Page History

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"The Authority of Scripture for Theology": 45-68

59, first full ¶, line 6 et seq. -- "There remains the distinct alternative -- and, in my judgment, the only correct alternative -- of following the intention of the scriptural principle itself and relocating the auctoritas externa in the original witness that constituted the apostolic church, even as it was, in another sense, constituted by it."

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67, I. 6 et seq. -- "But, without doubt, the religious assumptions of apocalypticism, and so also those of the Jesus-kerygma, are the express subject of the distinctive religious tradition whose foundations are documented by the Old Testament (Bultmann, 1949). Consequently, if theology asks, as it must, for the meaning of the Jesus-kerygma, and thus for the understanding of human existence -- of ourselves, the world, and God -- that the Jesus-kerygma assumes, the answer, clearly, is that it is a certain form or development of the understanding of existence that is variously expressed in the writings of the Old Testament.
      "Logically speaking, then, one may say that the relation of the Old Testament to the earliest Christian witness is like that of the assumptions of an assertion to the assertion itself, or, alternatively, like that of a question to its answer. But if this is correct, there is no doubt that the Old Testament, in its way, is also a theological authority, nor does using it as such pose any particular difficulty. For in the nature of the case, the assumptions of an assertion must be as authoritative as the assertion itself, just as the authoritative answer to a question must endow the question itself with an equivalent authority."

67, second full ¶, l. 7 et seq. -- '"The relation of prophecy to fulfillment, even when properly interpreted, is not the same as that of assumption to assertion, or that of question to answer. And yet there is a considerable and important overlap between the two kinds of relation, which is all the more striking when we consider, as we must, that, in the case of the existential question, there logically cannot be any sharp distinction between question and answer and that the same is true as between the assumptions of a religious assertion and the assertion itself."

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116, second full ¶ in Part 3, l. 4 et seq. -- '"This would seem to indicate," etc.

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122, second full ¶ in Part I, l. 5 et seq. -- "To be sure, the word 'God' itself can be used so broadly that it means simply ultimate reality in its meaning for us, whatever this meaning may prove to be, or -- to speak less existentially and more metaphysically -- it may mean simply ultimate reality in its structure in itself, however we may fially finally conceive this structure."

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126, second full ¶, l. 14 et seq. -- '"Tradition indicates that one might also speak of it as 'natural theology,' were not the presupposed distinction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' (or 'revealed') for various reasons problematic."

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