Incurvatus in se

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(Homo) incurvatus in se (Latin; Eng .: “the man bent on himself”) is a prominent formula of Christian theology. It characterizes the self-centeredness of humans instead of God and neighborly relation ( pro-existence or love ) as the essence of sin .

The formula originally goes back to Augustine , who described the "homo curvatus" as the human being who turned away from God and instead turned to earthly things. The "aversio a Deo" corresponds here to the "conversio ad creaturam". Thomas Aquinas took up this formula of sinfulness in order at the same time to contrast the orientation towards the divine order with that towards the disorder of worldly things.

The term plays an important role in Martin Luther's conception of sin and the doctrine of sola fide . Luther sees the sinful man as in himself curved beings ( "homo incurvatus"), which closes the divine grace to which it would be so reliant:

"Due to the guilt of the first sin, our nature is so twisted towards itself (Latin: tam profunda est in seipsam incurva) that it not only snatches and enjoys the best gifts of God, but also uses God himself to do so, to obtain those gifts, but also does not even notice that she seeks everything contrary to God, crooked and perverted everything [...] only for her own sake. "

- Martin Luther: Scholion zu Röm 5,4  Lut , WA 56, 304, 25-29.

literature

  • Isaiah Berlin : The crooked timber of humanity, German: The crooked wood of humanity . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992. ISBN 3-10-005205-6 .
  • Matt Jenson: Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on Homo Incurvatus in Se . T & T Clark Ltd., London / New York 2007.
  • Bernhard Lohse : Luther's theology . Goettingen 1995.
  • Michael Roth : Homo incurvatus in se ipsum - the self-despising man. Narcissistic theory and theological hamartiology . In: Praktische Theologie , Vol. 1998, No. 33–34 (1), pp. 14–33.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. on the metaphor of the "curvature" in Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Luther: Peter Nickl (Hg): The Seven Deadly Sins - between stimulus and repentance. Thomas-More-Impulse Vol. 3, Thomas-More-Gesellschaft, LIT Verlag , Münster 2009, Chapter: Stolz - Swollen Chest on Fragile Legs, p. 82 ff., Google books (excerpt).