Word: cullmann
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Switzerland's Oscar Cullmann, professor of early church history and New Testament at Basel University and one of Europe's top Protestant theologians, was visiting Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary last week, busy with lectures, seminars and informal discussions. The talk that stirred up the most discussion-and brought an unprecedented turnout of Roman Catholic priests to Union-was not on the problems of eschatology and exegesis, for which he is well known, but on the practical problems of Protestant-Catholic relations. Theologian Cullmann reiterated a proposal that has been catching on increasingly in Europe: Protestant...
Theological Brotherhood. The split between Catholic and Protestant Christians is an offense to Christ, says Lutheran Cullmann, but it is unrealistic to think that it can be healed now: Protestants are not going to accept the primacy of the Pope, and Catholics are not going to accept unity on any other terms. But the climate of relations between them can be changed. In fact, says Cullmann, that climate has improved considerably in recent years. On the Continent, Cullmann is involved in discussions with Catholic colleagues "almost daily," and there are "many important questions of faith in which we are able...
Looking for something to deepen the sense of Christian solidarity on the layman's level, Cullmann was inspired by the collection St. Paul made among his missionary churches for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. This, says Cullmann, was not merely an act of charity but was intended by Paul as a "symbol of unity" between circumcised and uncircumcised, Jewish and Gentile Christians. Since unity is not possible today, the offering "would no longer be a symbol of unity, but of solidarity, of brotherhood among all who invoke the name of Christ...
Brothers in Christ. For the past two years Cullmann has been expounding his idea throughout Europe. There have been skeptics on both sides, but more enthusiasts. After one Cullmann lecture in Rome, "a monk who did not make himself known placed a bank note wrapped in paper into my pocket. On my way home I discovered that the following words were scrawled on the paper: 'From a Catholic monk for a poor Protestant in Rome as a symbol of Christian solidarity.' I delivered the sum to the dean of a small Waldensian seminary in Rome ... He spoke...
...Time. Those who see the Christian belief in the end of the world as implying an attitude of indifference to earthly values are dead wrong, according to Cullmann. But though Christianity does not deny the world, it does not affirm it. either. The complex attitude that places the Christian between the two is what Cullmann calls "chronological dualism." This is "the conviction that, on the one hand . . . Christ the end is already fulfilled, and that nonetheless the consummation is still in the future, since the framework of the present world still endures...