Disciplina arcani

The Arkanprinzip (from the Latin arcanum - "secret" ) is the principle cult customs and rituals make it accessible to only a circle of initiates.

Origin

Already in pre-Christian times existed in mystery cults an obligation to keep secret cult practices. This tradition was taken over by Christianity. So the baptism and the baptismal, the custom of the Last Supper and the Lord's Prayer were kept secret in Late Antiquity before unbaptized. But there was no universally accepted definition of the scope of the duty of confidentiality, and of penalties for the event of an infringement is not known.

Arcane discipline

Under arcane discipline is defined as a formal commitment of in a religious mystery initiate to maintain this. The term was coined in modern times. It comes from the French Reformed theologian Jean Daille ( Dallaeus ), who wrote in his De usu patrum ad ea definienda religionis capita, quae sunt hodie controversa ( Geneva, 1656) of a disciplina arcani that was unknown in Christianity before the 4th century be. Daille turned in his treatise against the Catholic tradition, the zubilligte the Church Fathers in matters of faith and worship authority. In the former conflicts between Protestant and Catholic theologians, the question of a secret, only orally given the Patristic tradition played a role; Catholics justified the secrecy, the Reformed scholar Isaac Casaubon led her back to the influence of pagan mystery cults.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was under the impression the collection of Christian churches demanded by the Nazis and the simultaneous quasi- religious self-dramatization of the Nazi regime restoring an arcane discipline in the church, " by which the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected from profanation ". The church must develop a language for the public, " perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming, as the language of Jesus " was. Until then, would be " the cause of the Christians to be a silent and hidden ." It will however give people "who pray and do what is just and wait for God's time ."

The hitherto uncommon in the non- religious context expression arcane discipline was first applied in 1962 by Jürgen Habermas derogatory to the privacy practices of public administration and is today as a polemical term in the political debate over the creation or expansion of freedom of information laws in use.

The Arkanprinzip is today an accepted bid, inter alia, of Freemasonry.

The sociolinguistics explores the so-called Arkansprachen.