Jesus as the Means, the “Good Fairy”

In a letter from Franz Ernst Pfisterer to his former seminary professor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pfisterer reflects on DB’s critical observations about a sermon Pfisterer sent to him for critique. Evidently Bonhoeffer pushed against something in the sermon that made Jesus the means. I have been arguing for sometime that the soterian gospel, the gospel that centralizes salvation, makes Jesus the means of salvation and de-centralizes Jesus away from being the point and telos of the story. The focus on the gospel as centrally about salvation centers humans: it is about what God does for us, not who does what. I argue this in The King Jesus Gospel.

Here are Pfisterer’s words:

Put bluntly, one could perhaps express it this ray: in no way may Christ for us become a means to an end. When the entire accent is put on the gifts of “grace, forgiveness of sins, righteousness,” then the human being does move back into the center, without our clearly realizing this. If I recall correctly, here the theology of the Middle Ages, and Luther too, warned of such an uti deo = deum diligere propter bona.[The “use of God” as “loving God for the sake of God’s good gifts.”]…

On the other hand, I think it is very significant that the decisive confession of faith by the early Christian church-community was not: Christ the Soter [Savior], but rather Christ the Kyrios [Lord]. In that, the early church-community indeed asserted that the [Lord] is the [Savior], that the gifts of “grace, forgiveness of sins, life” come from him, and yet the confession demonstrates that Christ is more than a good fairy.

DBWE 15. 87, 88 (italics added).

Here are three priceless expressions of the gospel, expressions that focus our attention first on Jesus, citing the Common English Bible:

Phil. 2:6   Though he was in the form of God,

he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.

7 But he emptied himself

by taking the form of a slave

and by becoming like human beings.

When he found himself in the form of a human,

8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,

even death on a cross.

9 Therefore, God highly honored him

and gave him a name above all names,

10 so that at the name of Jesus everyone

in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow

11 and every tongue confess that

Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Now another early Christian “hymn”:

Col. 1:15   The Son is the image of the invisible God,

the one who is first over all creation,a

Col. 1:16   Because all things were created by him:

both in the heavens and on the earth,

the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.

Whether they are thrones or powers,

or rulers or authorities,

all things were created through him and for him.

Col. 1:17   He existed before all things,

and all things are held together in him.

Col. 1:18   He is the head of the body, the church,

who is the beginning,

the one who is firstborn from among the deadb

so that he might occupy the first place in everything.

Col. 1:19   Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,

20 and he reconciled all things to himself through him—

whether things on earth or in the heavens.

He brought peace through the blood of his cross.

And the quintessential gospel statement of the entire NT:

1Cor. 15:3  I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures,  4  he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures.  5  He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve…