^{page 114 note 1} Farrer, A.M., St. Matthew and St. Mark, London, 1954.Google Scholar

^{page 114 note 2} Evans, C. F., ‘The Central Section of St. Luke's Gospel’, Studies in the Gospels, ed. D. E. Nineham, Oxford, 1955, pp. 37–53.Google Scholar

^{page 114 note 3} Carrington, P., The Primitive Christian Calendar, Cambridge, 1952.Google Scholar

^{page 114 note 4} Bultmann, R., Jesus, Berlin, 1929, pp. 11 and 12.Google Scholar

^{page 115 note 1} Barth, K., The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed., Preface, London, 1921.Google Scholar

^{page 115 note 2} Bultmann, R., Kerygma and Myth, London, 1952.Google Scholar

^{page 116 note 1} Bultmann's Portrait of Jesus is contained in his Theology of the New Testament, Vol. I, 1952, pp. 3–32.Google Scholar

^{page 116 note 2} Bultmann was a pupil of Wilhelm Herrmann. His theology has at several stragetic points come under the influence of his teacher, e.g. at the point we are discussing, and also in his understanding of the nature of faith as being its own ground and object. Kähler thought of the ‘historisch’ as the ‘past’ which comes under the scrutiny of the historian as observer. The ‘geschichtlich’ on the other hand is for Kähler the ‘historical’ in the sense of what really happened (Geschehen). Herrmann accentuated the distinction by viewing the ‘historisch’ in a more objective and positivistic way than Kähler as causal sequence of past events. The ministry of Jesus as ‘historisch’ in this sense was in Herrmann's view inaccessible to us. Herrmann then understood the ‘geschichtlich’ in a pyschological sense of the ‘inward consciousness’ of Jesus, of the impact of His personality upon us. Now Kähler wished to show that the Christ-event in its reality, in its ‘geschichtlich’ character, is Jesus clothed with or indwelt by His Gospel, Jesus imbued with His message. It is precisely here that Bultmann is indebted to Kähler, since for Bultmann too Jesus and His message are quite inseparable. But Bultmann has gone beyond Kähler and stands closer to Herrmann, except that the ‘geschichtlich’ is interpreted by him existentially rather than pyschologically. Bultmann would not speak like Herrmann of the ‘inward consciousness’ of Jesus, nor of the impact of His personality, since for Bultmann the Christ-event has objective reality only when and where it confronts me through the Church's proclamation of its message, and effects a change in my understanding of myself. For Bultmann the Christ-event is ‘geschichtlich’ or ‘escatologisch’ as happening here and now for me in and through the Church's preaching. On the other hand Bultmann has always insisted that he accepts the ‘having happenedness’ of the Christ-event. In its ‘pastness’ it is ‘historisch’, though for Bultman all we can know about what really happened is that Jesus preached a message about the impending event of the kingdom of God and died on the Cross. We see how Bultmann has rather radically revised Kähler's position, transferring to the ‘historisch’ much of what Kähler meant by the ‘geschichtlich’. But we do detect throughout Bultmann's work Kähler's notion of the inseparability of Jesus and His message.

^{page 117 note 1} M. Lidzbarski, Mandäische Liturgien, 1926. Also Giza, Der Schatz, oder das Grosse Buch der Mandäer, 1925.

^{page 118 note 1} Deissmann, A., Light from the Ancient East, London, 1927, pp. 349–362.Google Scholar

^{page 118 note 2} Bultmann, R., Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Setting, London, 1956.Google Scholar

^{page 119 note 1} Fuller, R. H., The Mission and Achievement of Jesus, London, 1954.Google Scholar

^{page 120 note 1} Fuller, op. cit., pp. 79ff. In contrast to Fuller's view that Jesus' eschatological words are to be futuristically interpreted, that the Kingdom of God is only proleptically present in His earthly ministry, and that he becomes Messiah and Son of Man only after His death, W. G. Kümmel in his Detailed study of the eschatological message of Jesus (Promise and Fulfilment, Eng. Transl. of Verheissung und Erfüllung, 1957) maintains from the texts that ‘Jesus saw the future eschatological consummation to be effective already in the present in that the eschaton showed itself to be effective in His own person’ (p. 105). Whereas, for example, Fuller sees Mark 3.27 as denoting a preliminary assault upon Satan prior to his final overthrow at the End, Kümmel argues that the fight has already been won, because Satan must already be bound if he can be robbed of the children whom he has dominated—‘it is the meaning of the mission of Jesus, when announcing the approach of the Kingdom of God, to make this future at the same time already now a present reality’ (p. 109).

^{page 121 note 1} Selwyn, E. G., ‘Image, Fact and Faith’, New Testament Studies, Vol. I, No. 4, p. 246.Google Scholar

^{page 121 note 2} Stauffer, E., Jesus, Gestalt und Geschichte, Francke Verlag, Bern, 1957.Google Scholar

^{page 121 note 3} Dibelius, M., Aufsätze zur Apostelsgeschichte, 1951.Google Scholar

^{page 121 note 4} Conzelmann, H., Die Mitte der Zeit, 1954.Google Scholar

^{page 121 note 5} Manson, T. W., The life of Jesus: some tendencies in present-day research, The Background of the New Testament and its Eschatology, ed. Davies and Daube, p. 216. Manson's reference is of course to W. Wrede's Das Messiasgeheimnis, in which Wrede discredited the historical reliability of Mark on the ground of Mark's use of the Messianic secret.Google Scholar

^{page 122 note 1} Taylor, V., The Life and Ministry of Jesus, 1954.Google Scholar

^{page 122 note 2} V. Taylor, op. cit., p. 46.

^{page 122 note 3} Jeremias, J., ‘The Present Position in the Controversy Concerning the Problem of the Historical Jesus’, The Expository Times, Vol. LXIX, No. 11, pp. 333–339.Google Scholar

^{page 124 note 1} E. Fuchs, ‘Christus das Ende der Geschichte’, Ev. Th. 1948/49, 449, note 6. W. G. Kümmel holds on the contrary that it is quite wrong to exclude the message of Jesus himself. In the oldest tradition of Jesus' message, which can be ascertained by critical methods, we meet with the Jesus whose historical message alone confirms the correctness of the apostolic message. To set forth this oldest message is therefore not only a historical task, but one that is theologically indispensable and no hcrmeneutic mistake (Kümmel, op. cit., p. 105, note 1). Incidentally this is the only point in his work at which Kümmel raises the question of the historicity of the sayings of Jesus.

^{page 126 note 1} Knox, J., Criticism and Faith, 1952Google Scholar, and Jesus, Lord and Christ, 1958.

^{page 126 note 2} Ferré, Nels, Christ and the Christian, 1958.Google Scholar

^{page 126 note 3} Bultmann, R., Essays, London, 1955, pp. 234ff.Google Scholar

^{page 127 note 1} Bornkamm, G., Jesus von Nazareth, 1956.Google Scholar

^{page 128 note 1} Robinson, J. M., ‘The Quest of the Historical Jesus Today’', Theology Today, Vol. XV, No. 2, July 1958, p. 192.Google Scholar

^{page 128 note 2} ‘Fuchs, G. Bornkamm, and I see ourselves compelled to restrict the assertion that Easter founded the Christian kerygma; we must inquire as to the meaning of the historical Jesus for faith’ (E. Käsemann). See J. M. Robinson, op. cit., p. 194.

^{page 129 note 1} Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, Vol. II, Chicago, 1957, pp. 156–158.Google Scholar

^{page 129 note 2} The áναγνώρισις is common to all the narratives of the resurrection appearances of the Christ. See Dodd, C. H.: ‘The Appearance of the Risen Christ: an Essay in Form-Criticism of the Gospels’, Studies in the Gospels, ed. Nineham, Oxford, 1955, p. 14.Google Scholar

^{page 130 note 1} Bultmann does not regard the resurrection as in any sense an event at all, but simply as the Church's way of describing the release and perpetuation of the Word of the Cross.

One of the principal charges levelled against Bultmann by his German critics, e.g. Helmut Thielicke, and others, is that his existentialist interpretation of the Christ-event makes the event no more than an act of the human consciousness, and that he has revived Schleiermacher's notion of Erlebnis (psychological consciousness), a catch-word of German theology before the First World War. Bultmann has tried to counter this criticism by affirming the actuality of the Christ-event as real past happening. We know and experience human love only in concrete encounter here and now with the beloved who loves us, and the encounter effects a change in our understanding of ourselves. Although this change in our self-understanding is the all-important thing, no one would care to deny that the beloved exists outside of ourselves. In the same way, to Bultmann's mind, the significant thing is the change in the self-understanding produced by encounter with the Word of the Cross in the Church's preaching, but this does not mean that the redemptive act of God in Christ is not an event outside of ourselves. Nevertheless Bultmann's understanding of the Christ-event is so contemporary, so anthropological, so experience-centred, that the event is really bereft of objective reality. Bultmann does seem to have removed the event from the locus of the historical existence of the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. Has he not thus deprived us of the mystery of the God-Man, and left us merely with the Church's message of the Word of the Cross as God's statement of grace and pardon? Many certainly would feel that Bultmann gives us a poor substitute for the ontological reality or for the spiritual presence of that Other One, who in the abiding mystery of His Person companies with us still. Bultmann's anthropological and experience-centred interpretation of the Christ-event stems of course from the understanding of human existence established by his Heideggerian brand of existentialist analytics. For Bultmann, Dasein, human being, is choice, free personal decision. Human being is a series of encounters and decisions in every concrete moment of the ‘here and now’ of existence. In this way Bultmann appears to deny to human existence temporal continuity and participation in all the relativities of history. It is Bultmann's view of encounter with the Word of the Cross in the Church's preaching that is being called in question in the following pages of this paper, as over against the Church's continuous experience of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, in the mystery of His Person.

^{page 130 note 2} Kierkegaard, S., Training in Christianity, 1941, p. 122.Google Scholar

^{page 131 note 1} Burkill, T. A., ‘St. Mark's Philosophy of History’, New Testament Studies, Vol. 3, Jan. 1957, No. 2, pp. 142–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 132 note 1} Davies, W. D., Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 2nd ed., London, 1955, p. 88.Google Scholar

^{page 133 note 1} Robinson, J. M., The Problem of History in Mark, London, 1957, pp. 78–80.Google Scholar

^{page 133 note 2} Manson, T. W., ‘Realised Eschatology and the Messianic Secret’, Studies in the Gospels, ed. Nineham, Oxford, 1955, p. 216.Google Scholar

^{page 134 note 1} Noth, M., ‘Die Vergegenwärtigung des Alten Testaments in der Verkündigung’, Evangelische Theologie XII (1952), pp. 6–17.Google Scholar