be separated from the
appeal to Jesus as Messiah, and as there was actually nothing possessed
but the reality of the Person of Jesus, so in preaching all stress must
necessarily fall on this Person. To believe in him was the decisive
fundamental requirement, and, at first, under the presupposition of the
religion of Abraham and the Prophets, the sure guarantee of salvation.
It is not surprising then to find that in the earliest Christian
preaching Jesus Christ comes before us as frequently as the Kingdom of
God in the preaching of Jesus himself. The image of Jesus, and the power
which proceeded from it, were the things which were really possessed.
Whatever was expected was expected only from Jesus the exalted and
returning one. The proclamation that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand
must therefore become the proclamation that Jesus is the Christ, and
that in him the revelation of God is complete. He who lays hold of Jesus
lays hold in him of the grace of God, and of a full salvation. We
cannot, however, call this in itself a displacement: but as soon as the
proclamation that Jesus is the Christ ceased to be made with the same
emphasis and the same meaning that it had in his own preaching, and what
sort of blessings they were which he brought, not only was a
displacement inevitable, but even a dispossession. But every
dispossession requires the given forms to be filled with new contents.
Simple as was the pure tradition of the confession: "Jesus is the
Christ," the task of rightly appropriating and handing down entire the
peculiar contents which Jesus had given to his self-witnessing and
preaching was nevertheless great, and in its limit uncertain. Even the
Jewish Christian could perform this task only according to the measure
of his spiritual understanding and the strength of his religious life.
Moreover, the external position of the first communities in the midst of
contemporaries who had crucified and rejected Jesus, compelled them to
prove, as their main duty, that Jesus really was the Messiah who was
promised. Consequently, everything united to bring the first communities
to the conviction that the proclamation of the Gospel with which they
were entrusted, resolved itself into the proclamation that Jesus is the
Christ. The [Greek: didaskein terein panta hota eneteilato ho Iesous]
(teaching to observe all that Jesus had commanded), a thing of heart and
life, could not lead to reflection in the same degree, as the [Gree