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Discipleship and Belief in Jesus as Lord from Jesus to the Hellenistic Church1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

E. Schweizer  and
H. F. Peacock
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Extract

The Church to which we are permitted to proclaim the Gospel is no longer the Palestinian Church of the time of Jesus, for whom the real goal of life was to pass safely through the judgement of God. Neither is the Church any longer that of the time of Luther, weighed down by its consciousness of sin and the medieval fear of judgement. Today the message of forgiveness of sins answers a question which, to a large extent, has disappeared from the consciousness of modern man. The modern world is, however, similar in many ways to the Hellenistic world into which the Christian message entered with the proclamation of Paul. The unity of heaven and earth, as it had been perceived in the classic period, is destroyed for the Hellenistic man. The world for him is controlled by powers and forces to which he has been handed over helpless. Ananke or Heimarmene (Fate or Destiny) determines everything and the action of the individual is incapable of altering their established course. The ever-repeated movement of the heavenly bodies, once conceived as the expression of divine harmony, awakens now the concept of a giant machine which mercilessly completes its revolution, deaf to the cries of men. Of course, the Stoic seeks to flee back into the old harmony between God and the world and for that reason declares the whole world to be his polis. But even he knows that everything in this polis is determined by the great powers, their mighty armies, and their modern weapons and no longer by his individual decision. Thus the desires and longings of the Hellenistic man are concentrated upon liberation from the demonic powers of this world and upon participation in the upper, godly world.

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Articles
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New Testament Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 1955 , pp. 87 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1955

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References

2 Prümm, K., Religionsgeschichtliches Handbuch für den Raum der altchristlichen Umwelt (1943), p. 440Google Scholar; Braun, H., Plutarchs Kritik am Aberglauben (Der Anfang, 9, 1948)Google Scholar; Jonas, H., Gnosis and spätantiker Geist, i (1934), pp. 141 ff.Google Scholar

3 Bultmann, R., Das Urchristentum (1949), pp. 164 f.Google Scholar; Grant, F. C., ed., Hellenistic Religions (1953), p. xviiiGoogle Scholar; Nilsson, M. P., Geschichte der griechischen Religion, ii (1950), pp. 190 ff., 259, 264 ff., 286 ff. 484 f.Google Scholar; Prümm, , Religionsgeschichtliches Handbuch…, pp. 436 ff.Google Scholar; Stoicorum vet. fragmenta, ed. Arnim, J. v. (1921–1924), Zeno fr. i, 102, Chrysippus ii, 1076Google Scholar; cf. the references iv, 15, 46f., Ps. Aristoteles, de mundo 7; Menander fr. 275, 482; Philemon fr. 137.

4 Prümm, , Religionsgeschichtliches Handbuch…, p. 437Google Scholar; also Scott, E. F., The Varieties of New Testament Religion (1946), pp. 71 ff.Google Scholar

1 Rengstorf, K. H., Theol. Wörterbuch, ed. Kittel, , iv, pp. 447 ff.Google Scholar

2 Matt. xi. 19; cf. Mark ii. 14ff; Matt. xxi. 31f.; Luke iii. 12; vii. 29; xv. 1; xviii. 10ff.; xix. 1ff. and Deut. xxi. 20.

3 Mark x. 28; cf. i. 18, 20; ii. 14; x. 21; Luke ix. 57ff.; also Mark viii. 34ff.

4 For examples see Schweizer, , Erniedrigung and Erhöhung…, sect. 5.Google Scholar

5 Cf. especially Käsemann, E., Zeitschr. für Theol. u. Kirche (1954), pp. 144ff.Google Scholar

1 For the argument see Schweizer, , Erniedrigung und Erhöhung…, sect. 10e, especially n. 388Google Scholar; so also the recent book of Fuller, R. H., The Mission and Achievement of Jesus.Google Scholar

2 Bornkamm, G. (Wort and Dienst, Jahrbuch der theol. Schule Bethel, 1948, 49–54) has shown how Matthew transformed the miracle-story of the storm on the lake into a treatise about the discipleship in the church of Christ.Google Scholar

3 Rom. xv. 1–3; I Cor. xi. 1; II Cor. viii. 9; Col. iii. 13; Eph. v. 5, 25; cf. Lofthouse, W. F., Exp. Times, lxv (1954), pp. 338f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wingren, G., Theol. Lit.zeitung (1950), pp. 385 ff.Google Scholar

1 That Jesus himself formulated this thought appears to me, however, quite unlikely; Mark x. 45 stands completely isolated and has in Luke xxii. 27 what must be an older parallel without the thought of atonement; that the covenant idea in the Lord's Supper is probably earlier than the ‘for many’ in Mark xiv. 24, I have tried to show in my survey, ‘Das Herrenmahl im N.T.’, Theol. Lit.zeitung (1954), pp. 580 ff.

2 Also for the sins of others: II Macc. vii. 37f.; IV Macc. i. 11; vi. 28f.; xvii. 20ff.; (H. Strack-) Billerbeck, P., Kommentar zum N.T. aus Talmud und Midrasch, ii (1924), pp. 279 ff.Google Scholar; Moore, G. F., Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, i (1927), pp. 546 ff.Google Scholar; further, Schweizer, , Erniedrigung und Erhöhung…, sect. 5e.Google Scholar

3 For all examples see ibid., sect. 9.

4 Ezek. xxxiv. 23f.; xxxvii. 24f.; cf. Ps. lxxxix. 4, 21; Jer. xxxiii. 21f., 26; Zech. iii. 8; Hag. ii. 23.

5 Assuming that late communion texts have not here been interpolated as Peterson, E., Rivista di Archeologia Christiana, xxvii (1951), pp. 56 ff. conjectures.Google Scholar

1 For the basic meaning of ‘way’, ‘path’, cf. Wingren, G., Stadia Theologica, iii (1950/1951), pp. 111 ff.Google Scholar (and A. Kuschke, ibid. v, pp. 106 ff.).

2 In spite of vii. 17 and the present tense, the reference must be to the earthly life of the believer and not to the heavenly. That is evident from the allusions to the Synoptic words of discipleship (Holtzmann, Bousset, Lohmeyer point to Matt. x. 38; xvi. 24f.; but we should also name Matt. viii. 19).

1 Acts ii. 36; xiii. 33 (in opposition to Bruce, F. F., The Acts of the Apostles (1951), p. 269, and others)Google Scholar; the basis of Rom. i. 4; probably also of Heb. i. 5.

2 It is certain that the whole Petrine speeches do not go back to the early church. Argyle, A. W. (J. Theol. Stud.) (1953), pp. 213 f.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar has shown that ii. 14ff. was composed in Greek. But nevertheless, in my opinion, this is true for the christological summaries. To my arguments, Erniedrigung und Erhöhung…, sect. 6a, footnote, 180, it should be added that x. 42 does not contain the thought of i. 8, so important for Luke, that already the risen Lord gave commandment about the mission to the heathen.

3 Daube, D. (J. Theol. Stud. 1951, p. 48)Google Scholar conjectures that also Mark xii. 35ff. distinguishes between the earthly son of David and the exalted Lord of David.

4 Bousset, W., Kyrios Christos (1913); Jesus, der Herr (1916).Google Scholar

1 Bauernfeind, O. (Theol. Handkommentar zum N.T. 1939), ad loc. I agree with J. A. T. Robinson that this could have happened in some early Christian group. Thus it could be the expression of a (but not the) very early christology.Google Scholar

2 (Strack-)Billerbeck, , Kommentar zum N. T.…, ii, pp. 765 f.Google Scholar

3 Rengstorf, , Theol. Wörterbuch, iv, p. 462.Google Scholar

4 Cf. also Acts viii. 33b/c where possibly the church, which came into existence by means of mission activity, is founded upon the basis of his exaltation.

5 Rom. vi. 4ff.; Phil. iii. 11; but cf. even Col. ii. 12 .

6 II Cor. iv. 10; I Cor. xv. 31; Rom. viii. 36; probably also Gal. vi. 17; Col. i. 24; I Pet. v. 1.

1 Cf. such passages as Matt. xix. 28; Mark x. 30.

1 Mark x. 30; cf. Schlatter, A., Der Evangelist Markus (1935), p. 197.Google Scholar

2 Also in the rabbinic literature ‘the coming world’ is often the upper, heavenly, now existing world; cf. the contrast between the present Jerusalem and the Jerusalem above in Gal. iv. 26; further examples in Schweizer, Erniedrigung und Erhöhung…, sect. 16e, f.

3 Heb. vi. 20; further ii. 10f.; iv. 14; ix. 11–28.

1 Even if the subjunctive be genuine (against R. Leivestad, Christ the Conqueror, 1954, p. 114).

2 Gnosticism later saw the decisive event in the physically conceived breaking through the spheres which separated earth from the heavenly world.

1 Hellenism knows no descent of the gods to earth. There are men who were begotten of the gods claimed for Plato by his nephew Speusippus: Diog. Laert. III, 2), redeemers sent by Providence (Inscription of Priene). There is, in the dissolving old belief in the gods, an identification of abstract concepts with the old names for gods: ‘Hermes is the Logos whom the gods have sent to us having created among all beings on earth only men as logical ones’, at about the same time as the N.T. in Cornutus in Africa: Kleinknecht, , Theol. Wörterbuch, ed. Kittel, , iv, 85 f.Google Scholar; cf. Festugière, A. J., La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, iii (1953), pp. 158 ff.Google Scholar There is, above all, the concept that the souls of men originate in heaven or are demons banished to the earth, and one may ask whether this is not true only for particularly favoured men in Empedocles (fifth century b.c.) (Diels-Kranz, i, p. 207, fr. 115). But the Hellenist knows nothing of a descent of a god-redeemer to earth and nothing of an incarnation. From his presuppositions he is forced to see in such figures only the symbol for the eternal destiny, which ever remains the same, of the soul which has fallen from heaven. That is exactly what the gnosticism of the second century a.d. does. All examples in Schweizer, Erniedrigung und Erhöhung…, sect. 15.