Syncretistic dispute

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The syncretistic dispute was a dispute between Lutheran Irishmen and Zealots .

The term syncretism ( Erasmus : peaceful behavior of relative opponents), which has a positive connotation in humanism , is used in a derogatory sense by orthodox Lutherans ( Abraham Calov and others in Wittenberg) against the Lutherans striving for reconciliation (especially Georg Calixt in Helmstedt ).

The dispute was largely sparked by Calixt's " consensus quinquesaecularis ". Horrified by the atrocities of the Thirty Years' War , he wanted to find a basis for all denominations to end the disputes of that time. He believed he had found this basis in the Apostles' Creed and the doctrinal decisions of the Church in the first five centuries.

The Wittenberg theologians, who were particularly strict Orthodox Lutheran, accused Calixt of relativizing Luther and the Reformation. What he does is religious mingling (syncretism). Calixt even called them a cryptocatholic .

The dispute was not only against Calixt, but also within the Orthodox camp, and others. a. fought out between Calov and Johann Musäus . It dragged on in several phases until Calov's death in 1686.

The emergence of the term “Lutheran Church” and the fact that Lutheranism finally decided in favor of the existence of a “particular Lutheran Church” are regarded as the result of this dispute in terms of church history.

literature

  • Jörg Baur : The Helmstadt reading of the justification article and its orthodox critics. An investigation into the genesis of the syncretistic dispute ; in: Udo Sträter (Ed.) and Kenneth G. Appold (Ed.): On the Doctrine of Justification in Lutheran Orthodoxy. Contributions to the sixth Wittenberg Symposium on Lutheran Orthodoxy [1999] . Leucorea Studies on the History of the Reformation and Lutheran Orthodoxy Vol. 2, Leipzig 2003, pp. 81–135.
  • Heinz Staemmler: The dispute between the theologians in Electoral Saxony and the Helmstedt syncretism. A study on the “Consensus repetitus fidei vere Lutheranae” (1655) and the discussions about it . Waltrop 2005.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johannes Wallmann : Church history in Germany since the Reformation. 7th edition. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8252-3731-8 , p. 100.