Jacob Neusner

Faith, Truth, and Freedom: the Expulsion of Professor Gerd Lüdemann from the Theology Faculty at Göttingen University (Symposium and Documents) (Global Academic Publishing Books) Jacob Neusner

This book sets forth the documentary record of a signal, significant event in the academic study of religion in the universities of the West. That event is the expulsion of Professor Gerd Lüdemann from the Theology Faculty at the University of Göttingen by reason of the content of his academic writing and lecturing on the history and theology of earliest Christianity. He was expelled from his post as professor of New Testament and assigned a professorship of the history and literature of Early Christianity thereby losing all his academic rights and being forced into a ghetto existence within the theological faculty. The expulsion of a professor from his academic post because of the public consequence of his scholarship for an academic and also a religious body raises a variety of issues for the academy and for the Church as well as for public policy. What is at issue is the academic study of religion and theology, specifically, the possibility of an authentically academic theological enterprise: can religion be studied by the rules of the academy? This book collects not only Professor Luedemann?s account of mattes, but the response of the Dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty at Goettingen, a score of comments by colleagues, originally writing in the Anglo-American journal, Religion, newspaper reports and commentary, all sides of the debate being represented.