7 - Conclusions

Summary

The aim of this study has been to examine the extent to which the reading of one New Testament text – the Book of Revelation – can be used to support or question the contemporary theologies of history proposed by Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann.

I began in chapter 1 by setting the contributions of Pannenberg and Moltmann in their context, comparing and contrasting their proposals with other influential ideas about the relationship between faith and history. In chapter 2 I proceeded to explore some of the methodological issues which arise from the consideration of the relationship between theology and scripture. I argued against attempts to see the relationship between exegesis and systematics as a ‘two-stage’ process, in which the results of biblical interpretation are first determined, then transmitted wholesale to an entirely separate discipline, which seeks to apply them to contemporary questions. Rather, I suggested that it was both legitimate and important for the two disciplines to interrelate. Similarly, I argued for the relationship between scripture and theological formulation to be seen as dialectical. Scripture is a starting point for the generation of conceptual frameworks in theology. These frameworks then need to be reassessed continually, to determine their adequacy as elaborations of scripture. At the same time, new light may be shed on scripture itself by reading it through the lenses provided by such conceptual frameworks.