• Research dataclose
• Other research productsclose
• Restricted close
• DK close
• Copenhagen University Research Information System close

Theologia Germanica: Christianity between the Middle Ages and Luther’s reformation English summary The main subject of this master project is a devotional text about the path to reconciliation, salvation, and ‘illumination’ from around 1350, found by Martin Luther in a monastery library near Frankfurt and published by him in 1518 – the year before publicly inaugurating his reformatory work. In his Foreword to the text, which is written by an anonymous Christian contemplative master, Luther enthusiastically recommended the book with these words: “Next to the Bible and Saint Augustine no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned – and have desired to learn - more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are”. To emphasise the importance of the book as foundational for his own, German, theology, he gave it the title, Theologia Germanica. After a short introductory account of the societal, cultural and ecclesiastical conditions of the 14’th century, which saw a widespread up-welling of devotional Christian spirituality all over the European continent - the movement of “The Friends of God” in particular of which Theologia Germanica is a mouthpiece - a thorough outline will be given of its essential christological and ontological reflections concerning the relation between God, Jesus Christ and man, as well as epistemological considerations on the relation between the ‘heavenly eternal’ and the ‘earthly temporal’, and on how we can – or cannot possibly - know anything about God. And, last but not least, of its anthropological considerations as to why God ‘incarnated’ in the human person of Jesus and what His mission was – all to make it clear and understandable for the reader what it implies, presupposes and requires for someone to follow Christ and thus to be a Christian. The reflections and New Testament-near renderings of the essential subject matter of Christendom, according to Theologia Germanica, are surprising – not only because of the simplicity, clarity, and scope of presentation – but also for what is left out. Thus, in this humble treaties on what Christianity entails, which is at the same time the testimony of a spiritual master on the mystical path to salvation and ‘illumination’, there is no mention at all of the doctrines, essential to the theology of Luther’s, namely: the doctrines of original/heretical sin, the ‘double predetermination’, or the doctrines of atonement, i.e. of how Jesus suffered the death on the cross as a sacrificial offer, as ‘Stellvertreter‘, who caried our sins and conquered death for our sake and salvation. It is the intention of this master project to investigate how these interrelated doctrines originated and how they fare with the Word of the New Testament’s Gospels on the teaching, life, and works of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, to investigate what caused Luther to distance himself from what he once praised as the foundations of his theology - and, lastly, to attempt an answer to the question as to whether Luther’s theology is a creative extension and reformed continuation of a late medieval Christian mysticism, as recently suggested by leading Luther scholars.

Programartikel til Folketeatrets forestilling Så længe jeg lever, der tager afsæt i radioprogrammet Giro 413. Artiklen indkredser de tendenser i kultur og samfundsudvikling, der betingede programmets popularitet.

This thesis explores French natural winemakers’ relation to their vines and wines. It is based on anthropological fieldwork carried out in the spring of 2013 among natural winemakers primarily in the regions Loire and Jura. Natural wine is for the present purpose defined as wine from handpicked, organically grown grapes, produced without the use of sugars, sulphur, foreign yeasts or oenological adjustments such as fining, filtering or reverse-osmosis in the vinification process. The thesis takes several practices related to this specific way of producing wine as focal point for exploring the connections (and disconnections), that the winemakers experience in relation to the vines and wines. The study is inspired by theories that can be linked to “multispecies ethnography” (Kirksey & Helmreich 2010) – notably the work of Eduardo Kohn (2013), Philippe Descola (2005) and Tim Ingold (2000, 2012). Borrowing notions from this field the production of natural wine is seen as a way to cultivate multispecies thinking. It is proposed that a very interesting aspect of the work of natural winemakers, is that the social change they work for has its primary expression in their craftsmanship. The change they seek is ingrained in the very movements they make in the vineyard and the winery. They work in other words to change the world not by way of words, but rather by way of their actions. It is these actions that this thesis seeks to find an appropriate language for. Their relations are captured as a striving towards connection with the lives of these radically other life-forms. To the particular natural winemakers that the study is engaged with, what it means to be human in this age marked by extinction (Haraway 2013) involves questioning how we can move beyond ourselves in order to truly experience and feel, on our own bodies, the lives of these other life-forms that inhabit this Earth.