Summary: | The systematic goal of this project is to offer an account of Ernst Troeltsch's key theological concept of the Absolute. While Troeltsch is well-known for his critique of claims to "absoluteness" in religion and his identification of a "crisis of historicism" in modern religious thought, his understanding of the Absolute as a theological concept, and in particular as an eschatological concept, is less widely recognized. In fact, Troeltsch sees religion as a human orientation toward absolute and ultimate reality, such that his eschatology and his theory of religion more generally depend upon this basic concept. This dissertation first distinguishes Troeltsch's eschatology from the apocalypticism that began to be taken as normative for Christian theology following the New Testament research of Troeltsch's own day. Next, the Kantian and idealist precursors to Troeltsch's eschatological Absolute are examined. The ontological and epistemological implications of this doctrine of the Absolute are clarified through historical and systematic reconstruction, and finally two avenues for current application of Troeltsch's understanding of the Absolute are examined in the work of Hans Joas and Kathryn Tanner.
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