Jacob N. Cerone

Disability is not only a socially and medically relevant experience, but also opens up a fundamental theological path to knowledge. Disability theology questions central tenets of doctrine by reinterpreting concepts such as wholeness, normality, and salvation in the light of dependence, relationship, and the lived experience of difference. It criticizes the equation of healing with salvation, normativity with wholeness, and autonomy with humanity, and instead opens up physically situated life, based on resonance and participation, as a place of divine presence. This raises not only ethical questions about inclusion, medical boundaries, and social participation, but also systematic theological questions: How, for example, can our view of God, anthropology, Christology, pneumatology, and eschatology be rethought in light of physical diversity, relational interdependence, and shared dependence? Disability theology thus presents itself as an interdisciplinary but dogmatically distinct field that is gaining relevance both within the church and ecumenically.

• Anthropology

The biological theory of evolution understands the emergence and further development of organisms as an ongoing process throughout history. This challenged theology to reflect on its own understanding of creation and related questions of the doctrine of God and anthropology. The background to these reflections is the question of the fundamental relationship between theology and natural science. Evolution and creation are related to each other in different ways – from the view that they are incompatible to a synthesis of both concepts.

Not only the theory of the natural origin of species, but also the idea of a naturally explainable evolution of religion has been and continues to be understood as a challenge to religion and theology.

Feminist theology is gender-conscious, liberation-oriented, contextual, and experience-based theology. As such, it represents an important interdisciplinary perspective within theological reflection. It is therefore particularly important today to understand feminist theology as a theology that incorporates the construction and deconstruction of gender into every facet of its reflection. Personal experiences have been and continue to be the impetus and motivation to embark (anew) on a theological and scholarly journey in search of answers.

• Systematic Theology

Reference to the Bible as Holy Scripture is constitutive for Christianity in both praxis and theory and it plays a particularly important role in shaping identity within Protestantism. This is evident in its prominent status as canon. Since the Reformation, Protestant churches have regarded the Bible as the “rule and norm” (Formula of Concord, Art. I) of faith, towards which ecclesial life and theological teaching must be oriented. However, the manner in which this orientation towards the Bible is to be understood in the life of the churches and in the context of theological reflection remains controversial – both within Protestantism and among other denominations. In this respect, in contemporary Protestant dogmatics, Scripture is primarily viewed in terms of crisis. The debate surrounding the so-called “crisis of the Scripture principle” is a fundamental aspect of contemporary theological reflection on Scripture. To whom does Scripture apply, how, and in what respects? How do texts that must be interpreted historically relate to contemporary challenges? How should we deal with the plurality of Scripture and its interpretation?

• Ecclesiology
• Prolegomena