Georg Essen

Georg Essen (* 1961 in Kevelaer ) is a German theologian and has been Professor of Systematic Theology at the Institute for Catholic Theology at Humboldt University Berlin since February 2020 .

Life

After studying Catholic theology and history in Münster and Freiburg / Br. Georg Essen worked at the Catholic-Theological Faculty of Münster in 1987/88 as a research assistant at the Peace and Conflict Research Unit and in 1988 as a research assistant at the Catholic-Ecumenical Institute I. From 1989 to 2000 he was a research assistant at the seminar for dogmatics and theological hermeneutics the Catholic Theological Faculty of Münster. In 1994 he started at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Münster with a thesis on historical reason and the resurrection of Jesus. Theology and history in the dispute over the concept of historical reality for Dr. theol. PhD. For his dissertation he was awarded the prize of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster in 1994 and the "Richard Schaeffler Prize" of the Munich University of Philosophy in 1995. In 1999 he completed his habilitation with the work Die Freiheit Jesu. The neo-Alkedonian concept of enhypostasis on the horizon of modern subject and person philosophy .

In 2000/2001 he was a university lecturer at the Catholic Theological Faculty in Münster. From 2001 to 2011 Georg Essen was Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Faculty of Theology at Radboud University Nijmegen ; from 2008 to 2011 he headed the Heyendaal Research Program “Theology - Humanities - Sciences”. From 2006 to 2011 he also held the professorship for religious and cultural theory at the Faculty of Religiewetenschappen there (now Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies). From 2005 to 2007 he completed training in systemic supervision and institutional counseling at the "Institute for Family Therapy Weinheim - Training and Development eV" . From 2006 to 2009 he was a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen and worked on its project “Humanism in the Era of Globalization. An Intercultural Dialogue on Culture, Humanity, and Values ​​”. In 2011 he conducted research as a visiting scholar at Stanford University , Palo Alto (USA).

From the 2011/2012 winter semester to the 2010/2020 winter semester, Georg Essen was Professor of Dogmatics and the History of Dogmas at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Ruhr University in Bochum. From the winter semester 2014/15 to the summer semester 2015 he was vice dean and from the winter semester 2015/16 to the summer semester 2017 he was dean. From 2014 to 2019 he was the head of the Working Group on Catholic Dogmatics and Fundamental Theology. He has been on the advisory board of this working group since 2019. In the 2017/18 academic year, Georg Essen was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin , where he conducted research on a topic from the field of religious constitutional law: “Religion in the autonomous worlds of modern legal cultures. Catholicism as a paradigmatic case study ”.

Georg Essen has been Professor of Systematic Theology at the newly established Institute for Catholic Theology at Humboldt University Berlin since February 2020.

Act

Georg Essen's main focus is on the one hand classic topics of dogmatics, above all Christology and the doctrine of God as well as eschatology and theology of history . On the other hand, he is interested in a dialogue between theology and philosophy, with a focus on modern subject and freedom philosophies. In addition, he conducts research on questions of religious constitutional law. The approach of the history of dogma represented by Georg Essen is methodically interested in the drafting of a theory of the history of tradition which, under the term analysis of forms of thought, wants to bring into play an alternative to traditional theories of "dogma hermeneutics" or "dogma history". It is central to all of his philosophical and theological work that they revolve around the topic of theology and modernity. Georg Essen is one of the Catholic theologians who urge the elaboration of a strictly modern concept of theology that constructively takes up and processes the essential insights of the philosophy of modernism that emanated from Immanuel Kant and German idealism. Georg Essen thus positions itself on the horizon of liberal Catholic traditions, as they were already developed in the saddle era of modernism around 1800.

Fonts

author

• Historical Reason and Resurrection of Jesus. Theology and history in the dispute over the concept of historical reality. Mainz 1995.
• Jesus' freedom. The neo-Alkedonian concept of enhypostasis on the horizon of modern subject and person philosophy. (= ratio fidei, vol. 5) Regensburg 2001.
• Meaningful unrest in the system of law. Religion in the web of relationships between the modern constitutional state and secular civil society. Essen lectures on cultural studies, 14, Göttingen 2004.
• Theology of history and eschatology in modern times. A foundation (= textbooks and study books on theology, vol. 6). Lit, Münster 2016.

Editor and Associate Editor

• with Magnus Striet : Kant and theology. Darmstadt 2005.
• with Nils Jansen: Dogmatization processes in law and religion. Tübingen 2011.
• Constitution for no reason? The Pope's speech in the Bundestag. Freiburg 2012.
• with Christian Danz: Philosophical-theological disputes. Pantheism dispute - atheism dispute - theism dispute. Philosophical-theological disputes in the religious-philosophical Axial Age. Darmstadt 2012.
• with Franz Xaver Bischof : theology, church teaching and public opinion. The Munich meeting of scholars of 1863 and its consequences. Stuttgart 2015.
• with Christian Frevel : Theology of History - History of Theology (QD, 294). Freiburg u. a. 2018.

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Essen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Georg Essen on the website of the Chair for Dogmatics and the History of Dogmas

Individual evidence