Identität und Religion

The question of one's own identity is one of the basic questions of human experience. It arises in certain developmental stages of a person's life, in response to drastic changes or blows of fate, but also as an effect of the fragmentation of experiences into a myriad of roles which is typical of the modern age. Given the differentiation and diversification characterizing contemporary society, identity has become a widely discussed issue, and it is only natural that the topic of identity and that of religion overlap in various ways. The concept of religion can be defined in terms of processes of identity formation. However, questions of identity are themselves a topic of religious communication. In its symbols of creation, sin, salvation and consummation, material dogmatics deals with the entire spectrum of the religious reflection of the self.