Page History

...

How is Jesus understood, according to the summmary summary in Mk 1:14 f.?

Is he understood, as Marxsen claims, as "one who in the midst of the old age again and again lived the rule of God," or rather "as one who in the midst of the old age again and again decisively represented (and represents) the possibility of our living God's rule?

In either case, he would have been understood as having opposed himself to the old age and provoked its resistance against his working and therewith against himself.

...

Thus the upholders of the "divine order" turned against him. And hee he being opposed to one another. On the one from their standpoint, they had every good reason to do so, since two verydifferent very different "conceptions" wereside were side stood the representatives of an order that had gradually established itself n the course of history. On the other side, what was at issue was notorientation to this order, or to the law determining it, but rather an immediate orienation orientation of God.

This is not to imply that the old age is identical with a world that is (morally) corrupt through and through. It is not simply a world in which there is nothing but murder and killing, stealing and adultery, lying and deception. Naturally, these things are also present in it. But the old age is caricatured if they alone are taken to characterize it. For it is also a world in which human beings definitely can and do live in an ordered way; and if this order is broken, it itself is definitely in position to limit the costs and to restore itself. The situation becomes dangerous only when orderly, upstanding persons in the old age assert that all this is life in accordance with God's will, while yet others respond by asserting over against them that none of this has anything really to do with God. Now there is a conflict, because there is no agreement about God. Who is defining God rightly?

The conflict begins verbally and argumentatively -- witness the controversies that Jesus risks involving himself in -- but it does not end there (cf. Mk 3:6). Because what is at issue III the conflict is theology, the question is, Who is rightly defining God? And this question is answered christologically: on the basis of his working, as in the controversies, which is understood as eschatological working, Jesus himself is qualified as the Son of Man. It is the Son of Man who has power on earth to forgive sins (Mk 2:10), and who is also Lord of the sabbath (Mk 2:28). But it is also the Son of Man whom the upholders of law and order want to do away with in the name of their God.