Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Dialectical theology, in both its existentialist and neo-Orthodox manifestations, emerged as a response to the crisis of revelation resulting from the rise of scientific historiography in the middle and late nineteenth century. As epitomized by Ernst Troeltsch, the new historiography understood historical reality in terms of contingent, relative events which rendered supposedly absolute historical revelation problematic. As dialectical theology struggled to work within the historiographical consensus and yet to amend that outlook in such a way as to provide for a historical understanding of revelation, two dominant hermeneutical methods were developed. The Christian existentialists (or kerygmatic theologians) left the events of world history to the scrutiny of the secular historian without exception. However, an alternative definition of historical reality was proposed which concerned the dimensions of personal history where the issues of meaning and decision arise. Revelation, according to kerygmatic theology, related to the historicity of human existence rather than to the historicality of objective world occurrences. / 2031-01-01