DE HISTORISCHE JEZUS EN HET BIJBELSE BEELD VAN JEZUS ALS DE CHRISTUS VOLGENS PAUL TILLICH

Abstract

SUMMARY The all-embracing paradox of Christianity is, according to Paul Tillich, that in Jesus a new reality, a „New Being” has been manifested and realised, so that the disciples could accept him as the Messiah, as the Christ. Chalce-don made this faith more explicit in the doctrine of the two natures in Christ, while in later theology a monophysitic tendency became predominant. For this reason Tillich insists on the full humanity of Christ, whereby he takes a radical standpoint in the discussion about the importance of the historical Jesus for Christian faith and theology. In accordance with his master Martin Kähler of Halle (Germany), he rejects every foundation of the Christian faith by any historical research about Jesus of Nazareth. Not the man Jesus is „object” of faith, but only the biblical picture of Jesus who is accepted as the Christ. This picture is given to us in the writings of the New Testament, whereby every author insists on some different aspect or dimension of it. More than a photography, one could speak of an expressionist portrait of Jesus as the Christ—a portrait made in a continuous and faithfull reflection on the historical man whose name is said to be Jesus. A biography of this man is impossible, and so Tillich refers to the sceptical attitude of W. Wrede and R. Bultmann. But as the basic witness of the faith of the first disciples, the New Testament gives us a picture which is a true interpretation of the historical Jesus. So it is possible to accept an analogia imaginis between the picture and the person about whom the picture has arisen. However the historical Jesus is very important in Christian theology, for there should be no Christianity if there had not been a point of Durchbrach of God in human history. God manifests himself in and through some media, the first of all is the man Jesus of Nazareth. This man made the event Jesus as the Christ possible, as the last and decisive revelatory event in history.