Hartmut von Sass is Assistant at the Chair for Systematic Theology, Symbolism and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich and Associate Fellow at the Collegium Helveticum. He was born in Rostock, Germany, in 1980 and studied Protestant Theology and Philosophy in Goettingen, Edinburgh (UK) and Berlin before coming to Zurich in 2006. He had been a visiting scholar at Claremont Graduate University, California, in 2009; in the same year he got his PhD (Dr. theol.) which was awarded the Annual Prize of the Theological Faculty in Zurich. He holds an Associate Fellowship at the CH since May 2010.
His dissertation «Sprachspiele des Glaubens» («Language-Games of Faith»; Mohr Siebeck 2010) develops an approach to Christian belief beyond metaphysical fantasies and reductivist concessions. In line with Wittgensteinian thinkers, the constructive interest lies in recovering the spiritual dimension of Christian belief by describing religious practices in which believers are actually involved. Accordingly, God is not the personal addressee of human prayers but the reality in which we are praying; He is not creation’s first cause but the reality in which we speak of God’s good creation; He is not the judge of the very last assessment but the absolute reality in which we see our fragmented life coram Deo.
Currently, he tries to work out this non-metaphysical picture in more detail and prepares a second book on self-understanding and the prospects of a hermeneutical theology.
Publications