A surgeon participating in a 2008 congress on the topic of trans-identified people posed the question of whether doctors would have to defend themselves when "judgment day" comes for having employed surgical means to turn men into women or vice versa? What might be viewed as a certain level of (medical) irrationality surrounding transgender life, coupled with widely documented cases of violence directed at these groups may well partly be attributable to the deeply internalized doctrine of creation in Judeo-Christian culture. Objections, however, to the use of transgender medicine "in the name of normalization" cannot relate to the biblical tradition, for there is no normative concept of gender and no text whose scope is to articulate theory of gender. In the vast expanse and freedom of the Judeo-Christian creator there is space for diversity, variations, and, above all, for the development of individual freedom.

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One leitmotif that medical humanities shares with phenomenology and most contemporary medical ethics is emphasising the importance of appreciating the patient as a whole person and not merely as an object. With this also comes a focus on marginalisation and invisibility. However, it is not entirely clear what exactly patient-centred care means. What both phenomenology and medical humanities contribute to a 'more humane health-care encounter' (Goldenberg 2010, p 44) is offering not only a first-person perspective, but a dialogue between the third-person perspective and evidence-based medicine. Therefore, one main aim of medical humanities and phenomenology is to pay attention to the lived body () while adding this to the science of the objective body (). In this study, I will discuss this connection through the lens of Hermann Schmitz's phenomenology. Finally, in light of this dialogue between phenomenology and medical humanities some proposals for medical practice shall be suggested.

Als Tugend beschworen, in Katastrophen geendet: der Gehorsam. Nationalsozialismus, gewaltsame Erziehung, auch in kirchlicher Verantwortung, insgesamt die Diskreditierung der Ich-Instanz in Gehorsamsdiskursen, problematisieren eine Beziehungsform, die bis heute viel diskutiert, aber wenig systematisch untersucht worden ist. In der gefundenen Distanzstruktur des Gehorsams liegt der philosophische und theologische Beitrag dieser Studie zur Erforschung des Gehorsams: Das Problem des Gehorsams ist eine Distanz, die zwischen Person und Akteur, Wollen und Sollen auftritt. Im Gehorsam tun Personen etwas, das sie eigentlich nicht wollen -sonst wäre der Befehl unnötig. Mathias Wirth diskutiert die manchmal auch nur behauptete Distanz zwischen Person und Akteur als ethisches und religiöses Problem. Diese Arbeit wurde mit dem Wissenschaftspreis Hannover 2014 ausgezeichnet. Außerdem wurde der Studie der Ernst Wolf-Preis 2017 der Gesellschaft für Evangelische Theologie in der Kategorie A (Dissertationen/Habilitationen) zugesprochen.