The self-forgetfulness of love

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's study of the Sermon on the Mount, he discusses the extraordinary quality of the Christian disciple's life and the seeming contradiction that the disciples are to be the light of the world but at the same time should not make their Christian life visible. How do these two ideas go together? In explaining this, Bonhoeffer says something profound about the character of love itself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and confirmands, 1932

"From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing. We must be unaware of our own righteousness, and see it only in so far as we look unto Jesus; then it will seem not extraordinary, but quite ordinary and natural. ...
     [Discipleship] means an exclusive adherence to him, and that implies first that the disciple looks only to his Lord and follows him. If he looked only at the extraordinary quality of the Christian life, he would no longer be following Christ. For the disciple this extraordinary quality consists solely in the will of the Lord, and when he seeks to do that will he knows that there is no other alternative, and that what he does is the only natural thing to do....
     The genuine work of love is always a hidden work. Take heed therefore that you know it not, for only so is it the goodness of God. If we want to know our own goodness or love, it has already ceased to be love. We must be unaware even of our love for our enemies. After all, when we love them they are no longer our enemies. This voluntary blindness in the Christian (which is really sight illuminated by Christ) is his certainty, and that fact that his life is hidden from his sight is the ground of his assurance...
    Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word. But if we are to have it, our old man must die with all his virtues and qualities, and this can only be done where the disciple forgets self and clings solely to Christ. When Jesus said: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," he was sounding the death-knell of the old man. Once again, who can live a life which combines [Matthew] chapters 5 and 6? Only those who have died after the old man through Christ and are given a new life by following him and having fellowship with him. Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man. For man recovers his true nature in the righteousness of Christ and in his fellow-man."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship 

(trans. R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1963 [German: 1937]), 176-179.

N. T. Wright on holding off theological conclusions about Jesus until history has had its say

" John the Baptist is said to be 'more than a prophet'; but if that is said of John, what must be said for Jesus himself? At this point some will want to jump without more ado into a full Nicene christology, and will, not for the last time, have to be severely restrained. It will not do for the elder brother (orthodoxy) to set terms and conditions for the return of the younger (history). But the question 'Who then is this?', or at least 'Who does he think he is?', will not go away. ... the stories that Jesus told indicate well enough that he did not see himself as a prophet entrusted with a task simply for his own generation, one member of a long, continuing line. None of the 'leadership' prophets who have left traces in Josephus thought of themselves in that way, either. The stories he told, and acted out, made it clear that he envisaged his own work as bringing Israel's history to its fateful climax. He really did believe he was inaugurating the kingdom."

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996),

p. 197

Bibeltexter för advent

Växelläsning jag använde i morgonbön på Johannelund den 7 dec 2011

Ett barn är oss fött, en son är oss given.

Hans namn är Underbar i råd,

Väldig Gud, Evig Fader, Fridsfurste.                                         Jes 9:6

       Han ger oss kraft; vi kan göra allt genom honom.         Fil 4:13

       Utan honom kan vi ingenting göra.                                  Joh 15:5

Han ger våra själar vila.                                                                Matt 11:29

Han lever alltid för att vädja för oss.                                          Heb 7:25

       Han sover aldrig, han vakar ständigt.                                 Ps 121:4

       Han fyller alla våra behov.                                                     Fil 4:19

       Han är allt vi önskar.                                                              Ps 73:25-26

       Han är vår rika belöning.                                                        1 Mos 15:1

I hans hand är alla levandes själ, och alla människors anda.    Job 12:10

       Han är vår store herde.                                                         Heb 13:20

       Han vallar oss bland liljor.                                                    Höga v 2:16

       Han överger oss aldrig.                                                          Heb 13:5

Han har utvalt oss före världens skapelse.                                 Ef. 1:4

Han har kallat oss från mörkret till sitt underbara ljus.            1 Pet 2:9

       Han har kommit för att vi skall ha liv i överflöd,             Joh 10:10

       för att vår glädje skall bli fullkomlig.                       Joh 15:11, 16:20

Han förmår göra långt mer än vi kan begära eller tänka.        Ef 3:20

Med honom är ingenting omöjligt.                                       Luk 1:37, 18:27

       Han uppfyller både himmel och jord.                                   Jer 23:24

       Hos honom är all ljuvlighet.                                   Höga visan 5:16

Han är vår överstepräst, som känner med oss i våra svagheter,

Han har varit frestad i allting, liksom vi, dock utan synd.          Heb 4:14-15

       Han är nära de förtvivlade.                                                    Ps 34:19

       En hjälp i nöden.                                                                      Ps 46:2

Han har klätt oss i frälsningens klädnad.                                      Jes 61:10

Han ger oss glädjens olja i stället för sorgdräkt,

lovsång i stället för modlöshet.                                                        Jes 61:3

Han är den osynlige Gudens avbild                                       Kol 1:15

       och utstrålningen av Guds härlighet.                                       Heb 1:3

I honom har hela den gudomliga fullheten

förkroppsligats och tagit sin boning.                                              Kol 2:9

Han lyser upp våra hjärtan med kunskapen om Guds

härlighet.                                                                                          2 Kor 4:6

Han gör vårt mörker till ljus.                                                          Ps 18:29

       Genom honom har vi frid med Gud.                                   Rom 5:1

       Guds frid, som övergår allt förstånd, bevarar

       våra hjärtan och tankar genom Jesus Kristus.                   Fil 4:7

Han slår sitt läger omkring oss.                                                      Ps 34:8

Hans eviga armar råder här nere.                                               5 Mos 33:27

Han går framför oss.                                                                      2 Mos 23:20

och hans härlighet följer i våra spår.                                                Jes 58:8

       Hans godhet och nåd följer oss i alla våra livsdagar.           Ps 23:6

       Han är den uppståndne som vädjar för oss vid

               Guds högra sida.                                                          Rom 8:34

Han släcker törsten av alla som törstar.                                      Joh 7:37

Alla som vill får dricka fritt av Livets vatten.                                Upp 22:17

       Genom honom har vi friköpts

       och fått förlåtelse för våra synder.                                  Kol 1:14

       Han vill alltid förlåta.                                                           Jes 55:7

Hans blod fortsätter att rena oss från all synd.                        1 Joh 1:7

Han har dött för oss för att vi, vare sig vi är vakna eller

sover, lever eller dör, skall leva tillsammans med honom.          1 Thess 5:10

       Han är Immanuel, Gud med oss,                                         Matt 1:23

       det är i honom vi lever.                                                       Apg 17:28

       Han är vårt liv.                                                                      Kol 3:4

       Stunden är nära. Se, han kommer snart!                         Upp 22:11-12

Alla:  Halleluja! Herren vår Gud, allhärskaren, är nu konung!

Låt oss vara glada och jubla och ge honom vår hyllning!

Amen, kom Herre Jesus!                                             Upp 19:6-7; 22:20

The Theological Riddle of History

The antithesis between [the gospel] and modern idealism arises, not because Jesus and primitive Christianity were less human than humanitarianism, but because they were infinitely more so. The primitive Christians found the revelation of God in an historical figure so desparately human that there emerged within the early Church a faith in men and women so deeply rooted as to make modern humanitarianism seem doctrinaire and trivial. The New Testament does not present a complex chaos of conceptions about God and man from which one or another may be picked out and proclaimed as ultimate and true because it satisfies the highest idealism of this or of all ages; it presents a concrete and definite solution of the problems of life and death, of right and wrong, of happiness and misery in a form which consistutes a challenge to all thought and to all ethical idealism. The New Testament presents the solution in a unique event, in a particular history of human flesh and blood. The New Testament is therefore neither a collection of thoughtful essays nor an attempt to construct a system of ethics. It bears witness to a unique history, and it discovers the truth in the history.

Sir Edwyn Hoskyns and Noel Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament (1931), pp. 180-181

On the assumptions of form criticism

"Our own conviction is that if scholars are genuinely open to the possibility that the Gospel portrait of Jesus is possible, an assessment of all available evidence in this light will lead them to the conclusion that the historical veracity of this portrait is not only possible but most plausible. To state it differently, we believe that once the “plausibility” criterion is no longer used as an a priori naturalistic filter imposed upon the data, and once we allow the techniques and standards of historical reporting/precision of the orally oriented ancient world to guide our reflection, the evidence itself offers good reasons to conclude that the a posteriori burden of proof is justly shifted to those who wish to argue that the Synoptic portrait(s) of Jesus is not substantially reliable."

Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A Boyd, Jesus Legend, The: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Baker Academic, 2007), p. 440

Reevaluating Jesus' Ethical Teaching

"As the biographical genre of the gospels means that we should take Jesus' deeds and example into account as much as his words, so the epistolary genre of Paul's letters directs us to set his ethical teaching within the contingent context of his early Christian communities. As Jesus' pastoral acceptance of 'sinners' means that his extremely demanding teaching cannot be applied in an exclusive manner, so too Paul's ethical teaching must always be balanced by his appeal to the imitation of Christ -- and this entails accepting others as we have been accepted."

Richard Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Eerdmans, 2007), p. 154.

Avoiding epistemological suicide

"Reading the Gospels as eyewitness testimony differs therefore from attempts at historical reconstruction behind the texts. It takes the Gospels seriously as they are; it acknowledges the uniqueness of what we can know only in this testimonial form. It honors the form of historiography they are. From a historiographic perspective, radical suspicion of testimony is a kind of epistemological suicide. It is no more practicable in history than it is in ordinary life. Gospels scholarship must free itself from the grip of the skeptical paradigm that presumes the Gospels to be unreliable unless, in every particular case of story or saying, the historian succeeds in providing independent verification. For such a suspicious approach the Gospels are not believable until and unless the historian can verify each claim that they make to recount history. But this approach is seriously faulty precisely as a historical method. It can only result in a misleadingly minimal collection of uninteresting facts about a historical figure stripped of any real significance."

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006) p. 506.