Two Horizons : New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description

by Thiselton, Anthony C.

• ISBN13: 9780802800060
• ISBN10: 0802800068
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1980-06-01
• Publisher: Lightning Source Inc

Author Biography

Anthony C. Thiselton is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction	p. xix
Introductory Questions
The Nature and Scope of the Subject	p. 3
Why Philosophical Description?	p. 3
Philosophy and the hermeneutical task
Philosophy and the New Testament
The Underlying Problem of Hermeneutics: The Two Horizons	p. 10
The two-sided nature of the problem
A New Testament example
Some Issues Which Arise from the Hermeneutical Problem	p. 17
The New Testament and pre-understanding
Further Introductory Questions: Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein	p. 24
Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein: Three General Points	p. 24
Their importance
Description and interpretation
Tradition
The Relation of Wittgenstein to Heidegger, Gadamer, and Bultmann	p. 33
Secondary literature
Language-game, horizon, and world
Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and the New Testament	p. 40
The earlier and later Heidegger, Gadamer, and the Fourth Gospel
Broader Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics and History: the Issue of Historical Distance	p. 51
The Pastness of the Past	p. 53
Nineham's historical relativism
Criticisms of this position
The Emergence of Historical Consciousness	p. 63
Lessing, Herder, Hegel, and Ranke
Historical Method in Ernst Troeltsch	p. 69
History versus theology
Troeltsch's positivism
History and Hermeneutics in Wolfhart Pannenberg	p. 74
His critique of Troeltsch and rejection of dualism
Hermeneutics and Theology: The Legitimacy and Necessity of Hermeneutics	p. 85
The Word of God and the Holy Spirit	p. 85
The Spirit's work not independent of human understanding
Faith, "Timeless Truth," Time, and the Word	p. 92
Replies to three further objections to hermeneutics
Understanding and Pre-understanding: Schleiermacher	p. 103
The hermeneutical circle; Schleiermacher's earlier and later thought
Pre-understanding and Theology	p. 107
Bultmann, Latin American hermeneutics, Ricoeur, and Freud
Hermeneutics and Language	p. 115
The Restricted Hermeneutical Role of Linguistic and Semantic Investigations: Distance, Fusion, and Reference	p. 117
Linguistics and hermeneutics in Ricoeur
Frei and Petersen
Respecting the Particularity of the Text; Word and Context; Hermeneutics as Translation	p. 124
Saussure; field semantics; Kelsey and Nida on translation
The Relation between Thought and Language and Its Bearing on Pre-understanding in Hermeneutics	p. 133
Whorf, Saussure, and Wittgenstein
Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein
Heidegger's "Being and Time": Dasein, Worldhood, and Understanding	p. 143
The Question of Being from the Standpoint of Dasein	p. 143
Is the question of Being meaningful? Dasein as a technical term
Dasein, Hermeneutics, and Existenz	p. 149
Hermeneutics and horizon; presence-at-hand
World and Worldhood	p. 154
The ready-to-hand and equipment
Relation to sciences
State-of-mind, Understanding, and Discourse	p. 161
Double meaning of Befindlichkeit
Fore-conception and language
Further Themes in Heidegger's Earlier Thought	p. 169
The Falling of Dasein: Dasein's Being as Care; Reality and Truth	p. 169
Inauthentic existence
Truth as "letting be" what is
Being-towards-Death and Authentic Existence	p. 176
An existential phenomenon
Comparison with Bultmann
Time, Temporality, and History	p. 181
Dasein's temporality and historicity as the basis for time and history
Two General Comments on "Being and Time" and Its Relevance to Hermeneutics	p. 187
"World" and the subject-object relation
Role of cognitive thought
Further Comments on Heidegger's Thought	p. 194
Hermeneutical circle; feeling-states; hermeneutics of the "I am"
The Ingredients of Bultmann's Hermeneutical Concerns Prior to Heidegger's Philosophy	p. 205
Bultmann's Relation to Liberal Theology and to Neo-Kantian Philosophy: Modern Man and Objectifying Thinking	p. 205
Herrmann, Cohen, and Natorp
Science and objectification
Bultmann's Fusion of Neo-Kantian Epistemology with Nineteenth-Century Lutheranism: Objectification in Accordance with Law	p. 212
Faith no objective basis in dogma
First hints of dualism
Bultmann's Indebtedness to the History of Religions School and to Current Biblical Scholarship: Kerygma and Myth	p. 218
Strangeness of the New Testament
Weiss, Wrede, Schweitzer, Schmidt
Bultmann's Indebtedness to Dialectical Theology: The Final Setting of the Terms of the Hermeneutical Problem	p. 223
Barth and Gogarten
Talk from God, not about God
Further Philosophical Ingredients in Bultmann's Hermeneutics	p. 227
Differing Roles of Heidegger's Philosophy in Relation to Bultmann's Hermeneutics	p. 227
Three ways of construing the role of Heidegger's thought
Bultmann's Hermeneutics and the Philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey	p. 234
"Life" and pre-understanding in Dilthey
Legacy of Yorck
Bultmann's Appeal to Collingwood's Philosophy of History	p. 240
Affinities with Collingwood not to be exaggerated
The Emergence of a Dualist Trend in Bultmann's View of History	p. 245
History versus nature
Ott, Young, and Pannenberg
Bultmann's Hermeneutics and the New Testament	p. 252
Bultmann's View of Myth	p. 252
Three different definitions and responses to the problem
Bultmann's Proposals for the Interpretation of Myth	p. 258
Misunderstandings of Bultmann's aim
Problem of the New Testament itself
Specific Examples of Re-interpretation in the New Testament: A Critique of Bultmann's Claims about Eschatology and Christology	p. 263
Three principles
Objectification and contradiction
Difficulties
Further Examples: A Critique of Bultmann's Claims about the Cross and Resurrection	p. 269
Application of the three principles and its difficulty
The Use of Heidegger's Conceptuality in New Testament Theology: Paul's View of Man	p. 275
Existential interpretation of sarx and soma
Criticism of Gundry
Some Concluding Comments	p. 283
Complexity of Bultmann's position
Genuine criticisms as against others
Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics And Its Implications For New Testament Interpretation	p. 293
The Relevance to Hermeneutics of Questions about Truth and Art	p. 293
Limits of "method."
History of philosophy; art and the game
Gadamer's Critique of Hermeneutics from Schleiermacher to Heidegger	p. 300
Criticism of Ranke, Droysen, and Dilthey
Advance of Husserl, Yorck, and Heidegger
The Task of Hermeneutics in the Light of Tradition and of Man's Historical Finitude	p. 304
Pre-judgment not merely negative
Distance and the fusion of horizons
Hermeneutics and Language in Gadamer	p. 310
Language and thought
Question and answer
Assertions
Some Implications of Gadamer's Work: The Relation between Exegesis and Theology as the Problem of Fusion and Distance	p. 314
Tradition and systematic theology
The Reformation and Stendahl's criticism
Further Considerations of the Issue: Exegesis and Theology with Special Reference to Diem, Ott, and Stuhlmacher	p. 319
Wrede, Schlatter, Rahner, Schlier
Barth, Diem, Ott, Stuhlmacher
The Later Heidegger, Gadamer, And The New Hermeneutic	p. 327
The Malaise of Language and Thinking in the Western Language Tradition	p. 330
The legacy of Plato
Reality and concepts
Crisis of language
Language-Event and a New Coming to Speech	p. 335
Being and thought; "gathering" and art; language as the house of Being
Further Considerations about the Hermeneutics of Fuchs and Ebeling	p. 342
Einverstandnis and the parables of Jesus
Related Approaches to the Hermeneutics of the Parables: Funk, Via, and Crossan	p. 347
Affinities between Fuchs and Funk
Via and the existential
Further Assessments of the New Hermeneutic	p. 352
Positive contribution, but also serious one-sidedness
Philosophy And Language In Ludwig Wittgenstein	p. 357
The Contrast between Wittgenstein's Earlier and Later Writings and Its Significance for Hermeneutics	p. 357
Apel, and Janik and Toulmin
Abstract logic versus language-games
The Earlier Writings: Propositions, the Picture Theory, and the Limits of Language	p. 362
The nature of propositions
Logical determinacy
Saying and showing
Hermeneutics and the Later Writings: Language-Games and Life	p. 370
The particular case
Surroundings, training, application
The Hermeneutical Significance of the Argument about Private Language and Public Criteria of Meaning	p. 379
Public tradition versus "my own case."
Wittgenstein and Bultmann
Wittgenstein, "Grammar," And The New Testament	p. 386
Grammar, Insight, and Understanding: Examples of a First Class of Grammatical Utterances	p. 386
Eight examples in the New Testament
A Second Class of Grammatical Utterance and the Respective Life-Settings of the Two Classes	p. 392
Wittgenstein's On Certainty
New Testament and classical literature
Class-Three Grammatical Utterances: Linguistic Recommendations, Pictures, and Paradigms	p. 401
Examples of the issue in the New Testament
Language-Games, "the Particular Case," and Polymorphous Concepts	p. 407
Examples from Wittgenstein
"Faith," "flesh," and "truth" in the New Testament
Language-Games and "Seeing-as": A Fresh Approach to Some Persistent Problems about Justification by Faith in Paul	p. 415
Five persistent problems
Verdicts within different systems
Grammatical Relations and Dispositions: Faith in Paul and in James	p. 422
Difference of logical grammar
Dispositional accounts of faith
Wittgenstein and Structuralism	p. 428
Wittgenstein and the Debate about Biblical Authority	p. 432
Conclusions	p. 439
Bibliography	p. 464
Index of Subjects	p. 467
Index of Names	p. 475
Index of Biblical References	p. 482
Index of Ancient Non-biblical References	p. 484
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