Dualism (religion)

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The religious dualism is a belief that has emerged in the first millennium BC. You can find it in China and India as well as in the West.

In the dualistic worldview, reality consists of two spheres that are absolutely opposed to each other. Not only two worlds are distinguished, but also two eternal deities as creators who produced these worlds. An invisible, spiritual world is opposed to the visible, material world. A world of light is often distinguished from a world of darkness. The invisible spiritual world is the creation of a good God, while the material world goes back to the work of an evil God.

Dualism can take different forms in different places and at different times. One of the strictest forms can be found at the end of antiquity in Manichaeism , which goes back to the Iranian Mani . The Cathars of the 12th century also represented a dualistic doctrine.

Dualism in the Christian Churches

The dualistic teaching has always been condemned as heresy by official Christian theology . While the Creed of Chalcedon emphasizes that Jesus Christ was "true God and true man", dualism rejects this teaching because Christ had a share in the world with a material body and thus in Satan's creation , which was considered evil applies.

The Council of Braga (Portugal) adopted the following doctrine in 561:

13. Si quis dicit, creationem universae carnis non opificium Dei, sed malignorum esse angelorum, sicut Manichaeus et Priscillianus dixerunt, anathema sit.
( If anyone says that the creation of the carnal world is not the work of God but of fallen angels, as Manichaeus and Priscillianus said, he is excluded. )

With the Engelwerk founded by Gabriele Bitterlich , a dualistic movement emerged within the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century .

literature

  • Lothar Baier : The great heresy. Persecution and extermination of the Cathars by church and science. Wagenbach's Pocket Library, Berlin 1984, pp. 53–70 ("The lizard in the donkey's head. About the Cathar religion")
  • Arno Borst : The Cathars. 3rd edition, Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1991, pp. 56 - 64 ("Dualism and its tradition")
  • Martin Erbstösser: Heretic in the Middle Ages. Licensed edition for the Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt a. M., 1987, pp. 15-63.
  • Malcolm Lambert: Heresy in the Middle Ages. Heresies from Bogumil to Hus. Bechtermünz, licensed edition for Verlagsgruppe Weltbild, Augsburg 2002, pp. 22–46 ("Dualism in the East - Heresy in the West")

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Denzinger-Schönmetzer Freiburg 1965, 463
  2. ↑ Petra Bleisch: Engelwerk , Evangelical Information Center: Churches - Sects - Religions , 1998