Zusammenfassung / Summary
The Essay deals with the controversy that was launched by Pope Benedicts “Regensburg lecture” and the subsequent debate between Jürgen Habermas and Johann Baptist Metz on the so called “Hellenization of Christianity”. On the basis of an analysis of the descriptive aspects and the normative implications of that concept the author comes to the thesis that the paradigm of the „Hellenization of Christianity” is not a meaningful historiographical category to analyze and interpret the transformation processes of the late antique Christianity. Its lack of historical precision and hermeneutical differentiation in addition to the danger of simplifying highly complex transformations and opposing, even conflicting tendencies to a dualistic typology strongly suggest that the concept of “Hellenization” should no longer be used in the historiography of dogma.