Facs
Transcript
Lecture XIII, Nov. 15, 1955
Discussion with students:
This question is a good transition, perhaps, to the lecture I am starting now:
Question: Does scientific thought contribute to the breaking of religious symbols and myths, à la Bultmann?
b: Now “scientific” can be used in two senses. One is the sense in which I have used it in the last lecture, namely natural sciences. The other sense is methodological. In German the word Wissenschaft combines both meanings. In English, for some historical reasons, the term scientia (science) has almost been reserved for natural sciences of a mathematical character. So the question here can mean two things. From the point of view of the narrower concept, mathematical sciences, I would answer: they have nothing to do with the question of historical research, to which I turn now. If “scientific” is meant in a larger sense, namely as methodological, then certainly the interpretation, the historical understanding, of the biblical sources has a lot to do with the breaking of the myth.
Perhaps there is another question – I don’t want to run ahead too quickly. Since there is not, I run ahead!
The general subject is the relationship of religious truth to cognitive truth, and we wanted to proceed in three steps: scientific truth, historical truth, and philosophical truth. We discussed last week and the week before, scientific truth. The most important point perhaps was the very last one on Thursday, namely the question of ideology, the question of projection, in another terminology; the question: Can genesis, the becoming of something in the mind or in society, determine about its truth