A critique of some aspects of Kerygma as understood by Rudolph Bultmann and Charles Harold Dodd : Kerygma and its presuppositions

• Main Author: Templeton, Douglas Alan
• Published: University of Glasgow 1967
• Subjects: 230; BL Religion
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.633488

Essay I suggests that the context in which the enquiry concerning kerygma is being made is dominated by the rise of the historical-critical method. The hypothesis that theological language is an insoluble compound of historical and eschatological language is explored, then rejected in favour of the hypothesis that historical language is paradoxically identical with theological language. Essay II explores what it means to speak historically of the resurrection, finds it necessary to define God, to assert that the past is present and that my acts and words, like the acts and words of Jesus, are the acts and words of God, though these former are qualified by sin. Essay III assumes that the words of Jesus and the words of the early church were the words of God; that, if the words of the early church were kerygma, so too then were the words of Jesus kerygma. What differentiates kerygma from other language-games that deal with history is not that what they speak of remains past, lvhereas the kerygma makes present, but that in the kerygma he is present whose acts and words were, without the qualification of sin, God's acts and words. Essay IV summarises the position so far, with a parenthesis on the inseparable relation of narration and proclamation; suggests that the New Testament includes not one kerygma, but many, some of which"merely differ from one another, some of which contradict one another. It is further suggested that kerygma is created by men, or theologically speaking, by the Spirit, at the point where tradition and the present situation interact. As this interaction should be creating something new, it is not possible to test whether a new kerygma is true or false, as traditional norms cannot entirely measure what has gone beyond tradition. Essay V outlines the presuppositions that have been accumulating throughout the essays and suggests that they, or something like them, are necessary for' a comprehensive and consistent explanation of what kerygma is.