Theology

What place does the individual have in biblical ritual? Biblical ritual texts stage an ongoing struggle between centralized institutional authority and individual agency in the cult. Hananel Shapira shows how the priestly editors' efforts to manage that tension reshaped the cultic system itself.

Drawing on three broad, cross-genre and cross-confessional studies on the use of key New Testament texts during the Reformation and the age of Confessionalization, Patrick Bahl positions interpretation history as a central sub-discipline of church history and explores its hermeneutical and methodological foundations.

Alberto Solano reinterprets Hebrews through the lens of Sinai, portraying its audience not as wandering but waiting at the mountain's foot. He argues that believers participate in heavenly realities while on earth, challenging supersessionist readings and showing how Jesus' work builds upon - rather than replaces - Sinai's revelation.

Psalm 39 reveals a struggle with personal and anthropological questions through lament and self-reflection. It deals with guilt, silence, and mortality. In this study Margarethe Kelm shows how prayer can become a process of working on oneself and on the relationship with God - honest, painful, yet hopeful.