This essay concentrates on the reception of Oswald Spengler's book, „Der Untergang des Abendlandes” by German Protestant theologians in the early 1920s, who were more susceptible to the influence of this book than were philosophers. Just after the First World War, for example, Werner Elert, Karl Heim and Ernst Troeltsch – not to mention Emanuel Hirsch, Friedrich Gogarten and others – had to cope with deeply interconnected crises in faith, church, theology and nation. Spengler's idea of cycles in history seemed (...) to help them understand Germany's 1918 defeat not as due to military exhaustion but to a sort of divine destiny. But it also gave hope that this destiny would help to overcome the crisis. The authors drew epon certain aspects of Spengler's thinking to establish their theory of Christianity. However, the influence of Spengler vanished soon enough. As a result, the story of his reception is an example of the struggle to locate Christianity within post-war German society. (shrink)

Both theology and jurisprudence deal with the exegesis of texts. Textual exegesis respectively textual interpretation aims at giving an explanation of the meaning of the text itself but also refers to wider social contexts. Since theology and jurisprudence share this objective, this article wants to line out the method of theological exegesis on the one side and legal exegesis on the other side.Both sciences are closely related to basic conditions of social life. Yet, biblical texts are ,,holy“ and immune to (...) textual changes. Legal codifications however are - in general - open to change. Nevertheless, there exist certain codifications, namely constitutions or articles of a constitution, that are seen as expressions of quasi-religious faith. (shrink)