Historical theology

Historical theology is an institute name of theology at some universities and designates an interdisciplinary series of sub-disciplines that work historically and theologically. In particular, theological directions that want to avoid the term history as imprecise include the historically working disciplines.

The clarification of the terms is controversial within theological science itself. As a rule, those subject areas are called historical that research the historically tangible developments in Christianity, church and theology history. The concept of history is, however, often differentiated from the concept of history in systematic theology : Martin Kähler , for example, emphasized the “historical biblical Christ” as opposed to the “so-called 'historical Jesus'”. In addition to this “biblicism” in its opposition to the historical-critical method , “ dialectical theology ” in particular turned against the “historicism” of the 19th century and placed the question of the truth of God's biblical revelation at the center of theology tries. Its representatives, above all Karl Barth , Emil Brunner and Rudolf Bultmann , emphasized the radical Reformation difference between God's own word in human history and all religious phenomena that can only be demonstrated historically.

In today's subject areas called "Historical Theology", the following individual disciplines are usually combined:

• Dogma story
• Church history
• History of ecumenism
• History of religion