[The lay theology of Paracelsus from the traditional historical viewpoint and its classification to Reformation and Catholic reform].

Certain aspects of the theological oeuvre of Paracelsus--a body of work first described in painstaking detail and on the basis of the sources by Kurt Goldammer--still resist our understanding of them in appropriate historical terms. This circumstance is apparent in the various unanswered questions posed by the very biography of the physician and theologian: was his critical, reform-minded position vis-à-vis the Church in any way relevant to his choice of Strasbourg as a place of residence or to his being called to the position in Basel? Can certain manifestations in the activities of Paracelsus, who died within the Roman Catholic Church, be viewed as signs of a Nicodemism such as characterizes Agrippa von Nettesheim (a figure in some ways so close to Paracelsus)? From the very start, Hohenheim's accounts of himself reveal the art of medicine and theology as inextricably linked to one another. And in its development this linkage becomes in turn an essential element of autobiographical interpretation, with the result that the healing art, Christian faith, and the living of life are fused, through the self-awareness and activity of Paracelsus, into a fascinating unity. From this perspective, it proves to be difficult to assign his theological, world', having as it does its place in his total view of things, one based on Renaissance philosophy, to any single tendency or direction within the spectrum of Reformation thought and its critical approaches to the church establishment. Admittedly, in particular areas we may well suppose such a dependence to have existed, and certain classifications remain a possibility. But an affiliation of this kind, despite partial parallels in, say, the thought of Schwenckfeld, seems to break down precisely in the case of Paracelsus's teaching on the Eucharist; for at the heart of his Eucharistic ideas stands a distinctive concept of, limbus'--very likely unmatched in the thought of the Spiritualists--which is shaped by a distinction between what is earthly or mortal and what is heavenly, immortal. The same difficulty persists as well with the Paracelsian notion of the Christian magus. Here there are definitely models to be found in Renaissance philosophy; the magus concept peculiar to Paracelsus, however, is especially evocative of the unity (v.s.) characteristic of this physician-theologian in particular.