Salvation

This article briefly offers an account of the Black theology movement as it emerged in the United States context. First, it offers a brief definition and aims of the movement. Second, it situates its emergence in the broader context of Western settler colonialism, American chattel slavery, and the mid-twentieth-century U.S. Black freedom struggle during the post-Civil Rights era. Then the article will analyze James H. Cone’s  pioneering work, Black Theology and Black Power. Finally, this article concludes with remarks regarding how the Black theology movement has developed since its inception. It does so by highlighting the work of several thinkers to signal trajectories for the movement’s further development.

• Systematische Theologie

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 concept of justification is central in Protestant theology. Its theological meaning differs fundamentally from its meaning in non-theological language. In everyday language, the term refers to the act of explaining, or accounting for, a particular behavior or action before another entity. Within theology, it designates the relationship between human beings and God. It designates a divine act through which God frees human beings from the injustice of their sins and bestows righteousness on them. Questions about how God justifies, to what extent justification is an act of divine grace, whether and in what way human beings can contribute to their justification, and what constitutes the healing power of righteousness have been the subject of theological reflection and debate since ancient times.

As it pertains to religion, the term mission (Latin: missio = to send) usually describes the communication of one’s own beliefs and practices to people and groups with other religious traditions or world views. It occurs by means of various practices and media. Additionally, mission is often understood in terms of altruistic and caring service towards fellow human beings and the environment. While the term is often used both colloquially and in scholarship exclusively in relation to the Christian faith,[i] researchers on religion also apply it to other religious traditions. When viewed from the perspective of the history of religion, mission is, however, not a feature of all religious traditions.[ii]

[i] Bürkle, Horst, Art. Mission. I. Religionsgeschichtlich, in: LThK 7 ([Sonderdruck] ³2009), 288–289, 288.

[ii] Vgl. Sundermeier, Theo, Art. Mission. I. Religionsgeschichtlich, in: RGG⁴ 5 (2002), 1272–1273.

The term “Theologies of Religion” refers to the field within systematic theology that deals with the relationship of the Christian faith and the community of the faithful (Church) to other religions. It involves the examination of religious plurality in general as well as questions that emerge in relation to specific non-Christian religions (such as Islam).

• Prolegomena
• Religion
• Systematic Theology