A tribute to Ernst Kasemann and a theological testament

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 1998 by Zahl, Paul F M

Will von excuse me if I get person;ll? I have had my own experience with hell: two world wars, revolutions and dictatorships, mass murder and the rape of the weak, moreover the white man's exhausting of the whole earth. It is a miracle to me that I was not ground up by the wheels, but rather found myself a professor. This is a wonder, when I consider that "German-Christians" in my presbytery and members of the church council at Gelsenkirchen asked that I be arrested by the power of both State and Church and thrown into the concentration car p. They marked me as guilty of high treason. I still have the documents. For ten years I dealt with the Gestapo, week after week, before I had to become a soldier for three more. I could not have come ary closer to hell. Mr. Altizer held a seminar in New York once concerning theological nihilism. He invited me. It was only faith as gift which eluded him, not self-created faith. This letter comes to an end. but not our conversation.

Good wishes.

Ernst Kasemann

In Ksemann's third theological letter, from December 1995, he is in good spirits. Note that he returns once again to the criticism that his theology tends to "de-individualize" people. Initially, his comments concerning Bultmann appear to sustain my objection! But then he returns to his conviction that "patisanhip" is the highest form of individual that is possible for a human being to have

8 December 1995

Dear Friends!

Alabama marches on and we are sitting tight! But it does us good to know that we are not forgotten. Receive our warm thanks for the lovely picture of your family and for your correspondence, which gives us the feeling that we are much nearer to you than time and space allow. So we return your Christmas and New Year's greetings and trust that you and your family will be up to your present and future challenges. We have learned, from the experience of a long life, that constant provocation keeps us alert. It is then that we discover what we are capable of, and no less in the midst of crisis. The interplay of giving and receiving ought never to cease. It makes life exciting, and makes us human.

That your dissertation is now edited is fitting. The echo from your work was so positive, that I wished for its publication soon, even when I know that you will never be finished with the theme "the justification of the godless" and that you will run into steady opposition. Right theology,, which today has been dumbed down in so many, variants to the level of anthropology, will always remain in opposition to such anthropology; maybe in America more than elsewhere.

I would like you to continue your focus on the central theme of my work, the very thing which was the source of the "rumor" that followed me and the tradition of my school of thought always. I would desire that you would carry this on as a true protest against every theology of desire and self-deception that springs from the Old Adam.

In closing, here is one critical footnote: You have said that I am a de-individualizer and de-historicizer. This gives me pause. As early as my second semester of study, I opposed Bultmann on that question. He said, "'Mankind' is an abstraction." I replied, "The 'individual' seems to me the greater abstraction." That was fresh! But I held firm (i.e., against Bultmann-author) right on to the end of our friendship. I also held on to this view throughout my teaching career and also when I served in the parish. I was and remained a revolutionary "partisan" (which is as individualistic as you can get!), and all in the context of a world which had become an inferno. (I even saw that inferno differently from Bultmann!) The white man always lands in the middle of idealistic humanism. That (i.e., idealistic humanism) is always our partner and opponent in Christian dialogue concerning anthropology, whether such anthropology is found in Marxism or, more recently, in feminism-ideology in place of Gospel!