Very often one reads only want one already believes, and great poverty of Christianity stems not least from the fact that it always or mostly finds in the Bible what it already knew, this actually intends self confirmation. It is no longer known that the gospels are collections with a thousand fold variety of tradition.… Continue reading You believe what you want to believe.

From “Rudolf Bultmann: A Companion to His Theology” by David W. Congdons, Cascade Companions 2015. 

When will we wholeheartedly agree that the truth of the gospel consist in the freedom we desire for our own conduct of life and not merely concede but actually bring to others? 2. will we acknowledge that in Christianity uniforms are not appropriate but that various types of behavior have a place, and that in… Continue reading Reflections from Kasenamm

Even today and within all Christian churches, it is too often supposed that piety satisfies God and that conversion applies to the acceptance of particular Dogmas, traditions, and propositions respecting a given worldview. In this way a thousands and millions of Christians prove that  at bottom they are pagan. Ernst Kasemann

It it has also to be considered however that the readiness required of us must really be readiness for joy.  To be joyful is to expect that life will reveal itself as God’s gift of grace, that will present and offer itself in provisional fulfillments of its meaning and intention as movement. To be joyful… Continue reading Joy

Where it reads “I am the truth”, faith is not tied to a doctrinal system but to a person. Salvation does not consist of one’s believing something but in having a Lord whom one follows, from and toward whom one lives.  “On being a disciple of the crucified Nazarene” page 35

It is a political fact that there is global conflict over to Christianity, that individuals, groups, parties, concessions, and world wide communions are involved in erecting walls against each other that do not even allow common celebration of the Lord’s supper.  Economic, cultural, and military interest foster dissension on earth, but no less so do… Continue reading Kasemann on the righteousness of God

An apocalyptic reduced to a mood of world ruin and promoting desperate anxiety has nothing to do with the gospel. There, according to the revelation of John, the most apocalyptic book of the Bible, Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning in the end, in the rule of God come near is the… Continue reading Ernst Kasemann

No one should behave in wood or field “like the boy who beheads the thistles.”  And on a larger scale there is much senseless waste and destruction from which a reverent humanity should refrain in this sphere and of which it has obviously been guilty only its own destruction.  KBCD III/4 p.351

We cannot admit this work if we are placed by God’s commandments before the requirement of that renouncing faith in him, before the summons to become free before God and for Him,  is there for free from and for ourselves , free from our work in free for divine service. When the gospel the good… Continue reading Freedom before God