Spiritualität um 1900: Historisch-epistemologische Untersuchungen der protestantischen Pneumatologie der Religionsgeschichtlichen Schule

Abstract

This study concerns various ways of handling the phenomena 'spirit' in the religious and cultural history of Europe and Germany. The protestant theologians of the so-called 'Religionsgeschichtliche Schule' were inspired by the dominant intellectual trends of the German Empire. Their research on the pneumatology of the New Testament has been largely influenced by individual experiences of latent cultural forces of mobilization, labeled in terms as, i. e., spirit, appearance of spirit, embodiement of spirit, spirituality, mental, or consciousness. The study examines the protestant belief of the theologians by using methods of cultural sciences, sciences of religions, and historical epistemology. The theoretical bias is directed towards the cognitive potential of the period around 1900, which governed and shaped scientific as well as intellectual trends. In the context of a new research interest in protestant spirituality, the study affords a number of important new contributions.