Category: History of religion

In "In former times everything was better" under the heading "Man does not live from bread alone" the way of the human-spiritual in the post-creation is briefly dealt with.Now we want to look at the first steps of a human being after his demise, following the Grail-message "In the light of truth" by Abd-ru-shin (1). A human being lies in the dying... [...]

In "The Fire of Christianity" we asked the question of what may have prompted people in the first centuries to become Christians. Now let's take a brief look at the rapid spread of Christianity in its early days.The spread of early ChristianityWhen we talk about Christianization today, we involuntarily think of Rome as the most important starting point. But this [...]

Published in Grail World 22/2001) SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: In Grail World 14/2000, under the headline "Where is the hope for the poor of the world?", I expressed the view that after the collapse of communism, from which many people living in hopeless poverty hoped for the solution of their problems, a gap remained, which [...]

How long have religions existed? (Published 2019) No one can say how long religions have existed on earth. Some, like biologist Alister Hardy (1896-1985), see humans as "praying animals"[i] and assume that religions, or at least religiosity, existed as early as the Paleolithic. Burial rites of the Neanderthals 30,000 years ago can be interpreted religiously. [...]

(Published 2015) Atheism is "as old as human thought, as old as faith, and the conflict between the two is a constant feature of Western civilization" (2). In fact, doubts about religions existed in antiquity, and early philosophers, such as the pre-Socratic Xenophanes, expressed their reservations. (See box). At the same time [...]

Published in GrailWorld 85/2014 Was the Old Testament Abraham the first to spread the one-god faith? A biblical historical approach to the life of the legendary progenitor. According to historians, many parts of the Bible are not reliable accounts, and of the majority of biblical characters - especially in the Old Testament - it is uncertain if and when they lived. [...]

(Published 2014) The world is not coming to an end yet... At the beginning of the nineties of the last century, in a small, private circle around Carl Friedrich v. Weizsäcker (1912-2007), I listened to a lecture by Marion Gräfin Dönhoff (1909-2002), the grand old lady of German political journalism. Her presentation was characterized by the greatest optimism: the Iron Curtain had just [...]

(Published in GralsWelt 85/2014) In almost all religious groups there are fanatics who - with dogmatic intolerance - discriminate against, defame, even threaten with death dissenters from their doctrine or those who believe differently. This narrow-minded thinking has forced centuries of suffering, violence, oppression, expulsion and wars. Christianity, too, often did not follow the philosophy associated with charity [...].

Published in Grail World Special Issue 24 In the life of a human being there is one certainty: that the earthly life cycle is limited. Living beings are - from a physical point of view - unstable systems which have to be maintained by continuous energy supply. In the process, they change continuously and at some point come to their inevitable end. The maximum lifetime of a living organism on [...]

Witnesses to prehistoric cultures in the Alps (Published in Grail World 76/2013) Anyone who hikes through the Alps with open eyes will be reminded again and again that the history of the Alpine region did not begin with the invasion of the Roman conquerors. For despite their forbidding climate, the valleys of the Alps have been populated for millennia. Hunters, shepherds and traders crossed [...]