Jesus' thought centers in a call to the present against the background of the eschatological event of the near future. This call to the present concerning the nearness of the kingdom is such a central theme that it produces something. Illness and disability The nature of the Church Prayer and sacraments The Christian life The ministry.
The first part of this new program to begin in earnest is about the problem of the historical Jesus. The decisive issue is identified in "the issue of the continuity of the gospel in the interruption of times and the change of time". Käsemann's initial proposal for a new research arose from the problem of relating the message of Jesus to the Church's kerygma.
This is precisely the true work of Jesus.' What is said here about.
Bultmann’s Shift in Position
He “connects the hope of salvation with his person to the extent that he sees the kingdom effective in his actions and understands his preaching as the last word of God before the end.” Thus his. Bultmann recognizes that the problem of the relationship between Jesus' teaching and the kerygma of the Church – i.e. this does not clarify why the Proclaimer necessarily became the Proclaimed, unless it could be shown that Jesus' preaching of the law was distinguished from any other preaching . other preaching of the law by at the same time the.
But instead he seizes on Fuchs's concept of Jesus' behavior as God's goodness in action, and concludes that Jesus' message is grace after all, that is, 11.6; Luke 12.8 f., through the call for a decision regarding his person, are at the same time words of promise, of grace: it is precisely at this moment that the gift of freedom is offered to the hearer. Bultmann himself seems to have adapted to the 'post-Bultmannian' movement of his pupils, at least with regard to grace in the historical Jesus and the kerygma.
When we apply this position to Diem's original criticism of Käsemann, that the latter presented Jesus as teaching only general truths and not the kerygma, it becomes clear that Diem has missed the crucial point: Käsemann went beyond the view that Jesus taught God's fatherhood and human nature. freedom, to the claim that 'God has drawn near to man in grace and demand', and Jesus 'brought and lived the freedom of the children of God'.
The Barthian Rapprochement
The Church's kerygma, and thus the decisive area of research for a new search for the historical Jesus. From this study of the current German discussion we can conclude that the proposal for a new search for the historical Jesus. Bultmann himself. A concentration of power appears to be brewing, which may well provide enough impetus to go further than just.
To engage in this discussion in such a way that we can make a fruitful contribution to it, it will be necessary (chapter II) to recognize the degree of validity inherent in the arguments that brought the original quest to an end. by pointing out its impossibility and illegality. For only within the valid limits thus imposed can one attempt in a relevant way (chapter III) to define the sense in which a new search may be possible, and to examine the legitimacy of such a search (chapter IV). then one can try (Chapter V) to get the actual work underway by stating the central problem in terms of which the detailed investigation of individual problems will become more relevant.
A New Quest of the Biblical Jesus by James M. Robinson
The Impossibility and Illegitimacy of the Original Quest
- The Ambiguous Term ‘Historical Jesus’
- The End of the Original Quest
- The Sources and the ‘Impossibility’ of the Original Quest
- The Kerygma and the ‘Illegitimacy’ of the Original Quest
However, such a usage is the closest to the original, etymological meaning of the term "history" (Alb. "research"). This was in fact the assumption of nineteenth-century historical Jesus research. Then one continued to apply this alternative between orthodox Christology and Jesus Christ.
Albert Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus is often said to mark the end of the quest. Thus, the theological value of the original research in the validation of the Ritschlian system was overturned. It is often assumed that the original research ended in Germany due to growing criticism of the form.
Furthermore, it has increasingly replaced the theological centrality of the 'historical Jesus' in the leading theological systems of our day.
The Possibility of a New Quest
- The ‘Historical Section" of the Kerygma?
- A New View of the Gospels?
- A New Concept of History and the Self
This is difficult given the fact that, apart from the Acts of the Apostles, the kerygma is almost entirely absent. It is this understanding of humiliation that prevents the 'historical section of the kerygma from attempting to legitimize the kerygma with objectively demonstrable 'signs'. The statements about Jesus 'in the flesh', originally intended to define only half the humiliation of the paradox, come to express both sides of it.
Because this Gospel speaks more self-consciously and explicitly than the others about Jesus in terms of the kerygma. This kerygmatic meaning of the 'historical section' is constitutive of the Gospel as a literary form. The original quest was brought to an end by the rise of the kerygma to the center of twentieth-century theology.
The credit for the centrality of the core is due, at least in the English-speaking world, to C. Stauffer, initially impressed by the current consensus on the kerygmatic character of the Gospels (7), bases the possibility of a positivist search on the existence of new sources (8). What is really synchronized is the Fourth Gospel with the Synoptics, as in the Nineteenth Century Life of Christ.
What is new in Stauffer is the programmatic revival of the positivist understanding of history. Yet the nature of the collection does not seem to fundamentally change the kind of history or biography of Jesus that is possible. Nor does such a possibility lie in any general shift in the scientific assessment of the Gospels.
The first effect of the modern view of history and human existence on the study of the New Testament was, as we have seen, to focus attention on the kerygma as the New Testament statement of the history of Jesus and. The positive relevance of the modern view of history and oneself to the problem of Jesus did not remain completely undiscovered. If the Gospels do not talk about the history of Jesus in the sense of a.
It is clear that a new search for the historical Jesus cannot be built on the effort to deny the impossibilities inherent in the original search.
The Legitimacy of a New Quest
- The Relevance of the Theological Question
- The Permissiveness of a New Quest
- The Impetus Provided by Demythologizing
- The Necessity of a New Quest
Unless the trend of considering the search for the historical Jesus as theologically irrelevant or even illegitimate is reversed, i.e. this relevance lay in the identification in the kerygma of the humiliated Jesus and the exalted Lord. This clarification of the theological significance involved in emphasizing Jesus' historicity through the writing of the Gospels does not automatically provide a compelling motivation for a new search for the historical Jesus.
The writing of Gospels also does not constitute a precise precedent for a search for the historical Jesus. Now the concept of the kerygma as a religious symbol was familiar to Bultmann from his background in the comparative religious school. Consequently, it views salvation in terms of the meaning of history, rather than in terms of escape from history.
Not only did the coming of the Messiah mean that the eschatological age had dawned, i.e. Apart from this concrete situation, there is no theological necessity for a search for the historical Jesus, since Jesus can be met in the kerygma. It is this concern of the kerygma for the historicity of Jesus that necessitates a new search.
Nor can the requirement of the kerygma be met by the observation that Jesus' historicity is. This can be illustrated in relation to the 'cross', whose historicity in the normal sense of the word is not in doubt. The crucial point regarding the kerygma and history is therefore not whether the kerygma preserves detailed historical memories about Jesus, but rather that the kerygma is definitely an evaluation of the historical person.
The kerygma is thus largely uninterested in nineteenth-century historiography, for the kerygma is not at the level of objectively verifiable facts. Käsemann's essay reopening the question of the historical Jesus was instigated by Bultmann's procedure of placing the message of Jesus beyond the primitive.
A New Quest of the Biblical Jesus by James M. Robinson
The Procedure of a New Quest
As a purposeful enterprise, a new search for the historical Jesus would turn on a central problem area determined by its purpose. For it is the title most often claimed by Jesus in the Gospels, and with which the predictions of the Passion are usually associated. The kind of individual problems that arise from the purpose and focus problem of the new quest can be.
Therefore, his selfhood found its positive expression in its role as a "sign" of the eschatological situation in the world. How can Jesus' understanding of himself, whatever that understanding may have been, be subject to comparison with the kerygma's understanding of the course of history or the state of the cosmos? It is this contrast between Jesus and the Church that characterized science at the turn of the century.
He is, of course, incompatible with the Paul of the first century (whose unmodern credulity is somewhat exaggerated). This statement was continued by Ernst Fuchs. The existential meaning of the kerygma is still visible in the earliest written source, the letters of Paul. In this presentation, Fuchs has clearly laid out the basics in terms of the decision that constitutes the self.
In view of the current concept of the historicity of the self, it is not surprising that the most characteristic. Because on the one hand we have understood that the language of the kerygma must become transparent, if an interpretation of Jesus is to be seen through it. Thus, the solution to this typical problem of a new search for the historical Jesus must consist in an ad oculos demonstration.
We have become like the dregs of the world, the dregs of all things, until now. But in the midst of his eschatological description of Christian existence Paul introduces several phrases that express the existential meaning of the kerygma.
