The article is an attempt to define reduction – a phenomenological methodological device – as the beginning of philosophy. The author considers such questions as: What motivates a phenomenologist to do reduction? Can one speak of philosophy before reduction? What is the essence of reduction? To answer these questions the author refers to Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka, and tries to show that reduction is to be understood as an unmotivated expression of philosopher’s determination to overcome evidence inherent to natural attitude. The author argues that reduction enables one to perform a conceptualization of the world as such. Finally, reduction is defined as an attempt to take thinking seriously.
The article discusses the concentration of Martin Luther’s theology on the Christian existence. There are three main areas pointing to this key idea. Firstly, the description of justification of the people in the categories of freedom gained through the experience of faith, which leads to a thankful service towards one’s neighbour. Secondly, sacramental understanding of the working of God’s Word as a performative that changes the world. It defines not only the understanding of the sacraments, with the key role of Baptism as a foundation for everyday actualisation of Christian life in penance, which strives for fighting off the sinfulness of an old, sinful man, and leads to building the man’s own justice based on the alien justice of Christ, but it is also the basis for the communion of believers – the church, as well as for the orders of creation, which structure the current reality. Thirdly, the remarks on theological knowledge closed in the triad prayer–meditation–temptation and theological weight of the experience of differentiating between the Law and the Gospel.
This paper focuses on three issues. First, it is about the context and environment of pre-Nicene theology. It is emphasized that pre-Nicene theology did not neglect ca-techetical and liturgical reflection (ad intra) while at the same time successfully ente-red into a critical and creative dialogue with both the Semitic and Greco-Roman world where first Christians lived (ad extra). For contemporary theology its means that it cannot reject historical reasoning, placed in space and time. The second part stresses that, in spite of different situations and all historical and cultural contexts, theology before Nicea was above all an understanding of Sacred Scripture to which the key is the Risen Christ as the source and definitive fulfilment of the inspired writings. Finally, the third part of the paper focuses on the existential and spiritual experience from which pre-Nicene theology originated. For this theology the Gospel of Christ is not just the rule of faith but also the rule of life. This leads to a conclusion that a contem-porary theologian is a to take up an existential-personalistic reflection on Revelation using the historical-hermeneutic method .
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