A few quotes from the late Rector of the University of Berlin:
“I begin with what is best known and least doubtful, i.e. with that item in the teaching of Jesus which struck His kinsfolk most strongly, and which in fact must have excited the greatest surprise. Jesus is called by His opponents the ‘friend of publicans (tax collectors) and sinners,’ and He frankly accepts the title. It is His commission to go to the lost.
Jesus preaches a God who wants to have dealings with sinful men.
This conception of a God who offers Himself to the sinner is so familiar to present-day Christendom that it is hardly realized how revolutionary after all is such a doctrine – what a contradiction it implies to all religious conceptions recognized elsewhere.
Thus surely Jesus’ conception of God was new. He dealt a blow at everything that earnest ethical thinking about the relation between God and man had established, and everything that the common-sense understanding of mankind down to the present day has held to be the only right standard.”
COMMENTS
One response to “"The Distinctive Elements in Christianity" by Karl Holl (1866-1926)”
Leave a Reply
These quotes put the reader at the very heart and core and substance of the Christian message.
Everything else is secondary to this, and ironically there is very little friendship with sinners within the Christian community istelf.
It is the darndest thing.
And the closer people get to the “inside” of the Christian Church, the less He is allowed to be the Friend of Sinners.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
Our missing out on this radioactive truth of life, which R.-J. has so beautifully brought out through these Karl Holl quotes, may result in costing the Christian Church its future in the Western world.
No kidding.