It is the intention of this article on De Trinitate by St. Augustine to show that his doctrine is built upon applied epistemology aimed at the acquisition ofintellectus fidei. The main part of this paper explores the Augustinian search for vestigia trinitatis which reveals striking “psychological analogues” of thedivine trinity present in the human mind (Books 8-15). A mystical union with the holy trinity, however, appears impossible due to the impar imago of thehuman mind.

This essay examines Orosius’s historical-theological perspectives on the basis of the theologumenon of the Pax Augusta. First, it studies the method of Orosius’s chronography and his understanding of salvific oikonomia. Then the Author analyzes the Imperium Romanum and its fulfillment in the Imperium Christianium. A third section treats the synchronism of the Incarnation of the Logos in the Pax Augusta. Finally, the essay demonstrates how Erik Peterson detached Augustus’s theology as political theology from its late ancient context, and contrasts it with the emerging imperial church of National Socialism and Peterson’s denunciation of it.

The seventeenth-century Brussels manuscript 8232-33 is an extant Greek witness for the Metastasis of the apostle John. The seminal text edition of the apocryphal Acts of John by Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli provides neither a siglum for, nor a comprehensive codicological description of, nor catalogue references concerning this manuscript. The present annotation makes this information available and analyzes the manuscript of the Metastasis with regard to its model, copyist, and time of origin.

The so-called .Karlsschulrede. (1793) of the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer can be considered as a keystone to the understanding of"Naturphilosophie" both in German idealism (Schelling) and the romantic period.Kielmeyer's work considers life as the result of specific forces in the organic realm and thereby searches to explain the harmony of organic existence anddevelopment. Taking into account Kant.s outlines for a lifescience in the "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (1790), Kielmeyer's notion of teleological processes in nature is sketched. The historical and epistemological relevance of this "vital-materialistic" (Lenoir) theory of life can be characterized by three major transformations in the understanding of nature in the "Karlsschulrede": First, the development of a holistic, organological view on the world, second, the emphasis on phenomena of life as historical processes and third the analogy between organism and mind. These issues found the strong influence of Kielmeyer's text on philosophy and science in the early 19th-century.

Phenomenological philosophizing is practiced out of a sense of responsibility for contemporary culture, which is experienced as existing in a profoundcrisis. The first part of this contribution contains a systematization of the theory of crisis, a theory developed in many of Husserl's works: the description of the main phenomena of the consciousness of crisis, the explanation of crisis with regard to its causes, and the demands raised in order to overcome the crisis of scientific culture (»reflection«). Husserl's teachings on crisis are placed into close relation with his idea of science and science's Greek origin, an origin from which, according to Husserl, modern science has tragically distanced itself. It is argued, however, that Husserl was not at all a philosopher of decline or decay. The second part of this contribution represents an attempt to provide a critical and complex answer to the question as to the modern relevance and usefulness of Husserl's theory of crisis.

Johann Georg Hamann, a contemporary of Kant and Herder, was an important German philosopher of the 18th century, whose significance, however, is not sufficiently recognized today. His cryptic and short writings full of allusions and deep scholarship do not make him an easily accessible writer. He was a sharp critic of sophistry maskerading as philosophy, thus taking over the role of Socrates for his time, connecting a defense of Christian beliefs with a radical re-interpretation of enlightenment, thereby trying to enlighten enlightenment about itself. Hamann's concept of reason as language is an important contribution to the understanding of human nature as such, stressing the concreteness and historicality of human reason. Contrary to earlier interpretations, though, Hamann is no irrationalist, but a thinker who ridicules the absurdities of enlightenment rationalism and proved to be an important source of inspiration for writers like Sören Kierkegaard and Ernst Jünger.