Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Das Problem Gottes im Neuen Testament; allgemein; Kyrios

Kurzinhalt: Jesus: "Who am I, in your view of me?;

Textausschnitt: 26a The New Testament transforms the ancient problem of Yahweh into the new problem of Jesus. I do not use the latter phrase in the sense of the nineteenth-century Higher Criticism, for which the problem of Jesus centered on the issue whether the "historical Jesus" could be uncovered by the techniques and methods of historical research developed in the field of secular history, chiefly under the leadership of Von Ranke. We are not here concerned with the question of historical critique. It has, in any event, been largely outmoded by a happy enlargement of the conception of history and a consequent refinement of the notion of historical method. My assumption here is parallel to the assumption made in the case of the Old Testament. I assume that the New Testament records the faith of the early Christian community and that this faith was based on the new revelation contained in the total event of Christ. (Fs)

26b From this point of view, the problem of Jesus is seen to have been stated by Jesus himself in the decisive query reported in all three Synoptic Evangelists; "Who am I, in your view of me?" (Mark 8:29). The question is cast in the inter-subjective mode, in the existential terms familiar from the Old Testament: I, who am here with you in this moment-who am I, and what am I to you? Am I the Messiah of whom the Scriptures spoke? If this title defines my function, what, further, is my Name? Am I the Son, entitled by equality of power with God to bear the divine Name? Thus, the problem of God, in its New Testament form as the problem of Jesus, again centers on the presence of God in history, on his active existence with his people. The quadriform structure of the problematic is again discernible, though the substance of the four questions is radically new. There is the existential question whether, in the presence of the man Christ Jesus, God himself is present to his people. There is the inseparable functional question of the role and office of Jesus the Christ. And the noetic and onomastic questions follow: how is God now to be known, and how is he to be named? (Fs) (notabene)

27a The ancient questions, in their new form, lie behind the answer given to them in the acclamation of the early Christian community: "Lord Jesus!" This is the Christian paraphrase of the Old Testament address to God as Yahweh, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus bears the divine Name. He is Kyrios (the Greek translation, in the Septuagint, of the Hebrew Name Yahweh). He is the Lord, our Lord, the Lord-of-us. This affirmation and the questions latent in it form the burden of the primitive Christian kerygma (the Greek word for the apostolic preaching) of which the Acts of the Apostles preserve many examples. In St. Paul and St. John, this primitive preaching, which is a simple announcement of the Good News, is expanded into early Christian didache (the Greek word for teaching or instruction). The burden of this instruction is the triadic presence of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine (as we call it, not with entire felicity) of the functional Trinity, the Trinity-with-us. With the brevity appropriate to our present purposes, which have not to do with the complete theology of the New Testament, this doctrine may be stated in three simple propositions. (Fs)