the method’s first limit is that by its very nature it has to leave the biblical word in the past. It is a historical method, and that means that it investigates the then-current context of events in which the texts originated. It attempts to identify and to understand the past—as it was in itself—with the greatest possible precision, in order then

Because it is a historical method, it presupposes the uniformity of the context within which the events of history unfold. It must therefore treat the biblical words it investigates as human words.

Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.

Admittedly, to believe that, as man, he truly was God, and that he communicated his divinity veiled in parables, yet with increasing clarity, exceeds the scope of the historical method.

When a word transcends the moment in which it is spoken, it carries within itself a “deeper value.”

Isn’t it more logical, even historically speaking, to assume that the greatness came at the beginning, and that the figure of Jesus really did explode all existing categories and could only be understood in the light of the mystery of God?

you want to understand the Scripture in the spirit in which it is written, you have to attend to the content and to the unity of Scripture as a whole.

If we push this history aside, Christian faith as such disappears and is recast as some other religion. So if history, if facticity in this sense, is an essential dimension of Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method—indeed, faith itself demands this.

Historical-critical interpretation of a text seeks to discover the precise sense the words were intended to convey at their time and place of origin.