During this troubled time of World War II and its aftermath, religion flourished. The World Council of Churches, which had been foreshadowed by various ecumenical conclaves, was officially constituted by an assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. In the next year the Kirchentag, a large gathering of lay Christians, began holding its annual meetings in Germany. After the war university enrollments exploded, and the number of theological students increased dramatically. In America churches were crowded and ministerial candidates, many supported by the GI Bill, flocked to seminaries and divinity schools. State-supported universities encouraged religious discussion by hosting “religious emphasis” weeks: programs in which visiting theologians offered lectures and small groups met in fraternity and sorority lounges to discuss Kierkegaard. Students who became seriously interested in theology, especially biblical studies, were convinced that their graduate study had to be crowned by a year Göttingen, Heidelberg, or Tübingen. Indeed, while Germany lost the military war, it won the theological battle: Germany was hailed as the triumphant citadel of NT research.[1] When the universities were reconstructed in the period of de-Nazification, professors who had not been identified with National Socialism were primary candidates for academic posts. Members of the Bultmann school, largely sympathetic with the Confessing Church, were appointed to important chairs in the leading universities.
Rudolf Bultmann did not intend to found a school. With typical modesty he simply hoped that his work might stimulate the ongoing discussion. Nevertheless, his students developed a distinct perspective that encompassed a large vista within the theological landscape.[2] The “Old Marburgers,” Bultmann’s pupils and friends, continued to meet throughout the century. Space will not permit discussion of the work of the many members of the school. Some of them (for example, Hans Conzelmann and Helmut Koester) will be treated in other contexts.[3] Erich Dinkler, one of Bultmann’s most faithful followers, contributed to the German-American dialogue and influenced students during his tenure at Yale (1950–56). Heinrich Schlier, who converted to Catholicism, produced important work on the NT epistles.[4]
Käsemann was an enthusiastic theologian who was wary of enthusiasm. He thrived on combat. At 89 he confessed that he had “remained a revolutionary ‘Partisan’ my whole life long.”[5] Earlier he had observed: “I have always in my life and in my work had fun, and, where it was possible, tried to overstep the boundaries, and scuffled with many opponents and—unfortunately!—with friends, when a gauntlet was thrown down before me. I have also paid the price for that, and received unhealed wounds.”[6]
Ernst Käsemann was born in Dahlhausen near Bochum in Westphalia.[7] He began his theological studies at Bonn (1925), where he was influenced by Erik Peterson. Later he studied at Marburg with Bultmann and at Tübingen with Adolf Schlatter. From 1933 to 1942 Käsemann preached to a congregation of miners and steelworkers in Gelsenkirchen-Rotthausen. Members of the Gestapo were often in the gallery, since Käsemann had called the pro-Nazi Reichsbischof a traitor. In August of 1937 Käsemann preached a sermon on Isa 26:13 in which he declared that “Other lords rule over us beside you.” We hear a false gospel, he said, which claims that “Germany is God’s chosen people, the Führer is God’s messenger to our day.”[8] For this Käsemann was thrown into prison for four weeks; there he began his book on Hebrews. In 1942 he was drafted into the army and fought in France and Greece; he ended the war as an American prisoner. Käsemann taught at Mainz, Göttingen, and from 1959 to 1971 at Tübingen. His lectures drew large crowds and influenced a host of students including Peter Stuhlmacher and Americans like Leander Keck and J. Louis Martyn.[9]
Käsemann ardently supported social causes: women in the ministry, opposition to nuclear weapons, the Christian-Marxist dialogue. His daughter was assassinated as a revolutionary by the military junta in Argentina. Käsemann declared: “If the heart of the gospel, already contained in the first commandment, concretized in the New Testament, that Christ is for us the true Lord of the world, then it is not communicated without political judgment in preaching. . . . Who our Lord is and should be is the central question of existence.”[10]
In a lecture to the Kirchentag in 1967, Käsemann announced:
I see the whole of the New Testament as involving the cause of Christian freedom, and I have done my best to show that that cause is developed in much diversity. . . . Like God’s faithfulness, the gospel is new every morning and has been heard in many tongues ever since Pentecost, although ecclesiastical convenience has tried to turn the Holy Spirit into a single gramophone record, and makes the human spirit nothing more than a loudspeaker.[11]
Clearly, Käsemann believed that Jesus was an activist who opposed the piety of his contemporaries.
Christ’s resurrection means Jesus’ sovereignty, and such sovereignty becomes an earthly reality only in the realm of Christian freedom. . . . Jesus gives freedom. . . . He was free in that he came to serve, and he remains Lord by serving us. . . . Because Jesus’ gift is Christian freedom and we live by that gift and grace of his, Christian freedom demands that we prove it on earth before it is perfected in heaven.[12]
Like that of many of his contemporaries, Käsemann’s theology was influenced by Luther.[13] He stressed the Reformation understanding of justification by faith, the centrality of Christ, and the distinction between law and gospel. From F. C. Baur he inherited radical criticism, emphasis on history, and disdain for “early catholicism.” Käsemann was influenced by Barth’s dialectical theology and commitment to theological exegesis. He carried on a lover’s quarrel with his teacher, Rudolf Bultmann.[14] He embraced demythologizing and the history of religion methodology, but criticized Bultmann’s anthropology and individualism.
Käsemann’s thought can be characterized as theology in combat. He fought on several dual fronts. Against enthusiasm, docetism, realized eschatology, and individualism he advocated concern with history, corporeality, apocalyptic eschatology, and community. Against legalism, nomism, and early catholicism he praised the Spirit, freedom, and variety. Against the theology of glory he championed the theology of the cross. Above all, Käsemann was a biblical theologian. He recognized a canon within the canon; the center of the canon was the Pauline epistles; the center of Paul’s theology was the justification of the ungodly by God’s action in Christ; the Christ is the Christ of the cross; the historical Jesus is crucial to Christology.
According to David Way, Käsemann’s publications can be divided into two periods: before 1950 and after 1960.[15] Indeed, Käsemann’s thought does show development, even though many of his later ideas were implicit in his earlier works. In the early writings the influence of Bultmann is apparent, especially in the use of history of religion methodology. Käsemann’s Marburg dissertation, Leib und Leib Christi, investigates the meaning of Paul’s expression “body of Christ” by examining the understanding of “body” in Jewish, Greek, and Hellenistic sources.[16] He begins with an analysis of “body” and “flesh” in the OT and Judaism and then turns to Greek sources, where he finds anthropological dualism. He devotes over forty-five pages to the idea of the body in syncretism and Gnosticism. In this section he embraces the Gnostic myth of the redeemed redeemer as fabricated by R. A. Reitzenstein and Wilhelm Bousset.[17]
Turning to the NT, Käsemann investigates the use of “body of Christ” in the Deutero-Pauline letters, where he detects heavy Gnostic influence. In these epistles he discovers a realized eschatology whereby baptism already incorporates the believer into the heavenly body. In the genuine epistles Käsemann finds Gnostic anthropology in Paul’s idea of Adam and Christ, and use of the redeemer myth in the hymn of Philippians 2. Paul, according to Käsemann, adopts a double eschatology in which the new eon is present but the future hope remains.
The sacrament says that here and now a new history, a new divine order of salvation began, which is present as concrete and real in the church. 1 Cor. 15 holds, on the contrary, that this new order of salvation of the church is not realized, that it is not led in by the development of the kingdom of God, but that it stands or falls according to the grace of the Creator.[18]
To be in Christ is to be in the body of Christ—to be in the church, in the world. Käsemann returned to this theme over thirty years later.[19] In the later essay he does not stress the Gnostic background. “Generally speaking, it is possible to shed light on Paul’s meaning even without detailed investigation into the history of religion.”[20] Käsemann reinforces the historical and corporeal character of Paul’s thought. “The exalted Christ really has an earthly body, and believers with their whole being are actually incorporated into it and have therefore to behave accordingly.”[21]
Käsemann’s book on the Epistle to the Hebrews, The Wandering People of God, was begun during his imprisonment in 1937 and first published in 1959.[22] In describing the book he writes: “By describing the church as the new people of God on its wandering through the wilderness, following the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith, I of course had in mind that radical Confessing church which resisted the tyranny in Germany, and which had to be summoned to patience so that it could continue its way through endless wastes.”[23] He understands the wilderness wandering of the people of Israel as a type of life in Christ. According to Käsemann the people received the gospel in the form of a promise. “This means that in a constitutive and fundamental way the divine revelation in Hebrews bears the character of promise and thus is purely eschatological in nature.”[24] Käsemann believes the eschatology of the NT has two stages: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the fulfillment of these events at the end of time. In their wandering, the people, according to Käsemann, can respond to the gospel promise with either faith or apostasy.
Käsemann finds the background of the wandering motif in Gnosticism: the Urmensch-Redeemer is on the way to the heavenly goal, and the Gnostic believers follow. Similarly, he understands the title “Son” in relation to the anthropos of the Gnostic myth. “In other words, in each of the passages dealt with, the doctrine of theεἰκών that creates the world has its continuation in the scheme of the God-man who humbles himself, and thus in the scheme of the Gnostic Anthropos marked by the two foci of incarnation and death.”[25] Yet, although the message of Christ in Hebrews borrows the mythical tradition to depict the redemptive event, the Christ of the kerygma is not myth, but revelation of God’s grace in history. “Here, then, Christ is theτέλος of the myth as he may elsewhere be described asτέλος of the law.”[26] Käsemann concludes that the NT message guards against two opposing dangers. “Jesus’ death and his heavenly activity are a mutual safeguard. That is, the death secures the high priestly office against being dissolved by the myth, and the high priestly office secures the death against the misinterpretation by way of a historically rigid dogmatism.”[27] In this book Käsemann reveals his commitment to history of religion research in the service of exegesis and biblical theology.
Käsemann produced essays on apostleship, ministry, and sacraments. First published in 1942, his monograph on the legitimacy of the apostle investigates 2 Corinthians 10–13.[28] According to Käsemann the opponents of Paul in these chapters are not Judaizers but pneumatics who have invaded the church from outside, claiming the support of the Jerusalem apostles. Käsemann believes they opposed Paul’s apostleship as deficient because he had no relation to the historical Jesus. Paul argues that apostolic authority is not grounded in miracles or ecstatic experience but in weakness—in the power of the crucified Christ. In an essay on “Ministry and Community in the New Testament,” Käsemann argues that Paul understands ministry as a charisma: as the eschatological gift to the church.[29] This charisma, in contrast to the enthusiasm of the pneumatics, comes to expression in service. “The Apostle’s theory of order is not a static one, resting on offices, institutions, ranks and dignities; in his view, authority resides only within the concrete act of ministry as it occurs because it is only within this concrete act that the Kyrios announces his lordship and his presence.”[30] Käsemann believes that in the post-apostolic church this dynamic understanding degenerates into early catholicism wherein the gospel is perverted into dogma, the church into institution, and the apostolic charisma into ordained office.[31]
As a biblical theologian, Käsemann was concerned with the canon of the NT.[32] He delivered a lecture at Göttingen in 1951 that raised the question, “Does the canon of the New Testament constitute the foundation of the unity of the church?”[33] After reviewing the variety and “irreconcilable theological contradictions” in the NT, he concludes that “the New Testament canon does not, as such, constitute the foundation of the unity of the Church. On the contrary, as such (that is, in its accessibility to the historian) it provides the basis for the multiplicity of the confessions.”[34] The canon does not constitute the Word of God, and it is Word only “in so far as it is and becomes the Gospel.” “But the question, ‘What is the Gospel?’ . . . cannot be settled by the historian according to the results of his investigations but only by the believer who is led by the Spirit and listens obediently to the Scripture.”[35] Käsemann offers the same view in a lecture given at Göttingen two years later. “The Bible is neither the Word of God in an objective sense nor a doctrinal system, but the deposit left by the history and the preaching of primitive Christianity.”[36] Some years later he edited a large volume on the NT as canon. This book presents essays on the canon by a variety of scholars of various theological persuasions, among them Werner G. Kümmel, Oscar Cullmann, Kurt Aland, and Willi Marxsen. In his summary Käsemann concludes that the NT canon is the book of the church, the result of a historical process. He acknowledges (with Catholics in mind) that the church is historically prior to the canon, but he contends that the canon is prior in content, as witness to the gospel. In his own contribution to the volume Käsemann reveals his understanding of the canon within the canon: the gospel of God’s act of justification of the ungodly in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the message of justification appears to me essentially as the qualifying and decisive criterion indeed of the New Testament. This can be true, since in historical critical perspective, the characteristic feature of Jesus, in distinction from his entire religious environment, was his association with sinners in the name of God, his crucifixion linked decisively with his breaking of the law, which also made possible the Gentile mission, and finally the early Christian proclamation was determined more or less as central from then on.[37]
According to Käsemann the canon within the canon is not primarily a selection of books from the larger collection, although his idea of justification as criterion implies a selection: the heart of the canon is the letters of Paul. Käsemann believes that Luke-Acts, the Deutero-Pauline letters, and the Pastoral Epistles display the decline into early catholicism.
Käsemann’s freedom regarding the canon is evident in his understanding of the Gospel of John. “In the whole New Testament it is the Fourth Gospel which presents the greatest and most difficult riddles. Just as all that King Midas touched turned to gold, so almost everything which has any connection with this Gospel seems to become a problem.”[38]
Käsemann acknowledged that when he touched the Fourth Gospel he stirred up a nest of hornets. His book, The Testament of Jesus, was originally presented as the Shaffer Lectures at Yale (1966).[39] His critics delight in his acknowledgment that “I shall be discussing a subject which, in the last analysis, I do not understand.”[40] Käsemann believes the key to understanding the historical situation of the Gospel is to be found in the farewell discourses. In chapter 17 farewell is expressed in the form of a prayer, but according to Käsemann this prayer is—à la Gnosticism—secret instruction to the disciples. According to Käsemann the author replaces early Christian eschatology with docetic Christology. “From John we must learn that this is the question of the right christology, and we have to recognize that he was able to give an answer only in the form of a naïve docetism.”[41] John depicts “Jesus as God walking on the face of the earth.”[42] Käsemann concludes: “From the historical viewpoint, the Church committed an error when it declared the Gospel to be orthodox.”[43] Nevertheless, Käsemann thinks this was a fortunate error, since it witnesses to the freedom and variety of biblical thought.
Important for Käsemann’s view of Scripture is his distinction between letter and spirit.[44] In discussing this issue he affirms the Reformation antithesis between law and gospel. “We have now arrived at the first result of our investigation: what we call ‘letter’ is for Paul the Mosaic Torah in its written documentation, which is claimed by the Jews as saving privilege and which for Paul (as the essential portion and aspect of the Old Testament) is identical with scripture as a whole.”[45] “Letter,” according to Käsemann, also characterizes the legalistic method of interpretation used by Paul’s Jewish opponents and by pietists and fundamentalists today. By way of contrast, Käsemann believes Paul to be the first in Christian history to develop a theological hermeneutic. This is illustrated by Paul’s exegesis of Deut 30:11-13 in Rom 10:5-13. In his exegesis Paul interprets the text to mean that the law has been replaced by Christ, and Christ is proclaimed in the word of the gospel. Käsemann believes this is interpretation by the Spirit, and that Paul understands the Spirit christologically. He concludes:
Those who hold the canon to be without error of any kind, perfectly evangelical, inspired in whole and parts alike, have a docetic understanding of it; this will necessarily lead them to a docetic understanding of Jesus; and then, like all Docetics, they will no longer comprehend the Cross, they will make faith into intellectual assent and the Church, which is admittedly now being restricted to the pious, into the flock of the blessed.”[46]
Käsemann’s paper presented to the meeting of the Old Marburgers in 1953 is usually hailed as the harbinger of the new quest of the historical Jesus.[47] At the outset Käsemann recounts reasons for the demise of the earlier quest: dialectical theology believed that the gospel was distorted when the Jesus of historical reconstruction was made the ground of faith; the form critics demonstrated that much of the tradition about Jesus was not historically reliable. The current return to the quest was encouraged, according to Käsemann, by the recognition that the Synoptic Gospels contain more reliable tradition than had been supposed, and that the kerygma included facts and presupposed a continuity with the historical tradition of Jesus. Moreover, he noted that theologians were concerned to maintain the historical reality of revelation. Käsemann, however, insists that the revived concern with the historical Jesus should recognize that the Gospels do not primarily chronicle facts; they proclaim the gospel. “Mere history is petrified history, whose historical significance cannot be brought to light simply by verifying the facts and handing them on. On the contrary, the passing on of the bruta facta can, as such, directly obstruct a proper understanding of it.”[48]
Nevertheless, Käsemann says that revelation took place within the framework of history and in the life of the historical Jesus. The early Christians agreed “that the life history of Jesus was constitutive for faith, because the earthly and the exalted Lord are identical.”[49] Failure to recognize this identity, he believes, opens the door to docetism. For all its skepticism, historical criticism does recognize some features of the tradition as historical, especially reports about the teachings of Jesus. Käsemann believes that in the authentic teachings Jesus made a claim about his own authority. “The only category which does justice to his claim . . . is that in which his disciples themselves placed him—namely, that of the Messiah.”[50] Käsemann also thinks that Jesus made claims about the significance of his own behavior, which exceeded that of the prophets. “Above all, no prophet could be credited with the eschatological significance which Jesus obviously ascribed to his own actions.”[51] Jesus, according to Käsemann, understood his mission eschatologically; he saw himself as the initiator of a new eon. He concludes:
My own concern is to show that, out of the obscurity of the life story of Jesus, certain characteristic traits in his preaching stand out in relatively sharp relief, and that primitive Christianity united its own message with these. The heart of the problem lives here: the exalted Lord has almost entirely swallowed up the image of the earthly Lord and yet the community maintains the identity of the exalted Lord with the earthly. . . . The question of the historical Jesus is, in its legitimate form, the question of the continuity of the Gospel within the discontinuity of the times and within the variation of the kerygma.[52]
Käsemann took up the question again in response to Bultmann’s reaction to the new quest.[53] Actually, Bultmann does not allot much space to Käsemann. He notes that Käsemann wants to go beyond the mere “that” (dass) of the historical Jesus and to demonstrate the material continuity between the historical Jesus and the kerygma. According to Bultmann, Käsemann fails to adequately develop an existential interpretation of Jesus, but describes “Jesus’ uniqueness as a historical phenomenon.”[54] Käsemann devotes most of his essay, “Blind Alleys in the ‘Jesus of History’ Controversy,” to refutation of Bultmann.[55] According to Käsemann, Bultmann did not change his position in response to the new quest. He believes Bultmann affirms a radical historical and material discontinuity between Jesus and the kerygma. In contrast, Käsemann sees the relation as dialectical. “The Easter event is the bridge between Jesus and the whole of the later kerygma; it both divides and unites them.”[56] He rejects Bultmann’s attempt to reduce the historical Jesus to the dass—“a mathematical point.”[57] Instead, Käsemann calls for more attention “to a more accurate evaluation of the relevance of the earthly Jesus for the kerygma.”[58] He continues: “We can now put our problem in a nutshell: does the New Testament kerygma count the historical Jesus among the criteria of its own validity? We have to answer this question roundly in the affirmative.”[59]
Käsemann believes his point is affirmed by the documents of the NT. The Gospels, he says, “are essentially not preaching but reporting.”[60] Even the Fourth Gospel recognizes the relevance of the historical Jesus by presenting the Word in the form of a Gospel. Bultmann believes the continuity between Jesus and the kerygma is existential self-understanding; Käsemann believes the continuity is Christology, grounded in the historical Jesus.
The question as to what is prior to faith in the sense that it supplies the criteria of faith can in the last resort only be answered christologically; and answered in such a way as to keep christology distinct from ecclesiology and anthropology and in no circumstances to substitute either for it. Christ alone is the Ground, the Lord and the Judge of faith, of the individual Christian as of the whole community.[61]
To Bultmann’s famous observation that the proclaimer became the proclaimed, Käsemann responds that, from the perspective of the Gospel writers, the proclaimed became the proclaimer. According to Käsemann the historical Jesus provides protection from enthusiasm, docetism, and Bultmannian existentialism.
Around 1960, Käsemann’s thought took a decisive shift and he announced a surprising proposition: apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology.[62] His lecture on 2 Peter in 1952 was a portent of things to come.[63] According to Käsemann the author of this document was answering the charge (of Gnostic opponents) that the Christian hope had already been fulfilled. However, in his attempt to explain the delay of the parousia the author of 2 Peter, according to Käsemann, robbed Christian eschatology of its true apocalyptic meaning. Käsemann’s shift became explicit in his 1960 lecture on “The Beginnings of Christian Theology.”[64] By means of analysis of the tradition behind Matthew he identifies a group of early Christian prophets who affirmed apocalyptic theology. In Käsemann’s view this apocalyptic theology made historical thinking possible. “Since for apocalyptic the world has a definite beginning and a definite end, the course of history therefore takes a definite direction and is irrevocable, articulated into a series of epochs clearly distinguishable from each other.”[65] From the apocalyptic perspective the kerygma was not only to be proclaimed; it was to be narrated. “The Gospel history, like the prophetic proclamation, is a fruit of the apocalyptic of the period after Easter.”[66]
The heart of primitive Christian apocalyptic, according to the Revelation and the Synoptists alike, is the accession to the throne of heaven by God and by his Christ as the eschatological Son of man—an event which can also be characterized as proof of the righteousness of God. It is this for which those referred to by the fourth beatitude have been hungering and thirsting—for the realization of the divine justice on and to our earth. But exactly the same thing seems to me to be happening in the Pauline doctrine of God’s righteousness and our justification—which I therefore derive, so far as the history of religion is concerned, from apocalyptic.[67]
Käsemann’s thesis is further advanced in his essay on “Primitive Christian Apocalyptic.”[68] According to this essay Christian theology had its origins not in anthropology but in apocalyptic. Käsemann believes Paul opposed the realized eschatology of the Corinthian enthusiasts, and in Romans 6 argued that Christians already united with Christ would be resurrected in the future, affirming the “eschatological reservation.”[69] Paul, according to Käsemann, does not speak of an end of history that has come to pass, even though he declares that the end-time has broken in. “No perspective could be more apocalyptic.”[70]
By embracing apocalyptic Käsemann does not affirm the bizarre signs of the other world or the chronological speculation of Jewish apocalyptic literature. For him apocalyptic refers to an eschatology that is concerned with real events, with history, with community, with the end of history, with the whole cosmos. To be sure, Käsemann’s shift involves a move from emphasis on Hellenistic-Gnostic sources to stress on the OT and Jewish backgrounds. Most of all, however, Käsemann is opposed to the existentialist eschatology of Rudolf Bultmann, to the individualism of Bultmannian anthropology.[71] Käsemann’s apocalyptic eschatology includes not only the encounter with Christ in the decision of faith but also the future lordship of Christ over history and the cosmos.
The true theology of which apocalyptic is the mother is, according to Käsemann, Paul’s doctrine of the righteousness of God.[72] This doctrine is emphasized throughout Käsemann’s later work, but it is directly addressed in his 1961 lecture on the righteousness of God according to Paul.[73] “The Epistle to the Romans,” says Käsemann, “subsumes the whole of the preaching and theology of Paul under the one head—the self-revealing righteousness of God. . . . Conversely, the central problem of Pauline theology is concentrated in this theme.”[74] In regard to the grammatical issue concerning δικαιοσ‘υνη θεοῦ, Käsemann believes the construction is both genitive of author (“the righteousness from God”; Phil 3:9) and subjective genitive (“his righteousness”; Rom 3:25).[75] According to Käsemann, Paul understands righteousness as both future and present. It is God’s eschatological action in Jesus that establishes God’s sovereignty over the world. “The apostle’s present eschatology cannot be taken out of its context of future eschatology, any more than the gift of justification can be isolated from the context in which the righteousness of God is spoken of as a power which brings salvation to pass. Even when he became a Christian, Paul remained an apocalyptist.”[76]
During his visit to America in the mid-1960s Käsemann lectured on “Justification and Salvation” in Romans.[77] This lecture reacted to Krister Stendahl’s famous essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” in which Stendahl contends that Paul has been misinterpreted by theologians from Augustine to Luther and Bultmann who understood Paul’s doctrine of justification on the basis of an individualistic, introspective struggle with sin and guilt.[78] In response Käsemann argues that Paul’s doctrine of justification is not primarily concerned with the individual but with the whole creation. “Paul’s doctrine of justification means that under the sign of Christ, God becomes Cosmocrator, not merely the Lord of the believing individual or the god of a cult; it is not by chance that the doctrine has its roots in apocalyptic.”[79]
Käsemann can also use the unbiblical term “Cosmocrator” to affirm Christ’s lordship of the world.[80] Righteousness for Käsemann is not only the action of God that justifies the ungodly and triumphs over the world; it also results in a new ethical life. He insists that justification and sanctification cannot be separated. Christian ethics means life under the lordship of Christ; the Christian life is cruciform. According to Käsemann the consequence of justification is obedience—an obedience that responds to the freedom that righteousness conveys. This obedience is lived out in concrete act in the community, in the world following the example of Jesus Christ.
Käsemann’s Commentary on Romans is his crowning achievement.[81] In the preface he recalls hearing Erik Peterson’s lectures on Romans in 1925, an event that decided his theological life. “No literary document,” he writes, “has been more important for me.”[82] The commentary offers no critical introduction; an appendix argues that chapter 16 was originally a letter of recommendation for Phoebe, probably sent to Ephesus. Käsemann arranges his comments according to his understanding of the structure of the epistle: introduction, five main sections, and conclusion. Each main section is prefaced by an overview, and each subsection is introduced by Käsemann’s translation of the text and a bibliography. The exegesis is in running paragraphs. There are no footnotes; references are presented in parentheses within the text. A few examples can illustrate the character of Käsemann’s exegesis.
In the “Introduction” (1:1-17), the “Prescript” (1:1-7) follows the formal convention of Greek letter writing with three parts: superscription, adscription, greeting. Noting that the superscription is unusually long, Käsemann argues that the phrase δοῦλος Χριστοῦ echoes the OT honorific title of the people of God and expresses both election and submission. Käsemann believes Paul uses “Christ” as a proper name, and that he has coined the phrase “apostle of Christ.” In regard to the term εὐαγγέλιον, Käsemann notes its use in inscriptions, the LXX, and the Qumran texts. He thinks the word expresses the good news about a definite event: the resurrection and lordship of Christ. The genitive construction, εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, according to Käsemann, indicates authorship; God is the author, Christ is the content of the gospel. Käsemann agrees with the growing consensus that detects a pre-Pauline liturgical formula in verses 3b-4. In contrast to Paul’s view of the pre-existence and divine Sonship of Christ, the formula, in Käsemann’s opinion, reflects an adoptionist Christology in which “Jesus receives the dignity of divine sonship only with his exaltation and enthronement.”[83] Käsemann believes Paul corrects this formula by the use of the title Kyrios, the one that became dominant on Gentile soil. The omission of “in Rome” (v. 7) from some manuscripts indicates an early attempt to change the epistle into a general letter.
In regard to the subsection “Theme” (1:16-17), Käsemann comments on the meaning of “gospel.” “It is God’s declaration of salvation to the world, which is outside human control, which is independent even of the church and its ministers, and which constantly becomes a reality itself in proclamation in the power of the Spirit. It can thus be called δύναμις θεοῦ.”[84]
The term σωτηρία “denotes deliverance in the final judgment.”[85] “Faith,” according to Käsemann, is not belief or trust but (à la Bultmann) decision: receiving the gospel. He says that “faith is an appropriation of the eschatological public proclamation made to the whole world and to each individual. Each person is placed in a situation of personal responsibility.”[86] The theme of Romans and the content of the gospel, according to Käsemann is “the righteousness of God.”
It speaks of the God who brings back the fallen world into the sphere of his legitimate claim . . . whether in promise or demand, in new creation or forgiveness, or in the making possible of our service, and . . . who sets us in the state of confident hope and . . . constant earthly change. With recourse to the Kyrios acclamation we may summarize the whole message of the epistle in the brief and paradoxical statement that the Son of God is as our Kyrios the one eschatological gift of God to us and that herein is revealed simultaneously both God’s legitimate claim on us and also our salvation.[87]
In the first main section, “The Need for the Revelation of the Righteousness of God” (1:18–3:20), the first subsection deals with “The Revelation of God’s Wrath on the Gentiles” (1:18-32). Käsemann, in the tradition of Barth, argues that Paul does not really advocate natural theology. He acknowledges that Paul uses popular Hellenistic expressions but argues that metaphysical concepts are alien to the apostle; natural theology is irreconcilable with Paul’s eschatology and Christology.
Käsemann believes that the second main section, “The Righteousness of God as the Righteousness of Faith” (3:21–4:25), is the heart of the epistle.[88] The “Thesis” of the section is the subsection 3:21-26. In verse 22 Paul points out that the righteousness that is revealed is a righteousness of faith. Käsemann rejects the theory that πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is a subject genitive (the faith of Jesus Christ) and believes verse 26 also supports the objective genitive (“faith in Jesus”). Käsemann thinks that in verses 24-26 Paul is quoting the fragment of a hymn. The participle δικαιούμενοι (v. 24) means “being made righteous” and refers to “eschatologically transformed existence.”[89]
Käsemann rejects the interpretation of ἀπολύτρωσις as reflecting the sacral manumission of slaves or as paying a ransom. He translates it “redemption” and stresses the eschatological, once-for-all event “in Christ.” He does not believe that ἱλαστήριον means “cover of the ark” or the place of expiation; the Gentile Christians of Rome would not have understood such an allusion, and Christ cannot be at the same time the offering and the site of the offering. The meaning of the term, according to Käsemann, is “means of expiation.” Also, Käsemann rejects the doctrine that Christ’s sacrifice satisfies God’s justice. Instead, “God himself makes this expiation and hence makes possible again the fellowship which had been disrupted.”[90]
Using his characteristic terminology, Käsemann entitles the third main section (5:1–8:39) “The Righteousness of Faith as a Reality of Eschatological Freedom.” The first subsection (5:1-21) is designated “Freedom from the Power of Death.” As to the textual variant in verse 1, Käsemann prefers the reading ἔχομεν (indicative) to ἔχωμεν (subjunctive); Paul, he says, is speaking of the peace we have, not exhorting his audience to have peace. In discussing “The Dominion of the Last Adam” (5:12-21) Käsemann, reflecting his earlier interest in history of religion, believes that the background is to be found in the Gnostic idea of the primal man. “The intention of the apostle is to present the universality of the reign of Christ in antithesis to the world of Adam.”[91] In addressing the notorious verse 12 (“sin came into the world through one man”), he rejects the traditional doctrine of original sin. He suggests translating the phrase ἐφ" ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον as “because all sinned”; the text emphasizes “responsible decision.”[92] In discussing “Dead to Sin by Baptism” (6:1-11), Käsemann notes that baptism has its background in the Hellenistic cults and that early Christian enthusiasts celebrated it as a cult mystery in which they already experienced the resurrection. Paul counters this, according to Käsemann, with his stress on the cross, “actualized in the act of baptism.”[93] Käsemann believes Paul maintains the “eschatological reservation.” “We have yet to participate in the resurrection even though its power already rules us and sets us in the new walk.”[94] The eschatological event of the cross, which is actualized in baptism, frees the Christian for ethical obedience.
In the subsection “The End of the Law in the Power of the Spirit” (7:1–8:39), Käsemann discusses chapters 7 and 8 as the climax of the larger section that began at 5:1. He believes that 7:7-13 describes pre-Christian existence from the Christian perspective; the text is not autobiographical. “As regards the I-statements this implies the use, stylistically, of a rhetorical figure with general significance.”[95] In regard to the positive statements about the law (7:12-13), Käsemann writes: “Paul is no antinomian. The law in its truth does not belong with sin and death. It has been misused by the power of sin, which always perverts the good, and now effects the opposite of what was intended.”[96] In exegeting 7:14-25 he notes the use of the present tense but argues that Paul is not referring to the Christian experience; he is describing the struggle of the old Adam in cosmic dimension. Käsemann thinks the chapter ends in answer to the cry of despair (v. 24) with the triumphant acclamation: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25a). (He thinks v. 25b is a non-Pauline interpolation).
In his general introduction to the exegesis of 8:1-39 (“Man in the Freedom of the Spirit”), Käsemann presents his understanding of Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit:
The Pauline doctrine of the Spirit is constitutively shaped by the fact that the apostle, so far as we can see, is the first to relate it indissolubly to christology. In the Spirit the risen Lord manifests his presence and lordship on earth. Conversely the absolute criterion of the divine Spirit is that he sets the community and its members in the discipleship of the Crucified, in the mutual service established thereby, and in the assault of grace on the world and the sphere of corporeality. The difference from enthusiasm is that the Spirit is to be tested in terms of christology, and christology is not set under the shadow of ecclesiology.[97]
Käsemann sees in the references to creation in 8:18-25 an apocalyptic and cosmic emphasis in opposition to enthusiasm and existentialist interpretation.
If Marcion was forced by the inner logic of his theology to cut out vv. 18-22, he is followed today by an existentialism which individualizes salvation and thereby truncates Paul’s message by describing freedom formally as openness to the future. . . . The truth in the existential interpretation is that it recognizes in pride and despair the powers which most deeply enslave mankind. Its theological reduction derives from a world view which no longer knows what to do with Pauline apocalyptic, allows anthropological historicity to conceal the world’s history, obscures the antithesis of the aeons of 1:20ff. by natural theology and here through the assertion of mythology, and for this reason can no longer speak adequately of the dominion of Christ in its worldwide dimension.[98]
Obviously, shots fired at the ancient heretic ricocheted off Marcion and hit Rudolf Bultmann.
Käsemann believes the fourth main section, “The Righteousness of God and the Problem of Israel” (9:1–11:36), suffers excessive violence from misinterpretation. Much mistaken interpretation, in Käsemann’s opinion, fails to see that the panoramic text presents the worldwide dimension of the righteousness of God, wherein the concept of the people of God is central. According to Käsemann the argument develops in three stages: “the freedom of God, the guilt of Israel, and Israel’s final redemption.”[99] In regard to “Israel’s Guilt and Fall” (9:30–10:21), he interprets τέλος (10:4) as depicting Christ not as the “goal,” but as the “end” of the law. “The Mosaic Torah comes to an end with Christ because man now renounces his own right in order to grant God his right. . . . Even for Israel no other possibility of salvation exists.”[100] Käsemann titles his exegesis of chapter 11 “The Mystery of Salvation History.” On “Israel’s Redemption” (11:25-32) he writes, “All that has gone before leads to the conclusion that Israel’s obduracy leaves room for the conversion of the Gentiles. But the completion of the latter also carries with it Israel’s salvation.”[101] In regard to the “Deliverer from Zion” (11:26), Käsemann declares:
Obviously the reference is neither to the historical Jesus . . . nor to the christological event as a whole . . . nor indeed to the parousia in Jerusalem . . . but to the return of the exalted Christ from the heavenly Jerusalem of Gal. 4:26. . . . Whereas Christianity is already living in the new covenant, Israel will begin to do so only at the parousia, and it will do it through the same Giver, Christ, and with the related gift . . . of the forgiveness of sins. Only the time, not the salvation, is different.[102]
The “all” of 11:32, according to Käsemann, refers to the whole world. Käsemann’s apocalyptic and cosmic understanding of justification implies the paradox of the salvation of all the ungodly. “Hence salvation history in its universal breadth is linked to the doctrine of justification. . . . Paul is bold enough to view both each individual and world history from the standpoint of the doctrine of justification.”[103]
Käsemann titles the last main section (12:1–15:13) “The Righteousness of God in Daily Christian Life.” Because of his stress on ethics, this section is important for him. It begins with a general exhortation (12:1–13:14). Käsemann says that “Paul is the first to have considered exhortation theologically. . . . The apostle here draws the consequences of his message in the daily life of the community, and in this regard he emerges yet again as the theologian who now develops his theme under a final aspect.”[104] In regard to the controversial 13:1-7 (“The Relation to Political Powers”), Käsemann cautions against the attempt to unearth some idea of natural order or political theory here. The text stands in the tradition of the Diaspora synagogue and supports order in opposition to the enthusiasts. “When all this added up, the result is that by God’s will even the fallen world can point to manifestations and instruments of the order which God has set up, and that in this the Creator demonstrates his further dealings with it.”[105]
Not since Karl Barth had dialectical theology produced a commentary on Romans. Although Bultmann gave major attention to Paul’s theology in his monumental Theology of the New Testament, his major commentary is on the Gospel of John. With Käsemann, Romans is returned to the center. In the commentary he enlists text critical, linguistic, and historical research in the service of exegesis. The central concern, however, is theological interpretation. For Käsemann the theology of Romans is the right theology; Käsemann’s exposition of the theology of Paul is the theology of Käsemann.
In sum, Ernst Käsemann is the most independent student in the Bultmann school. With his eye on some distant star, he set his own course. Indeed, the development of Käsemann’s career expresses an increasing divergence from the route charted by his teacher. His early work employs the method of the history of religion school with special appreciation for Hellenistic and Gnostic backgrounds. His later work embraces Jewish apocalyptic, affirming as valid what Bultmann dismissed as myth. Although Käsemann continued to stress faith and existential decision, he resolutely moved away from the hermeneutic of existentialism. In place of the focus on anthropology he concentrates on Christology. In place of concern with the individual he stresses the importance of the community, its ministry and its sacraments. Rather than restricting eschatology to the “now” of faith, he embraces an apocalyptic that affirms both the reality of the historical present and the confident hope in the cosmic future. Although Käsemann agrees that God is known from the human perspective, theology for him is not anthropology, but doctrine of God as Creator and Christ as Cosmocrator. Although he acknowledges that one cannot write a biography of Jesus, he insists that the tradition of the words and deeds of Jesus is presupposed by the kerygma and that faith in Christ is grounded in the historical Jesus.
To be sure, Käsemann did not completely forsake Rudolf Bultmann. He continued his teacher’s devotion to radical criticism. Like Bultmann, he believed the Reformation doctrine of justification to be absolutely central. Like Bultmann and much of the tradition of Lutheran biblical scholarship, Käsemann, in championing the gospel over law, tended to caricature Judaism. At the same time his attack on early catholicism betrays a latent aversion toward Rome. With Bultmann, Käsemann recognized the importance of the theology of Paul, but contrary to his teacher he saw in the Gospel of John a thinly veiled docetism—a view his critics consider an exaggeration. However, he surprises the critics even more by insisting that heresy within the canon is a beneficial witness to theological freedom. For his own part, Käsemann, on the one hand, battles every form of unhistorical docetism, and on the other he attacks the calcifying of history into early catholicism. He embraces a charisma expressed in ministry, sacrament, and ethics; he abhors a charisma expressed in self-asserting enthusiasm.
Perhaps a weakness in Käsemann’s theology is his proclivity for combat. Much of his energy is devoted to refuting Rudolf Bultmann. Also, in abandoning existentialist hermeneutics Käsemann offers no clear hermeneutical basis for his work. While affirming dialectical theology’s opposition to metaphysics, he does not articulate an ontological foundation for his own theology. In contrast to Bultmann’s negative use of criticism to demonstrate that faith cannot be based on historical reconstruction, Käsemann employs criticism positively to delineate the central message of the NT and to confirm the continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the kerygma. By critical analysis, working together with faith, Käsemann identifies the canon within the canon, and this canon is the Word of God. Indeed, he ignores the historical gap between the words of ancient Scripture and the hearing of faith today. In his commentary on Romans he shifts almost imperceptibly from “they” to “we,” from the original hearers of Paul’s letter to the modern readers of Käsemann’s commentary. He assumes that the proclamation of Paul is the Word of God for ancient Romans and is also the Word of God for today. The question of the significance of historical distance and the task of translation would remain for other members of the Bultmann school.
In personality Bornkamm resembled Rudolf Bultmann: genial, modest, and unassuming.[106] During a year in Heidelberg (1971–72) I attended Bornkamm’s lectures on NT theology. One morning as I was riding by streetcar to the university, Bornkamm boarded. He saw me and came to sit with me. “Did I usually take this route to class?” he asked. When I answered in the affirmative, he insisted that for the rest of the semester I must come to his house and ride with him. This sounded like a wonderful opportunity that I eagerly accepted. However, on the next class day, as I prepared to appear at Bornkamm’s door, I was in a quandary as to when to arrive. The lecture was a 9 a.m. class, which meant it actually began at 9:15. I certainly did not want to be late, so I arrived before 8:45. Mrs. Bornkamm welcomed me, offered coffee and a place to sit; “Professor” was in his study. He remained in his study until 9 o’clock, or a minute or two after. He then rushed out; Mrs. Bornkamm helped him into his coat; he and I hurried to the vintage Audi parked out front; we jumped in; he revved up the car. We drove rapidly through “New Town,” across the bridge, over the cobblestone streets to the lecture hall. After he parked, Bornkamm rushed to his office and I to the lecture hall, where he appeared to say, “Meine Damen und Herren . . .” at 9:15. This occurred every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the rest of the semester. The association with Bornkamm was rewarding, but what I learned above all was that this great teacher—in his last year of lecturing on a subject he had presented scores of times before—was still preparing for every lecture until the last minute.
Bornkamm was born in Görlitz in northeastern Germany, near the Polish border. He studied at Marburg, Tübingen, Berlin, and Breslau. While at Marburg he became associated with Bultmann and his students. Bornkamm began his teaching at Königsberg (1935), and in 1936 moved to Heidelberg, where after a semester he was forbidden to teach in a state-supported university because of his participation in the Confessing Church. He joined the faculty at the theological school at Bethel in 1937—a school closed by the Gestapo two years later. From 1940 to 1942 Bornkamm served as a pastor in Dortmund and Münster. He was drafted into the army in 1943 and fought on the eastern and western fronts. After the war he returned to Bethel, but in 1946 he moved to Göttingen. He was appointed to the faculty at Heidelberg in 1949, where he remained until retirement in 1972. Bornkamm was awarded honorary degrees from Glasgow and Oxford. He traveled and lectured widely, and was revered by his students. In 1977–78 he served as president of the SNTS.
Bornkamm was influenced by the revival of interest in Luther and the Reformation and by the dialectical theologians, especially Rudolf Bultmann. His assessment of Bultmann is presented in his essay, “The Theology of Rudolf Bultmann.”[107] Bornkamm observes that Bultmann was influenced by two movements: historical criticism and dialectical theology. He supports Bultmann’s concern with history but criticizes him at two points: his idea of pre-understanding, which is a presupposition that impedes the reception of biblical revelation, and his transformation of theology into anthropology and Christology into soteriology. Earlier Bornkamm had discussed Bultmann’s program of demythologizing.[108] He agrees that demythologizing is necessary because modern humans cannot accept the worldview of the NT; myth must be interpreted in terms of its meaning for human existence. Bornkamm affirms Bultmann’s belief that the doctrine of justification is the theological ground for demythologizing, but he is critical of Bultmann’s reduction of the saving event to a brute fact. “Jesus Christ has become a mere saving fact and ceases to be a person. He himself has no longer any history; he himself is no longer really the One who speaks in his word. In other words, he is no longer the One who personally addresses me, who in speaking personally encounters me face to face.”[109]
Along with this anticipation of his later work on Jesus, Bornkamm, like Käsemann, insists that eschatology is more than self-understanding, open to the future; it includes a new future and a new history.
Bornkamm’s early work reveals the influence of Bultmann and his commitment to history of religion methodology. His Marburg dissertation, written under Bultmann, investigates the apocryphal Acts of Thomas in relation to the development of early Christian Gnosticism.[110] In this apocryphal document Bornkamm detects the use of myth and legend, in particular the myth of the Gnostic redeemer. He finds parallels in the Mandaean texts, the Odes of Solomon, Pistis Sophia, and the later documents of the Manicheans. According to Bornkamm, the Acts of Thomas represents a religious syncretism in which Gnosticism is presented in Christian garb. Bornkamm’s concern with Gnosticism is seen in another early work on “The Heresy of Colossians.”[111] Convinced that Colossians was not written by Paul, Bornkamm identifies the heresy refuted in the document as a variety of Jewish Gnosticism.
The Colossian doctrine of the elements belongs to the ancient mythology and speculation of the Oriental Aeon-theology, which was widespread and active in Hellenistic syncretism. Its origins reach back to the Indo-Iranian cosmogony and its conception of a world-deity, whose gigantic body was composed of the elements of the universe. The cosmogonic myth of the body of the world-god and of the elements of his limbs occurs again in gnosis in the form of the myth of the primeval man, in which it receives a cosmic-soteriological meaning.[112]
In a later non-technical book Bornkamm presents an overview of his criticism of the NT.[113] His purpose is to provide “a clear and simple guide to the New Testament writings.”[114] Special attention must be given to Jesus. “His priority . . . is . . . one of substance: every statement in the New Testament must be understood and evaluated with reference to him as its criterion.”[115] In regard to the Synoptic Gospels, Bornkamm adopts the 2DH. He believes Mark was written in the east around 70. Matthew, according to Bornkamm, was composed in the 80s or 90s in the region of Palestine and Syria. The Gospel of Luke is the first of a two-volume work that intends to present a biography of Jesus and the history of the early church. Paul, according to Bornkamm, was the first to use the epistle as a form of Christian expression. Bornkamm accepts seven letters attributed to Paul as authentic; he rejects 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Bornkamm believes all of the Catholic Epistles to be pseudonymous. He classifies Revelation as an apocalyptic book, dating probably from the reign of Domitian.[116] Bornkamm believes the Fourth Gospel was composed by an unknown author around 100. Sharing Bultmann’s enthusiasm for this Gospel, Bornkamm writes that John has reflected upon the Christian message “more profoundly than any other writer, and has articulated it with a one-sidedness which, though sometimes monotonous, is truly magnificent.”[117] He concludes: “Thus the New Testament is the ‘charter’ of Christian faith—and not just in the historian’s sense of the word. The history of this faith will continue to be what it always was, the story of Jesus’ passion—and the story of his resurrection.”[118]
More representative of his critical skill are Bornkamm’s essays on 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Romans. The essay on the pre-history of 2 Corinthians was originally published in 1961 and was revised for publication in Bornkamm’s collected works.[119] In regard to the opponents attacked in 2 Corinthians, Bornkamm agrees (with Dieter Georgi) that they are traveling “divine men” (like Apollonius of Tyana) who invaded the church after the writing of 1 Corinthians. Bornkamm attempts to reconstruct the fragments of the letter in relation to stages in Paul’s battle with these “super apostles.” According to his reconstruction Paul first wrote an apology for ministry that included 2 Cor 2:14—7:4 (except for 6:14—7:1, which he views as a non-Pauline interpolation). This apology, according to Bornkamm, was written after 1 Corinthians and before Paul’s interim or “painful” visit to Corinth (implied in 2 Cor 2:1; 12:14; 13:1). After the interim visit Paul, in Bornkamm’s opinion, wrote the “severe” letter of “many tears” (mentioned in 2 Cor 2:3-4), which consists of 2 Corinthians 10–13. After writing this letter Paul sent Titus to Corinth, and after meeting Titus in Macedonia and hearing his good report he wrote the letter of reconciliation (2 Cor 1:1—2:13; 7:5-16). Bornkamm argues that 2 Corinthians 8 presupposes the letter of reconciliation and is either the conclusion or an addition to that letter; chapter 9 is a separate letter written after chapter 8 to other churches in Achaia.
Of special interest is Bornkamm’s rationale for the final order of the fragments as they appear in canonical 2 Corinthians. He believes the placing of chapters 10–13 at the end corresponds to the tendency of early Christian literature to put anathemas and warnings against heresy at the end of documents. Bornkamm believes the editor inserted the hymn of praise and apostolic apology (2:14–7:4) into the letter of reconciliation in order to depict Paul’s journey from Troas to Macedonia as a triumphal resolution of the problem.
Bornkamm produced a similar analysis of Philippians.[120] Within this letter he finds evidence that Philippians, like 2 Corinthians, is a collection of fragments. For example, he notes the change of tone at 3:2 and the transition from the greeting of peace (4:9) to a section that ends with an expression of praise. On the basis of such evidence he identifies three separate letters: “A” (4:10-20) is a section of a letter that expresses thanks for the gift Epaphroditus had brought to Paul; “B” (1:1—3:1) is a letter that reports Paul’s imprisonment and announces the return of Epaphroditus (4:21-23 is probably the ending of this letter); “C” (3:2-49) is a fragment of a polemic letter that warns against Jewish Christian Gnostics or gnosticizing Judaizers, written after Paul’s release from prison. Bornkamm believes all three of these fragments were written from Ephesus. He thinks the editor put “A” last because of his pride in the special relation of the Philippian church to Paul.
Bornkamm also reflects on the notorious problem of the nature and purpose of Romans. He characterizes “The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament.”[121] In this essay he attends to T. W. Manson’s article, “The Letter to the Romans—and Others.”[122] Bornkamm agrees with Manson that the epistle deals with issues Paul had encountered in the east, and that Romans 16 was addressed to Ephesus. However, he thinks the original letter (Romans 1–15) was written to Rome; it was not a general letter to the Romans “and others.” Bornkamm believes, nevertheless, that the epistle does not address the particular situation in Rome but presents a summary of Paul’s major concerns: the apostolate to the Gentiles and the doctrine of justification by faith. These fundamental concerns prepare for the apostle’s visit to Rome, but they are also composed in anticipation of serious trouble in Jerusalem. “This great document, which summarizes and develops the most important themes and thoughts of the Pauline message and theology and which elevates his theology above the moment of definite situations and conflicts into the sphere of the eternally and universally valid, this letter to the Romans is the last will and testament of the Apostle Paul.”[123]
Bornkamm pioneered in the use of a method that later became known as “redaction criticism.”[124] In distinction from form criticism, which analyzes the development of oral tradition, redaction criticism attends to the shaping of the tradition by the authors or editors of the written documents. Bornkamm’s research applies this method primarily to the study of Matthew. In an essay originally published in 1948 he analyzes the account of the stilling of the storm in Matt 8:23-27.[125] He notes the distinctive features of Matthew’s account in relation to his source (Mark 4:36-41). For example, Matthew puts the account in a different context: it follows two sayings about discipleship (Matt 8:19-22). This emphasis on discipleship is continued in the details of the text. Only in Matthew’s account does Jesus enter the boat first and “his disciples follow him” (8:23). The cry for help, κύριε σῶσον, found only in Matthew (8:25), employs the confession of the “Lord” of the disciples. Jesus’ accusation, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith,” precedes the miracle (only in Matthew), and makes use of the distinctive Matthean term ὀλιγόπιστος (used once in Luke 12:28). Matthew does not limit the astonishment to the disciples (as in Mark and Luke), but broadens the audience to ἄνθρωποι who would hear the story in preaching. “The setting of the pericope is thus extended, its horizon is widened and from being a description of discipleship in which the disciples of Jesus experience trial and rescue, storm and security, it becomes a call to imitation and discipleship.”[126]
In a longer essay on eschatology and church in Matthew, Bornkamm presents an overview of the evangelist’s redactional activity.[127] As to the method, he says that
. . . the Synoptic writers show—all three and each in his own special way—by their editing and construction, by their selection, inclusion and omission, and not least by what at first sight appears an insignificant, but on closer examination is seen to be a characteristic treatment of the traditional material, that they are by no means mere collectors and handers-on of the tradition, but are also interpreters of it.[128]
The first section of the essay deals with the union of eschatology and ecclesiology in the construction of the Matthean discourses. For example, the Sermon on the Mount includes requirements for admission to the community and presents eschatology by reference to judgment. Bornkamm views the discourse to the congregation (chapter 18) as a collection from various sources; it presents discipline for the church (18:15-18) and warns of the future judgment.[129] According to Bornkamm everything Matthew says about discipleship is related to his understanding of law and righteousness. “Matthew reaches his radical understanding of the law by regarding it in the light of the will of God made known in creation, but more still in the sense of the universal judgment, which all men, and particularly the disciples, have to face.”[130] He notes the close connection between law and Christology in Matthew. Jesus is presented, according to Bornkamm, as a second Moses, interpreter of the law. He also finds a close connection between Christology and ecclesiology. “No other Gospel is so shaped by the thought of the Church as Matthew’s.”[131] In sum, Bornkamm has attempted “to show to what a high degree the first evangelist is an interpreter of the tradition which he collected and arranged. It should have become clear in the process that tradition and theological conception stand in a mutual relation to each other. Just as theology is placed at the service of tradition, the opposite is also true.”[132]
Throughout his career Günther Bornkamm produced exegetical works on various books of the NT. In 1937, he published an exegetical study of 1 Corinthians 13[133] in which he explicates Paul’s understanding of love and explains why love is greater than faith and hope. “If faith is based on what God has done and hope directs itself to what God will do, then love—from God, to God and thus simultaneously love toward the brother (cf. 1 John 4:7ff)—is the permanent presence of salvation, the ‘bond of perfection’ (Col. 3.14). As such it is the greatest.”[134]
Bornkamm’s exegetical work is often directed to problematic texts like 1 Cor 9:19-23, where Paul says that he has “become all things to all people.”[135] Bornkamm acknowledges that Paul is sensitive to different historical situations, but he insists that the apostle is not advocating flexibility as a missionary strategy. “Paul intends the statements to characterize a practical stance of solidarity with various groups, rather than to describe several ways of adjusting his preaching in terms of content and language to various environments.”[136] Instead, Bornkamm thinks Paul’s missionary stance is grounded in the gospel of justification by faith—a doctrine he believes to be totally missing in Acts. The author of Acts, according to Bornkamm, fails to understand Paul’s eschatological understanding of history and replaces justification with Heilsgeschichte, a succession of events whereby Paul turns from Jews to Gentiles.
Bornkamm also published exegetical essays on Romans and Philippians. In exegeting Romans 6 he understands Baptism as an eschatological event in which the believer is united with Christ.[137] The one who is baptized already walks in the new life, but resurrection, according to Bornkamm, is an event of the future. In discussing Romans 7 he raises the conventional questions: Is Paul speaking about his own experience? Is he describing the situation of humans under law or under grace?[138] Bornkamm answers that Paul is not speaking autobiographically; “I” here has a general meaning. He concludes: “The exegesis has shown that the old dispute about whether man in Romans 7 is to be understood as man under the law or man under grace must be answered in the first sense.”[139] In regard to Phil 2:6-11, Bornkamm rejects the interpretation that understands Christ as ethical example. Instead, he believes the hymn presents the incarnation and exaltation of the pre-existent Christ. Although he believes Paul makes use of the myth of the Gnostic redeemer, he finds that his emphasis on obedience unto death totally transforms the meaning. In the major issues of these texts Bornkamm agrees essentially with Käsemann.
Likewise, Bornkamm published exegetical studies in the Gospels. In an essay on the delay of the parousia he investigates two difficult texts.[140] Concerning Mark 9:1 (“Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power”), Bornkamm rejects efforts to avoid the problem of the text, for example, by C. H. Dodd’s notion that the kingdom has already come.[141] Instead, he interprets Mark as implying delay of the parousia: though some will actually live to see the coming of the eschatological kingdom, others will not. In Matt 25:1-13 (the parable of the ten maidens) he argues that concern with the delay of the parousia is explicit. The wise maidens have prepared for the delay; the foolish have not. According to Bornkamm the parable represents the word of the exalted Lord who calls believers to be prepared. In the situation of delay the faithful can still trust in the coming salvation of Christ.
Bornkamm attacks Käsemann’s position regarding the Fourth Gospel. In a paper presented to the Old Marbugers he rejects Käsemann’s notion that the Gospel of John presents a “naive docetism.”[142] Bornkamm believes Käsemann is blind to the anti-gnostic features of the Gospel. John, says Bornkamm, has not abandoned the theology of the cross but understood it paradoxically: the passion reveals the glory. He expresses the same idea in his essay on the paraclete in the Fourth Gospel. “Every mythological theologia gloriae is rejected and the community is held fast in John’s distinctive theologia crucis; it means that in the cross of Christ itself his glory is revealed.”[143]
As his critical and exegetical research indicates, Bornkamm was primarily a biblical theologian. In the NT he hears the word of God, spoken in the words of humans.[144]
Wherever this word becomes audible, it can only speak of what God has done to us and the world, of the story of his grace and his judgment, culminating and summed up in the story of Jesus Christ. Therefore the gospel always has one and only one indispensable content for all time: Christ the crucified one, Christ the living one, Jesus Christ our Lord.[145]
This statement implies a canon within the canon—an idea Bornkamm develops vis-à-vis Roman Catholics in regard to the question of authority.
The answer obviously cannot be given formally and have one and the same binding force in content for all scriptural expressions, but can only express the conviction, that within the canon of Scripture a substantial canon meets us, namely the proclamation of God’s claim and God’s grace, by which everything, even the Scripture itself, can be measured. From this perspective, the Protestant idea can be understood, that the message of Jesus Christ and his sending is better understood by no other early Christian witness than by Paul.[146]
Bornkamm’s biblical theology gives special attention to the idea of confession.[147] His inaugural address at Königsberg dealt with “The Word of Jesus about Confession.”[148] This address was delivered in the time of the Confessing Church under the shadow of National Socialism—a time when confession had serious political consequences. Bornkamm notes that Jesus’ word about confession (recorded in Q), “Everyone . . . who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 10:32, NASB), is found in different contexts (see Luke 12:8). Moreover, the corresponding saying about denial, “But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matt 10:33, NASB; Luke 12:9), is also found in the Markan tradition (Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26). The denial and confession formula is found in later texts as well (1 Tim 2:12; Rev 3:5). These observations, together with the use of “everyone who” (a phrase frequent in the Sermon on the Mount) in the Q saying, indicate to Bornkamm that the saying is independent and has the character of a rule. Bornkamm believes the confession (or denial) involves a decision early Christians had to make in the world: a public confession or denial of their relation to Jesus. The decision, according to Bornkamm, has its ultimate outcome in the eschatological judgment.
Bornkamm’s concern with the NT idea of confession is developed in an essay on Hebrews, originally published in 1942.[149] He believes that holding to the confession is the fundamental theme of the document. “The ὁμολογία of the community must therefore be the basis of the letter, since it is at the same time the goal toward which the letter is ever anew directed.”[150]According to Bornkamm this confession is the baptismal confession, and the content of the confession is Jesus the Son of God. The confession is the act of the individual, but the individual, in Bornkamm’s view, is a member of the faithful community. He rejects Käsemann’s notion that the presentation of Christ in Hebrews has its source in the myth of the Gnostic redeemer. Instead, the Christology of Hebrews, according to Bornkamm, is founded on the recognition of Jesus as the redeemer from sin—a concept that has its ground in the historical event of the cross. The once-for-all of the redeeming sacrifice of Christ corresponds to the unique event the believer has appropriated in the confession.
Turning to Paul, Bornkamm declares that the apostle’s commitment to world mission is based on his confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.[151] According to Bornkamm this confession is totally different from the political confession of Caesar as Lord. Bornkamm believes the NT views the world and its political powers as dominated by sin, but the world of sinful humanity has come to an end in the cross. In the resurrection, he believes, the exalted Lord brings salvation; in Christ there is new creation. “The message of the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the gospel of justification, the word of reconciliation. As such, it is not a message that would have nurtured itself on the political myth of the emperor and the empire. It is at the same time the message of Jesus Christ as the end of the world and as the Lord of the world.”[152]
Like the dialectical theologians, Bornkamm sounds the themes of the Reformation: law and gospel, judgment and justification, the righteousness of God. In 1934 he published a monograph on “Law and Creation in the New Testament.”[153] In the introduction he observes that the question of the relationship between law and creation has become crucial in this time of the ascendancy of National Socialism because of its significance for problems of the relation of church and state. Bornkamm seeks to answer the question in terms of the NT. According to his reading of the Bible, the law presents the will of God, given by revelation; God’s law created a people and called for obedience. Bornkamm, like many in the Reformation tradition, charges the Jews with formal obedience in contrast to Jesus’ demand for absolute obedience. The NT, according to Bornkamm, understands creation to reveal the will of God but does not affirm natural law. When Paul says that Gentiles by nature φύσει do “what the law requires” (Rom 2:14) he is not referring to natural law but to the biblical law, which Gentiles perceive in God’s actions in creation. Bornkamm believes Paul sees all humans under the wrath of God: Gentiles because they worship creation and Jews because they exploit the law for their own advantage. The message of the NT, according to Bornkamm, is that this situation is overcome by God’s act of grace in the death and resurrection of Christ. In Christ both creation and law are fulfilled. The believer, according to Bornkamm, is the new creature who is called to obedience to the law of Christ. In the social and political realm, the believer, in his opinion, is not primarily obedient to the order of nature or the law of the people; the believer belongs to another fatherland; his or her citizenship is in heaven.
Since the saving work of God in Christ is history and the church as the body of Christ is a cosmic power, the concrete reality of life in which the church finds itself has to be understood not under “nomos” or “ethos,” but under the kerygma. In other words: the event of the new creation is not groundless, but is fulfilled here. Therefore the believer cannot run from his reality, but he must take his stand here and affirm himself in the situation in which he is called (1 Cor. 7:20).[154]
Bornkamm develops some of the same themes in his essay on “The Revelation of God’s Wrath: Romans 1–3.”[155] Beginning with 1:18, he argues that what is revealed in creation is an accusation: that humanity is disobedient and guilty. “Therefore, Rom. 1.18ff. is not an apologetic and pedagogical discussion, because the intention of the Apostle is not to infer God’s being from the world, but to uncover the being of the world from God’s revelation; not to prove the revelation of God before the judgment of the world, but to unveil the judgment of God over the world revealed in the law.”[156] He believes that in Rom 2:1 Paul turns to the Jews. He recognizes that they have received revelation in the law, but says they have perverted it into their own privilege; they, too, stand under the judgment of God, in need of the saving revelation of God’s righteousness. This revelation, according to Bornkamm, is the eschatological event.
The revelation of this saving “righteousness” of God is an eschatological event that is accomplished in the “Now” of salvation history. To this same hour is bound the revelation of his wrath from heaven over all the unrighteousness of men. Because he lets his “righteousness” be made known, all the “wickedness” of men also comes to light.[157]
This idea of judgment is taken up again by Bornkamm in a lecture presented at the end of World War II in which he observes that the recent catastrophe of Germany has been viewed as the judgment of God. This leads him to an investigation of the theological understanding of judgment. According to Bornkamm the judgment of God can be seen in history, but it must be understood in the light of revelation. From this perspective he believes Jesus Christ to be the supreme revelation of God in history: the eschatological action of God that is both judgment and righteousness. “Thus the question of the righteousness of God in history, the question of theodicy, is removed and resolved through the preaching here and now, since God has revealed his righteousness, no longer his righteousness in itself, no longer his righteousness against me, but the righteousness of God for me in Jesus Christ.”[158]
Bornkamm had a special interest in a NT concept interpreters often avoid: the question of reward. He observes that it is an embarrassment to Protestant theology because of its abhorrence of the idea of reward for good works. Yet, as Bornkamm observes, Jesus and the NT frequently express the idea. In Judaism emphasis is placed on the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous in heaven. Bornkamm believes Jesus has a different view: reward has to do with the coming and presence of God. “The treasure in heaven is the rule of God itself.”[159] According to Bornkamm the NT idea is not based on an obedience that seeks reward but on a spontaneous obedience that is unaware that it has done something for the Lord (Matt 25:31-46). He believes the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16) radically refutes the human idea of reward; God’s grace is totally different from human expectation. The NT idea of reward, according to Bornkamm, is paradoxical: God acts in grace and humans react with obedience. “There is no more appropriate expression than the word of Phil 2:12f. for the unlimited power of God and the freedom of his grace, but at the same time for the limitation and lack of freedom of humanity before God, for the unconditional character of the divine demand, but at the same time for the conditional nature of humanity.”[160]
Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth first appeared in 1956; it went through thirteen editions and was translated into ten languages; it sold over 120,000 copies.[161] The book is often hailed as the concrete realization of the new quest of the historical Jesus. Actually, Bornkamm addressed the question of the quest in publications written after the first edition of the book. In an essay on “The Significance of the Historical Jesus for Faith,” originally published in 1961, he noted the failure of the old quest to recognize that the tradition about Jesus had been shaped by post-Easter faith and that the Gospels were not concerned with biography.[162] Nevertheless, he contends that we cannot be indifferent to the historical Jesus. The post-Easter church proclaimed God’s action in Jesus and the early church had faith in Jesus. Faith cannot be separated from history and history is decisive for faith. “Nevertheless, faith remains constantly directed to a specific history, although not to one that offers proofs and supports which supposedly first make faith possible. . . . For faith everything depends upon the identity between Jesus and the Christ. . . . The center and content of faith, therefore, is that ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever’ (Heb. 13:8).”
In another essay Bornkamm responds positively to Käsemann’s proposal for a new quest.[163] He also argues that the Gospels, as distinct from the post-Easter kerygma, are concerned with the words and deeds of Jesus. “[T]hey bring the hearer back to the beginning and lead him into the encounter with Jesus as on the first day when he encountered his contemporaries with summons and promise, with call to repentance and saving act demanding an answer.”[164]
Most of the editions of Bornkamm’s book are reprints; the English translation (ET) was made from the third edition of 1956. However, the tenth German edition (1975) was revised and expanded. The revisions update the bibliography and respond to criticisms, notably the charge that Bornkamm had misrepresented first-century Judaism. The following review is based on the ET and expanded with reference to the German tenth edition. In the foreword to the first edition Bornkamm observes that publications on the life and teachings of Jesus, once numerous, have become rare. Some scholars have even supposed that historical criticism is not the way to investigate the subject. He responds: “Certainly faith cannot and should not be dependent on the change and uncertainty of historical research. . . . But no one should despise the help of historical research to illumine the truth with which each of us should be concerned.”[165]
In the first chapter, “Faith and History in the Gospels,” Bornkamm notes that the old quest, chronicled by Albert Schweitzer, has ended.[166]Nevertheless, he says that “it cannot be seriously maintained that the Gospels and their tradition do not allow enquiry after the historical Jesus. Not only do they allow, they demand this effort.”[167] The post-Easter faith, according to Bornkamm, is concerned with the pre-Easter Jesus; “the primitive tradition of Jesus is brim full of history.”[168]
Chapter 2, “Period and Environment,” presents a review of the history of Judaism from the return from Babylonian captivity to the destruction of Jerusalem. In regard to religion, Bornkamm recounts the affirmation of the one Creator God who has revealed the will of God in the law. However, he believes that this religion in time degenerated into a scribal legalism. “The sole task of interpretation,” he comments, “is to relate the Torah to the manifold situations of life in each particular period. Even the weirdest oddities of Jewish casuistry betray this understanding of the law.”[169] These sentences remain in the tenth edition, although the section on “Groups and Movements” expands the discussion of the Pharisees and acknowledges that Matthew’s hostility reflects the Jewish-Christian conflict in the time after Jesus. Nevertheless, Bornkamm continues to believe that the Pharisees represent a legalism “to which Jesus’ message of the divine will stands in sharp contrast.”[170]
In chapter 3, titled “Jesus of Nazareth,” Bornkamm admits that a biography of Jesus cannot be written, but he claims that much can be known. We know that Jesus’ childhood and adolescence were spent in Galilee, and we know the names of his father, mother, and brothers. We know that Jesus spoke Aramaic and that he was baptized by John. Bornkamm also believes that we know that Jesus conducted a prophetic ministry, heralding the coming of the kingdom of God. We know that he took his message to Jerusalem where he was crucified. Bornkamm asserts that Jesus cannot be fitted into any of the conventional categories of the time, such as rabbi or apocalyptic prophet. In contrast, Bornkamm believes he stressed the presence of God and claimed a direct authority from God. “To make the reality of God present: this is the essential mystery of Jesus. This making-present of the reality of God signifies the end of the world in which it takes place. This is why the scribes and Pharisees rebel, because they see Jesus’ teaching as a revolutionary attack upon law and tradition.”[171]
Chapter 4 on “The Dawn of the Kingdom” includes a section on “the Hour of Salvation.” In the tenth edition Bornkamm adds material to illustrate the contrast between the eschatology of Jesus and that of the rabbis. Jesus, he thinks, is closer to apocalyptic Judaism, although Jesus is reticent to predict the time of the kingdom’s coming; instead, he concentrates on the certainty of God’s reign. According to Bornkamm, Jesus believes the kingdom is already dawning and understands himself as a sign of the kingdom. In regard to “the Hiddenness of God’s Reign,” Bornkamm believes Jesus speaks of the mystery of the kingdom—the kingdom that is already secretly at work. In view of the coming kingdom, Jesus calls for repentance. In contrast to John and the Jews, Jesus, in Bornkamm’s opinion, understands the call to repentance as a call to joy. “God’s future is God’s call to the present, and the present is the time of decision in the light of God’s future.”[172]
In discussing Jesus’ understanding of “The Will of God” (chapter 5), Bornkamm, in the tenth edition, revises his treatment of “Jesus and the Law” and “The New Righteousness.” In the revision he recognizes that the later tradition, echoing the conflict between the church and Judaism, puts caustic words into the mouth of Jesus. Nevertheless, he continues to recount Jesus’ attack on Jewish legalism. “He liberates the will of God from its petrifaction in tables of stone, and reaches for the heart of man which seeks seclusion and safety behind the stronghold of observance of the law. He detaches the law of God from the “traditions of men” and sets it free.”[173]
By way of contrast, Jesus sums up the whole law in “The Commandment of Love”—a love that, grounded in the will of God, has no limitation. Jesus addresses God as “Father” (Abba), affirming, according to Bornkamm, the presence of God. Although faith involves the belief that Jesus can perform miracles, Bornkamm thinks Jesus did not want to be viewed as a miracle worker and opposed faith based on miracles. In regard to the idea of reward, Jesus, in contrast to the Jewish idea of retribution, understands reward in terms of God’s grace. “Thus the idea of reward has received a completely new meaning. Detached from deeds of merit and the claims of man, it has become an expression of divine justice and grace, to which man is directed, now more than ever called to effort and faithfulness, and on which he must lean.”[174]
Regarding “Discipleship” (chapter 6), Bornkamm observes that one becomes a disciple by the call of Jesus. The task of the disciple is to follow and join in the proclamation of the kingdom. Bornkamm believes “Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem” (chapter 7) was decisive. Jesus traveled to Jerusalem, according to Bornkamm, in order to take his message to the capital city. In Jerusalem, Jesus celebrated a last supper with his disciples, a meal that, in Bornkamm’s opinion, was not a Passover observance. Bornkamm’s account of the events in Gethsemane is revealing of his understanding of history.
This story, too, should not be read simply as a historical record. The very fact that no human being witnessed Jesus’ struggle is evidence of this. Yet this story, too, is a historical document in a higher sense: it presents Jesus, alone, at the fiercest point of his temptation, separated from his disciples, not as a “divine being,” but in his complete humanity.[175]
In the tenth edition Bornkamm revises and expands his account of the trial of Jesus. In the revision he observes that the later tradition tended to exaggerate the responsibility of the Jewish authorities, although historically the action of Pilate was decisive for the crucifixion.
Bornkamm devotes chapter 8 to the controversial “Messianic Question.” According to him Jesus did not make messianic claims or adopt messianic titles.
[A]though the historical Jesus spoke most definitely of the coming Son of man and judge of the world in the sense of the contemporary apocalyptic hope, and did so with the amazing certainty that the decisions made here with regard to his person and message would be confirmed at the last judgment, nevertheless he did not give himself the title Son of man. Also we can hardly assume that the earthly Jesus saw himself as destined to be the heavenly judge of the world.[176]
Nevertheless, Bornkamm is convinced that Jesus lived a “messianic” life and engaged in a mission that was messianic and more.
[T]he Messianic character of his being is contained in his words and deeds and in the unmediatedness of his historic appearance. No customary or current conception, no title or office which Jewish tradition and expectation held in readiness, serves to authenticate his mission, or exhausts the secret of his being. It is impossible to solve this mystery with the logic, of whatever type, of any preceding doctrinal system. We thus learn to understand that the secret of his being could only reveal itself to his disciples in his resurrection.[177]
Bornkamm takes up the question of the resurrection in his final chapter, “Jesus Christ.” According to him the resurrection cannot be the object of historical inquiry; the historian can only deal with the rise of the Easter faith and the origin of the church. Bornkamm believes the resurrection narratives are not historical records but expressions of faith. Nevertheless, he thinks the risen Christ discloses the meaning of the Jesus of history. “It is the resurrected Christ, therefore, who first reveals the mystery of his history and his person, and above all the meaning of his suffering and death.” He concludes:
By the events of Easter and the certainty of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, he who proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God, as we have already said, became the one proclaimed, the one who called to faith became the content of the faith. Jesus’ words and the gospel about Jesus Christ have become a unity.[178]
All in all, Günther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth is a masterful accomplishment: thoughtful, readable, moving, and widely influential.[179] Of special significance is the relation of Bornkamm’s work to Bultmann’s Jesus and the Word.[180] The major difference is that Bultmann concentrates almost exclusively on the message of Jesus; Jesus is presented as “the bearer of the word.” Bornkamm, while emphasizing the proclamation of the kingdom and Jesus’ understanding of the will of God, gives more attention to the person and activity of Jesus, to the narrative. Also, Bornkamm affirms the continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the post-Easter faith. A major criticism of Bornkamm’s Jesus was launched by Leander E. Keck.[181] According to Keck, Bornkamm has confused historical criticism and faith. This is seen, for example, in his argument that Jesus did not use messianic titles but that his words and deeds witness to his messiahship. In making this argument Bornkamm, according to Keck, enlists criticism in the support of faith. Bornkamm responded to Keck in a Nachwort to his tenth edition.[182] He denies that he attempted to ground faith in historical facts confirmed by criticism. He insists that faith and history cannot be separated; we must seek history in the kerygma and the kerygma in history. According to Bornkamm the hermeneutical circle of faith and history cannot be avoided. An easy resolution of the Keck-Bornkamm debate is scarcely to be expected, but it indicates that the hermeneutical problem and its philosophical-theological basis demand further investigation.
Bornkamm’s Paulus first appeared in 1969; it went through four editions (largely reprints), and was translated into English, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, and Norwegian.[183] In the introduction he deals with sources. He accepts seven epistles as authentic (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon). He believes Acts can be used as a secondary source. Part I reviews the “Life and Work” of apostle. Paul, according to Bornkamm, was a Diaspora Jew who joined the Pharisees and became devoted to the law; he persecuted the Christians because they did not keep the law. Bornkamm understands Paul’s conversion as a prophetic call, not an ecstatic experience. In his encyclopedia article he writes: “the meaning of his conversion is concentrated on one point: it means his life-transforming recognition that God in the sending and sacrifice of Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God has brought an end to the Jewish way of salvation, and thereby at the same time has opened to all the saving way of faith.”[184] Bornkamm believes that Paul began his mission in Arabia. After more than two years there he made a brief visit to Jerusalem and then continued his mission in Syria and Cilicia. He thinks the Apostolic Assembly (Gal 2:1-10; Acts 15:6-21) was held fifteen or sixteen years after Paul’s conversion. The assembly, according to Bornkamm, acknowledged Paul’s mission but did not fully consent to his gospel. The apostolic decree (Acts 15:23-29), in Bornkamm’s view, was not enacted by the assembly when Paul was present. Bornkamm believes Paul’s mission to Cyprus and southern Asia Minor (reported in Acts 13 and 14) took place after the assembly. The conflict between Paul and Peter in Antioch is important for Bornkamm because it illustrates Paul’s uncompromising opposition to legalism.
In regard to the so-called second missionary journey, Bornkamm believes it proceeded through central Asia Minor where Paul founded the churches of (north) Galatia. During this journey Paul, in Bornkamm’s opinion, came to the conviction that he should take his mission to the ends of the inhabited world. After crossing into Macedonia, Paul founded churches in Greece. Bornkamm believes the speech attributed to Paul in Athens to be a post-apostolic composition. During his stay in Corinth, Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, which Bornkamm views as the first of the extant Pauline epistles.
Bornkamm rehearses his understanding of the composition of the Corinthian correspondence as presented in his earlier research. He believes Paul wrote Galatians from Ephesus; Philemon and part of Philippians were written from an Ephesian imprisonment. After leaving Ephesus and traveling through Macedonia, Paul visited Corinth prior to his final trip to Jerusalem. Although Bornkamm considers Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:25-35) to be a later composition, he believes the Acts account of the event in Jerusalem, including Paul’s participation in a Nazirite vow (Acts 21:23-26), is reliable. In regard to the exciting account of Paul’s voyage and shipwreck, Bornkamm supposes the author of Acts used a written source that had no connection with Paul. He believes the author of Acts knew of the death of Paul in Rome but declined to report it because the report would have been counter to his purpose: to present the triumph of Christianity.
Part II on Paul’s “Gospel and Theology” is longer than the first part.[185] Bornkamm begins by discussing the relation of Paul’s gospel to the kerygma of the primitive church. With the preaching of the church a significant shift occurs. “The proclaimer has become the subject of proclamation, his life has assumed dimensions that it did not have on earth, and for Jesus’ own words are substituted the word about Jesus, his death, resurrection, and second coming at the end of the world.”[186] Although Paul knew and sometimes quoted the early tradition, “Paul expounds and develops the Christian gospel as the gospel of justification by faith alone. So far from this doctrine’s being common property in the primitive church, it is a specifically Pauline creation.”[187] Echoing Bultmann, Bornkamm interprets Paul as affirming that “every statement about God, Christ, Spirit, Law, judgment, and salvation is at the same time one about man in his world, the old lost man and the new one set free by God.” He continues: “To lead man as confronted by God to self-understanding and thus to reflection on his situation and life in the world: this is the steadfast aim of the apostle’s preaching and theology.”[188]
As to the situation of humanity in the world, Bornkamm believes Paul views humans as lost, standing under the wrath of God. The law, which reveals the will of God, discloses human disobedience; it reveals humans as sinners. Bornkamm does not believe Paul affirmed the doctrine of original sin; sin is a responsible act of humans. Adam’s sin is characteristic of humans who are in the world and under the power of Satan. The law, according to Bornkamm, cannot free humans because the law, as a means of salvation, had been destroyed. Christ is the end of the law (Rom 10:4). The saving event, says Bornkamm, is the righteousness of God. Righteousness, he thinks, is not a an attribute but an action of God.
Grammatically, then, the genitive in “God’s righteousness” is not subjective (if so, the transcendent God would be made utterly remote and inaccessible to man), but a genitive of origin. That is to say: God creates his righteousness for man, puts him in the right—man who apart from this verdict and act is lost, but now may have life in his sight.[189]
Righteousness is an action of God’s grace, occurring the death of Christ. According to Bornkamm the response to this divine action is faith. “It signifies acceptance, in obedient trust and trustful obedience, of God’s saving act as proclaimed in the gospel.”[190] He rejects Käsemann’s notion that righteousness to a gift to all humanity, the apocalyptic disclosure of the lordship of Christ over the cosmos. Instead, the saving event is directed to the individual. Bornkamm believes that Paul’s doctrine of predestination does not mean determinism but affirms the idea of pure grace.
Bornkamm thinks Paul views the life of faith as a life of peace with God: a life of freedom from law, freedom from death. Faith works in love; love is not a precondition of salvation but a response to grace. According to Bornkamm, Paul’s idea of life “in Christ” is not mysticism but “the full meaning of the new basic and all-comprehending reality into which believers are transferred once they have been delivered from the power of corruption.”[191] Under the theme “Present Salvation,” he discusses Paul’s understanding of the word. The word is not information about the gospel; it is saving event. It is the word of the cross, which stands in opposition to the wisdom of the world yet paradoxically is the wisdom and power of God. The resurrection, according to Bornkamm, does not nullify the cross; it makes the cross operative as saving event, enacted in the proclamation. Bornkamm believes Paul understands his apostleship in relation to the gospel. He proclaimed the gospel with his life—a life of suffering for the gospel, not a display of martyrdom.
Bornkamm believes that the church arose in expression of the resurrection faith. He thinks Paul stressed the presence of the Spirit in the church. “Thus, for Paul God’s Spirit is not the supernatural power that enables a man to transcend his earthly life and its limitations: instead, it is the power of God who shows himself mighty in lowliness and weakness.”[192] In exercising discipline in his churches Paul draws from many sources—Scripture, words of the Lord, nature—but most of all from the gospel. “The most important source of Paul’s directions, the basis of all else, is the church’s remembrance of its origin, God’s saving acts in Christ as proclaimed in the gospel.”[193] Bornkamm believes Paul understands Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as sacraments.[194] Baptism mediates the forgiveness of sins, bestows the Spirit, and incorporates believers into the eschatological community; the Supper makes present the reality of the saving death of Christ.[195] Bornkamm is convinced that Paul’s description of the church as the “body of Christ” is more than a metaphor.
[I]t is not something like a body, but—in a real sense—it is Christ’s body. . . . Accordingly, it is not an organism in the strict sense of the word, but rather—though this, too, is open to misconception—an organ, a means and tool through which Christ himself organizes his lordship and gives it effect by the Spirit. The church is not just to become this: it is so already, in virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, released and endowed by him, all members without exception.[196]
Concerning eschatology and ethics, Bornkamm believes Paul views the coming of Christ as the turning point of the eons. In the time of faith—the time between the resurrection and the parousia—life is based on grace and oriented to God’s action in Christ. Christian life, according to Bornkamm’s reading of Paul, involves the indicative and the imperative: the new life in response to the grace of God. Christian life is characterized by love, grounded in God’s love revealed in the cross of Christ. In describing the eschatological future Paul borrows imagery from Jewish apocalyptic. “However diverse all these statements in the Pauline letters about the future and whatever their application, they again reveal fixed basic motifs in the apostle’s theology viewed as a whole: the sovereignty and final victory of God, who alone is to bring the work he began to completion.”[197]
Bornkamm concludes with an important discussion of the relation of Paul to Jesus. In liberalism there was a tendency to detect a gulf between Jesus and the apostle, together with a plea to return to Jesus. Bornkamm acknowledges differences, but he affirms a fundamental unity.
This makes clear that Paul’s gospel of justification by faith alone matches Jesus’ turning to the godless and the lost. In neither case is it a concept of God, the idea of the God who forgives, but the establishment and, in the full sense of the term, the bringing home to men of what is now happening and what the hour has proclaimed; the kingdom of God “in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20), “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4).[198]
Thus Bornkamm finds the continuity between Jesus and Paul to consist in the doctrine of justification by faith. Although Bultmann is inclined to acknowledge a discontinuity, much that is found in Bornkamm’s Paul he had heard in Marburg. But what his teacher did not do—write a book on the life and work of Paul—Bornkamm did. And he did it with grace and clarity, making the thought of the master alive for the masses.
All in all, Günther Bornkamm is the complete NT scholar: competent historian, analytical critic, imaginative exegete, thoughtful theologian. After his earlier preoccupation with Religionsgeschichte, his later work shows mastery of all the critical and exegetical disciplines. His critical conclusions reflect the liberal consensus: the 2DH, non-apostolic authorship of John, authenticity of seven Pauline letters, inauthenticity of the Catholic epistles. Bornkamm pioneered in redaction criticism and contributed to advancing research on Matthew. He provided creative solutions to the problem of composition and redaction of the Pauline letters. His understanding of Jesus claimed a balance between history and faith. He was convinced that the history of Jesus was more than a bare fact and that the words and deeds of Jesus were important for faith. He insisted that faith could not rest on a Jesus reconstructed by historical research but that the historian, to understand the NT, had to share its faith. To be sure, Bornkamm had not explained fully how faith and history were interrelated; he did not provide a philosophy of history that could explain the relationship or develop a hermeneutic that could offer an adequate method. Nevertheless, Bornkamm enlisted criticism and exegesis in the service of theology. In some areas, notably the idea of confession and concept of reward, he made unique contributions to understanding the theology of the NT. Most of all, he was committed to the center of the NT message. Bornkamm embraced the theology of the NT as his own: a Christocentric theology, a theology of the cross.
When American graduate students returned from study in postwar Germany they brought with them the theology they had heard in Heidelberg and Tübingen. In pulpits and at lecterns they proclaimed the message of dialectical theology, and they found a largely receptive audience. Americans, too, were troubled by the crises of the time. They trembled at the threat of nuclear war and sought a faith that offered more than a well-stocked bomb shelter. Americans, of course, had not experienced the horrors of the war directly, and they tended to seek more moderate solutions. In theology they were attracted more to Emil Brunner than to Karl Barth, more to revelation and reason than to the God who was radically Other. Many rallied around the flag of Rudolf Bultmann and his followers. Bultmann embraced the Bible, and the Bible was dear to pious Americans. Yet he believed the Bible should be interpreted in harmony with science—a science that resonated with American empiricism and the Enlightenment tradition. Bultmann’s stress on the proclamation and the call to decision echoed the American passion for religious revival. And, of course, Americans had been reading the existentialists, and though they were baffled by Heidegger they were excited by Gide and Faulkner. Bultmann’s synthesis of biblical theology, historical criticism, and existentialist philosophy had a powerful appeal.[199]
Bultmann influenced a host of American NT scholars in various ways and to various degrees. Moreover, some of Bultmann’s students and students of his students migrated to the USA and remained for the balance of their careers—scholars like Helmut Koester and Hans Dieter Betz. These and others will be discussed below in different connections. However, the scholar who intentionally promoted German-American theological dialogue was James M. Robinson. Robinson’s contribution to the study of the Nag Hammadi texts (NHC) and to research regarding the Q document will be reserved for later treatment. In this chapter attention will be given to his early work, which dealt with the new quest of the historical Jesus and the new hermeneutic.
Born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, James M. Robinson was the son of William Childs Robinson, an orthodox Calvinist Presbyterian who taught for many years at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.[200] The younger Robinson was educated at Davidson College (AB, 1945) and Columbia Seminary (BD, 1946). He studied at Basel with Karl Barth. In 1950–51 Robinson spent a semester at Marburg, where he studied with Bultmann. Later he was to write: “By now I have come to recognize in demythologizing the only form in which I can believe, and, what is more significant, what makes believing important.”[201] Robinson also studied at Zürich, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and Paris. In 1953 he resumed studies he had begun earlier at Princeton Theological Seminary and completed a dissertation (ThD) under Otto Piper. From 1952 to 1958 Robinson taught at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He moved to the Claremont School of Theology in 1958, where he was promoted to full professor in 1961. In 1964 he was named Arthur Lets, Jr. Professor of Religion in the Claremont Graduate University. From 1968 to 1999 he served as director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at Claremont. He was named Emeritus Professor at Claremont in 1999. While serving as annual professor at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1965–66) Robinson traveled to Cairo and became involved in the study of the NHC. He was later appointed permanent secretary of the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices. For many years Robinson was a leader in the International Q Project sponsored by the Institute at Claremont and the SBL. He participated in various leadership posts in the Society and served as president 1980–81.
Robinson’s first major publication was his Basel dissertation on The Problem of the Holy Spirit according to Wilhelm Herrmann.[202] This research eminently prepared Robinson as an interpreter of Barth and Bultmann, since both had studied under Herrmann. In the dissertation Robinson observes that Herrmann was anxious to bring the thought of the Reformation into new expression. He opposed metaphysics, affirmed God’s revelation in Jesus, and believed communion with God was accomplished through faith in the inner life of Jesus. For Herrmann, communion with God was the ground for ethics, and sanctification was more important than justification. According to Robinson, Herrmann increasingly moved from stress on the historical Jesus to concern with the Spirit of Jesus—a movement from the second person to the third person of the Trinity.
Especially interesting is Robinson’s claim that the adverse trends in Herrmann’s theology were continued by Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann shared and expanded Herrmann’s view of myth as expressing the meaning of the self-understanding of the ethical believer. Robinson thinks both Herrmann and Bultmann betrayed a subjectivity reflecting the influence of existentialist philosophy. In his conclusion Robinson suggests how Herrmann’s thought should properly be continued. Most important, the revelation in “the historical Christ” should again be emphasized; Herrmann had missed the scandal of the Word made flesh. In contrast to Herrmann’s later thought, Robinson recommends a christocentric approach to Trinity that maintains both the divine and the human. It is obvious that Robinson at this time was critical of Bultmann and sympathetic with Barth.
A condensed version of Robinson’s Princeton dissertation (1955) was published as The Problem of History in Mark.[203] Robinson’s interest in the idea of history in the NT is seen in an earlier publication, “Jesus’ Understanding of History.”[204] In this essay Robinson contends that the parables of Jesus present an understanding of history; they address the situation of the hearer and call for a decision of faith in response to the eschatological rule of God. In the book on Mark, Robinson reviews the history of the interpretation of Mark. He points out that scholarship in the nineteenth century, celebrating the triumph of the 2DH, assumed that Mark was the earliest and most important source for the historical Jesus. Robinson’s intent is to investigate Mark’s understanding of history by analysis of the Markan text. “However it is only by defining Mark’s understanding of history that a centre of interpretation can be located which does justice both to Mark’s history of Jesus and to Mark’s religious experience.”[205]
In Mark’s introduction (1:1-13) Robinson analyzes the accounts of John the Baptist and the temptation of Jesus. By narrating these events Mark, according to Robinson, intends to present “the inauguration of eschatological history.”[206] Robinson believes that Mark presents the exorcisms as a dualistic cosmic struggle—between Jesus’ action by the Spirit and the power of Satan.
For Mark, history is not ultimately ambiguous or relativistic; rather it has two clear-cut and irreconcilable alternatives in it, which can at times be stated as simply as Son of God versus demon, Holy Spirit versus unclean spirit. . . . It is Jesus’ function to enter this struggle on behalf of the true destiny of mankind and with his heavenly power to carry through to the victory, and to the life and communion it brings.[207]
Robinson turns to the accounts of Jesus’ debates with opponents—what the form critics call Streitgespräche (acceding to Bultmann, “controversy dialogues”). In these debates, Robinson believes, truth is presented as the eschatological presence of the Son of Man in history. The acts of the Son of Man, according to Robinson’s reading of Mark, confirm his teaching. The cosmic struggle reaches its apex in the passion narrative, which culminates is the triumph of the resurrection.
This survey of the Markan material has made it clear that Mark sees the history of Jesus from an eschatological perspective. For Mark the driving force in history is the divine power of the end of time, operative already in the history of Jesus, propelling the whole course of history toward its ultimate destiny.[208]
According to Robinson, Mark interprets history from his own perspective within the life of the church after 30 CE. The whole course of history encompasses the time of the prophets, followed by the time of Jesus, and finally the time of the church. “Mark’s understanding of history is rooted in the fact that Mark envisages the cosmic struggle as extending to all peoples and continuing to the culmination of history. Mark’s understanding of history shares in the universality of the cosmic struggle itself.”[209]
Although Mark presents Jesus as the heavenly Lord, Robinson does not believe that Mark’s piety is dominated by a sense of the numinous. Instead, Mark has an eschatological understanding in which Jesus and the Spirit enter history and create history; Jesus’ action created an eschatological community. Robinson concludes: “Mark’s understanding of Christian existence consists in an understanding of history: the history of Jesus and the history of the Church.”[210]
In 1958 Robinson presented a paper as part of a symposium on “The Meaning and Validation of Biblical Faith,” at the annual meeting of the National Association of Biblical Instructors (now the AAR) at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Robinson’s contribution was entitled, “New Testament Faith Today.”[211] In his paper he contended that recent developments in theology (for example, Bultmann’s review of Barth’s Romans) call for a discussion of the meaning of the NT for faith and of the NT understanding of faith. He believes that the NT understands faith as the response to the eschatological event of salvation proclaimed in the kerygma. Faith in the eschatological event, he says, brings with it a new self-understanding. “In faith a new selfhood is affirmed, based upon the aeon to come which in the saving event has already broken in upon our world, providing a transcendent context of existence.”[212]Robinson thinks this eschatological self-understanding of the believer corresponds to the self-understanding of Jesus. “Thus Christian selfhood is one with Jesus’ selfhood.”[213] According to Robinson, Christian existence involves thinking—a thinking that comes to expression in theology that expresses the meaning of existence in the language of today. Theology, says Robinson, is explication of the kerygma. “For the kerygma is the unveiling of the act of God in the actions of Jesus, as the power which rules the universe and as the reality of the believer’s own existence. . . . As knowledge about my existence, the content of faith can be held to be true only by thus understanding my existence, i.e., only as the act of faith.”[214] This paper makes it clear that Robinson has pitched his tent in Bultmann’s camp and viewed the star that will guide his work in days to come.
Robinson’s most important early contribution to NT research is his book, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus.[215] The book grew out of a paper Robinson had presented at the Oxford Congress on the Four Gospels (1957) entitled “The Kerygma and the Quest of the Historical Jesus.”[216] In this lecture he observes that German scholarship has been striving to renew the quest. He quotes Käsemann as saying: “Fuchs, G. Bornkamm, and I see ourselves compelled to restrict the assertion that Easter founded the Christian kerygma; we must inquire as to the meaning of the historical Jesus for faith.”[217]According to Robinson the old quest was ended when it became apparent that the gospels do not present biography of Jesus.[218] However, he believes a new understanding of history makes possible an understanding of the selfhood of Jesus. “The decisive point with regard to the kerygma and history is not whether the kerygma preserves detailed historical memories about Jesus, but rather that the kerygma is decidedly an evaluation of the historical person.”[219]
During the summer semester in 1959, Robinson used his New Quest as basis for his lectures as guest professor at the University of Göttingen. These lectures were expanded and published as Kerygma und historischer Jesus.[220] A second, revised and expanded edition of this German translation appeared in 1967. The following review presents a summary of the original work, with notice of additions made in the second German edition.
The introduction presents the historical background of the new quest. Robinson reviews “the Bultmann epoch in German Theology.” Turning to “the Post-Bultmannian Quest of the Historical Jesus,” he hails Käsemann’s paper of 1954 as the point of new beginning. He notes Fuchs’s stress on Jesus’ conduct as the setting of his teaching. “Fuchs has carried through with regard to Jesus’ action the same thesis which Käsemann presented with regard to his message: in the message and action of Jesus is implicit an eschatological understanding of his person, which becomes explicit in the kerygma of the primitive Church.”[221] Robinson also reviews Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth, noting Bornkamm’s concern with narrative as well as teaching. Bornkamm affirms a continuity between the message of Jesus and the kerygma of the church. Robinson believes that Bultmann, in response to the new quest, has shifted his position. “Bultmann himself seems to have moved with the ‘post-Bultmannian’ move of his pupils with regard to the historical Jesus and the kerygma.”[222] The German editions expand this introduction to include lengthy footnotes that enlarge the argument and respond to criticisms.
The first chapter of the New Quest discusses “The Impossibility and Illegitimacy of the Original Quest.” In this chapter Robinson presents a definition of the historical Jesus: “What can be known of Jesus of Nazareth by means of the scientific methods of the historian.”[223] The old quest tried to avoid the Christ of dogma and rediscover Jesus as he actually lived. But as Schweitzer shows, the quest reproduced the reflections of modern expectations and missed the Jesus of history. The old questers, according to Robinson, presupposed a positivistic historiography, but subsequent research demonstrated that the sources were not amenable to that sort of investigation. The sources were not factual reports but devotional and didactic literature designed to meet the needs of the early Christian community. Not only was the old quest impossible; Robinson is convinced it was illegitimate. The center of the gospel, he insists, was not the Jesus of historical reconstruction but the kerygma; the kerygma called for authentic faith, not for an inauthentic search for historical proof. “Now it became increasingly clear that ‘the historical Jesus,’ the scholarly reconstruction of Jesus’ biography by means of objective historical method, was just such an attempt to build one’s existence upon that which is under man’s control and invariably at his disposal.”[224]
In the next chapter Robinson presents “The Possibility of the New Quest.” He is sure that attempts to resurrect the old quest—for example, C. H. Dodd’s understanding of the kerygma as a collection of data—are doomed to failure.[225] However, Robinson is convinced that a new quest is possible on the basis of a new view of history and the self. This new view of history, according to Robinson, focuses on the encounter with persons and with the meaning of human existence. This new understanding of history is analogous to the proper understanding of the kerygma; the kerygma is also concerned with self-understanding, and “Jesus’ understanding of his existence, his selfhood, and thus in the higher sense his life, is a possible subject of historical research.”[226]
The next chapter of Robinson’s book is devoted to “The Legitimacy of the New Quest.” He argues that the new quest is legitimate and relevant because theology, like the new view of history and the kerygma, is concerned with human existence. “Man’s quest for meaningful existence is his highest stimulus to scholarly enquiry; consequently a serious quest of the historical Jesus must have meaning in terms of man’s quest for meaningful existence.”[227] Whereas the old quest attempted to secure faith by historical research, the new quest confesses one’s willingness to put his or her faith into question. Robinson believes the new quest is facilitated by demythologizing. This method, by looking through the objective mythical form of the message, exposes the existential meaning of the kerygma.
From this position at which Bultmann has arrived it is only one step to the ‘post-Bultmannian’ recognition that the actual demythologizing which went on within the primitive Church was the ‘historicizing’ process taking place within the kerygma and leading to the writing of Gospels. . . . It is simply because Germany’s leading exegetes have correctly understood the demythologized meaning of the New Testament kerygma, that they have looked through the kerygma not directly to a principle inherent in human nature, but rather to Jesus as the event in which transcendence becomes possible.[228]
Robinson not only believes the new quest is legitimate, he also insists it is necessary because of the new situation in which we find ourselves, and because of the nature of the kerygma itself. “It is this concern of the kerygma for the historicity of Jesus which necessitates the new quest.”[229] Robinson concludes:
Thus the kerygma is largely uninterested in historiography of the nineteenth-century kind, for the kerygma does not lie on the level of objectively verifiable fact. But it is decisively interested in historiography of the twentieth-century kind, for the kerygma consists in the meaning of a certain historical event and thus coincides with the goal of modern historiography.[230]
Thus all the pieces fit together—modern historiography, demythologizing exegesis, the existential understanding of the self, the meaning of the kerygma, Jesus’s self-understanding—all shaped into a radiant mosaic reflecting the Jesus of history.
A final chapter in the original English edition deals with “The Procedure of the New Quest.” The new quest, according to Robinson, continues to use the method of historical criticism; the method becomes illegitimate only when it fails to recognize its limitations. For example, the method must acknowledge that the sources of the Jesus tradition are not perfectly reliable as history. Nevertheless, says Robinson, “the material whose historicity has been established is sufficient in quality and quantity to make a historical encounter with Jesus possible.”[231] Moreover, he believes the new quest can cut through some of the old clichés such as the contrast: “Jesus preached the kingdom; Paul preached Christ.” According to the new quest there is more continuity than contrast: Jesus’ call to decision implied a Christology, and the kerygma’s call to faith presupposed the life and teaching of Jesus. The point of correlation and continuity is the self-understanding of Jesus and the self-understanding of faith. “If the existential decision originally called for by the kerygma corresponds to the existential decision called for by Jesus, then it is apparent that the kerygma continues Jesus’ message; and if the decision called for by Jesus as well as by the kerygma was at the basis of his own selfhood, then it is apparent that his person corresponds to its christology.”[232]
Thus the deeper meaning of Jesus’ message is: in accepting one’s death there is life for others; in suffering, there is glory; in submitting to judgement, one finds grace; in accepting one’s finitude resides the only transcendence. It is this existential meaning latent in Jesus’ message which is constitutive of his selfhood, expresses itself in his action, and is finally codified in the Church’s kerygma.[233]
Robinson believes that the new quest is effective because it combines modern historical method and faithful commitment to the kerygma. He says that “the selfhood of Jesus is equally available to us—apparently both via historical research and via the kerygma—as a possible understanding of our existence.”[234]
In the second German edition Robinson expands the last chapter of the first edition into a new chapter and adds another. The new chapter, “Individual Problems of the New Research for the Historical Jesus,” further explicates his idea of Jesus’ understanding of existence. At his baptism Jesus, according to Robinson, abandoned his old understanding and embraced a new self-understanding. Robinson believes this new understanding corresponds to the understanding of existence in the early Christian kerygma. The old notion of a distinction between Jesus and Paul missed the eschatological: the act of God that both Jesus and Paul proclaim.[235] According to Robinson the preaching of Jesus demanded an existential decision, and this call to decision corresponds to Paul’s call for faith.
Robinson’s New Quest sparked a conflagration that swept over the theological landscape.[236] In an essay added to the 1983 edition of the New Quest, Robinson summarizes “The Recent Debate on the ‘New Quest.’ ”[237] This essay was originally presented as a paper at the annual meeting of the National Association of Biblical Instructors in 1961 as part of a symposium on “The New Quest of the Historical Jesus.” At the outset Robinson reproached American scholarship for its tardiness in recognizing the significance of the new quest. He pulled no punches: as a example of the moribund old quest he cited the recently published The Prophet of Nazareth (1961), whose author, Morton S. Enslin, was present as a participant in the Symposium. In contrast to American paralysis Robinson praised the activity of Europeans since the appearance of Käsemann’s pioneering paper of 1954.[238] He illustrates this with reference to the 710-page symposium on The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ edited by Ristow and Matthiae with contributions from a host of scholars.[239] Robinson gives special attention to Bultmann’s response to the new quest in his essay, “The Primitive Christian Kerygma and the Historical Jesus.”[240] In this essay Bultmann maintains that the preaching of Paul and message of John prove that the historical Jesus is not essential to the kerygma. Robinson criticizes Bultmann’s claim that the kerygma does not go beyond the mere “dass” (“that”) of the historical event:
In the situation in which the synoptic authors found themselves, one could no longer maintain, as Paul could, the “dass,” the historicalness of the worshipped Lord, merely by repeated assertion of the fact of his historicalness. In their situation—and ours—an emphasis upon the “dass,” indispensable as it is for the kerygma and for Bultmann, could only be made in terms of the Jesus tradition and not by ignoring that tradition through an exclusive proclamation of the Easter gospel. In their situation, the synoptic writers could retain the “dass” only by maintaining the “was,” that is, only by making corrective use of the Jesus tradition, by replacing the un-Christian understanding of existence, which had invaded the Jesus tradition, with a Christian understanding of existence.[241]
Robinson concludes that Bultmann’s failure to recognize the importance of the historical Jesus for the kerygma has serious consequences. Thus the basic refutation of Bultmann’s position on the relevance of the historical Jesus is that if carried to its ultimate consequence it would prove too much. It would bring to an end the scholarly study of the Bible and theological scholarship in general as they would have no function for the church.[242]
Among the most caustic critics of Robinson’s version of the new quest are Van A. Harvey and Schubert M. Ogden in their essay, “How New is the ‘New Quest of the Historical Jesus’?”[243] Much of this essay is concerned with the interpretation of Bultmann. Contra Robinson, Harvey and Ogden contend that Bultmann’s position had not undergone a shift. As Ogden says in his contribution to the symposium of 1961, “Bultmann’s present view on the problem of the historical Jesus is essentially the same as it has been for over three decades.”[244] Harvey and Ogden also contend that Bultmann believes the historical encounter with Jesus provides a new understanding of human existence but not (contra Robinson) Jesus’ understanding of his own existential self-hood; the latter is not accessible to historical investigation. These critics also address Robinson’s claim that new historical method is appropriate for interpreting Jesus because it is concerned with the meaning of the self. This indicates to Harvey and Ogden that the new quest, like the old, attempts to ground faith in historical research. Moreover, the concern of the new quest with the existential selfhood of Jesus seems similar to the old quest’s preoccupation with the inner life and personality of Jesus.[245] To Harvey and Ogden the new quest appears to rely on the same sort of data—chronology, relation of Jesus to John the Baptist, etc.—as the old. They conclude:
The question remains, therefore, how new the new quest is in relation to the old quest of which Robinson is so critical. If the old quest was illegitimate because it rested on the unchristian search for security, the new quest apparently opens the door to an anxiety that historiography will disconfirm the kerygma and so can hardly be different in principle in its own motivation. Likewise, if the old quest was impossible because the sources do not yield the kind of chronological information necessary to write a life of Jesus, the new quest seems to presuppose the same kind of information and so, to that extent, to be equally impossible.[246]
To investigate the fine points of this dispute is beyond the scope of this survey. However, as regards the interpretation of Bultmann, his essay in response to the new quest does not seem to give much ground. As Harvey and Ogden have shown, the new quest is not all that new; it has certain similarities with the old: the use of historical method and the importance of historical data. Also Robinson’s version of the quest, wherein the concern is with the self-understanding of Jesus, seems much like the old concern with the inner life of Jesus and the question of messianic consciousness, concerns that seem to elude both old and new historiography. Nevertheless, the new questers suppose they are doing something new, and to those who review the work of Schweitzer some differences seem to emerge. Perhaps instead of “the new quest,” this quest should be known as the post-Bultmannian quest. What can be known about the historical Jesus after Bultmann by scholars who belong to the Bultmann school? Surely Jesus must be more than a bare historical “that.” Surely there is continuity between Jesus and the early Christian proclamation of Jesus. Yet for his followers Bultmann is surely correct in his claim that faith cannot be based on fact or on the reconstruction of history by fallible criticism. In contrast to the historical positivism of the old quest, the new quest does assume a new view of history like that proposed in Bultmann’s Presence of Eternity.[247] The Jesus of the new quest, as Bornkamm’s book shows, is more modest than the biographies of the old quest. The new quest, too, is more aware of the historical distance, more cautious about creating a Jesus in a modern image. Nevertheless, the new questers, although viewing Jesus in his historical setting, seek a Jesus who is relevant for their own faith. The problem of the relation of faith and history remains a persistent concern of NT research.
As well as his work on the new quest, Robinson also made a significant contribution to the understanding of the “new hermeneutic.”[248] This new approach to the ontology of interpretation had been promoted by Gerhard Ebeling and Ernst Fuchs. Inspired by the thought of the “later” Heidegger, these two theologians were concerned with the theology of language.[249] They believed that existence is linguistic and faith occurs in language. According to Fuchs, hermeneutical theology is faith’s doctrine of language; it is concerned with the meaning of the word of God. The word of God speaks in history; it is speech event (Sprachereignis) or word event (Wortereignis). Fuchs believes that the speech event is the saving event, in which the historical Jesus is heard as word of address.[250]
Another important American contributor to the development of the new hermeneutic is Robert W. Funk. Throughout his career Funk made a variety of contributions to NT research including NT Greek grammar and leadership of the “Jesus Seminar”; these will be reviewed later in this volume.[251] The “early Funk” presents his hermeneutic in Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God: The Problem of Language in the New Testament and Contemporary Theology.[252] In this book he presents an introduction to language and hermeneutic in relation to the biblical idea of the word of God. Funk observes that hermeneutic is engaged in “translation.” Translation is necessary, he points out, because of the distance between the world of the Bible and the world of the interpreter. The ancient language of faith does not speak to the modern human being. In hermeneutic the language of faith must be translated into the language of non-faith so the non-believer can hear. Theology, according to the new hermeneutic, is not primarily language about God but language from God. God speaks in human words, and the word of God became flesh in Jesus Christ.
The members of the Bultmann school are just that: pupils of Rudolf Bultmann. To be sure, they deviate from the teachings of the master—Ernst Käsemann more than Günther Bornkamm. According to Käsemann, Bultmann’s existentialist anthropology should be replaced by a theocentric apocalyptic. For both Käsemann and Bornkamm more can be said about the narrative of the life of Jesus, adding significant content to the dass of the event of revelation and salvation. Bornkamm can stress the person of Jesus and write a Jesus book that looks a little like a biography. Both scholars emphasize the importance of the theology of the cross, but that is evident in Bultmann’s essential scandal. Käsemann and Bornkamm agree with Bultmann on the use of historical critical method. Indeed, Käsemann can go beyond the master in radical criticism, for instance, with his detection of shades of Docetism in the Fourth Gospel. Bornkamm’s use of redaction criticism represents a move beyond the historical criticism of Bultmann, though it may be implicit there. Käsemann and Bornkamm share the history of religion methodology with special attention to Gnosticism. They support Bultmann’s affirmation of the heritage of Luther and the doctrine of justification by faith while refusing to construe it anthropologically or existentially.
James M. Robinson and the Americans play the role of communicators in the Bultmann school; they ring the bell to call new students. They are especially concerned with the existential understanding of the new quest and the new hermeneutic. Not all Americans welcomed the message. Besides the philosophical-theological critique of scholars like Harvey and Ogden, some older scholars were offended by the seeming arrogance of the “young Turks.” Nevertheless, the Bultmannians provoked significant debate. Echoes of the Bultmann school would be heard again in the American biblical theology movement, in the later British biblical theologians, and in the American scholars in the last chapter of this book.
40-8. “One Lord Alone: A Sermon of Protest,” ExpTim 110 (1999): 249–51. ↵
40-10. “Was ich als deutscher Theologe,” 244. ↵
40-17. See HNTR 2: 140–41, 247–51. ↵
40-18. Leib und Leib Christi, 183. ↵
40-38. Käsemann, “New Testament Questions of Today,” in New Testament Questions of Today, 16. ↵
40-40. Testament of Jesus, 1. ↵
40-45. “The Spirit and the Letter,” 143. ↵
40-46. “Thoughts on the Present Controversy,” 277. ↵
40-48. “Problem of the Historical Jesus,” 24. ↵
40-62. See Gisel, Vérité et histoire, 221–41. ↵
40-65. “Beginnings of New Testament Theology,” 96. ↵
40-72. See Zahl, Rechtfertigungslehre Ernst Käsemanns. ↵
40-76. “Righteousness of God,” 181. ↵
40-79. “Justification and Salvation,” 75. ↵
40-112. “Heresy of Colossians,” 126. ↵
40-117. The New Testament: A Guide, 142. ↵
40-120. “Der Philipperbrief als paulinische Briefsammlung,” Geschichte und Glaube 2, 195–205. ↵
40-123. “Letter to the Romans,” 27–28. ↵
40-124. See pp. 332–42 below. ↵
40-126. “Stilling of the Storm,” 56. ↵
40-128. Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, 11. ↵
40-130. “End-Expectation and Church,” 32. ↵
40-134. “More Excellent Way,” 187. ↵
40-136. “Missionary Stance,” 202. ↵
40-139. “Sin, Law and Death,” 100. ↵
40-143. “Der Paraklet im Johannes-Evangelium,” Geschichte und Glaube 1, 68–89, at 88. ↵
40-147. See Gerd Theissen, “Theologie und Exegese,” 311–14. ↵
40-148. “Das Wort Jesu vom Bekennen,” Geschichte und Glaube 1, 25–36. ↵
40-153. Gesetz und Schöpfung im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934). ↵
40-159. “Der Lohngedanke im Neuen Testament,” Studien zu Antike und Urchristentum, 69–92, at 78. ↵
40-165. Jesus of Nazareth, 9. ↵
40-167. Jesus of Nazareth, 22. ↵
40-173. Ibid., 105; see 10th ed., 92–93. ↵
40-174. Jesus of Nazareth, 143. ↵
40-201. Quoted in Patterson, “Robinson,” xxii. ↵
40-204. James M. Robinson, “Jesus’ Understanding of History,” JBR 33 (1955): 17–25. ↵
40-205. Problem of History in Mark (1957), 15; (1982), 63. ↵
40-211. James M. Robinson, “The Meaning and Validation of Biblical Faith,” JBR 27 (1959): 233–42. ↵
40-220. James M. Robinson, Kerygma und historischer Jesus (Zürich: Zwingli, 1960). ↵
40-239. Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus (1960); see n. 686 above. ↵
40-240. See ch. 2, n. 155 above. ↵
40-241. New Quest: And Other Essays, 165–66. ↵
40-243. In The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ, 197–242. ↵
40-244. “Bultmann and the ‘New Quest,’” JBR 30 (1962): 209–18, at 210. ↵