Page History

...

But Marxsen seems to me right in insisting that the distinction Bultmann thus tries to make between Jesus and Paul really won't stand up if it is taken, as BUltmannBultmann evidently takes it, to be a "real difference," as distinct from being largely verbal, or, at most, a difference of emphasis. For in one respect, Paul as much as Jesus lives in the time of expectation, while in an other respect Jesus as much as Paul lives in the time of fulfilmentfulfillment. "Jesus announces the present breaking in of the kingly rule of God (thought of as in principle something that is coming) (Mark 1:15). Paul says that, amidst the night that still persists, the Christians live as children of the coming day (1 Th 5:5). Thus both say that what counts is to accept God and God's salvation now, in the midst of this world that is passing away. . . . It was not Paul who first summoned people to this faith; Jesus had already done so" (_JC_: 51). Thus, while it is formally correct that Paul's statement in 2 Cor 5:17 about "being in Christ" is a later way of putting things, "materially, this Pauline statement holds true already of the period of the earthly Jesus." "Whoever gives oneself over to Jesus of Nazareth gives oneself _along+through with him_+ \[I would prefer to say "through him"\] to the inbreaking of God's rule and then lives 'a new creation.' For this person (again and again, in each such act), the 'old' that has surrounded him or her has 'passed away.' It is no longer determinative. Therefore, the 'new' has actually come" (_JC_: 73).

...

Where Marxsen, for his part, is seriously misled, while Bultmann is perfectly clear, is in inferring that those who responded to the earthly Jesus with the faith expressed in the Jesus-kerygma did so "because they experienced how Jesus gave himself to God's inbreaking rule in their behalf" JC: 74), because they "experienced that he himself gave himself over to his announcement concerning time. He risked living the rule of God again and again in the midst of the old aeon" JC: 66). Bultmann insists, on the contrary – -- and with complete correctness – -- that no one can experience the obedience and love of another in the way in which Marxsen evidently assumes that one can – -- and that the apostles did. I can indeed experience the obedience and love of another insofar as through her or him I am myself set free for a new life of obedience and love. But this I can experience only insofar as I accept the other person as the re-presentation to me of God's liberating love; and in order to do this I in no way have to experience her or his own faith, which I could never possibly experience, anyway.

The case is similar to the two different senses in which one can talk about being crucified with Christ. Such talk can be understood in one sense as an imitation of Christ's example of self-sacrifice. But in another sense, to let oneself be crucified with Christ is, as Bultmann puts it, to accept as valid for oneself the judgment that is spoken in the cross (EF: 197). If there is any sense in which it is proper to talk about Christian faith's being a matter of believing
with Christ, or as Christ (cf. JC: 37), it is in the sense of accepting as valid for oneself the possibility of faith that is decisively re-presented through Christ.

...