TH6317 The Interpretation of the History of Israel

Synthesis

Writing

Edit for clarity by April 25.

Prepare oral presentation for May 2.

Edit for syntax, grammar, and punctuation by May 10.

Major themes

History of Revelation according to Karl Rahner

I’m not mean enough to make you try to decipher Rahner directly, but here is a pithy summary by someone who writes to be understood.

In Rahner’s view, this is a special “official” history of revelation. Describing this “brief moment” from Abraham to Christ, he remarks: “What makes this history a history of revelation is rather the interpretation of the history as the event of a dialogical partnership with God, and as a prospective tendency towards an open future” (1967: 167; 1979: 177-90). Rahner critiqued the third chapter (surely it is a weak chapter) of the Dei Verbum of Vatican II for failing to offer “a survey of the whole of human history as the history of salvation and revelation” (1979: 198).

Roland E. Murphy, “When Is Theology ‘Biblical’?—Some Reflections.” Biblical Theology Bulletin, 33.1 pp. 21-27, Feb 2003.

Philosophies and Theologies of History

Return to list first introduced in the first class (LINK)

Further reading

Hegel and Philosophy of History, see Wikipedia (LINK) and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (LINK)