117 - History and Existential Theology

History and Existential Theology
By Norman J. Young
174 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1969. $5.95.

Norman J. Young is Professor of Systematic Theology at Melbourne University. He took his doctorate at Drew University, and has served as a visiting professor both at Drew and at Princeton Theological Seminaries.

The author finds the clue to Bultmann's theology in a distinctive concept of history (Geschichte). Having carefully defined this concept, the author employs it to clarify, Bultmann's exegetical method, his program of demythologizing, and his concepts of God's self-revelation, of Christology, and of human existence prior to and under faith.

Hand in hand with the attempt at clarification goes another purpose, viz., to defend Bultmann against the charge of inconsistency advanced both from the right and from the left. The author successfully demonstrates that, when rightly interpreted, this charge is frequently unjustified. But the author is not a blind adherent of Bultmann. Some charges do stick, particularly the charge that an existentialist interpretation, while legitimate for certain areas of the kerygma, is not adequate to cover its full dimensions.

More debatable, perhaps, from the point of view of New Testament exegesis (though let me say in passing how refreshing it is to find a Systematiker in the English-speaking world who takes exegesis seriously) is the contention that the self-consciousness of Jesus is of primary importance for Christology: "While it is true that much of Jesus' teaching is found within Judaism, one important feature is not, namely his teaching about himself. It is on this teaching which reflects Jesus' recognition of and obedience to the role assigned by him that the kerygma is based. . . . The question of the self-consciousness of Jesus is seen to have theological

118 - History and Existential Theology

significance" (p. 129). Does a rigorous application of form-critical method really allow us to credit "Jesus' teaching about himself" to the earthly Jesus, rather than to the tradition or the redaction? Can we really speak about the "self-consciousness of Jesus"? Yet the author, despite these incautious formulations, has a legitimate concern. While Jesus' message of the kingdom rather than his teaching about himself was the primary thrust of his message, it did contain-self-effacingly most of the time and indirectly and implicitly rather than directly and explicitly -the claim that he himself was the sign and embodiment of that kingdom: "I say unto you" and "Blessed is he who is not offended in me." This is important because it establishes a continuity between Jesus and the kerygma which Bultmann ignores. But it is still not of primary importance for the kerygma. Of primary importance is the claim of the earliest church that God raised Jesus from the dead.

While the author normally quotes German writers from English translations where these are available, he does not seem to be aware of the second volume of Kerygma and Myth (1962) which includes a translation of K. Barth's Rudolf Bultmann, ein Versuch ihn zu verstehen.

Reginald H. Fuller
Union Theological Seminary
New York, New York