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Martin Kähler: Kerygma and Gospel History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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Martin Kähler lived at the turn of the century when the impact of the methods of historical criticism was being felt acutely by theologians. What can one say about the authority of the Bible for the believer in the light of critical historiography? What can one say about the relation of history and faith if that faith is living faith which is awakened in response to the testimony of Scripture, especially to the apostolic preaching of the Lord's resurrection? Can one say that there is a ground for such faith in results derived from the picture of the so-called ‘historical Jesus’ in the Gospels? It is in the area of questions like these that Kähler has been acknowledged by Tillich, Barth, and Bultmann as a pioneer. Whereas only a few theologians were directly influenced by Kähler's systematic theological work, many regarded his critical position as a harbinger of the future. Barth pays tribute to Kähler for insisting at a time when it cost something to say so that the real historical Christ is the biblical Christ attested by the New Testament as the risen and exalted One. In the course of our essay we shall have occasion to note the positive affinity which exists between Kähler's position and that of Barth. Cullmann has indicated the significance of Kähler for the rise of Form Criticism with its insistence that the Gospels are by nature the Church's witness to its faith as embodied in its preaching.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1963
References
page 50 note 1 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics 1.2, trans. Thomson, G. T. and Knight, Harold. (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1956), p. 64. Volumes in English hereafter cited as C.D.Google Scholar
page 50 note 2 Cullmann, Oscar, ‘Out of Season Remarks on “the Historical Jesus” of the Bultmann School’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. XVI, no. 2, p. 132Google Scholar. Refer also to Bultmann, Rudolf, Theology of the New Testament, I (S.C.M. Press, London, 1952), p. 86.Google Scholar
page 50 note 3 Forsyth, P. T., The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (Independent Press, London, 1909) P. 169Google Scholar. Cave, Sidney has indicated the similarity between Kähler's and Forsyth's Christology in The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Duckworth, London, 1925) p. 223.Google Scholar
page 51 note 1 Kähler, Martin, Der sogennante historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (2nd edition, A. Deichert, Leipzig, 1896), p. 51. This volume hereafter cited as S.H.J.Google Scholar
page 52 note 1 See also the remarks of P. T. Forsyth, op. cit., p. 41. Mackintosh, H. R. summarises Kähler's argument thus: ‘The records … do not even establish the order in which the narrated episodes took place, much less the course of Jesus' spiritual development. In the circumstances, anyone who aims at a biography of Jesus is compelled to fill up the meagre outline with private fancies based on psychological analogies which are really irrelevant to a sinless life.’ The Person of Christ (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1913), p. 313.Google Scholar
page 52 note 2 C.D.III.2, pp. 209–10.
page 52 note 3 Refer also to C.D.IV.2, p. 165, where Barth, speaking of the Gospels, says: ‘Does this mean that we are given a character sketch, to use a favourite concept of the earlier 20th century? If so, it is singular that the attempts which have often been made to define this character have never succeeded. In point of fact they cannot succeed, because the texts do not give us, and do not even try 10 give us, the right kind of materials for this purpose’ (italics mine). See also the five points by which Barth characterises the writing of the Life of Jesus in his essay on Strauss, Die Prottstantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Evangelischer Verlag A.G., Zollikon-Zürich, 1952), p. 505. Note especially what he says concerning the method of proceeding by the effort to reconstruct Jesus' consciousness.Google Scholar
page 53 note 1 S.H.J., p. 57.
page 53 note 2 S.H.J., pp. 127ff. See especially p. 135, where Kähler warns against the substitution of Christusbewusstseins for the action and teaching of the Saviour.
page 54 note 1 S.H.J., p. 21.
page 54 note 2 S.H.J., p. 82.
page 55 note 1 See also Barth, C.D.III.2, p. 471: ‘The life and work of the apostles is wholly and utterly dependent on His (Jesus') presence. Their whole recollection and tradition concerning Him is not centred on a figure of the past, on a dead man, but on One who even after His earthly time is still an acting subject. … It is not from within themselves supported by their fragmentary recollection of past days and the corresponding tradition … that the apostles and the primitive community derive their raison d'être and their commission. … They receive all these things from the Lord who is Himself Spirit. …’ See also Schlatter, Adolf, The Church in the New Testament Period, trans. Levertoff, Paul (S.P.C.K., London, 1955), pp. 15–24.Google Scholar
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page 56 note 3 S.H.J., p. 5.
page 57 note 1 See the article on Kähler by Hermann, R. in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, III, Dritte Auflage, p. 1082.Google Scholar
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page 58 note 1 S.H.J., pp. 84, 108.
page 58 note 2 Note, however, how Bornkamm in his recent book affirms Paul's lack of interest in the pre-resurrection Christ on the basis of 2 Cor. 5.16. Jesus of Nazareth (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1960), p. 17.Google Scholar
page 58 note 3 ‘Man könnte sich jenes Wort aneignen: der Christus der Evangelien ist das Transparent des Logos, nur dass dieses durchlässige Mittel nicht eine nebelhafte legende ist, sondern ein greifbares Mannesleben, reich und bestimmt, wenn auch kurz und knapp bemessen.’ S.H.J., p. 92.
page 59 note 1 S.H.J., pp. 108, 112.
page 59 note 2 C.D.I.I, p. 426f and 1.2, p. 16f.
page 59 note 3 Refer also to Barth, C.D.III.2, p. 56: ‘Jesus is wholly and utterly the Bearer of an office. Hence He is not first man and then the Bearer of this office, so that it might be possible to conceive of Him apart from this office, or as perhaps the Bearer of a very different office. On the contrary, He is man as He is the Bearer of this office. … There is no neutral humanity of Jesus. …’
page 60 note 1 S.H.J., p. 64.
page 60 note 2 Cullmann, Oscar, ‘Out of Season Remarks on “the Historical Jesus” of the Bultmann School’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. XVI, no. 2, p. 146Google Scholar. See Cairns, David, A Gospel without Myth (S.C.M. Press, London, 1960), p. 145fGoogle Scholar. Cairns points out the shift in meaning which the terms historisch and geschichtlich undergo at the hands of Bultmann.
page 61 note 1 Kähler, Martin, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre (A. Deichert, Leipzig, 1905). P. 336f.Google Scholar
page 61 note 2 ibid., p. 353f.
page 61 note 3 See sermon, Kähler's, ‘Das göttliche Muss’, in Wiedergeboren durch die Auferstehung Jesu Christi (A. Deichert, Leipzig, 1908), p. 24f.Google Scholar
page 61 note 4 S.H.J., p. 87. See Barth's judgment on coherence in the gospel history in C.D.IV.2, p. 193: ‘What finally counted was their internal coherence which differentiated these Gospels from other unusable attempts of the same kind, proving that they were trustworthy and could therefore be used as a rule or canon for the true consideration—retrospective, concurrent and prospective—of the man Jesus. And this internal coherence, which was achieved in spite of all the external inconsistencies in presentation, consisted in the unmistakeable unity of the picture which they drew of the totality of the activity of Jesus. The basic features of this portrait proved to be the same in all these recognized Gospels—that is why they were recognized.’
The argument from the consensus and coherence in the gospel portrait cannot be used alone to justify the historicity of Jesus. Coherence in a narrative cannot be used as the only criterion for deciding what happened in the past, because it is possible, logically and practically, to construct a consistent yet fictitious account. We may praise a novel for its self-consistency, but would not contend that it is other than fictitious. Bornkamm, in his Jesus of Nazareth, provides an opening chapter on the relation between faith and history which enters a plea for the authenticity of the historical figure by an appeal to the recurrence in the tradition of essential characteristics. However, Bornkamm does not face adequately the problem of providing criteria by which the authentic elements in the gospels can be established. Kähler, in our opinion, is more adequate in facing the question of the historical links between the history of Jesus and the church's kerygma which make plausible the very content of that kerygma itself.
page 62 note 1 S.H.J., p. 80. Refer also to Lieb, Fritz, ‘Die Geschichte Jesu Christi in Kerygma und Historie’, Antwort (Evangelischer Verlag A.G., Zollikon-Zürich, 1956), p. 582f.Google Scholar
page 62 note 2 S.H.J., pp. 92, 94.
page 63 note 1 Martin Kähler, ‘Das göttliche Muss’, op. cit., p. 28. For Barth's distinctly similar opinion see C.D.IV.2, p. 259.
page 63 note 2 ‘A Reply to Bultmann’, Kerygma and Myth, ed. Bartsch, H. W. and trans. Fuller, R. H. (S.P.C.K., London, 1953), p. 91.Google Scholar
page 63 note 3 S.H.J., p. 109.
page 64 note 1 S.H.J., p. 106.
page 64 note 2 S.H.J., pp. 107, 112.
page 65 note 1 C.D.III.2, p. 442. See also IV.2, p. 295.
page 65 note 2 Refer to Kähler's sermon, ‘Wiedergeboren’, in Wiedergeboren dutch die Auferstehung Jesu Christi, pp. Iff. Refer also to S.H.J., p. 105.
page 65 note 3 Horst Stephan rightly notes the significance of Kähler's controversy with Herrmann. See Geschichte der Deutschen Evangelischen Theologie (A. Töpelmann, Berlin, 1960), p. 270. We dissent, however, from Stephan's judgment that Kähler bypasses the repercussions of historical criticism as these affect theology and faith.Google Scholar
page 66 note 1 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith, English translation ed. by Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1928), p. 418Google Scholar. See also Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, vol. II (University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 155Google Scholar: ‘It is the certainty of one's own victory over the death of existential estrangement which creates the certainty of the Resurrection of the Christ as event and symbol; but it is not historical conviction or the acceptance of biblical authority which creates this certainty.’ Further, Tillich says that the temporal occasion to which the meaning of Jesus as the Christ conquering transitoriness attaches may very possibly have antedated even Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi.
page 66 note 2 Herrmann, W., Gesammelte Aufsätze (J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1923), p. 214fGoogle Scholar. The similarity between Herrmann and Bultmann here is evident. Bultmann carries out Herrmann's suggestion that the decision of the Christian in faith is not derived from historical evidence objectively determinable but proceeds from a grasp of that which constitutes the inner life of the self.
page 67 note 1 The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology, ed. Davies, W. D. and Daube, D. (Cambridge, 1956), p. 214.Google Scholar
page 67 note 2 C.D.1.2, p. 21. See also IV.2, p. 152.