How New is the New Hermeneutic?

Abstract

“The claim that there is a new hermeneutic is bound up with the judgment that Fuchs and Ebeling have, with the aid of Heidegger, rediscovered the hermeneutical import of language— perhaps for the first time since Jesus and Luther. In my opinion it is possible to call this insight ‘new’ to the extent that one forgets that, despite frequent aberrations in homiletical practice, the church has always regarded proclamation in the mode of witness as a kind of ‘primal speech’ which serves as the hermeneutics of the Word of God.”