The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Why shouldn't "the canon before the canon" comprise an "epistle" as well as a "gospel" component, analogous to the New Testament canon itself? Why shouldn't the earliest and therefore "apostolic" witness include, for example, something like 1 Corinthians 15:3 f. as well as the logia forming the earliest stratum of the synoptic tradition? In short, why shouldn't it include "Christ-kerygma" as well as "Jesus-kerygma"?

This is not to question the logical priority of the subject of the christological assertion to the predicates thereof. What the Jesus-kerygma explicitly asserts is only implied by the Christ-kerygma, while what the Christ-kerygma explicitly asserts is only implied by the Jesus-kerygma. Where the two kerygmata coincide, however, is in both being about Jesus, i.e., the person-event that is the origin as well as the principle of the church and its witness of faith. Moreover, as the gospels were rightly taken to be prior to the epistles, so the Jesus-kerygma may be rightly taken to be prior to the Christ-kerygma as well as the mixed form, the Jesus-Christ-kerygma.

So there is no need to withdraw the claim that the witness documented by the earliest layer of the synoptic tradition has a certain priority relative to the witness documented by earliest pre-Pauline traditions reconstructible from the authentic letters of Paul.

10 March 1975; rev. 22 September 2002

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