New Testament Theology itself sharpens our eyes for this independent life of the church by showing how primitive Christianity’s expression of its faith was rooted in its own historical situation, and is therefore something individual and unrepeatable. By confronting us with the peculiar life of the apostolic community and clarifying it for us, New Testament theology makes it impossible for us to transform the New Testament into a series of abstract statements and models that hover around suspended over and above reality. It also strengthens our awareness of the need for dogmatic work, because when we are thus aware that what was once the case can only become real in a particular moment of the past course of history, then the question cannot be avoided: How is what once happened in the past made new in the present? How can we verify that something is the cause of our own being alive when it came into existence in a life that has in part become foreign to us?
Adolf Schlatter, “The Theology of the New Testament and Dogmatics,” in The Nature of New Testament Theology, ed. Robert Morgan (SBT 25; London: SCM, 1973), 117-66.
1 comment:
Michael,
I forget Schlatter's original dates. Was he responding to Bultmann?
I've always been very impressed with his conceptions of NT Theology.
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