Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The major problem that I consider concerns the relationship between the historical and the religious, a problem highlighted by the traditional understanding of the claims of Christianity, characterised as an 'historical religion'. The problem is approached through a study of Lessing's theological writings in which the 'ugly ditch' is exposed between historical facts and the religious truths they are held to validate. This leads us to question the status and nature of the historical. If the truth of the religion is dependent on the historical facts that must mean that uncertainty about the historical jeopardises the religion's claims. There seems then to be an incompatibility between religious truths and empirical truths. I argue that the nature of the incompatibility, or of the relationship, is determined by particular understandings of historicality. ;Lessing highlighted the conflict by working with an objective sense of history, but suggesting that the empirical is irrelevant for faith because religious truths are necessary. The historical events merely serve as occasions by which man can apprehend these truths. Hegel addresses the problem of the relationship between the historical and the religious by offering an understanding of the relation, such that the religious includes the development of the religious consciousness. Empirical details drop out of significance as the truth of the religion is seen as emergent within history. If religious truths are philosophically understood then the historical can be grasped as moments in the development of consciousness itself. ;Kierkegaard claims that such a philosophical explanation of the religious experience is mistaken and points us to an existential sense of historicality. I argue that the relationship between and religious experience only becomes potentially disastrous for the claims of Christianity if the historical is treated in the objective or Hegelian manner. If Christianity is understood as an existential communication then it is an historical religion only insofar as it concerns the believer's own historicality. Treating its historicality in any other way merely results in a confusion of the nature of faith itself