Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T02:16:09.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Faith and History: A Critique of Recent Dogmatics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. C. Thomas
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions, University of Ghana

Extract

A great deal of modern Protestant theology looks very much like an attempt to conduct a salvage operation which is designed to make clear how it is possible to retain belief in Jesus Christ, and at the same time remain intellectually honest. For the same sceptical challenge which faces the secular historian also faces the theologian. If Christians are correct in arguing that the locus of God's revelation to man is in Jesus of Nazareth, then in order to know about this supposed revelation, it is necessary to know about a period of time in the past; it is necessary to know the history of the man's life and actions. Theologians are therefore faced with the question: how, if at all, is it possible to bridge the logical gap between statements describing what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, and statements describing the evidence for what Jesus of Nazareth said and did. The solution found to this question by theologians tends to be determined by their conscious and unconscious philosophical presuppositions; just as it did in the examples discussed above of secular critical philosophies of history.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 327 note 1 Bultmann, Rudolf, Theology of the New Testament, I (Eng.trans. S.C.M., 1965), 26.Google Scholar

page 328 note 1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, III, pt. ii (Eng.trans. T. and. T. Clarke, 1960), 452.Google Scholar

page 328 note 2 Bultmann, R.., Jesus Christ and Mythology (S.C.M., 1960), p. 184.Google Scholar

page 329 note 1 Bultmann, R.., op. cit. p. 84.Google Scholar

page 329 note 2 Barth, K.., Church Dogmatics, I, pt. I (Eng.trans. T. and. T. Clarke., 1936), 132.Google Scholar

page 330 note 1 (pq.-q),: -p.

page 331 note 1 Bultmann, R.., New Testament Theology, II (Eng.trans., S.C.M., 1965), 21.Google Scholar

page 331 note 2 Op. Cit. p. 22.Google Scholar

page 331 note 3 Op. cit. p. 22.Google Scholar

page 331 note 4 Op. cit. p. 9.Google Scholar

page 331 note 5 Op. Cit. p. 293–4.Google Scholar

page 331 note 6 Op. cit. p. 26.Google Scholar

page 331 note 7 Thus ‘General laws have quite analogous functions in history and in the natural sciences’. Hempel, . ‘The Function of General Laws in History’ in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. Feigl, H.. and Sollan, W.. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1946), p. 459.Google Scholar

page 332 note 1 Bultmann, R.. ‘New Testament and Mythology’, Eng. trans., in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Bartsch, Hans W.., I (S.P.C.K., 1964), 5.Google Scholar

page 333 note 1 Bultmann, R..; Kerygma and Myth, p. 42.Google Scholar

page 336 note 1 Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed. (Gollanz, 1946), p. 115.Google Scholar