Joachim Jeremias 'Central Message'

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From: Donald - - -
Sent: Friday, 7 September 2012, 20:25
Subject: Re: Joachim Jermias

In a Blogspot, a word from Joachim Jermias is so on focus;

A hardback first edition of Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament, published by SCM in 1965. The last lines of Jeremias in The Central Message of the New Testament, on the Johannine Prologue (John 1.1-18), are a good example of his style and his way of doing New Testament theology from the standpoint of a faith both critical and confident:

It is in a world which knew of God's silence as a token of his inexpressible majesty that the message of the Christian church rings out: God is no longer silent - he speaks... [and] God has not always remained hidden. 

There is one point at which God took off the mask; once he spoke distinctly and clearly. 

This happened in Jesus of Nazareth; this happened above all on the cross...God is no longer silent. God has spoken. 

Jesus of Nazareth is the Word - he is the Word with which God has broken his silence. Page 90

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http://livingwittily.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/07/joachim-jeremias-and-the-central-message-of-the-new-testament.html 

July 08, 2009

Joachim Jeremias and the Central Message of the New Testament

Well I'm on holiday. That's when you get doing what you like. I like second-hand bookshops. So that's what we did, Graeme and I. James Dickson's out at Kilsyth, via Caulders Garden Centre with tea room. Only bought three books - two of them recently published but well reduced. One of them a wee gem from another era. A hardback first edition of Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament, published by SCM in 1965. What was a surprise about the book was the reverse of the dust cover. Unlike the bad and often annoying habit of contemporary publishers, who put the mutually congratulatory blurb of sympathetic peers on the back, this one has something much more interesting. A map. The SCM Map of Theology 1965, showing the university whereabouts of some of SCM's main European continental authors. Fascinating and a who's who of mid-20th century and mainly German and Swiss Protestant biblical scholars. It both dates me and pleases me that I've read something by most of them, and lots of stuff by some of them.

Joachim Jeremias himself I have admired and enjoyed reading ever since working through Volume 1 of his New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus. He never finished the second volume - and some of his main contentions are now questioned or superceded. But there is a seriousness of purpose and a reverence for the words of Jesus in Jeremias that helped to reassure a young Scottish Baptist student who had discovered that reading German biblical criticism can be like a debut attempt at white water rafting not knowing how to hold the paddle. So I bought this book in appreciation of a good man and a careful scholar. His other books, The Parables of Jesus, The Eucharistic Teaching of Jesus and Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, show the same careful learning tracing its way through ancient cultures and texts.

The last lines of Jeremias in The Central Message of the New Testament, on the Johannine Prologue (John 1.1-18), are a good example of his style and his way of doing New Testament theology from the standpoint of a faith both critical and confident:

It is in a world which knew of God's silence as a token of his inexpressible majesty that the message of the Christian church rings out: God is no longer silent - he speaks... [and] God has not always remained hidden. There is one point at which God took off the mask; once he spoke distinctly and clearly. This happened in Jesus of Nazareth; this happened above all on the cross...God is no longer silent. God has spoken. Jesus of Nazareth is the Word - he is the Word with which God has broken his silence. Page 90