Professor Rudolf Bultmann's Jesus, translated here, is a strictly historical presentation of the teaching of Jesus in the context of the thought of his own time. However, Professor Bultmann's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus is radically different from that popularized by liberal scholars from the days before the First World War. One of the main stumbling blocks in the Gospels was the eschatological element.
Albert Schweitzer (cf. The Quest of the Historical Jesus) that eschatology was an essential part of the teaching of Jesus, but he differed from dr. Insofar as the thought of Jesus corresponded with this ideal system, one can speak of the super-historical element in his message. It is precisely this complex of ideas in the oldest layer of the synoptic tradition that is the object of our consideration.
According to tradition, Jesus is named as the bearer of the message; in all probability he really was. After the historical introduction, this presentation of the message of Jesus develops in three concentric circles of thought.
Jesus and the Word by Rudolf Bultmann
The Historical Background for the Ministry of Jesus
- The Messianic Movements
- John the Baptist and Jesus
This law and the faithful man's unconditional obedience to it make the Jewish nation a chosen people. Such hope is based on the promises of the prophets, whose relation to earlier concrete historical situations is neglected. In rabbinic Judaism after the beginning of the Christian era, hope recedes more and more into the background, not as a fundamental concept, but as a practical attitude.
It is true that the official class of the Jewish people welcomed the Roman rule, which gave peace to the land and, in the very act of depriving the race of its national existence, allowed the religious to work in peace and live faithfully to the Law. But among the people themselves, and especially among the strictly legalistic group, the Pharisees, from the Messianic hope arose a fiery activism, which itself undertook to put an end to the rule of the heathen. From the time of Herod the Great the messianic movements did not cease, until they finally culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the annihilation of the Jewish state in so far as it could be called a state.
It had no political character, of course, but it was motivated by the certainty that the time of the end had now arrived. Possibly the later emerging Gnostic sect is a development of this ancient Baptist sect, and perhaps many of the Mandanian beliefs go back to the beginning of the movement.
The Teaching of Jesus: The Coming of the Kingdom of God
- The Kingdom of God
- Universalism and Individualism? Dualism and Pessimism?
- Future and Present. The Necessity of Decision
I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes." As the grain miraculously sprouts and ripens without human agency or understanding, so wonderful is the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Obviously, the Jews thought of the salvation of the Kingdom of God as salvation for the Jews. The fact that in the mind of Jesus the national connotation of the Kingdom of God remains in the background does not mean that he learned its universality. This message of the Kingdom of God is absolutely foreign to the contemporary conception of mankind.
And this crisis of decision arises for the man because he is face to face with the coming of God's kingdom. Finally, it is also clear why Jesus cannot give a description of the kingdom of God.
The Teaching of Jesus: The Will of God
- Jesus as Rabbi
- The Authority of Scripture
- The Jewish Ethic of Obedience
- Jesus’ Insistence on Obedience
- The Intelligibility of the Demand
- The Will of God and the Coming of His Kingdom
It also shows in the social laws, which were supposed to keep the people's lives healthy and vigorous. Jesus sees human behavior from the point of view of the obedience that man owes to God. Not one of the 'people of the land' [that is, no one belonging to the common people] is religious."
He clearly implies that they have a better understanding of God's will than the blameless. The will of the disobedient man is evil; it is up to him to surrender, not to deny nature. Jesus, unlike the Old Testament prophets, does not speak about the state and civil rights.
Nevertheless, there is a fundamental similarity between the prophetic conception of God's will and that of Jesus. He will give justice to the tribes of the nation sanctified by the Lord their God. This is evident from the narrative in which the question of the prime commandment arises.
Because self-love is not a principle of morality, but the attitude of the natural man. It is not the promotion of the individuality of others for the sake of one's enjoyment of it. How does Jesus' preaching about the will of God relate to his proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom.
There is another expedient that has often been tried: Jesus' words about the will of God must be understood strictly in light of the eschatological message. We only have to compare a prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah with Jesus' teaching about the will of God to see the difference. It is true, however, that Jesus' demands must be understood in light of the eschatological message on one point – namely, that contained therein.
This leads us to see how truly the eschatological message and the proclamation of God's will must be understood as a unity. Or the seriousness of the last hour does not mean that the decision is final.
The Teaching of Jesus: God the Remote and the Near
- The Jewish Conception of God
- The God of the Future
- Belief in the Providence and Justice of God
- Belief in Miracles
- Belief in Prayer
- Faith
- God the Father
- God the Remote and the Near. Sin and Forgiveness
The idea of a Creator is never given up, and no internal law or power is ever ascribed to the world; God is. The idea that God is far away, far above the world and man, is just as necessary an element of the concept of God as the other, that he is nevertheless constantly close. The thought of the god of the future stands with a one-sided emphasis and a certain coloring so much in the foreground that it is often.
Such confident faith in the God of the present is typically shown in the fifth. First, of course, God, insofar as He is the Judge, is the God of the future. Both just and merciful, God is essentially the God of the future, and the future is completely uncertain.
Likewise the idea of God's grace is not radically conceived; for the grace of God is manifested here. The God of the future is not really the God of the present, because man does not see the God of grace in the present at all. God is for him in the Hebrew sense the distant God, who in no way belongs to the world and is not part of the world.
For the emphasis on immediacy does not indicate a fundamental difference from the dualistic judgment of the world. Thus, if we want to understand the message of Jesus, it is not possible to ignore the future. the character of the Kingdom of God nor to minimize the distance of God in the present. Or rather, it is only possible to ask whether and how the recorded assertions of God's presence can be reconciled with the thought of the God of the future.
But this idea could not be sustained in the face of the realities of life. The question of the justice of God in the universal sense, as the Greeks formulated it, cannot arise here. In the thought of forgiveness is to be found the final meaning of the paradox of God far and near.
Man has departed from God; he does not see the activity of God in the daily events of the world;. And no one has spoken more forcefully of the wrath of God (though without using the word) than Jesus, precisely because he proclaims the grace of God.
