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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The relation between faith and history has been troublesome for Christians and Jews for centuries. It is the problem of the relation of the Exodus, the cross and the empty tomb to us today. The seriousness of the matter is shown in the description of Christian faith as a ‘pious fraud’. Karl Barth has popularized the problem as ‘… Lessing's question concerning the relationship between the contingent truths of history and the necessary truths of reason (Der Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft, 1777). “This, this is the gaping and wide chasm which I cannot cross, however often and seriously I have attempted the leap. If anyone can help me over, let him do so: I implore and entreat him. He deserves from me a divine reward.”’ However, Barth also pinpoints the problem in the final analysis as a particular form of the problem of time.
1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics IV, 1, § 59 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), p. 287Google Scholar. See also Church Dogmatics 1, 2, § 14, for an earlier discussion of time.
2 Ritschl, Dietrich, The Logic of Theology (London: SCM Press, 1986, and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
3 Barth, K., CD, IV, 1, § 59, p. 287.Google Scholar
4 See also my article, ‘The Trinity and Time’, Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 39, Nr. 1 (1986), 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other views are presented by Sorabji, Richard, Time, Creation and the Continuum, Theories in antiquity and the early middle ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 415Google Scholar, although his stated purpose is not to investigate time itself, but rather to attempt a partial rehabilitation of Aristotle, who caused so many problems for dynamics. See also the review of the latter by MacKinnon, Donald M., SJT Vol. 38, No. 2 (1985), pp. 270–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 von Rad, Gerhard, Old Testament Theology, Vol. II (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 99–125.Google Scholar
6 Cited in von der Osten-Sacken, Peter, Grundzuege einer Theologie im christlichjuedischen Gespraech (Muenchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1982), p. 212.Google Scholar
7 Farley, Edward, Ecclesial Reflection (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).Google Scholar
8 Von Rad, Vol. I (1962), p. 111; see also Vol. II, pp. 112–119.
9 See my article in note 4 above, 76–77, on Origen's assumption that God is beyond time. See also Butterworth, G. W., ‘Introduction’, in Origen, On First Principles (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), p. liv, on Origen's system.Google Scholar
10 Ritschl, Dietrich, Memory and Hope (New York: Macmillan Co., 1967).Google Scholar
11 Ritschl, D., Logic, pp. 89–91Google Scholar, distinguishes between issues of lasting importance and issues of momentary urgency.
12 See Wilfried Haerle/Eilert Herms, ‘Deutschsprachige Protestantische Dogmatik, nach 1945’, Teil I, 2.3.2, ‘Theologie des Wortes Gottes als Eschatologie’, Verkündigung und Forschung, Heft 2/1982, p. 42.
13 Bultmann, R., Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1951), p. 302.Google Scholar
14 Farley, p. xiv passim.
15 Barth, K., loc. cit., IV, 1, § 58, p. 109.Google Scholar
16 P. von der Osten-Sacken, p. 35.
17 Paul van Buren has helped with reminders as to how closely the traditions of Christians and Jews are related: Discerning the Way (New York: Seabury Press, 1980)Google Scholar; A Christian Theology of the People of Israel (New York: Seabury press, 1983).Google Scholar
18 Bellah, Robert N. et al. , Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 153.Google Scholar
19 Farley, p. 217.
20 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Anthropology in Theological Perspective (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), p. 516.Google Scholar
21 Loc. cit., p. 519.
22 On the ‘trinity’, see my article referred to above. For ‘implicit axioms’, see Ritschl, D., Logic, pp. 108–111.Google Scholar
23 Van Buren, loc. cit.
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