Theology and history, historical theology

 history

1.     What is history?

2.     Objective: Actual facts of past

 

Relevance of history?

Lessing's "big ugly ditch" btw history and faith.

·         Chronological problem(weak verification)_

·         Metaphysical problem(gap from history to reason)

·         Existentil problem (identification gap)_

 

Ritschl sought to return to the historical method?

 

The History of Religions School

Ernst Troeltsch:

·         Adopted historical relativism as its central concept, so he denied the uniqueness of Christinity among the religions of the world.

·         Evaluated biblical history according to standards of one kind of secular historical science (as Ritschl did)

 

20th C theology

Karl Barth - the chief concept of Barth's theology: Geschichte (history in its fullest revelational meaning), to be distinguished with Historie(available for inspection of secular historians)

·         Barth failed to locate Geschichte in actual historical time and concrete historical space.

·         Therefore it created confusion about "what actually happened" and how those happenings were related to human salvation

 

 

Oskar Cullmann (C. H. Dodd, G. E. Wright, et al. influenced by J. A. Bengel's concept of Heilsgeschichte)

·         Sought to present Scripture as "the book of the acts of God."

·         Revelation was in event, rahter than word, and therefore, importantly, "historical,"

·         Unlike Barth, Cullmann emphasized this history taking place along a timeline, Revelation occurred when a

·         historical events was perceived by faith.

·         But declares that only event, never word, could function as revelation.

 

Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and liberation theologians

·         Have sought to make "history" the unique locus of revelation: History as opposed to word.

·         For Pannenberg, revelatory history is discovered by the criteria of secular rationality, i.e., by autonomous reflection not itself subject to the revelation.

 

 

 

 

 

    Historical theolgoy

 

Historical theolgoy applies the word ot the church's past  for the sake of the church's present edification.

Advantages:

·         Scripture is profoundly historical, and theolgoy must always be interested in history

·         Biblical history enables us far better to understand the Scriptures.

·         The post-biblical history helps