Page History

...

Marxsen allowed as how I succeed in showing in my Bultmann essay (1984) that the usual understanding of Bultmann's christology is false. He also allowed that, within limits, the view I rightly attribute to Bultmann is close to his own.

But he also made clear to me that he believes that there are certain things about Bultmann's typical argument that open him to being thus misunderstood. Specifically, there are three such things:

1. Bultmann fails to recognize that there were two earliest communities, not one. (To my direct question whether he himself hadn't once operated on the same assumption, Marxsen answered, "Yes, of course!")

...

Of course, I have never argued that one should simply take Bultmann's position. In fact, I have allowed, perhaps even more strongly than Marxsen himself is willing to do, that Bultmann has sometimes expressed his position in ways that hardly do justice to it. The fact remains, however, that at the crucial point -– whether Christian faith has its primal source in the kerygma or in Jesus – Bultmann is on the side of those who say Jesus, notwithstanding his insistence that the primary norm of Christian faith, witness, and theology is not the witness of Jesus, or Jesus himself, but rather the witness of the apostles.-

Marxsen's own position is not essentially different, although he maintains – in my opinion, rightly – that there was not one form, but two forms, of early Christian witness and that the relatively earlier of these two forms is properly the primary norm of Christian faith, witness, and theology. Why? Simply because implicit christology represents "first statements," while explicit christology consists in "second statements," first statements being related to second as "foundation" (=Grundlage, Basis) is related to "consequence" (=Konsequenz).