Orthodoxie als Konsensbildung

This historical analysis of Lutheran Orthodoxy emphasizes the movement's commitment to intellectual freedom and diversity. Based on newly discovered source material, the study describes academic culture at the University of Wittenberg during the early-modern period. It focuses in particular on theological disputation as an instrument for achieving intellectually defensible doctrinal consensus in an emerging trans-territorial confession. It begins with an account of the institutional conditions and regulations governing theological disputation, continues with an overview of disputed topics, and concludes with an in-depth analysis of disputations on a particular subject: that of ecclesiology. In the end, previous images of Orthodoxy as a stagnant or repressive movement are discredited and a picture of intellectual pluralism and resistance to early-modern absolutism emerges in their stead.