A tribute to Ernst Kasemann and a theological testament

Zahl, Paul F M

PAUL F. M. ZAHL*

On February 14, 1998 the New Testament scholar and theologian Ernst Kasemann died. He was 91 years old. He was buried from the Protestant Parish of Tbingen-Lustnau on February 25th.

For all who knew him, let alone the very wide circle of those who were influenced by his work, Kisemann's death was a blow. It also occasioned many moments in which to give thanks. This brief essay is one of them.

In the early 1990s I was able to spend three years at the University of Tubingen studying the theology of Ernst Kiisemann. This research was conducted under the supervision of Jirgen Moltmann. Kasemann was very much alive and well, despite his chronic protestations of illness. He was in full provocative mode during that entire period.

After receiving the doctorate in systematic theology December 6, 1994, I returned to the U.S. to take up duties at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. At that point Kasemann and I began a correspondence. This correspondence revealed the astonishing strength and continuity of his theological reflection. Four of his letters were direct responses to friendly theological criticism and interpretation. These letters, composed at the end of his life, comprise a dense, terse theological testament. I have translated them from German into -English and offer them to the readers of Anglican Th.eological Review), with brief commentary to establish the context. Only a few cuts have been made, of certain private and family observations.

To establish the context of these letters, it is necessary first to give a short profile of Ernst Kasemann's life. He was born July 12, 1906 in Dahlhaussen near Bochum. He said that his youth was "alone and joyless."4 Hav,ing studied theology at Bonn (where he was influenced by Erik Peterson) and Marburg (where he first met Rudolf Bultrnann), Kasemann came to Tubingen in 1927 in order to hear Adolf Schlatter. He received the doctorate from Marburg in 1931 and served in parish ministry from 1933 to 1946. His ministry in the mining town of Gelsenkirchen drew down the wrath of the Gestapo. He was imprisoned briefly in 197. Kasemann was active in the Confessing Church's struggle against Alolf Hitler.

In 1946 he became Professor of New Testament at the University of Mainz. From 1951 to 1959 he was Professor of New Testament at Gottingen, until he was called to Tubingen. He retired from active teaching in 1971.

Kasemann considered himself a revolutionary "partisan," campaigning against idolatry on every front. His celebrated confrontation with the Gestapo in 1937; his conflict with the "Pietists" in the late 1970s, who believed that he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus; his highly public sympathy with student radicals in 1968; the fact that his daughter Elizabeth became a political revolutionary in Argentina and was murdered by the Junta there in 1977: these and many other important moments in a life that can properly be described as almost "world-historical,' were all shaped by the metaphor of struggle against the principalities and powers.

On the scholarly side, Kasemann was known as one of the founders of the "second quest" for the historical Jesus, as a leading theologian of Paul and Pauline apocalyptic, and as a student of John's Gospel. The inner core of all his written work, as the following letters attest, was his highly individual reception of justification by faith. If Kasemann was a partisan of the partisans and a higher-critic of the higher-critics, he was also a Reformation theologian par excellence. He did not at all mind being called a "Gnesio-Luther(lner" (a "purest of the Lutherans"), although he really wasn't. He was too combative to be held to any one school of thought. His personal heroes were F.C. Baur and Martin Luther.

The first letter I received of a strongly theological characterafter my family and I had come to Birmingham-was typical. Kasemann spent three paragraphs describing his many illnesses and limitations, even asserting that he had not read my dissertation. Then, like lightning, he was right into it! He seemed completely focussed at all times on his theological mission, and extraordinarily well-informed given the fact that he had been emeritus for 24 years.

The reader will note Kasemann's focus on the word "godless" and its meaning. For him, the "godless" are those who have come to the end of their hopes of achieving self-importance or self-worth and have been reduced to "nothing." God has acted to "justify" such by His intervention in Christ, through which the "godless" receive their true God or "]Lord." Kasemann criticizes my identification of Jesus on the Cross with the "godless," stating that this goes further than he intends. He also parries my criticism that he "de-individualizes" persons when he claims that a "man" (Mensch) is no more or less than the "concretion" of his or her "Lord." Kasemann moves immediately on to a reflection concerning philosophical Idealism, which he believes to be the true culprit in abstracting away the entire world. He introduces his vital notion of the Christian individual as being a revolutionary "partisan," at war with the powers of this world.

22 August 1995

Dear Herr Zahl!

For the last nine months your dissertation has been sitting on my desk in the study, enclosed within it the very nice family photo that you sent at the end of April. For that I have not yet thanked you and I now can. with my sincere apologies. I do have my excuses, which you will understand and will consider sufficient. From the fact that I have just one fonth ago entered the ninth decade of my life, and that I am now not only the eldest in my theological faculty but am also the oldest living of the academic theologians who were part of the radical wing of the Confessing Church in Germany, I bear heavily the burdens of my age.

In February I was operated on for cataracts by means of laser surgery and for four or five weeks thereafter had to be very guarded in respect to any reading I might do. Then came our Diamond Anniversa]? (60 years!) and in July my 89th birthday. To head off the storm, we first retreated from Tubingen to our daughter's house. But the 70 letters we received finally had to be answered. Then, with the end of the semester, the foreign students left town, after which the Prague Society and several others came to us, all of whose visits we had to take in small doses. In mid-September, the third (cataract) operation will probably take place.

After that, it will become clear whether I shall go slowly blind or just be further reduced in productivity. Your dissertation in any case will have to wait in order to be read to its conclusion. Or it may have to wait until it sits before me in book form. Now I have complained enough, but have laid out my burdens before you. So long as my wife is still with me, I remain serene. Our life was full of adventure and not in vain. That is enough.

Now, to your work: It has been highly praised by both examiners and deserves it, tco. I do not expect the Americans in general to read my work with much sympathy. I remain wide open to their criticism and feel all right about that. But where there are many opponents, there are also reliable friends. You belong among the latter. People like Keck and Martyn will step up for me from the trenches, and in England Barrett and the Edinburgh people especially, in Scandinavia Jervell, and also Alorgan and Templeton. I think you will understand, therefore, if I now appear critical, because our agreement is already established. I owe you as much a debt as anyone. I do hope that your work will appear in America. I would also gladly see an edition of your work published in Germany.

On the objective side, I do not agree with the way you say on page 74 that faith means "to be one of the godless," even though you immediately clarify a "godless" one as one who is "at the end of his own works." One should not over-state matters. Everywhere in the Bible there are truly pious people, that is, receivers and doers of God's works, therefore instruments of the Holy Spirit, pneumatics really.

Less tolerable to me is where you occasionally reckon Christ on the Cross as being among the godless, although you mean that He was like us with the exception of sin. One should neither leap over the Old Testament nor over Pentecost, leap over neither the "humble" nor over the "charismatics," because they refer themselves to God's help and remain among the tempted ("Angefochtene"). God's servants ought not to be thrown into the same pot as the unfaithful, and certainly not the suffering Christ. I do not know whether you develop elsewhere more ]?recisely what we both mean by the expression "godless," and therefore refer as "godless" to Christians who arm themselves with their own piety and thus look down on the poor heathen. God is powerful in the world and obdurately overturns any who convert God's gifts into their own works and pompous titles, as Paul himself says of Israe'. Paul represents himself as one of these in Philippians: he was zealous for the Law and therefore had to be broken into pieces.

Here, by the way, is a footnote: you should not say that I "de-individualize" anyone. I am against the Idealism of the Enlightenment and I also oppose the Idealism of Pietism, which today blooms within feminism and strikes the word "Lord" from the biblical text and laughably substitutes "Adonai". One cannot get around the word "Lord," even if one were to delete every other word. On the word "Lord" the First Commandment rises and falls, the First Commandment which is made concrete in Christ so far as the New Testament is concerned. I inveigh against both the Idealists and the Enthusiasts, who wish Christians to become "autonomous." As I see it, no "individual" (Christian) who as a charismatic stands under the lordship of Christ can be exchanged for any other. But the other, the person who lives under the tyranny of sin, is, no matter how many hundreds of times differentiated, representative of the demons that control him. I do not speak of people as "objects" of God's powers nor of the world's powers, but rather as being representative of their lords. In this sense the mass of people are in constant flux (i.e., everyone "represents" a different dominating "lord" and people are ever exchanging one "lord" for another-author). The whole subject-object scheme has stamped its Idealism right up through Kierkegaard and Bultmann. That schema has substituted the abstract concept of "the individual" for the concrete "specific human being" (who in my language is really meant to be a "partisan," or revolutionary).

Idealism is our philosophical heritage and is always answering for "autonomy;" though "autonomy" is forever antagonistic to the Cross. If I were really a "de-indi,idualizer," I who was and who remained a revolutionary "Partisan" my whole life long, then I really would be inhuman, because all men are concrete individuals, right up from their fingerprints, and thus irreplaceable. The concrete individual as I see it is not independent. Maybe something like the "individual" in Idealism's abstract sense exists in mechanics and there, strictly speaking, as an object. But we are "parts of a body," never independent, never autonomous.

Now a. word more on the theme "atoning sacrifice." The Crucified is not actively obedient, but rather the one who was obediently led into his suffering: not a sacrifice paying off the judge, but rather our representative. More on that later.

Good wishes,

Ernst Kasemann

Kasemann's second, quite moving letter refers again to his understanding of the "godless." From there he moves into a Philippians 3style defense of the point made by one of my examiners that he had had difficulties in making himself understood. Kasemann then looks at my criticism that his emphasis on Christ's obedient "partisanship" and its prototypical character for Christian "partisanship" in general, could tend to a semi-pelagian picture of discipleship. He moves to a discussion of faith as miracle and gift, ending with an affecting account of his own indictment in 1937 for high treason.

8 September 1995

Dear Herr Zah!

Thank you for your letter of 2 September, which arrived early this morning. You know that my criticism is intended only to serve your best interest and only stands next to my praise. I did not know whether your examiners had communicated their thoughts to you orally. In the meantime I have their comments in front of me. I should like to tell you something of what they thought, and also make some comments of my own.

I wish to underline again my explanation of the word "godless." Christ should not be characterized thus. Pentecost has taken place, and Christ's lord:ship has become concrete in the Spirit. Weakness is the sign of an apostle, thus II Corinthians 12:9. The justification of the godless leads to the power of the weak. This is the center of Paul's dialectic.

One of your examiners refers to my own "weakness" in making myself understood, especially in respect to my preaching. On that point I wish to protest energetically. When I was a professor, I tore up hundreds of sermons that I had worked on in earlier times when I served in the parish. I preached in those days at least four times a month. Seldom then did I preach to congregations that did not fill the church, which sat 1200. Seldom did I address a Bible study that did not have fewer than 200 participants. Critical services during the time of the Confessing Church were taken by myself. Once at a "ChurchDay" ("Kirchent,ig") we had to shut the doors of the hall after 7000 listeners crowded in. Later, over a 20-year period, my colloquia were the best attended, a-ter Barth's, in Germany. In the early days (i.e., when EK was pastor in Gelsenkirchen-author), the academics had to come to the miners and steelworkers! The Gestapo was always there, taking notes when I was in the pulpit. All this is not to boast. It is simply to say that my so-called "difficult,v in making myself understood" seems to have resulted in my having opponents among the Nazis, among the Pietists, among colleagues and among laity. Ru>nor has always accompanied me, whether it was Nazis who saw in me a "betrayer of the people" or whether it was Pietists who saw in me a concealed atheist.

Had I not become a follower of St. Paul or had I suppressed the scandal of the Gospel, I would probably have become bored. Professors have their crosses to bear, too. In any event I was asked constantly to give beyond what I could. I could not see my way to living a right middle-class life in a world that had never felt the hangman's noose. Anyway I have almost turned 90. My portrait shouldn't be over-painted.

Now let's look at this question of the Old Adam and the outbreak of his "temperament"! It seems to me more or less that you have cut too close the problematic of the Law, which has got to be dealt with as far as justification is concerned. \When you enter this territory, an indinidualistic point of view seems to me to play a questionable role. The Enlightenment as well as Pietism pioneered the way by which soteriology began to circle around the individual. As far as the antithesis of faith and works is concerned, the Enlightenment neglected the apocalyptic eschatology of Paul. In Paul's eschatology, the real question is, who is this world's lord and who ought it to be? So it is not altogether clear to me, what you want to say about the "active obedience" of Christ in relation to the active obedience of Christians. The Cross has to be understood primarily as something Christ endured rather than something He did. He asked the Father to be spared the cup. Here he is not the "subject" but the victim of his enemies. And here I don't particularly like the word "expiation," or "atonement," because that kind of sacrifice does not happen from free will, of the victim; nor is it brought fonvard willingly, so to speak, by the congregation; nor is it given up by God for the sake of His reconciliation with the world. Jesus suffers representatively along with all sufferers, because that is the earthly lot of the servants of God.

But "active obedience" is also not the same thing as the "good works" of faith. Active obedience is rather the concretizing of the grace given us, namely the gifts of the Spirit. Just as the demons take possession of us hen we presume to be "autonomous," so Christ takes possession of us as Lord, and transforms us into instruments of grace. Our faith is; not primarily our decision and our service. Faith is rather the miracle that God subdues us, and rips away our illusions and our ideologies. Faith makes us into listeners and receivers, us for whom His promise is a greater thing than our reason. Justification of the godless takes place when we become believing-against our own will and against irs reason. Faith is not a product of the idealism of Icarus, who fashioned for himself his own wings. Faith is in the first place a becoming nothing ("ein rcd nihilhm werden"), a comforted despair, of those ho can neither heal nor help themselves, of those who are stuck in "Original Sin." I am not of the opinion that this should be called "pessimism" and therefore be written off as something psychological. Original sin is the situation after the Fall, it is the experience of a world which is hell, it is the reality of the power of arrogance and the presumption of idealists who promise to make the earth a heaven in varying and contradictory ways.

Will von excuse me if I get person;ll? I have had my own experience with hell: two world wars, revolutions and dictatorships, mass murder and the rape of the weak, moreover the white man's exhausting of the whole earth. It is a miracle to me that I was not ground up by the wheels, but rather found myself a professor. This is a wonder, when I consider that "German-Christians" in my presbytery and members of the church council at Gelsenkirchen asked that I be arrested by the power of both State and Church and thrown into the concentration car p. They marked me as guilty of high treason. I still have the documents. For ten years I dealt with the Gestapo, week after week, before I had to become a soldier for three more. I could not have come ary closer to hell. Mr. Altizer held a seminar in New York once concerning theological nihilism. He invited me. It was only faith as gift which eluded him, not self-created faith. This letter comes to an end. but not our conversation.

Good wishes.

Ernst Kasemann

In Ksemann's third theological letter, from December 1995, he is in good spirits. Note that he returns once again to the criticism that his theology tends to "de-individualize" people. Initially, his comments concerning Bultmann appear to sustain my objection! But then he returns to his conviction that "patisanhip" is the highest form of individual that is possible for a human being to have

8 December 1995

Dear Friends!

Alabama marches on and we are sitting tight! But it does us good to know that we are not forgotten. Receive our warm thanks for the lovely picture of your family and for your correspondence, which gives us the feeling that we are much nearer to you than time and space allow. So we return your Christmas and New Year's greetings and trust that you and your family will be up to your present and future challenges. We have learned, from the experience of a long life, that constant provocation keeps us alert. It is then that we discover what we are capable of, and no less in the midst of crisis. The interplay of giving and receiving ought never to cease. It makes life exciting, and makes us human.

That your dissertation is now edited is fitting. The echo from your work was so positive, that I wished for its publication soon, even when I know that you will never be finished with the theme "the justification of the godless" and that you will run into steady opposition. Right theology,, which today has been dumbed down in so many, variants to the level of anthropology, will always remain in opposition to such anthropology; maybe in America more than elsewhere.

I would like you to continue your focus on the central theme of my work, the very thing which was the source of the "rumor" that followed me and the tradition of my school of thought always. I would desire that you would carry this on as a true protest against every theology of desire and self-deception that springs from the Old Adam.

In closing, here is one critical footnote: You have said that I am a de-individualizer and de-historicizer. This gives me pause. As early as my second semester of study, I opposed Bultmann on that question. He said, "'Mankind' is an abstraction." I replied, "The 'individual' seems to me the greater abstraction." That was fresh! But I held firm (i.e., against Bultmann-author) right on to the end of our friendship. I also held on to this view throughout my teaching career and also when I served in the parish. I was and remained a revolutionary "partisan" (which is as individualistic as you can get!), and all in the context of a world which had become an inferno. (I even saw that inferno differently from Bultmann!) The white man always lands in the middle of idealistic humanism. That (i.e., idealistic humanism) is always our partner and opponent in Christian dialogue concerning anthropology, whether such anthropology is found in Marxism or, more recently, in feminism-ideology in place of Gospel!

So much for today! Heartfeltedly yours, and thankfully and provocatively!

Yours,

Ernst Kaseman

The last letter I received from Kasemann was dated Reformation Day 1996. He had just received a copy of my book. Never one not to be provocative-again, one of his favorite words-he returned a fourth time to my point concerning his tendency to "de-individualize." How does an individual come to faith in your scheme?, I had asked. If God's intervention on the human stage, exorcizing the world of its demons, is 100% of the equation, where is human subjectivity in any recognizable form? Kasemann would not let go on this one and again referred to his experience with the Nazis. In his struggle against them, he was no idea of a person, rather he was one sole being against the world. He was a revolutionary radical "partisan."

Finally, Kase:mann draws us back to Romans 9-11. He wants this section of Paul's letter to be a full part of any thinking on justification. He sees the corporate dimension of the doctrine as being embedded in this "second part" of Romans (to which he has devoted half his life). He concludes with greetings from himself and from his wife of over 60 years.

Reformation Day, 31 October 1996

Dear Herr Zahl!

You have given me rich gifts for my 90th birthday. I thank you warmly for your congratulations and for the essay concerning my relation to my teacher Bultmann2. I am in deep agreement with it. Now I am overtaken with surprise by the just-published German edition of your dissertation3. It has reduced my linguistic reservations about it to merely minor points. It was good that my old illness, chronic bronchitis, rendered me infirm for an uncommonly long time and thus postponed my thank you for your gifts. Otherwise I could not have given you my fir al response to your book. I have read it gladly and with great interest.

The printed edition has particular strength because the themes have been consciously set out in clear delineated sections. The difficulties of ;German) language that I might have foreseen are scarcely evident. Similarly, it is inconceivable to me how much you have read that was unknown to me. It is also excellent what you say about my dialogue with 1 my old teachers. I wonder whether German reviews will go into that in precise detail, or even notice its importance. In sum: your hook is entirely better than I could ever have expected.

On two points, however, I have to offer serious criticism:

1. My theology of justification absolutely cannot be accused of "de-individualizing" persons. I reject utterly Bultmann's Idealism, and the Idealism of many others. They want to emphasize the "individualit)" and self-understanding of the Apostle. They do not see that the human being according to Paul is in his human body the projection of good and bad powers also. I cannot predicate the word "godless" of the crucified Christ. The Crucified calls on the Father as He dies, and the Christian is not defined simply by light or by darkness. The Christian exists both as one who is under attack ("Angefochtenen") and at the same time as victor. Pentecost occurred in this world, but we obtained, in a world that is for the majority of its inhabitants a living hell and nrmains so, the spirit of the child, who prays and also coinplains, the First Commandment, and the Lord who makes us free in our "weakness." We live from our forgiveness. Resistance and service make that concrete. So I could not say that God leads us into godlessness in order to draw us back to Him. That would be blasphemy. God acts on our behalf against his enemies. They then become His creatures in the experience of being "reduced to nothing." We experience that we are just dreamers when it comes to our own righteousness. We wish to rescue ourselves on our own power. From guilt, suffering, and death we will never be able to free ourselves, even as Christians. But we have the Lord, who carries us through this earthly life and makes us His witnesses. To the Christian, our environment here will always be enigmatic. Tc be "in Christ" and at the same time in the body remains a miracle.

Whoever took part in the German Church struggle (i.e., of 19331939-author) was a very individual partisan. I was one, too. I stood in the pulpit and right in front of me, in the gallery and below in the chancel, sat the Gestapo and the Nazis. You won't believe how much of an individual I felt then!: To preach heaven and to have hell right before your eyes in the person of its legates. This was no idealistic understanding of myself. It was the resistance and the freedom of a disciple. A thousand listeners were asked, at the highest pitch of individuality, to what end they were listening. "Godless" were we not. We represented our Lord and we risked His cross. We were called revolutionaries and were de alt with accordingly. But the kingdom of God is revoltionary! The COld Adam dances with himself, by himself-godless.

2. Now, a short point: Justification by faith appears in the Book of Romans in hvo ways. It concerns individuality, but it concerns also the problem of Israel, as Chapters 9-11 demonstrate. This neither you nor your examiners have reckoned with. The problem of the "hardening of the heart" belongs to our theme. Romans 11:32 says: "God has shut up all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." This is the "justification of the godless" as truly universal! I don't have to go further in respect: to that verse. I have pounded through it in my Romans commentary. Now you are in the apostolic succession.

Receive my best wishes. My wife and I are thinking of you, your family; and your work. We wish to keep you as friends, even though old age makes that harder and harder. Let me hear from you, and naturally, too, about America, her politics and her theology.

Yours,

Ernst Kasemann

Working with Kasemann, learning so much from him, and thinking with Herr Moltmann through one after another of the great issues related to justification by faith will forever stamp my life, thinking, and ministry. Ernst Kasemann was a living epistle (II Corinthians 3:2). His revolutionary partisanship had become a way of life. His role in the left wing cif the Confessing Church under National Socialism was the defining moment for his understanding of what true individuality means. His tension with Bultmann, over 50 years, was also critical and hinged on Kasemann's allergy to the tradition of theological Idealism, stemming from Hegel, which had so conditioned Protestant theology by the time Kasemann began his studies. "Partisan," provocateur, apocalyptieist, Gnesio-Lutheraner, radical critic, warrior for Christ: these words say it. I am thankful for the privilege of having known Ernst Kasemann.

I "Ein freier Christenmensch," death notice in the Schwabisches Tagblatt, 19 February 1.998.

Paul F.M. Zahl. "A New Source for Understanding German Theology: Kasemann Bultmann, and the New Perspective on Paul," Sewanee Theology Review, 39:4 Michae mas 1996; pp. 413-422.

Paul Francis Matthew Zahl, Die Rechufertigungslehre Ernst Kasemanns, Calwer Theologische Monographien, Reibe B (Systematsiche Theologie and Kirchengeschichte), Band 13 (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1996).

Paul F M. Zahl is dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama.

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 1998
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved