782. It seems clear that all ...

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1. It seems clear that all of Bultmann's statements to the effect that "only in preaching is the cross God's saving act" (Existence and Faith: 139), or "not the historical Jesus, but Jesus Christ, the one who is preached, is the Lord" (Glauben und Verstehen 1: 208) are made in a context where he is arguing against the supposition that preaching is merely a historical report and that it is the historical (or cosmic) events thereby reported to which one must recur in order to confront the salvation event.

2. But, then, it is arguable that none of these statements is intended to take account of the unique situation of the first proclaimers, but rather all have to do with our situation today, or, more generally, with the situation of any and all disciples at "second hand," who come after and depend upon the witness of the first proclaimers. The proof of this, it seems to me, is that, when Bultmann does take account of the unique situation of the first proclaimers, he expressly allows that the ground of their faith was not the Christian proclamation, but their encounter with the historical Jesus.

3. It is also clear to me that Bultmann never cuts the preaching, or the proclamation, off from the salvation event that is its "criterion," that alone "legitimates" it, and so on.

4. What does this all mean? It means, I suspect, that one has to be more careful than Bultmann himself characteristically is in making the point he wishes to make. The truth in his claim that "Jesus Christ encounters us nowhere else than in the kerygma" (GV 1: 208) is that Jesus encounters us as (the) Christ only in the significance that belongs to him as historical person-event and that it is the whole point of the kerygma to express.

n.d.; rev. 28 December 2001