Hans Weder recalls the importance of the work of Ernst Fuchs for New Testament theology and hermeneutics on Fuchs' hundredth anniversary, June 11, 2003. Fuchs has always emphasised the proximity of religious language to life and experience. He understood Jesus' proclamation to presuppose God's presence to everyone, but a presence that had to be discovered. It is everyday life and reality that discloses the truth of God's Word. It is not the tack of language, understood as human activity, to transform mere possibility into actual truth. Rather language corresponds to divine truth as it comes to illumine reality. This is why theological hermeneutics cannot as such make the biblical texts be understood, but must wait for the word to become effective. The art of waiting for this is the very point of hermeneutical rules and methods. The interpretation of parables is a central application of these considerations: Fuchs rejects the usual distinction between picture and content for God's Kingdom as expressed in parables and metaphors. There can be no theoretical language which describes God's Kingdom more precisely than pictorial language. The widely shared insight of much recent theology that metaphor is essential to religious language owes a great deal to Ernst Fuchs.

Enthalten in:
Theologische Literaturzeitung; 2004/Nr.3 Monatsschrift für das gesamte Gebiet der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (2004)

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Serie / Reihe: Theologische Literaturzeitung

Personen: Weder, Hans

Schlagwörter: Theologie Neues Testament-Theologie Hermeneutik Fuchs, Ernst