Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Jeremia: jenseits der metastatischen Vision Jesaias; prophetische Existenz als Fortsetzung der geschichtlichen Existenz

Kurzinhalt: Jeremiah indeed returned from the metastatic vision of the future to the experience of the untransfigured present; the word of the prophet is not spoken to the wind...; prophetic existence as the continuation of order in history

Textausschnitt: eg: weiter unten: ... "Das Wort, das durch den Propheten spricht, ist selbst geschichtliche Realität ...

104/13 In Jeremiah we have to look for the experiences which advanced the understanding of order beyond the metastatic visions of Isaiah. As the first motive must be noted the lapse of time, though its effect is difficult to gauge. Between the calls of Isaiah and Jeremiah more than a hundred years had passed. That was time enough for a prophetic personality which did not belong to the inner circle of Isaiah's disciples, but rather formed itself through the study of Hosea, to relax the tension of gazing into a future which never became present. For the order of being is the order in which man participates through his existence while it lasts; and the consciousness of passing, the presence of death in life, is the great corrective for futuristic dreams - though it may require a strong personality to break such dreams, once they have become a social power in the form of accepted creeds. The fundamental concern of man is with the attunement of his existence, in the present tense, to the order of being. And Jeremiah indeed returned from the metastatic vision of the future to the experience of the untransfigured present. In this return, however, he did not have to break altogether with Isaiah. For his great predecessor, in spite of the extreme articulation of his experience in the symbols of the metastatic ruler, had achieved a solid advance, never to be abandoned, in the understanding of order: that the order of society in history is reconstituted in fact through the men who challenge the disorder of the surrounding society with the order they experience as living in themselves. The word of the prophet is not spoken to the wind, it is not futile or impotent, if it does not reform the society which he loves because it has given him birth. The Word that speaks through him is itself historical reality and forms the order of a new community wherever it is heard. In Isaiah, his sons and disciples, the "remnant" of Israel, which had been the contents of prophecies of salvation, had become the reality of salvation. The prophetic word about the future became historical present in the men who spoke and preserved it in community. And while the Israel that was pragmatically organized as the Kingdom of Judah went the way of all organizations, their governments, and kings in history, the Word spoken by the prophets and preserved by the communities which heard it, still forms the "remnant" of Israel in the present. This insight into the meaning of prophetic existence as the continuation of order in history, when its realization in the pragmatic order of a people is in crisis, was the heritage from Isaiah to be increased by Jeremiah. (482f; Fs) (notabene)