The Real Jesus

[TBC: In this age of counterfeit spirituality, the resurrection of Medieval Catholic practices, and the Church's acceptance of humanistic psychology, it is encouraging to note that a skeptic's honest recognition of the real Jesus can cut through the fraud and folly now being promoted by the "emerging church." Professor Rudolph Bultmann was a prominent member of a group of scholars promoting "higher criticism," a movement denying the historical reality of the scriptures. It is certainly ironic that ]

"Professor Bultmann's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus, however, differs radically from that popularized by liberal scholars of pre-World War One days. It forces recognition of the fact that Jesus' teaching did not center around such ideas as the infinite worth of personality, the cultivation of the inner life, the development of man toward an ideal; that Jesus spoke rather of the coming Kingdom of God, which was to be God's gift, not man's achievement, of man's decision for or against the Kingdom, and of the divine demand for obedience."

(Translator's preface to the 1958 republication of Bultmann's book "Jesus").