Kategorie: English Texts

Reinhold Niebuhr, Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist (1940): „A simple Christian moralism is senseless and confusing. It is senseless when, as in the World War, it seeks uncritically to identify the cause of Christ with the cause of democracy without a religious reservation. The fact is that we might as well dispense with the Christian faith entirely if it is our conviction that we can act in history only if we are guiltless. This means that we must either prove our guiltlessness in order to be able to act; or refuse to act because we cannot achieve guiltlessness. Self-righteousness or inaction are the alternatives of secular moralism.“

In seinem lesenwerten F.A.Z.-Essay „Der Umschlag des Pazifismus in sein Gegenteil“ hat Mark Siemons ausgiebig auf den folgenden Text von … Mehr

Martin Niemöller, Sermon on 1. John 4:9 at Christmas Eve, 24th December, 1936, Church of Jesus Christ, Berlin-Dahlem: „To-day, you see, we are not dealing with the eternal laws of Nature and History, according to which we must adjust and regulate our lives, while behind these laws stands immutable Fate, with which our thoughts had rather not meddle; but the vital point about the Christmas message and the Christmas story is that the eternal, living God, in Whose sight none is guiltless and Who is unfathomable, comes forth from His secret dwelling-place, in order to prove His existence to us.“

Sermon on 1. John 4:9 at Christmas Eve, 24th December, 1936, Church of Jesus Christ, Berlin-Dahlem By Martin Niemöller “In … Mehr

Kornelis H. Miskotte on the unutterable NAME in his „When the Gods are silent“: „The meaning and purpose of the Old Testament is this: to verify with all the means of language the confession ‚YHWH is the Godhead‘ is ‚irreversible.‘ From the time of the Apologists the church, and from the time of Philo and later of Maimonides the synagogue, have been pursuing the path of reversibility.“

It was Kornelis Heiko Miskotte, who introduced the importance of the NAME for Christian Theology: The Unutterable Name By Kornelis … Mehr

Kornelis Heiko Miskotte about Narrative Theology in his „When the Gods are Silent“: „In our conviction the Bible is essentially a narrative, a story, which we must pass on by retelling it. And in this way it can come about that the story may ‚happen’—so to speak, in an ‚unbloody repetition’— to those who listen to us. Look!—this is the way God dealt with men back there; but because it is he, will he not also deal with you in the same way?“

It was Kornelis Heiko Miskotte, who first introduced the relevance of a narrative theology in his book „When the Gods … Mehr