Geschichten, Historik und die Theologie

Abstract

The convention that history is an objective reality has become questionable as a result of the ‘linguistic turn’ in historiography. Taking the past seriously excludes the possibility of substantiating historical facts. Since the reality of past facts depends on a continual process of tradition, every contemporary attempt of telling something new about the past will inevitably be fictitious. Due to this inherent fiction of its arguments, historical-critical exegesis cannot revise the biblical histories. The literal sense of the Bible requires a historical faith (fides historica) concerning the narrated events in order to preserve God’s promises for the future. Even though the ‘theology of history’ has lost its dominance, the historical method is still prevalent in systematic theology. Historicism in theology is the logical result of the primacy of research over doctrine, since it is linked with the historical method. Theological research leads to the multiplication of opinions without coherence in doctrine. In addition, the modus loquendi theologicus has been reduced to indirect speech about God.