Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | April/2021 |
Spalte: | 313-315 |
Kategorie: | Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Møller, Maria Louise Odgaard |
Titel/Untertitel: | The True Human Being. The Figure of Jesus in K. E. Løgstrup’s Thought. |
Verlag: | Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2019. 285 S. = Studia Aarhusiana Neotestamentica, 4. Geb. EUR 75,00. ISBN 9783525536179. |
Rezensent: | Carsten Pallesen |
The book at hand is a PhD dissertation (2012) translated from Danish. The author, PhD Maria Louise Odgaard Møller, offers a systematic reconstruction and assessment of the image of Jesus in the work of the Danish theologian and philosopher K. E. Løgstrup (1905–1985). Compared to main trends of dialectical theology, Løgstrup’s philosophical rehabilitation of the doctrine of creation is an original and in Denmark rather influential approach to systematic theology. The True Human Being demonstrates how this view of creation is decisive for Løgstrup’s approach to the figure of Jesus compared to the explicit Christology of »theology of scripture« in K. Barth and R. Prenter and to S. Kierkegaard and R. Bultmann’s existential interpretation.
Løgstrup replaces freedom, autonomy, love, and mutual re-cognition by the view of a precultural created normative order and laws of human nature. The figure of Jesus articulates true human life as such, without an ego (71). On a Lutheran reading Christol-ogy harbours the communicative dialectics of subjectivity and otherness, freedom and love, which is intensified in the theology of Sin and Grace, all of which Løgstrup downplays. Subjectivity as the principle of Protestantism in Hegel, Kierkegaard and dialectical theology is what Løgstrup questions fundamentally.
The figure of Jesus in Løgstrup is closely connected with the vi-sion of the created goodness of the basic human condition in its concrete forms, before and independent of historical and cultural interpretations, and despite the human destruction hereof. On this reading, the preaching of Jesus aims at »making good times better«, not a total destruction like in the traditional Lutheran understand-ing.
Løgstrup’s Jesus is construed as a type: An »idiot«, in the sense Nietzsche adopted from Dostojevski, and as the anti-type to St Paul, the »genius«, who in Nietzsche’s perception construed the God on the Cross. In Løgstrup, the Christological proclamation that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is Christ, plays a secondary if any role at all. Does Løgstrup’s construction of Jesus result in a Christianity without Christology? True Human Being exposes this problem in pointed and detailed readings.
Løgstrup shares the question about the human point of entry, Anknüpfungspunkt with the existential interpretation as a universal religious horizon of understanding the human life without which Løgstrup implies, that the reception of the Christian message is truncated. Løgstrup points to ethical phenomena such as trust, mercy and sincerety as sovereign expressions of life, which cannot be accounted for in current transcendental deduction of human possibilities and responsibilities, including Heidegger and Bultmann. Løgstrup’s gift understanding of life is a critique of the irreligious ontology and epistemology that was inaugurated by Kant. However, the Cross and the empty grave represent a chasm impossible to bridge for any Christology, be it from above or from below. In Main Part One (25–179), the figure of Jesus in Løgstrup’s work is presented in thematic readings of the central texts and contexts. Beginning with the early work (1936–1943), including Løgstrup’s doctoral dissertation, Den erkendelsesteoretiske konflikt mellem den transcendentalfilosofiske idealisme og teologien (1942), M. points out significant changes in The Ethical Demand (1956) and Opgør med Kierkegaard (1968), in which Løgstrup approaches the Christological question. Løgstrup’s interpretation has some affinities with R. Bultmann’s Jesus (1926), and W. Grønbech’s Jesus the Son of Man (1935), that has led scholars like R. Prenter, O. Jensen and N. H. Gregersen to assume some degree of dependence or adoption. This claim is critically revised and rejected as superficial in M.’s account. Løgstrup’s perception of the basic human condition differs decisively from Grønbech’s philosophy-of-life, including Nietzsche’s approach to Jesus, as well as from the emphasis on the existential decision in the eschatological preaching of Jesus in Bultmann. According to Løgstrup: »This talk of human life as an unceasing series of decisions is a pure construction« (93). Løgstrup points to the relational and social character of human life, and most of all, he points to the religious interpretation of life as created as the horizon for Jesus’ preaching of the law. The relation to God is decided in the relation to the other, the neighbor, Løgstrup claims with references to the biblical text (Mt 25,45–46). Hence, the figure of Jesus is detached from an eschatological and otherworldly perception of the Kingdom of God. Bultmann demythologizes the eschatology and neutralizes the distinction between a modern profane interpretation and a Jewish Christian religious gift understanding of life. Consequently, M. concludes, that Løgstrup’s Jesus image is not in any significant way adopted from other theologians or philosophers, but »can be defined as something original, Løgstrupian« (94).
Løgstrup’s religious view of human life as created by a transcendent divine power is the all over horizon of his interpretation of other theological topics, including Jesus, the Law, and the Kingdom of God. M. examins how this is played out in the interpretation of Jesus in The Ethical Demand and Opgør med Kierkegaard with some comparative references to Chapter 6 of Skabelse og tilintetgørelse (1978), in which Løgstrup most systematically presents his answer to the Christological question. Main Part Two (183–245) confronts the Christological question, which divides the scholarly reception. Løgstrup’s arbitrary sketches of Jesus are difficult to grasp in a dogmatic assessment or in an exegetical account of the scriptural sources. The question has been at the center of the Bultmann school to which Løgstrup was affiliated. M. discusses whether Løgstrup was influenced by the second quest for the historical Jesus launched in 1953 by E. Käsemann and concluded in G. Bornkamm Jesus of Na-zareth (1956). The criterion for the second quest was to identify a figure of Jesus in distinction from Judaism as well as from primi-tive Christianity (194), which would have decisive significance for the decision of faith. On Bultmann’s account, the implicit or incomplete Christology in the preaching of the historical Jesus does not provoke the decision of faith. The decision is understood as the distinction between Law and Gospel, which Bultmann exclusively attributes to the Christological kerygma which requires the Church as its bearer and is dogmatically understood a deed of the Holy Ghost (203). Løgstrup, like Käsemann and Bornkamm, wants to go beyond the naked »that« (das Dass) (206), which according to Bultmann is blocked by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ. For Bultmann, the second quest ends in the same blind alley as the 19th century Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Løgstrup nevertheless assumes the incomplete or implicit Christology in the figure of Jesus as the true human to have decisive significance for the decision of faith (217).
In the final section, Main Part Three (249–269), M. offers an evaluation of Løgstrup’s figure of Jesus from the perspective of Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutical philosophy of religion. Løgstrup claims that his figure of Jesus is an »interpretation« (268), however without defining the object of this interpretation: »Løgstrup’s presentation of Jesus lacks the most essential aspect of the figure of Jesus drawn from a hermeneutical reading of the texts« (268). On Ricœur’s read-ing, the synoptic accounts of the historical Jesus are perceived as instances of »interpretive narrative«, i. e. interpretations of apocalyptic and prophetic scripture such as Psalm 22. Moreover, the synoptic genre is perceived as »passion narratives with long introductions« (M. Kähler), which present different and polemically opposed christologies: The suffering Son of man in Mark is opposes to a Christology of glory in Luke. The figure of Jesus is overdetermined in a way that exhausts the resources of Løgstrup’s intention and his phenomenological method. On a hermeneutical reading, the distinction between the historical Jesus and the christological schematizations of the primitive community is an anachronism. Bornkamm notes that the synoptic narratives are composed in peri-kopes, each of which light up the total without a narrative chain. Something similar characterizes Løgstrup’s fragmentary picture of Jesus. However, M. concludes, that Løgstrup’s interpretation is untenable and problematic. The True Human Being is an important achievement. The book sets new standards in Løgstrup research, that recently has become more international, without however much attention to Løgstrup’s figure of Jesus as a dead end in sys-tematic theology, that deeply questions his perception of philo-sophy of religion. Moreover, M. points to Ricœur’s biblical her-meneutics as a more satisfying and relevant philosophical account of the Christological question at the heart of Christianity.