Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Chrstologie, kerygma addressed to Existenz; Heilsgeschichte; Botschaft in Wechselwirkung zu unserer Entscheidung

Kurzinhalt: 5 Arten der Forschung; aber keine bezieht sich auf die Botschaft im eigentlichen Sinn; in correlation with the response it elicits, that in that response there emerges the message as message-for-us

Textausschnitt: 37/6 I have distinguished five different genera of inquiry. All five can be applied to the New Testament. The textual critic can specialize in the manuscript tradition. The exegete can master all related literatures and bring them to bear on an understanding of this or that section of the text. The factual historian can assemble the factual statements in the New Testament, submit them to his critical scrutiny, and seek to fit them in the context of other known contemporary events. The ethically oriented historian can compare the moral attitudes of New Testament personages with those of other human communities or he can subsume them under some moral code to praise them or blame them. But while all of these approaches have their significance and value, none of them deals with what manifestly is the principal concern of the New Testament. For first and last, the New Testament is a book with a message; the message is presented in a great variety of manners, in narratives and parables, in precepts and counsels, in exhortations and warnings. The message is depicted as emanating from the man, Jesus, who suffered, died, was quickened from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. The message announces the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, and, as it challenged Jew and Greek two millennia ago, so too today it challenges us with a last word about last things. As Saul on the way to Damascus heard a voice saying: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" so each of us is to hear from the same voice either of two verdicts. That verdict may be: "[...] anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me." But again it may be: "[...] anything you did not do for one of these, however humble, you did not do for me." (83; Fs)

38/6 Our third step continues the second. We began from the exigence of a post-Kantian transcendental method that attends not just to the object, not just to the subject, but to each in itself and in its dependence on the other. We proceeded from that generality to the currently common view that the New Testament pertains to the genus, Heilsgeschichte, that it centers on a kerygma addressed to Existenz. We have now to note that the message is at once simple, radical, and intensely personal, that it stands in correlation with the response it elicits, that in that response there emerges the message as message-for-us. (83f; Fs) (notabene)

39/6 The message then is simple, as simple as the "Follow me" addressed to Simon and Andrew, to James and John, to Levi the publican. It is as radical as the counsel to leave father and mother and all one possesses, to renounce wealth and honors, to put up with every indignity, day after day to take up one's cross. Simple and radical, the message is intensely personal. It is "Follow me," "for my sake and for the Gospel," "for the sake of my name," "for the sake of the kingdom of God," that is, for the kingdom for which Jesus himself lived and died. (84; Fs) (notabene)