures, The Anathemata is not only circular, forming a verbal templum around the Cross; it is also built of massive, rich elaborations of creaturely detail, including highly embroidered and historicized voices and discourses. Critics have long noted the influence of Christian mystical texts on Eliot’s Four Quartets, but some have also detected a countercurrent within the later three Quartets, one that resists the timeless even as the poem valorizes transcending time. This tension, central to Four Quartets, reflects Eliot’s engagement with the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Eliot’s deployment of paradox and negation does not merely echo the apophatic theology of the mystical texts that figure in the poem; it also reflects the discursive strategies of Barth’s theology. The self in Four Quartets is dialectical and paradoxical: suspended between time and eternity, it can transcend its own finitude only by embracing it.

The contemporary debate concerning the Christian theology of religions has been profoundly shaped by Alan Race’s three-fold typology of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Although the insufficiency of this typology’s descriptive and critical capacity has become increasingly acknowledged within the field, widespread agreement about its replacement remains elusive. This thesis argues that a replacement can be found in Hans Frei’s five-fold typology of Christian theology, which differentiates between a range of approaches to theology, from theology as philosophical discourse (Type 1) to theology as quarantined, Christian self-description (Type 5). It is suggested that the more basic question posed by Frei’s typology of how Christian theology is understood in relation to philosophy and other external discourses, provides a better means of accounting for the different positions in the Christian theology of religions within 20th century ecumenical movements. It is shown how Frei’s typology emerges from his emphasis on both the limitations and the significance of external discourses for Christian theology, an emphasis which results from his construal of the mystery of Christ’s universal presence as a function of the particular incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. Chapter one considers the philosophical foundations upon which Race’s typology is constructed, with particular emphasis on Troeltsch’s historicism, Hick’s epistemology of religious experience and WC Smith’s phenomenological hermeneutic, concluding that they determine the typology’s apologetic approach. It is shown how these commitments lead Race’s typology to differentiate between types of Christian theology primarily in relation to the philosophical viability, as Race understands it, of their Christology. Chapter two focuses first on the theology of Hans Frei and his analysis of the relationship between Christology and historicism, epistemology, and hermeneutics. It is suggested that Frei’s focus on the ordering of the relationship between Christian theology and external discourses, while undermining Race’s approach, affirms the possibility of a theologically valuable relationship between Christian theology and external discourses. Moreover, unlike Race, Frei’s emphasis on the significance of external discourses for Christian theology is derived in light of, and not in spite of, a faith in the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Chapter three looks at Frei’s fivefold typology as a better means of accounting for the differences Race posits between exclusivists, inclusivists and pluralists. It is argued that in following Frei’s typological logic and the historical, epistemological and hermeneutical considerations characteristic of a Christian theology between types three and four, an approach to the theology of religions emerges which addresses the question of the universality of divine revelation – the central concern of Race’s typology – while also showing the inadequacy of Race’s typology and its prioritisation of philosophy. This will be shown by applying Frei’s typology to 20th century ecumenical movements and the positions on the theological significance of non-Christian religions that have emerged therein. Though Frei did not directly take up the issue of the Christian theology of religions, chapter three will demonstrate how his typology of Christian theology is of particular importance for this discussion. For his typology highlights the central question driving the theology of religions – how the ‘internal’ discourse of Christian self-description in reference to the gospels’ history-like witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ relates to the historically contingent, public world outside the church. The conclusion will point toward a constructive proposal for a theology of evangelism and interfaith dialogue in pluralist societies of the 21st century, drawing on the ecumenical discussion viewed in relation to the theological and typological insights of Hans Frei.

Ideas of kinship play a significant role in structuring everyday life, and yet kinship has been neglected in Christian ethics, as well as moral philosophy and bioethics. Attention has been paid in these disciplines to the ethics of ‘family,’ but little regard has been paid to the fact that kinship is not a given, but is culturally contingent. The thesis seeks to remedy the neglect in recent Christian theological ethics by drawing on resources from the history of Christian thought and practice. It uses social anthropology both to unsettle the accounts of kinship used in Christian ethics, and to expose elements in Christian traditions of thought and practice relating to kinship. Notions of shared bodily substance, the house, gender and personhood recur cross-culturally in giving shape to kinship. By examining these four notions as they inform Christian thought and practice, a theological account is developed. Chapters dedicated to each of these four attempt to provide, in the first instance, a descriptive account of how the notion has structured Christian thought and practice in relation to kinship. Each chapter then turns, in the second instance, to a critical mode, offering a theological treatment of the chapter topic as it bears on kinship. The thesis concludes that kinship in Christ should be considered normatively primary for the Christian, but also that there are ways in which Christians have honoured this kinship in Christ by organising and playing out kinship on a smaller scale. In detailing the distinctively Christian organising principles that structure some practices of kinship ‘in miniature,’ another common practice – the special privileging of the blood tie in structuring kinship – is singled out for critique.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology���s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed.

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).

This dissertation is presented in two parts. It first identifies the shape and content of an ancient system of Christian thought predicated on the theology of the cross of Jesus Christ, and proposes the marks typifying its theologians. Over against the ensuing hermeneutic it next finds the project of twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth to exhibit many of the defining characteristics of this system, and Barth himself to be fairly deemed a modern theologian of the cross. He crucially recovers, reshapes and reasserts the classical theologia crucis as a modern theological instrument, one answering enlightened theology’s self-glorifying accommodation to modernity with the living Word of the cross. The crucicentric system itself is found to comprise two major theological dimensions, epistemological and soteriological. Each of these comprises dialectically corresponding aspects connected with false and true creaturely glory. The cruciform Word (or theology) speaking through this system likewise moves in two directions. It declares negatively that any attempt by the creature to circumvent the cross so as to know about God directly, or to condition God's electing decision, is necessarily the attempt to know and act as God alone may know and act - an attempt therefore on the glory of God. It declares positively that in the crucified Christ God formally discloses the knowledge of God, and determines the creature for God. This knowledge and election are appropriated to the creature as, drawn into the cruciform environment, its attempt to glorify itself is negated and Christ's exalted humanity received in exchange. Thence it is lifted to participate in Christ's mind and in his glory, a process guided by the Holy Spirit and completed eschatologically. The database for this research includes selected primary materials in the Apostle Paul, Athanasius, a group of medieval mystical theologians, the reformer Martin Luther - particularly here his Heidelberg Disputation, and Karl Barth. It also pays attention to the recent secondary literature peripherally or more concertedly connecting itself to the theology of the cross, of whatever period. In this literature numerous suggestions for the content of the theology of the cross exist, a major methodological task in the current research being to bring these together systematically. To the extent that the inner structure of the system carrying the cruciform Word has not previously been made explicit, and Barth's crucicentric status not finally determined, in moving towards these achievements this dissertation breaks fresh ground. In the process a new test by which to decide the crucicentric status of any theological project is developed, and a further and crucicentric way of reading Barth proposed. / This dissertation identifies the shape, content, and marks of the theology of the cross, an ancient and still extant epistemological and soteriological system of Christian thought. Applying the resulting hermeneutic it then shows this system to be present with renewed vitality and future significance in the modern project of seminal Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968).