Paul Gerhard Aring

Paul Gerhard Aring (born October 7, 1926 in Rheydt ; † May 3, 2003 in Cologne ) was a German Evangelical Reformed theologian.

Life

Paul Gerhard Aring (according to the birth certificate: Paul-Gerhard Otto Ernst) grew up in Rheydt in a bourgeois parsonage that left a mark on him and attended the Stiftische Humanist Gymnasium in Mönchengladbach from Easter 1937 (officially until February 11, 1944) . From February 15, 1943, he was deployed as a flak helper and from June 1944 as a non-commissioned officer in the war and, at the age of 18, experienced the death of his father during a bomb attack. From April 1945 he was deployed on the Eastern Front in Silesia and graduated from high school on June 26, 1945 after being liberated from fourteen days of American captivity in the Czech Republic and returning to his parents' house (June 1, 1945) on June 5, 1946.

Study of Protestant theology and vicariate

In the winter semester of 1946/1947 he began studying Protestant theology for three semesters at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal and went to Tübingen for three semesters in 1948 (coined by Helmut Thielicke , Gerhard Rosenkranz and Otto Michel ). Aring completed the 1st theological exam after a first attempt on 16./17. April 1951 by review on 2/3 October 1951, followed by the vicariate at the seminary in Wuppertal-Elberfeld (1951–1952) and in the Reformed community of Cronenberg (Wuppertal) (1952–1954). The end of the vicariate was overshadowed by the dying care of his vicariate mentor, Superintendent Peter Bockemühl, and his death on September 15, 1953. Aring was able to take the second theological exam on 1./2. Successfully completed April 1954 and celebrated his ordination a month later on May 2, 1954 in Wuppertal-Cronenberg .

Marriage and pastor in Anrath and Jüchen

On July 17, 1954, Aring married Ursula Latsch (born November 22, 1926), a daughter of the missionary Karl Latsch († 1940), who was born in Lolowoea ( Nias ), and to whom he was engaged on April 9, 1950. Their marriage resulted in two daughters and two sons. Aring also performed the church service first in the Reformed community of Cronenberg (1954) as parish administrator, then in Weinsheim near Sobernheim / Bad Kreuznach (September 1, 1954 to April 30, 1955) and then in the Rhenish Mission Society in Wuppertal-Barmen from 1 September 1954 to April 30, 1955 May 1955 to January 31, 1956. Finally, the leadership of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland entrusted Aring, who was waiting for his entry visa for Indonesia, with the administration of the parish of Willich-Anrath . On November 1, 1956, Aring took up his first pastor's position in Jüchen (1956–1960) for four years .

Mission in Papua New Guinea and first inquiries to a Jewish mission

Since August 1, 1960, Aring has been on leave from the church leadership for his service in the mission in Western New Guinea (Angguruk station in Piliam / Balim-Yalimo region). On August 20, 1960 Aring left for Baliem-Wamena in New Guinea, followed in March 1961 by Aring and Pastor Siegfried Zöllner and the Dutch doctor Willem H. Vriend in the highlands of the island of New Guinea . The Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (April to December 1961) took place at this time and was the trigger for the Aring family to deal with Judaism and Nazi atrocities, especially against Jews. In several stages, this led to political commitment, a church-theological disorientation and a fundamental change in thinking with regard to the Christian faith and the relationship to the Jewish religion. In a dialogue with his wife and later with the Duisburg theology professor Heinz Kremers , who was also of the same age and who grew up in Rheydt, more and more of the position that, in view of the history of the mission to the Jews, the possibility of missionary work around Jews should be ruled out today.

Pastor in Düsseldorf and Schwanenberg and doctorate in Prague

From September 13, 1964 to January 31, 1970 Aring was pastor of the Matthäi parish in Düsseldorf , where he joined the Christian-Jewish society and first experienced uncertainty and then a fundamental change in his theological position (“I really don't know what I I preached earlier ... "). Study and parish trips to Czechoslovakia led to a close acquaintance with theologians from Charles University in Prague . On 16 June 1969 he was in Prague (Comenius Faculty) with one of Josef B. Jeschke supervised missiological work ( The mission of the Church of Jesus Christ in the output of the Twentieth Century - A practical-theological contribution to the reorientation of the mission theology ) to Dr. theol. PhD. In 1971 Aring published a much shortened version of this dissertation under the title Church as an event. A contribution to the reorientation of mission theology . During his time as pastor in Schwanenberg near Erkelenz (February 1, 1970 to December 31, 1978) he largely completed his habilitation thesis on mission to the Jews . The beginning of his pastoral office there was overshadowed by the accidental death of the 14-year-old firstborn. From 1975 to 1988 Aring was the honorary president of the relief organization Kindernothilfe, founded in 1959 and based in Duisburg . For years he was involved in the leadership of the Rhenish Mission Conference. From November 21 to December 10, 1975, Aring took part in the World Church Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, which continued to shape him theologically .

Melanchthon Academy Cologne and habilitation

On January 1, 1979, Aring was appointed head of the Melanchthon Academy in Cologne and made it a Rhenish center for new impulses around the Judeo-Christian dialogue, organized further training for theologians and offered study trips to Israel . Here Aring took the position that Christian anti-Judaism should be seen as the root of anti-Semitism. In the spring of 1979 the ecumenical working group Jews in Mülheim was founded in order to preserve the memory of the perished Jewish community in Cologne-Mülheim. From the summer semester 1979 onwards, Aring took on a teaching position on “Mission and Ecumenism” from Heinz Kremers at the Duisburg University.

In 1983, at the age of 56, Aring received his habilitation at the University of Duisburg because of his work on mission to the Jews , and on January 13, 1983 he held his habilitation lecture on Confessing Jesus Christ Today - Reflections on Christology in the Context of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of the Present and took over 1983 summer semester as a private lecturer for systematic theology seminars, especially from a Judeo-Christian perspective. -

The last few years

Aring was a member of a Rotary Club in Cologne and active in the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ). After his retirement (July 1, 1991) he went to Lithuania from July 1993 at the request of the Evangelical Church in Germany . While his wife was teaching German, Aring held lectures for Protestant and Catholic students at the Center for Protestant Theology (later: Protestant Faculty) at the University of Klaipėda (Memel). Until the end of the assignment (a total of six semesters) at the end of April 1996, the Aring couple went on numerous excursions to Jewish sites in Lithuania together with students, which resulted in a number of publications. He spent the last years of his life with his family in Cologne and devoted himself incessantly to his ideas for the further path of a Christian-Jewish dialogue. His allegations of unwillingness to enter into dialogue or inability to enter into dialogue with people with other positions can be seen, on the one hand, in an existential deep concern about the stagnation of this struggle and, on the other hand, in a view of the Bible that changes over the course of life and, in particular, of the Church, which it increasingly as a "religious institution" and less as a spiritual reality. An announced publication on the mission to the Jews in southern Germany remained a fragment and could no longer be realized. Aring died on May 3, 2003 in Cologne, where he was also buried.

Fonts

• Church as an event. A contribution to the reorientation of mission theology , Neukirchen-Vluyn 1971 (Diss. Prague 1969).
• Christian mission to the Jews. Their history and problems are presented and examined using the example of the Protestant Rhineland. A study within the framework of the research focus "History and Religion of Judaism" at the University of Duisburg / Comprehensive University, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1980 (research on Jewish-Christian dialogue; 4).
• Sponsorship. Notes on a current, timeless form of charity , Moers 1986.
• Christians and Jews today - and the “mission to the Jews”? History and theology of Protestant mission to the Jews in Germany, presented and examined using the example of Protestantism in central Germany , Frankfurt am Main, 1987 (²1989).
• Mission to the Jews . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 17 (1988), pp. 325-330.
• "Do you dare to err and dream ... Jews and Christians on the move". Theological Biographies - Biographical Theology in the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of the Baroque Era , Leipzig-Cologne 1992.
• "If your children ask you ...". Impressions of the past and present of Jewish life in Lithuania , Cologne 1998 (Galut Nordost, special issue 3).
• Paul Gerhard Aring also wrote numerous articles in the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL).

literature

• Gustav Voss: Schwanenberg 1972. Picture of a community in the past and present . Erkelenz-Kückhoven 1972.
• Farewell Paul Gerhard Aring , in: Kindernothilfe. Report to our friends 110 (1988) (December).
• Katja Kriener, Johann Michael Schmidt (Ed.): "... for the sake of His name". Christians and Jews before the One God of Israel - 25 years of the synodal resolution of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland "On the renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews" , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2005.
• Ulrich Dühr: Workplace Matthäikirche . In: The Matthäikirche is 75th contributions to the church anniversary . Special section of the community letter, Düsseldorf 2007.
• Hubert Rütten: Jewish life in the former district of Erkelenz , Erkelenz 2008.
• Gerhard Gronauer: The State of Israel in West German Protestantism. Perceptions in church and journalism from 1948–1972 , Göttingen 2013.
• Marten Marquardt: The Melanchthon Academy Cologne. The Rhine-speaking city academy in and on the river . In: Martin Bock (Ed.): Thinking ahead. Crumbs from the birthday table. On the 50th anniversary of the Melanchthon Academy , Cologne 2013 (RheinReden 2013), pp. 9–63.
• Reiner Andreas Neuschäfer: Paul Gerhard Aring . In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon XXXVI (2015), pp. 44–58, also at www.bbkl.de.
• Reiner Andreas Neuschäfer: “Reorientation” - Paul Gerhard Aring (1926–2003) and his struggle for a Christian-Jewish dialogue. Approaches to a mission against mission to the Jews and their biographical premises , in: Yearbook for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 65 (2016), pp. 202–222.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Gerhard Aring in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Reiner Andreas Neuschäfer: Paul Gerhard Aring, in: BBKL XXXVI (2015), pp. 50–52
2. ↑ In addition to articles such. B. "When your children ask you ...". Impressions of the past and present of Jewish life in Lithuania, Cologne 1998 (Galut Nordost, special issue 3)