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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
At first sight this article would seem to be a critique of the views of Professor W. Marxsen of Miinster, in that it borrows the English title of one of his books and sets a question mark against it, a thing which he steadfastly refuses to do. However, it will become apparent that it is in fact more complementary to his book, and concentrates more on the points of agreement with the thesis contained in it.
page 23 note 1 The New Testament as the Church's Book (Philadelphia, 1972).Google Scholar
page 23 note 2 A charge contained in a letter to the authorities of the Evangelische Landeskirche in Württemberg, quoted by Marxsen, op. cit., p. 5.
page 24 note 1 cf., on the one hand, op. cit., p. 29: ‘the norm for the church … is … the apostolic testimony which is found in the New Testament but is not identical with it’; and, on the other, p. 61: ‘The “canon” of the Christian church is not the New Testament but Jesus’; p. 63: ‘The norm for the Christian church and its preaching … must always remain Jesus.’
page 24 note 2 ‘Das Problem des neutestamentlichen Kanons aus der Sicht des Exegeten’ in (ed.) Käsemann, E., Das Neue Testament als Kanon: Dokumentation und kritische Analyse zur gegenwärtigen Diskussion (Göttingen, 1970), 233–246, here pp. 242fGoogle Scholar; what Marxsen would perhaps not be prepared to grant is that the primary norm, Jesus Christ, is in any way directly recoverable so that he may act as a control upon our use of the last two. But need he be directly recoverable? If we can know anything at all about him is that not something? Nor, as Marxsen suggests in his book (p. 79), is it true that to try to penetrate behind the first witnesses is to seek historical certainty for faith; it may simply be to seek as great a degree as possible of historical faithfulness.
page 25 note 1 cf. Moltmann, J., The Theology of Hope: on the Ground and Implication of a Christian Theology (London, 1967), p. 277Google Scholar: ‘the texts which come to us from history … have to be read in terms of their historical place and their historical time, in terms of their own historical connections before and after.’
page 27 note 1 ‘Vom theologischen Recht historisch-kritischer Exegese’, ZThK lxiv, 1967, 259–281, here 268.Google Scholar
page 27 note 2 Smart, J. D., The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church: a Study in Hermeneutics (London, 1970).Google Scholar
page 27 note 3 Philadelphia, 1975.
page 28 note 1 One possible means of making a distinction here is to distinguish between those who admit the possibility of ‘Sachkritik’ and those who do not (cf. his critique of G. E. Wright, op. cit., p. 33).
page 28 note 2 cf. Bartsch, H.-W. (ed.), Kerygma and Myth I (London, 1953), p. 11Google Scholar: the New Testament ‘invites’ demythologising; cf. also Frör, K., Biblische Hermeneutik: zur Schriftauslegung in Predigt und Unterricht (München, 1967 3), on Bultmann's use of Dilthey's principles here.Google Scholar
page 29 note 1 From the Tridentine Profession of Faith of 1564, cited according to Bettenson, H., Documents of the Christian Church (London, 1963 2), p. 375.Google Scholar
page 29 note 2 A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Orchard, B. et al. (London, 1953), §7d.Google Scholar
page 29 note 3 ibid. §1f; contrast Dei Verbum II. 10 (Vatican Council II: the Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Flannery, A., Tenbury Wells, 1975, p. 756).Google Scholar
page 30 note 1 Reid, J. K. S., The Authority of Scripture: a Study of the Reformation and Post-Reformation Understanding of the Bible (London, 1957), p. 113.Google Scholar
page 30 note 2 ibid., p. 106.
page 30 note 3 In speaking of ‘the Church’ Reid in fact glosses over at this point the difficulty of inter-denominational disputes on the relative merits of their various systems and beliefs as interpretations of Scripture.
page 32 note 1 pace J. M. Robinson, ‘Hermeneutic since Barth’ in Robinson, J. M., Cobb, J. B. (eds.), New Frontiers in Theology II: The New Hermeneutic (New York, 1964), p. 46Google Scholar; it would perhaps help if ‘significance’ were used, rather than ‘meaning’, for these latter senses.
page 32 note 2 cf. Cullmann, O., Salvation in History (London, 1967), pp. 71, 73Google Scholar; compare Frör's contention that ‘theological exegesis’ is distinguished from other exegesis, not by its methods, but by the context in which it is carried out (op. cit., p. 18).
page 32 note 3 cf. Käsemann, E., New Testament Questions of Today (London, 1969), p. 110, n. 2Google Scholar: ‘The principal virtue of the historian and the beginning of all meaningful hermeneutics so far as I am concerned is the cultivation of the listening faculty, which is prepared to take seriously what is historically alien and does not think that violence is the basic form of engagement.’
page 32 note 4 cf. Cullmann, op. cit., p. 67.
page 33 note 1 cf. Beyschlag, W. cited by Morgan, R., The Nature of New Testament Theology, Studies in Biblical Theology, 2nd series, xxv (London, 1973), p. 59.Google Scholar
page 33 note 2 cf. Frör, op. cit., p. 61.
page 34 note 1 In Morgan, op. cit., p. 116.
page 34 note 2 What may confuse things is that both processes may be called ‘interpretation’; it might help to call the one ‘exegesis’ and the other ‘(re)interpretation’. This means that, if we use Cullmann's distinction (op. cit., p. 66), the ‘simple listening to the content of the proclamation’ must be distinguished not only from ‘the encounter of faith, that is, the existential decision’, as he does, but also from the evaluation and (re) interpretation carried out in the light of that existential decision.
page 35 note 1 Well put by Stendahl, K., The Bible and the Role of Women: a Case Study in Hermeneutics, Facet Books, Biblical Series xv (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 16f.Google Scholar
page 35 note 2 cf. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 57, 59.
page 35 note 3 But Morgan, op. cit., p. 55, rightly warns against overrating their advantages.
page 36 note 1 But at this point he will pass beyond the scope of his particular expertise qua New Testament scholar (Stendahl, op. cit., p. 9).
page 36 note 2 e.g., op. cit., pp. 94, 106, 165.
page 36 note 3 cf. Strecker, G., Das Problem der Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Wege der Forschung ccclxvii (Darmstadt, 1975), p. 7.Google Scholar
page 38 note 1 op. cit., pp. 50, 64; cf. Smart, op. cit., p. 25.
page 39 note 1 op. cit., p. 238; cf. also his article in ZThK lxiv, pp. 270, 275, 281.
page 40 note 1 London, 1969, E.T. of Der Ruf der Freiheit (Tübingen, 1968 3).Google Scholar