Abstract

The author begins by stating that one of the principal reasons for writing this book was that “the more I came to ‘know’ God in Hegelian categories, the less I had any sense of the presence of God. In other words, the God of speculative philosophy did not seem to bear any relation to the God of the Bible, who is portrayed as speaking to men and personally guiding their lives.” I, too, doubt whether the God of the Bible has been speaking to most Hegelian scholars and philosophers lately, whether they are men or women. The first and last chapters are devoted to a theological discussion of the contemporary “dilemma,” explained as a split between “secular” and “biblical” methods of doing historical research and of understanding the meaning of history, a split that has been fostered by such diverse figures as Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Barth, because they refused to question the presuppositions of “secular” methods of appropriating history. The solution proposed is a return to “biblical” categories for understanding “biblical history” and “secular history,” and for a “biblical” foundation for religious language; none of these terms are explained.