Oscar Cullmann\u27s Concept of Time

In the foreword to the second edition of his book Christ and Time, Oscar Cullmann admits that this work is not intended to answer the questions raised by systematic theology. He goes on, to claim that the giving of such answers is not the real task of a New Testament scholar like himself, nor, in his opinion, should it be. In his own words: Is it not the most valuable service that the New Testament scholar can render to the systematic theologian that he permits the questions that are not solved in the New Testament itself to stand as questions? And does not the real responsibility of the exegete in relation to systematic theology lie precisely in this limitation, so that his duty is to hand on these questions in the very form in which they are presented by the objective New Testament data? In this book Cullmann has done the task of a New Testament scholar as he sees it and has, as far as possible, performed this most valuable service for the systematic theologian. However, such a service is also a challenge to the systematic theologian, the challenge to formulate and to evaluate answers to the questions which have been handed on to him. In its own limited way, this paper is an attempt to meet this challenge. It is an attempt to understand Cullmann’s concept of time, to investigate the relationship between this concept and other theological questions to which Cullmann has addressed himself, and to determine whether or not this conception of time has implications which Cullman himself has not yet thoroughly explored