In his famous 1938 lecture of the same name, Martin Heidegger understood modernity ("Neuzeit") to be "The Age of the World View" or the "World Picture" ("Die Zeit des Weltbilds"), an age defined by radical metaphysical transformation wherein all Being (Seiendes) can be considered as being (seiend) only insofar as it is posited by man as part of one coherent understanding of reality as a whole: a "World Picture". Taken in this sense, not every age has its world view, but rather, the very possibility of a „World Picture" encompassing the whole opens up only once it is man positing being as being. This is a shift that contributes to the modern forgetfulness of being as such („Seinsvergessenheit") and marks, among others, the starting point of a radical critique of technology.
Specifically the later Heidegger had an enormous influence on German Hermeneutical Theology. Another influential figure was his Marburg colleague Rudolf Bultmann, in whose work the "World Picture" or "Weltbild" features quite prominently as well, albeit in a different context, namely in the rejection of an antique world view as tenable in modernity. This rejection is the main motivation for Bultmann's famous program of the demythologization of the biblical texts.
Considering these influences, it stands to reason that the "World Picture" would feature prominently in Hermeneutical Theology, if not in name then in at least one of the meanings given to the concept by Bultmann and Heidegger. The paper thus aims to trace the motif of "World Picture" and what it encompasses in Hermeneutical Theologians such as Eberhard Jüngel, in whose critique of modernity some points from Heideggers "Weltbild"-lecture may be rediscovered. What does Hermeneutical Theology have to say about the "World Picture", implicitly or explicitly? Does it formulate its own or does it rather consider a world that can be captured within an image to be in danger of losing God as its genuine mystery?