734. Bultmann's point in distinguishing between ...

scanned pdf

Bultmann's point in distinguishing between the "what" and the "that" of Jesus can be stated (and I believe, stated better) in terms of my distinctions among "authority," "source of authority," "subject of faith," " object of faith," "ground of faith," and so all.

By the "what" of Jesus is properly meant Jesus insofar as he is a subject of faith and witness, and hence, at most, the primary authority for Christian faith and witness, as distinct from its explicit primal authorizing source. One may also say that it is Jesus as the ground of faith and witness who can never (logically, justifiably) become the object thereof as well. By the "that" of Jesus, on the other hand, is properly meant the ground of Christian faith and witness who is also, at least implicitly, their object, and hence the explicit primal source authorizing them.

Likewise, using the same distinctions, one can state very clearly and precisely what is properly meant by the Kählerian distinction between "the so-called historical Jesus" and "the historic, biblical Christ." This is so, at any rate, if the judgment is sound that, in speaking of the second, Kähhler intends to speak precisely of Jesus as Jesus is thought and spoken of by the biblical witnesses, however diverse or variable the christological concepts and symbols in terms of which they express his decisive significance.

Obviously, the underlying insight here is that the distinction between "the historical Jesus" and "the Christ of the kerygma," construed as a theological distinction, is properly understood as a distinction between two different ways of understanding and speaking of one and the same Jesus. The difference between these ways is that between understanding and speaking of Jesus as himself the subject of his own faith and witness and understanding and speaking of Jesus as at least the implicit object of Christian faith and witness, because he is their explicit primal authorizing source. On the one way of understanding and speaking, Jesus is a man very much like ourselves who believes in God in a certain way and undertakes to bear witness to God on the basis of his belief. On the other way of understanding and speaking, Jesus is a man radically unlike ourselves through whom God is decisively self-revealed to us so as to be believed in and witnessed to in a certain way -- specifically, the way that can be fully explicated only insofar as Jesus himself becomes the explicit object of our faith as well as its explicit primal authorizing source and, in that sense, its ground.

Three further reflections: (1) The situation in this whole matter is evidently exactly parallel to the one in which Bultmann denies that historical-critical method has any bearing whatever on the claim that the Bible is God's word. (2) Clearly, a Jesus who decisively re-presents God may be just as much "the historical Jesus" as the Jesus who perfectly actualizes God -- which is why my own christological efforts were, for a long time, more a part of the problem than a part of the solution! (This, no doubt, is just what Bultmann meant when he wrote me, "You have no proclamation!") (3) The historical Jesus, as Schmithals rightly insists, is law not gospel, because the historical Jesus is at most an example for us to follow -- one whose faith is to be our faith, whose witness is to be our witness, and so on.

1976; rev. 30 October 2006