Theology's major challenge is to speak in a definite way about that which cannot be defined. The paper argues that God's indeterminacy is a limit notion that is understood differently in epistemic contexts (unintelligibility) and soteriological contexts (sin). Whereas the theistic and transcendental projects concentrate on the first, theology as a reflective orienting practice cannot ignore the second. This involves a shift of perspective. Whereas Kant, Schleiermacher or Hegel construe the term "God" in a 3rd person perspective as an ideal, an index term, a symbol or an epitome of everything true and good, Christian theology ought to construe it in a 2nd person perspective as a human response to divine self-determination as disclosed in God's Word in history. The Trinitarian thought-form is an elaboration of the latter, not a speculative theory about the divine along the lines of the former. This thought-form spells out the principle indeterminacy which lies at the very core of Christianity, i. e. the cross and resurrection of Christ, in a determinate way. From the beginning the determinate indeterminacy of God in the event of Jesus Christ's cross and resurrection has been the productive ground of a multiplicity of theological views about God, Jesus Christ, human life and the world. None of them can claim to present the truth about God and the world in a single definitive way but all of them are Christian only in so far as they determine their way of speaking about the indeterminable by reference to the event in which the indeterminable became determinable as indeterminable in a determinate way.

Enthalten in:
Theologische Literaturzeitung; 2014/1 Monatsschrift für das gesamte Gebiet der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (2014)

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Serie / Reihe: Theologische Literaturzeitung

Personen: Dalferth, Ingolf U.

Schlagwörter: Theologie Gott Bestimmung Denkmodell