Heilsgeschichte

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to present Dilthey’s philosophical effort in his academic life to critique Historical Reason, which establishes the epistemological legitimacy of the Geisteswissenchaften. Whereas Oscar Cullmann’s hermeneutics sought to find a historical control for investigation of theology (Geschichte und Offenbarung) and a manner to avoid both Theological Liberalism, which is marked for its anti-supernaturalism, and Dialectical Theology with its emphasis on God as the “wholly other” that never reveals himself in the events of history. For him faith must exist in constant interaction with history. That is the way to avoid the criticism that one is merely finding in the NT that which one already believes. The hypothesis suggested here is in struggling to find a historical control for theology, Cullmann drawn in a certain degree from Dilthey’s Hermeneutical Theory, and therefore, established an intermediate position between those two theologies, his magnus opus Heilsgeschichteliche Theology or Heils als Geschichte (Salvation as History).