Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

6. There were certainly influences from Hellenistic cultic meals, but there were also profound differences. The sole basis for the early Christian eucharistic celebration is Jesus’ last meal. Cf. Hans-Josef Klauck, Herrenmahl und hellenistischer Kult. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum 1. Korintherbrief, NTA n.s. 15, 2nd ed. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1986).

7. Thus Peter Fiedler, “Sünde und Vergebung im Christentum,” Concilium 10 (1974): 568–71; idem, Jesus und die Sünder, BET 3 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1976), 277–81.

8. For what follows, see also Rudolf Pesch, Das Abendmahl und Jesu Todesverständnis, QD 80 (Freiburg: Herder, 1978), 103–11.

9. Cf. Michael Wolter, Das Lukasevangelium, HNT 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 498.

10. Pesch, Abendmahl, 106.

11. Cf. Hartmut Gese, “The Atonement,” 93–116, in idem, Essays on Biblical Theology, trans. Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981); Bernd Janowski, Sühne als Heilsgeschehen. Studien zur Sühnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament, WMANT 55 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982); idem, Stellvertretung. Alttestamentliche Studien zu einem theologischen Grundbegriff, SBS 165 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1997); Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 136–43.

12. Exod 24:4-11.

13. Jer 31:31-34; cf. Jer 34:40; Ezek 16:59-63; 37:21-28.

14. Isa 52:13–53:12.

15. See in more detail Gerhard Lohfink and Ludwig Weimer, Maria—nicht ohne Israel. Eine neue Sicht der Lehre von der Unbefleckten Empfängnis (Freiburg: Herder, 2008), 223–30.

16. Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Proclamation,” 1–44, in idem, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).

17. Immanuel Kant is frequently cited in this connection by many authors: “Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,” II.1.c., in idem, Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings, trans. Allen Wood, et al., Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

18. Cf. the comprehensively informative work of Karl-Heinz Menke, Stellvertretung. Schlüsselbegriff christlichen Lebens und theologische Grundkategorie (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1991), 17. At this point he refers to Dorothee Sölle, Stellvertretung. Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem “Tode Gottes,” 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1982), English: Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the “Death of God” (London: SCM, 1967).

19. Or “you can because you must.” Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London: Longmans, Green, 1898; repr. Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books, 2008), 25: “He [= one who in a difficult situation and must decide according to conscience—Author] judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free—a fact which but for the moral law he would never have known.” Apparently “you can because you should/must” was later abstracted from this text. At any rate, in 1942 Walter Schmidkunz edited a collection of Kant citations in the Münchner Lesebogen 11, titled “I. Kant, Du kannst, denn du sollst. Vom Ethos der Pflicht.” The phrase in the title did not, however, appear within the collection. I am grateful to Fr. Giovanni Sala, SJ, for this information.

20. I thank Ludwig Weimer for this formulation.

21. Cf. Gese, “The Atonement,” 95–96, 106.

22. For an extended discussion of this point see Lohfink and Weimer, Maria, 37–64.

23. Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, trans. Leif Sjöberg and W. H. Auden (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), 173.

24. Thus, e.g., Jürgen Becker, Das Evangelium nach Johannes. Kapitel 11–21, ÖTK 4/2 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1981), 592.

Chapter 17