Christoph Sander holds the Junior Professorship for Digital Humanities in Religious Studies at the Center for Religious Studies CERES at Ruhr University Bochum.
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Cursus Theologicus, 5. De Justitia, Et Jure, Digitalisierung Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Datenpartner Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
ERC Starting Grant 2024
How much natural science there is in early modern theology
Science historian Christoph Sander is studying theology manuals from the 16th to 18th centuries in his ERC project SCIGMA.
Prof. Dr. Christoph Sander is focusing on the influence of the natural sciences on theology in the period between the Reformation and the French Revolution. His project "Science and Dogma (SCIGMA): Tracing Natural Knowledge within Scholastic Theology (1545-1789)" is being funded for five years with around 1.5 million euros.
Until well into the 18th century, theology was regarded as the most sublime science at European universities. Sander wants to know: How did it function in interaction with other sciences? For his project, he chose a time when the natural sciences were gaining strength and many new insights, and Christianity had to reorganize itself as a result of the Reformation.
Medical questions of bodily resurrection
The subject of his research are theological textbooks from the 16th to 18th centuries, which were used at universities for the training of prospective priests. They have been preserved in large numbers and some have been digitized. The passages in which theology deals with scientific questions are of particular interest. For example, they deal with medical questions of bodily resurrection. Or the question of whether it is sufficient for a baptism if the holy water only touches the hair of the person being baptized, but not the head itself.
The books document very serious scientific considerations and intellectual debates on matters that we today mostly regard as purely a matter of faith.
ERC grant projects