Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 33:2 (May 1971)
Article: Recent Doctoral Dissertations
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 33:2 (May 71) p. 257

Recent Doctoral Dissertations

Hendrik Krabbendam: From Bultmann to Ott. A Critique of Theological Thought in Modern Hermeneutic. Dissertation for the degree of Th.D., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1969. Available through University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This dissertation critically appraises the nature of theological thought in Rudolf Bultmann and Heinrich Ott as representatives of a theology that first created the modern hermeneutical problem and then was faced with the necessity of solving it.

The modern hermeneutical problem originates in the religious, dialectic ground motive of Kantian and post-Kantian thought with its two mutually excluding and presupposing poles of objectifying nature and non-objectifying faith.

The original problem emerged when Scripture, as a document of the past, was declared fallible and the question became urgent how it could assert authority in the present.

When liberalism’s proposal to separate the trustworthy kernel as a reliable foundation for faith from the questionable husk by means of historical science resulted in an ever-growing relativism, dialectical theology attempted to secure a firm foundation for faith by removing the subject matter of Scripture, characterized as historic, from the reach of historical science in keeping with the mutual exclusion of the two poles of the fundamental dialectic. Thus the modern hermeneutical problem was born. The horizontal gap between the uncertain, historical past and the present was replaced by the vertical gap between the indisposable, historic subject matter and the present.

The mutual presupposition, however, is no less demanding than the mutual exclusion. While the latter creates the vertical gap, the former requires that the gap be bridged by means of a synthesis of the historical and the historic, which reflect the essential characteristics of the poles of nature and faith respectively, as the condition for effective and universal communication.

This effective and universal communication, which makes the peaceful coexistence of the man of faith and the man of science possible, is the objective of modern hermeneutical theology.

WTJ 33:2 (May 71) p. 258

This dissertation demonstrates in a study of the thought of two of its representatives that modern hermeneutical theology fails to reach its objective, since the synthesis of the objectifying and the non-objectifying as the transcendental condition of communication is elusive.

It appears that in Bultmann theological thought, which is essentially existential interpretation, takes place in anticipation of the act of faith and the single, most important concept for the ...