By Schubert Ogden
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This is entirely consistent, of course, with the point Marxsen made long since against Bultmann's denial that Paul's understanding in 2 Corinthians 5:17 ff. is what Jesus himself had already meant or been understood to mean in the Jesus-kerygma. _Formally_, Marxsen replied, Bultmann is correct: "Being in Christ" is a later way of putting things, presupposing, as it does, Easter and the post-Easter Christ-kerygma. But _materially,_ Paul's statement "holds true already of the period of the earthly Jesus," and thus of the Jesus-kerygma." Jesus announces the present breaking in of the kingly rule of God (thought of as in principle something that is coming) (Mk 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. This is always a risk, because appearances speak against it. Yet this is precisely what faith is. It was not Paul who first summoned people into this faith; Jesus had already done so." "Whoever gives oneself over to Jesus of Nazareth gives oneself along with 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: 51, 73; _Wer sich auf Jesus von Nazareth einläßt, l{_}{_}äß{_}{_}t sich mit ihm zusammen auf einbrechende Gottesherrschaft ein--und dann lebt er neue Schöpfung. Für ihn ist (immer wieder, bei jedem Einlassen) das ihm umgebende Alte_ _vergangen. Es bestimmit ihn nicht mehr. Darum ist wirklich Neues geworden_ \[_Ch-p_: 55\]). |
I fmd find it significant, incidentally, that Paul says both that God "reconciled us to himself through Christ" and that "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself." This indicates, I take it, either that Paul is saying the same thing in two different ways somewhat as I do when I say that Jesus is "the decisive re-presentation of the meaning of ultimate reality for us," meaning by "us," not only "us as Christians," but "us as human beings," or "the world"-- or that he is saying the two different things that other places in the passage indicate he has in mind. I mean the places where "us" clearly means not all of us as human beings, but only those of us to whom God has given, or entrusted, the "message of reconciliation," whether apostles only, or, as I should argue with Furnish et al., all Christians simply as such.
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