Elastische Identität

The intellectual physiognomy of the modern era began to take shape in the Age of Enlightenment. From the perspective of church history and the history of theology, this study analyzes the way in which the reassurance of a person's identity against the backdrop of his denomination was accomplished in this critical transformation phase of the breakthrough to Neo-Protestantism. Using the eminent Enlightenment theologian Johann Joachim Spalding (1714–1804) as an example, the author reconstructs his efforts, exemplary for the entire theology of the Enlightenment, to update the basic assumptions of the Reformation in the interest of the Christian faith's responsibility to tradition and timeliness and in such a way to demonstrate flexible identity in the subjective adaptation and individualization of Protestant structural elements.