Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:17:27.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The New Testament in Religious Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Morgan
Robert Morgan
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Lancaster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The aim of this essay is to show the significance for a new situation of Barth's attack upon some of the historical scholarship of his day over fifty years ago. Barth was motivated by Christian theological concerns, but what he stood for has important implications for New Testament studies generally, and in particular for its purpose and place within a Religious Studies syllabus. If what is written has a mildly polemical edge this will betray the scarcely veiled theological interests which prompt the warning against New Testament studies that spurn theology and a theology that spurns the New Testament. But the argument depends upon considerations arising from the character of the New Testament material and the educational reasons for studying it outside the Christian church. Within the theological circle, liberal protestantism is at last emerging from under the cloud cast over it by the dialectical theology. The rediscovery of Schleiermacher is rightly being followed by a rediscovery of Troeltsch. But for reasons for which dialectical theology is itself partly to blame this is being accompanied in some quarters by a failure to insist upon the importance of the Bible for Christian theology. Despite all their differences, liberals and dialectical theologians agreed in defending biblically rooted theologies. Some of those engaged in revising the map of recent theological history need reminding that the emphasis upon the theological use of the New Testament which has dominated the work of Barth and Bultmann has more than a narrowly confessional interest. It is directly relevant to the recent swing towards Religious Studies in British universities and colleges of education.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 385 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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 385 note 1 The Epistle to the Romans, Eng. tr. of second edition by Hoskyns, E. C., Oxford, 1933. See especially the prefaces, pp. v–26.Google Scholar

page 385 note 2 In addition to several dissertations recently published, J. Th. and Ch. 7, Schleiermacher as Contemporary Herder, New York, 1970Google Scholar, is indicative of the new mood. Volumes of Troeltsch's essays recently translated are forthcoming from Beacon Press, and from Duckworth, London. The international colloquium on ‘The Legacy of Ernst Troeltsch’ held at Lancaster in January 1974 should also be mentioned.

page 386 note 1 Romans p. 4.

page 386 note 2 Faith and Understanding, SCM Press, 1969, p. 29.Google Scholar The article was published in 1924.

page 386 note 3 Ibid. p. 52.

page 386 note 4 What is Christianity? Third revised edition, 1904, p. 8.

page 387 note 1 Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, SCM Press, 1972, p. 27.Google Scholar

page 387 note 2 See especially Gunkel, H.Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen zeit und nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus, 1888, which destroyed the idealist interpretation of Spirit in the New Testament.Google Scholar

page 388 note 1 I have argued this in The Cardinal Meaning. Essays in Comparative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity. Ed. Pye, M. and Morgan, R.. Mouton, The Hague, 1973. Pp. 90–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 388 note 2 Brief Outline on the Study of Theology, Eng. tr. by Tice, T. N., John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia, 1966.Google Scholar

page 389 note 1 What is Christianity? Pp. 8–10. See Troeltsch's essay, ‘Was heisst “Wesen des Christentums”?’ G.S.II (Tübingen, 1913), pp. 386–451, an English translation of which by Michael Pye is to appear shortly.

page 389 note 2 The Barth-Harnack correspondence is now available in English in The Beginnings of Dialectical Theology ed. Robinson, J. M., John Knox Press, Richmond, 1968Google Scholar, and Rumscheidt, H. M.Revelation and Theology, Cambridge, 1972.Google Scholar

page 389 note 3 G.S. II, p. 448.

page 389 note 4 Outlines of the History of Dogma, Eng. tr. 1893, p. i. Quoted by Rumscheidt op. cit. p. 73.

page 389 note 5 G.S. II, p. 431.

page 389 note 6 Brief Outline §35. 54. Pp. 30, 35 f.

page 390 note 1 The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ. Eng. tr. by Braaten, C. E., Fortress, Philadelphia, 1963. PP. 47 ff.Google Scholar

page 390 note 2 Faith and Understanding, p. 132.

page 390 note 3 Most tellingly by Käsemann, E. in New Testament Questions of Today, SCM Press, 1969, pp. 35–65Google Scholar, and Perspectives on Paul, SCM Press, 1971, pp. 1–31, 65, 76 f., 95, 116.Google Scholar

page 392 note 1 Variously translated as ‘content criticism’, ‘material criticism of the content’, ‘objective criticism’(!) ‘theological criticism’, ‘critical interpretation’, ‘critical study of the content’ and ‘doctrinal criticism’. See my discussion in The Nature of NT Theology, SCM Press, 1973, pp. 42–52.Google Scholar A forceful insistence upon the necessity of critical interpretations is given by Käsemann, E., Essays on NT Themes, SCM Press, 1964, pp. 54–62.Google Scholar The argument of this article owes any cogency which it might have to Käsemann's theological and critical approach to New Testament studies.

page 393 note 1 As Schlatter, A. realised. See my translation in The Nature of NT Theology, op. cit., p. 124.Google Scholar

page 393 note 2 Origen's phrase: De Principiis IV. 2.8.

page 394 note 1 Comments such as this on liberal Protestantism ought to have prevented typical misunderstandings of the demythologising proposal. Faith and understanding, p. 263.

page 394 note 2 See Backhaus, G.Kerygma und Mythos bei Strauss und Bultmann (Theologische Forschung, 12,) Reich, Hamburg, 1956.Google Scholar

page 394 note 3 ‘Die Aufgabe der theologischen Facultäten und die allgemeine Religionsgeschichte’ (1901) in Reden und Aufsätze II (1906), pp. 159–87.Google Scholar It is only dated in its provincialism and cultural imperialism. To his credit, Harnack called for and exemplified a phenomenological approach to the study of Christianity. One reason for rejecting the study of other religions in Protestant theology faculties was the belief that in this context it would not be sufficiently phenomenological.

page 395 note 1 What is Christianity? p. 6.

page 395 note 2 Church Dogmatics 1, 2 (Edinburgh, 1956), pp. 280–361.Google Scholar

page 396 note 1 See especially Baur, F. C., Die Tübinger Schule und Ihre Stellung zur Gegenwart, Tübingen, 1859.Google Scholar

page 396 note 2 The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 1835–1836, Eng. tr. 1846; rp, SCM Press, 1973.Google Scholar

page 396 note 3 See all Baur's work on the New Testament from Die Christuspartei in Korinth… (1831) to the posthumously published Vorlesungen über neutestamentlichen Theologie (1864). In a pamphlet entitled ‘F. C. Baur and his theory of the origin of Christianity and of the New Testament writings’ (Present day Tracts, 38. 1885) p. 5, A. B. Bruce wrote with both truth and bias of ‘a theory which makes Christianity a thing of purely natural origin, calls in question the authenticity of all but a few of the New Testament books, and makes the whole collection contain not a harmonious system of Divine truth but a confused mass of merely human and contradictory opinions as to the nature of the Christian religion’.

page 397 note 1 Reimarus died in 1768. Some of his work was published by Lessing in 1774–8. See the new edition ed. Talbert, C. H., Reimarus: Fragments, SCM Press, 1971.Google Scholar

page 397 note 2 This is why the battle for the apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel was fought so hard and long. Kähler (op. cit. p. 108) recalls Tholuck's remark that ‘if it could be demonstrated that the Fourth Gospel was not written by John, the son of Zebedee, that would be an almost insuperable blow to Christianity’.

page 397 note 3 As Gunkel, H. thought (Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, Göttingen, 1903), p. 95.Google Scholar See also Bultmann, R.Primitive Christianity (Collins, Fontana, 1956), pp. 209–13.Google Scholar

page 397 note 4 Delitzsch, F., Babel and Bible, Eng. tr. London, 1903, reflects that controversy.Google Scholar

page 398 note 1 Schleiermacher, F. D. E.The Christian Faith § 11 does not use the word ‘christocentric’.Google Scholar See also Pannenberg, W.: ‘All theological statements win their Christian character only through their connection with Jesus. It is precisely christology that discusses and establishes the justification and the appropriate form of theological reference to Jesus in a methodological way.’ Jesus God and Man, SCM Press, 1968, p. 11.Google Scholar On this topic see Riches, J. K. ‘What is a Christocentric Theology?’ in Christ, Faith and History, ed. Sykes, S. W. and Clayton, J. P., Cambridge, 1972, pp. 223–38.Google Scholar

page 399 note 1 Creed, J. M., quoted by MacKinnon, D. M. in a preface to the Fontana edition of The Divinity of Jesus Christ, Collins, 1964, pp. 10 f.Google Scholar

page 399 note 2 W. Pannenberg is surely right to insist in his Christology (op. cit.) upon the necessity of such an enquiry. Cf. also Prestige, G. L.God in Patristic Thought (Heinemann, 1936; S.P.C.K., 1956), p. xv: ‘The doctrine of the Trinity was reached by true rational development…’Google Scholar

page 400 note 1 Bultmann divined this, and began his review of Barth's Romans by associating Barth's work with Schleiermacher's Speeches and Otto's Idea of the Holy. It should also be noted that G. van der Leeuw acknowledged Bultmann's interest in the preface to his Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1933, 2nd Eng. ed. Allen, and Unwin, , 1964), p. v.Google Scholar But German Protestant theology in the twentieth century has moved in other directions. Its institutional isolation from Religionswissenschaft in universities is no doubt partly responsible for its surrender of theological leadership to America in recent years.

page 401 note 1 One aspect of the potential usefulness of this alliance has been clarified by Michael Pye in his discussion of ‘comparative hermeneutics’ in The Cardinal Meaning, op cit., pp. 9–58.

page 402 note 1 Bultmann's genius as a theological interpreter rests upon his expertise in both these fields as much as in his linguistic and historical skills.

page 402 note 2 Cf. Ebeling, G. ‘Church History (i.e. history of doctrine) is (as) the History of the Exposition of Scripture’ in The Word of God and Tradition, Collins, 1968, pp. 11–31.Google Scholar

page 403 note 1 This example suggests itself in view of the recent appearance in English of two brilliant but highly questionable treatments: Bousset, W.Kyrios Christos (Abingdon, Nashville, 1970), pp. 446–53Google Scholar, and Campenhausen, H. vonThe Origin of the Christian Bible (Blackwell, Oxford, 1972), pp. 147–209.Google Scholar

page 405 note 1 See Gabler, J. P., Oratio de iusto discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte utriusque finibus, 1787, a reprint of which is expected from the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt.Google Scholar See also Kümmel, W. G.The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems, SCM Press, 1973, pp. 98–101.Google ScholarMerk, O.Biblishe Theologie des NTs in ihrer Anfangszeit, Elwert, Marburg, 1972.Google Scholar

page 405 note 2 For example, in his controversy with Harnack. See Rumscheidt op. cit., pp. 32 and 42.

page 406 note 1 I am grateful for some far-reaching critical comments on an earlier draft of this article by the Rev. S. W. Sykes and the Rev. J. K. Riches. My debt to my collegues, Professor Ninian Smart and Mr. Michael Pye will be very clear. I am especially grateful for comments from Professor C. F. D. Moule whose lively concern for the Sache of the New Testament has inspired several of his pupils to explore new ways of giving it expression.