The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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For Bultmann, as much as for Marxsen, Devenish, or me, the decisive thing about the kerygma of the earliest community was not the message that the Messiah is coming in general, or even that he is coming soon, but that this Jesus, this crucified one, is coming as the Messiah. In other words, even for the earliest community, the decision had already fallen in the past with the historical person-event Jesus. Even for them, the historical person-event Jesus was the decisive saving act of God. And this was so, as Bultmann insists, regardless of the extent to which they were explicitly clear about it. Implicit in their kerygma as kerygma was what became explicit in the kerygma-theology of Paul: the new aeon has already broken in in the historical Jesus.

28 January 2009

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