Albert Stein (theologian)

Albert Stein (born January 13, 1925 in Kleve ; † March 25, 1999 in Brühl (Rhineland) ) was a German lawyer, Protestant theologian and university professor.

Life

Stein, the son of a student councilor, grew up as a member of the Roman Catholic Church. After graduating from high school, which he passed in Duisburg in February 1943, he did military service and ended up as a prisoner of war at the end of World War II. After his release, he studied law in Freiburg and passed his first state examination in the summer of 1949. In 1950 the doctorate to Dr. jur. (based on a dissertation supervised by Karl Siegfried Bader ). During his studies, in which he was mainly influenced by Erik Wolf , he approached the Evangelical Church and joined it in 1949.

After completing his doctorate, Stein joined the judicial service of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and passed the second state examination in 1952 in Düsseldorf. In 1953 he became a court assessor and in 1955 a district judge at the Bonn district court . Since October 1965 senior judge in Cologne , Stein had the best prospects for a further career in the judiciary, which he gave up out of interest in theology. As a member of the presbytery and the district synod , he was also a member of the ecclesiastical order committee of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland and studied Protestant theology at the Protestant theological faculty of the University of Bonn while working . In 1963 he was ordained and in 1965 Dr. theol. PhD. The dissertation on problems of Protestant teaching objections , supervised by Walter Kreck , was followed in 1971 by a post- doctoral dissertation suggested by Gerhard Krause , in which he dealt with the history of Protestant lay preaching from the church struggle to the present day. After he had already taught as a lecturer at the Protestant theological faculty of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and as a private lecturer in Bonn, the faculty appointed him extraordinary professor in 1976.

In 1977 Stein was appointed full professor for practical theology at the Protestant theological faculty of the University of Vienna , where he also took over the management of the Institute for Canon Law and taught canon law , state church law and church legal history. From 1981 to 1984 he also served as dean of the faculty. As a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church of the Helvetic Confession , he successfully campaigned for full legal equality for ordained theologians .

As early as 1984 Stein gave up his professorship in Vienna again to take over the office of executive senior church council in the Evangelical Upper Church Council of the Evangelical Church in Baden at the request of Regional Bishop Klaus Engelhardt . From then on he taught as honorary professor in the theological faculty of Heidelberg University . After retiring in 1990, he returned to the Rhineland.

Stein's best-known work is Evangelical Canon Law , first published in 1980 and the third edition in 1992, which wanted to give canon law, as a sub-discipline of practical theology, a similar status in the study of Evangelical theology as it has long had in Catholic theology. His other publications were mainly devoted to questions of legal theology, the history of ecclesiastical law, the organization of the spiritual office and teaching and disciplinary law.

Fonts (selection)

• Problems of Protestant teaching objection. Bouvier, Bonn 1967.
• Evangelical lay sermon. Its history, its order in the church struggle and its current significance (= work on the history of the church struggle 27). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972.
• Pastor X and the Laws. Legal conflicts in the everyday life of a pastor. Neukirchener, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1977.
• Pastor X and the church order. Neukirchener, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1979.
• The importance of “Barmen” and “Dahlem” for the development of theory and practice of the Protestant church constitution. In: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild , Georg Kretschmar , Carsten Nicolaisen (eds.): The Lutheran Churches and the Barmen Confessing Synod. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1984, pp. 186–205.
• The new Code of Canon Law Pope John Paul II and the introductory Roman Catholic literature. In: Theologische Literaturzeitung 109 (1984), Sp. 787-796.
• Canon law in theological responsibility. Selected contributions to legal theology, canon law and state church law. Edited by Karl Schwarz . Vienna 1990.
• Protestant canon law. A textbook. 3rd revised and supplemented edition. Luchterhand, Neuwied u. a. 1992.
• Work appropriately - make appropriate decisions - manage sensibly. Aspects of church administrative work. Neukirchener, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1993.
• Ordination. In: Gerhard Rau , Hans-Richard Reuter , Klaus Schlaich (eds.): The right of the church. Vol. III. On the practice of church law (= research and reports by the Evangelical Study Community, Vol. 51). Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1994, pp. 73–117.
• Lordship of Christ and fraternal church. In: Gerhard Rau, Hans-Richard Reuter, Klaus Schlaich (eds.): The law of the church: Vol. II. On the history of church law (= research and reports of the Protestant study group, Vol. 50). Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1995, pp. 272-317.
• Catechism for Pious Gentiles. Lenz, Neustadt am Rübenberge 1996.
• Comments on the law and the practical importance of the office of preacher in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland. In: Karl-Hermann Kästner , Knut Wolfgang Nörr, Klaus Schlaich (eds.): Festschrift for Martin Heckel on his 70th birthday. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, pp. 85-101.

literature

• Andrea Boluminski (Ed.): Church, Law and Science. Festschrift for Albert Stein on his 70th birthday. Luchterhand, Neuwied u. a. 1994.
• Karl Schwarz: "Don't let order be above faith ...!" In memoriam Albert Stein (1925-1999). In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Theologie 3 (2000), pp. 1–18.
• Jörg Winter : Albert Stein. Canon law teacher and church lawyer - in memory. In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Theologie 4 (2002), pp. 353–372.
• Jörg Winter:  Stein, Albert. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 30, Bautz, Nordhausen 2009, ISBN 978-3-88309-478-6 , Sp. 1424-1433.

Web links

• Literature by and about Albert Stein in the catalog of the German National Library