theology Archives - understand-culture

Union by Decree, Fellowship by Consent

In 1817 King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia called for a union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches. In February 1822 he ordered a common liturgy. The Old Lutherans rejected both. Pastors were suspended, and in 1834 the minister Altenstein asked for military help. In 1837 and 1838 nearly 2,000 Old Lutherans emigrated. Only in 1845 did the next king allow them their own congregations.

On 16 March 1973 Lutheran, Reformed and United churches agreed on the Leuenberg Concord. They granted each other fellowship at the pulpit and at the Lord’s Supper. Die Konkordie lässt die verpflichtende Geltung der Bekenntnisse in den beteiligten Kirchen bestehen. The concord leaves the binding force of each church’s confession in place.

The Crucifix Ruling

In a decision dated 16 May 1995 and published on 10 August, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that Bavaria’s rule on crucifixes in classrooms was incompatible with freedom of belief under the Basic Law, and void.

On 23 September 1995 a crowd protested against the ruling on Munich’s Odeonsplatz. Sources put it at anywhere from 20,000 to more than 30,000 people. Bavaria’s premier, Edmund Stoiber, said: Kreuze gehören zu Bayern wie Berge. Crosses belong to Bavaria like mountains.

In December 1995 Bavaria passed a new law. Angesichts der geschichtlichen und kulturellen Prägung Bayerns wird in jedem Klassenraum ein Kreuz angebracht. In view of Bavaria’s historical and cultural character, a cross is put up in every classroom. Parents may object on serious grounds of belief. The head teacher must then seek a gütliche Einigung, an amicable agreement.

No Majority in Matters of Faith

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 set a rule for religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire. In matters of religion, and whenever the Catholic and the Protestant estates separated into two groups, soll allein gütlicher Vergleich die Streitigkeiten schlichten, ohne Rücksicht auf die Stimmenmehrheit. Only an amicable settlement shall decide the disputes, without regard to the majority of votes. The Latin text calls it amicabilis compositio.

The separation into two groups was called itio in partes. As a result, the Protestant minority could not be outvoted at the Imperial Diet in religious questions.

How a Coming Generation Is to Live

At Christmas 1942 the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay for a small circle, Nach zehn Jahren, After Ten Years. It was meant for his parents, his friend Eberhard Bethge and his resistance colleagues Hans von Dohnanyi and Hans Oster. In it he wrote: “Die letzte verantwortliche Frage ist nicht, wie ich mich heroisch aus der Affäre ziehe, sondern [wie] eine kommende Generation weiterleben soll.”

The ultimate responsible question is not how I heroically extricate myself from the affair, but how a coming generation is to go on living. Bonhoeffer called talk of heroic downfall unheroic, because it did not dare to look into the future.

Twelve Steps Before a Theological Statement

In German university theology, the historical-critical method is the leading method of interpreting the Bible. It asks what meaning a biblical text had at the time it was written. Students work through a series of analyses, such as text criticism, form criticism, literary criticism and transmission criticism.

In one university guide, the theological statement about the text comes only as step 12 of 13. Its scholars include Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Gunkel.

The German Bible Society’s lexicon also notes that critics in recent decades have pointed to the limits of the method.

A Holiday Set by the Census

In Bavaria, the Assumption of Mary on 15 August is a public holiday only in municipalities with a mainly Catholic population. The state statistics office decides which these are, on the basis of the latest census. In April 2025 the Bavarian State Office for Statistics informed the town of Tirschenreuth that, on the basis of the 2022 census, the day remains a holiday there from 2025. In 2019 the newspaper Abendzeitung counted 1,704 of the 2,056 Bavarian municipalities, among them Munich and Augsburg.

A Holiday for One City

Augsburg has celebrated the Hohes Friedensfest, the High Peace Festival, every year on 8 August since 1650. It began as a Protestant celebration after the Thirty Years’ War. Since 1950 it has been a public holiday, but only within the city of Augsburg.

Luther’s Table Talk

At Luther’s table in the Black Monastery, his former monastery and later his home, students, friends and visiting scholars ate with him and talked. Johannes Mathesius described how the meals went. Luther opened the conversation with Was höret man newes? What news do we hear? When someone once took the other side, kondt ers auch leyden vnd mit geschickter antwort widerlegen, he could bear it and refute it with a skillful answer. In 1566 Johannes Aurifaber printed the conversations as Tischreden, Table Talk. Their topics range from Luther’s own life to his conflicts with the pope.

God Rested on the Seventh Day

Genesis 2:2 in the Luther Bible (2017 revision) reads: Und so vollendete Gott am siebenten Tage seine Werke, die er machte, und ruhte am siebenten Tage von allen seinen Werken, die er gemacht hatte. And so God finished his works on the seventh day, and he rested on the seventh day from all his works that he had made. The verse names the completed work first, and only then the rest.

The Academy at Bad Boll

In September 1945, Pastor Eberhard Müller organized a conference for men of law and business in the Kurhaus at Bad Boll. It became the founding event of the oldest Evangelical Academy in Germany. Müller saw the academy as a Ort des Gesprächs, a place of conversation, and as a mediator between opposing positions that takes neither side. In 2019 the academy held 120 to 150 conferences a year, with about 10,000 participants. It invited even representatives of right-wing populist parties from Poland and Hungary, um das Verstehen zwischen konträren Positionen zu ermöglichen, to make understanding between opposing positions possible. Sixteen more Evangelical Academies exist across Germany.