860b. One can argue historically . . .

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One can argue historically, it seems to me, that Bultmann is right that, "while it is true that Jesus did not demand faith in his own person, he did demand faith in his word" (EF: 195).

But, be that as it may, he is almost certainly correct historically that "the early community understood Jesus' word—and this means, not its timeless content of ideas, but his having spoken it and their having been addressed by it—as the decisive act of God" (GV, 1:204 f.). In other words, whatever may or may not have been true of Jesus' kerygma, the Jesus-kerygma of the early church represents Jesus—in the "that" of his proclamation and ministry—as the decisive re-presentation of God.

Moreover, Bultmann himself, in his way, also points to the origin of the earliest church, and thus of Christian faith and witness, not at Easter, in the disciples' experience of Jesus' death and resurrection, but during his earthly ministry, in their prior experience of his words and deeds. Neither the question of decision raised by the cross nor the answer given to this question by the disciples' faith in Jesus' resurrection was completely unprecedented. On the contrary, the same question of decision had already been raised by Jesus' claim to have been sent by God, and it had already been answered by the disciples' decision to "follow" him prior to his crucifixion (TNT: 47).

But if this is so, Bultmann, in his way, evidently allows for the possibility of Jesus-kerygma, as expressing the earliest, because pre-Good-Friday-Easter, response to the "that" of Jesus' own kerygma.

19 May 1997