Abstract
The meaning and interpretation of language is a problem for which the theologian is responsible in his presentation of the Christian message to the modern consciousness. The centrality of the hermeneutical question for the growth of theology is illuminated by the insights of an ontology of knowing in their relationship to Paul Tillich’s statement that the formal criteria of theology are (1) the object of theological activity is that which concerns us ultimately, and (2) the locus of our ultimate concern is determined by that which has the power of threatening or saving our being for us.1 If we accept Tillich’s demand that theology be responsive to the existential realities of the situation in which it is present, then because of our affirmation that language is an ontological element constitutive of man’s being in its passage into historical reality, we must also realize that a proper concern of theology is the meaning and interpretation of language.
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Reference
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, pp. 13–14.
Ibid., p. 22.
Heinrich Ott, Theology and Preaching (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1965), p. 13; Heinz Kimmerle, “Hermeneutical Theory or Ontological Hermeneutics”; History and Hermeneutic, edited by Wolfhart Pannenberg et al. ( New York: Harper and Row, 1967 ), p. 113.
Heinrich Ott, “Language and Understanding,” New Theology No. 4, edited by Martin Marty and Dean Peerman ( New York: Macmillan, 1967 ), p. 126.
Pannenberg, History and Hermeneutic, “Hermeneutics and Universal History,” p. 122. e Ott, “Language and Understanding,” p. 131.
Pannenberg, pp. 107, 127.
Ibid., pp. 109–11o.
Richard Niebuhr, Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion ( New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964 ), P. 79.
Pannenberg, pp. III, 13o.
Ibid., p. 113.
Ott, “Language and Understanding,” p. 132.
Pannenberg, p. 137.
Ibid., pp. 239–240; H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1960 ), pp. 258, 335.
Pannenberg, p. 142.
This is not the same as Schleiermacher’s conception of the feeling of absolute dependence, but the awareness of this feeling has a similar role in the development of theological understanding.
Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 126. Tillich calls what we have referred to as secondary revelation, a dependent revelation. “The history of revelation indicates that there is a difference between original and dependent revelatioSns. This is a consequence of the correlative character of revelation. An original revelation is a revelation which occurs in a constellation which did not exist before. This miracle and this ecstasy are joined for the first time. Both sides are original. In a dependent revelation the miracle and its reception together form the giving side, while the receiving side changes as new individuals and groups enter the same correlation of revelation.”
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© 1972 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Winquist, C.E. (1972). The Development of a Hermeneutical Theology. In: The Transcendental Imagination: An Essay in Philosophical Theology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9558-4_5
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