History

The work provides an overview of debates in political philosophy, ethics, and legal philosophy, highlighting their connections with law and legal policy. It is aimed at students and scholars who wish to learn about fundamental debates and new developments in related disciplines.

Although scriptural discourses in late antiquity are eminently characterized by forms of wisdom thinking, wisdom is not yet an established category in Qur'anic and Islamic studies. The contributors to this volume explore traces of wisdom thinking, teaching, and interpretation in an interreligious perspective from the Hebrew Bible to the gospels and Hellenistic and late antique literature, and ask for its continuing presence in the context of Islam.

Tracing the public debates on church-state relations in the nineteenth century shows that this relationship was shaped both by a gradual departure from sovereign church rule and by the formation of Protestant ecclesial identity, thereby substantiating the viability of the definition of the relationship which is still valid today.

Christian Steiner develops a systematic theological reconstruction of Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of reconciliation under the guiding concept of amicitia Dei. He shows that Thomas understands reconciliation not as a legal settlement or purely ethical model, but as a Trinitarian-based friendship between God and man.