879. According to Grass . . .

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According to Grass, Bultmann's christology has been criticized, above all, at two points.

(1) it treats the kerygma as something in itself, unrelated to the historical Jesus; and

(2) it forbids any ontological assertions in christology, allowing only existential assertions that attest Christ within the limits of his significance for us.

Grass goes on to comment, rightly, that Bultmann's students have corrected their teacher on the first point by renewing the quest of the historical Jesus. It is not clear, however, whether the theological interest in this quest has more to do with legitimating the Christ-kerygma even while giving it the primary weight, or whether it has more to do with making the historical Jesus the real ground of faith in the way in which Ritschl and Herrmann undertook to do this.

I can make clear sense of the distinction Grass makes here only by supposing that anyone having the first kind of interest would be open to Grass' own insistence on the resurrection as well as the historical Jesus as essential to the ground of faith, whereas anyone having the second kind of interest would see the ground of faith solely in the historical Jesus. But I wonder whether either of these alternatives is adequate -- or, alternatively, whether both of them may express a legitimate as well as an illegitimate motive. Clearly, you can't get incarnation even out of perfect immanence; and to this extent, the Ritschl-Herrmann move is hardly possible. But, on the other hand, Easter is not completely novel and unprecedented, because the question to which the Easter faith is the answer was posed by the that of Jesus' proclamation before it was posed by the that of his crucifixion (indeed, this had to have been so, else the crucifixion could never have posed this question at all); and the answer to this question was given first by the disciples' following Jesus during his lifetime before it was given on Easter itself (indeed, the content of the Easter faith is that the that of Jesus' proclamation was already the decisive eschatological event).

The great advantage of Bultmann's position (and this is where Grass misleads in assimilating it so unqualifiedly to Herrmann's) is that it manages to express all that is legitimate in these two positions, while avoiding all that is illegitimate in them.