I cannot find anything like belief in human perfection with Jesus. Here especially his incorruptible realism is evident. He knows that human beings are evil (Luke 11:13); he speaks of this “evil and adulterous generation,” with adultery of course serving as an image for turning away from God (Matt 12:39). He speaks of the persecution and even the violent death of those who follow him and do the will of God. In the end he himself was killed. His death is the final interpretive element added to his proclamation of the reign of God (chap. 2). Without what Jesus had said about slander, persecution, and suffering, his idea of the reign of God might insinuate an almost magical success story; it could lead one astray to believe in the possibility of perfecting humanity.
Jesus did not believe in the perfecting of the human, but only that it is possible to become perfect (Matt 5:48), though “perfect” does not mean simply moral perfection; it means an undivided surrender to the will of God (chap. 13). Jesus believed not in the constant “improvement” of human beings but that in the people of God all could help one another, repeatedly forgive one another, and show one another the way. Precisely because Jesus counted not on the optimization of the human but on joy over the reign of God and constant conversion and reconciliation we do not find in him anything like the contempt for reality that characterizes so many utopias—the same contempt for reality that began with Plato in the utopian sections of his Politics. Precisely because Jesus always had the weakness and fragility of human existence before his eyes the society he began with his group of disciples was not totalitarian, as are so many utopian societies from More to Lenin. With the Zealots, with whom Jesus was much more powerfully confronted than is usually assumed (chap. 5), one can speak of a “terror of ideas” and also of genuine terrorism. There is nothing like that with Jesus. He even warns people against following him.
Utopia almost always demands a total or at least a closed system. Therefore the old world must first be demolished. But with Jesus the tensions within reality are maintained: the fruitful tension between the state, which Jesus did not fundamentally question (Mark 12:17), and the people of God; the tension between the individual and the community; between the already of the reign of God and its not yet; and finally the tension between grace and freedom, that is, between the reign of God as pure gift and the fact that human beings can work in freedom and yet with ultimate passion for the reign of God. He did not destroy any of these tensive arcs; he maintained them. Jesus was very well aware of the “impossibility” of God’s cause in the world, but he knew that God’s possibilities are infinitely greater than all human possibilities (Mark 10:27).
Was the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed a utopia? Most certainly it was not. We can see this also from the fact that his proclamation, sealed with his death and resurrection, immediately after his execution brought forth communities on Israel’s soil everywhere around the Mediterranean, communities that lived his message. What began in those communities is still alive and world-altering in the church even today, despite all the weakness and deficits of the church, despite its constant failure. That must be connected with the fact that the Risen One is present in the church—always, to the end of the age of the world (Matt 28:20). And it must be connected with the truth that Jesus’ proclamation and practice of the reign of God is more radical than any utopia. It is more realistic, it is more critical, it knows more about human beings. It is the only hope for the wounds and sicknesses of our planet.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. The text that follows uses material from Gerhard Lohfink, Der letzte Tag Jesu. Was bei der Passion wirklich geschah (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 71–98. The material was reworked and updated for this book. For an English translation of that book see Gerhard Lohfink, The Last Day of Jesus: An Enriching Portrayal of the Passion (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1984).
2. Story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 289 (11 December 2010): 33.
3. Translator’s note: Scripture quotations are based on the NRSV but adapted to match the author’s German translation. Cf. v. 24 above, where NRSV reads: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
4. This is the fifth Sunday in the cycle for Year B. Unfortunately, the liturgists broke up Mark’s composition and spread it over the fourth and fifth Sundays.
5. Stauffenberg won the prize for best German television film of 2004. Its international English title is Operation Valkyrie.
6. Frank Schirrmacher, “Was fehlt. Die entdramatisierte Geschichte. Jo Baiers ‘Stauffenberg’-Film und wie es gewesen ist,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 47 (25 February 2004): 33.
7. Cf. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität infrähen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1997; 6th ed., 2007). Cf. idem, Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).
8. Thomas Meurer, “Wer zu spät kommt…” Christ in der Gegenwart 54 (2002): 369–70.
9. Romano Guardini, “Das Gleichnis vom Säemann,” [3–13], 159–69, in idem, Wahrheit und Ordnung. Universitätspredigten 7 (Wärzburg: Werkbund Verlag, 1956).
10. “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” quotations and comments from Oscar Cullmann, “Infancy Gospels,” in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. McLean Wilson (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1963–65), 1:439–52, at 444.
11. This has been demonstrated especially well by David Trobisch. See his The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
12. Joseph Ratzinger, “Israel, die Kirche und die Welt,” 152–67, in Heute. Pro ecclesia viva. Das Heft der Integrierten Gemeinde 1: Vom Wieder-Einwurzeln im Jüdischen als einer Bedingung für das Einholen des Katholischen (Bad Tölz: Urfeld Verlag, 1994), at 156. Cf. also Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xxii.
Chapter 2
1. For an extensive presentation see Norbert Lohfink, “Der Begriff des Gottesreichs vom Alten Testament her gesehen,” 152–205, in idem, Studien zur biblischen Theologie, SBAB 16 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1993).
2. On this cf. especially Helmut Merklein, Jesu Botschaft von der Gottesherrschaft. Eine Skizze, 2nd ed., SBS 111 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1984), 28–33.
3. Cf. Exod 15:17; 2 Sam 7:10; Isa 60:21; 61:3; Jer 32:41; 42:10; Matt 15:13; Jub. 36:6; PsSol 14:3-5.
4. According to the Sayings Source used by Matthew and Luke the coming judge baptizes “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt 3:11 // Luke 3:16). This is probably an updating to conform to Christian experience of the Spirit. The Greek pneuma can mean not only “spirit” but also “wind” and even “storm.” The Baptizer must have spoken of a baptism of judgment “by storm and fire.”