Theologische Aufsätze

In this volume, Ulrich Luz presents theological, ecclesiological, hermeneutical, religious-historical, and biographical-autobiographical studies and sketches, some of which have not previously been published. They revolve around fundamental questions of theology, hermeneutics and the church. Several are »hot potatoes«, questioning, for example, the relationship between theology and the study of religion. The author also investigates what aggressive texts in the New Testament have to do with Christianity's claim to exclusivity and whether church finances belong to the fundamental characteristics of churches. Alongside the question of the church fathers' significance for Protestantism's interpretation of the Bible, he goes on to ask if the sense of New Testament texts is completely open, or random, for any interpretation to be feasible, and how then reaching an understanding of the sense of biblical texts in mainstream churches and ecumenism might still be possible.