A 'Theologian' Saved By God

Here are a couple of highlights from Eta Linnemann who as a Biblical Professor (!) put her hand up at a Christian meeting to pledge a commitment to Christ for the first time. It is a beautiful read. There would have been great rejoicing on that day.

When she started as a student ...

"I started attending when he [Bultmann] was at chapter 12, and I do not remember what he had said concerning chapters 12-14. But I still remember what he said when he came to chapter 15:1-5, where Paul said:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some of them have fallen asleep.

When Professor Bultmann came to the next verse, he said, “Here Paul is not at the usual height of his theology because he is speaking of the resurrection of Christ as if it were a historical fact.” Thus I learned as a young student in my very first term that we were not allowed to think of the resurrection of Christ as a historical fact. This great professor had said it, so it had to be. After all, how could I, as a young student, know more than my professors!"

And after she gave herself to Christ, she had a new perspective and is one of the feistiest anti-theological-establishment writers that I have read.

"The god of historical critical theology is like the statue of three monkeys: one is covering the eyes, the next covering the ears, and the third covering the mouth—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, speaking nothing—and as the hands are always occupied, doing nothing. But now I became aware of the living God! And in the same moment I became aware that I had been a blind teacher leading my blind students. I repented of my wrong teaching. I also realized that, despite all my years of study, I knew nothing of God. But through the grace of God, my reaction did not lead me to despair but to the conclusion that now I must get to work learning about this God."

Read her whole story ....


PS. Here is what Alex said on Gordon's Blog. Alex and Gordon, I hope you don't mind me repeating this.

Good ol' Eta Linnemann! She knows what she's talking about, having been a student of Bultmann and a famous professor of New Testament exegesis herself. Her [PhD thesis] "Gleichnisse Jesu" ("Parables of Jesus") received seven(!!!) editions and was translated into several languages (there were also at least two editions of the English translation). In the early 1980s she became a Christian, revoked everything what she had written before her conversion and forbade any further editions of her earlier works. Since then she writes one book after another on the failures of historical-critical exegesis. All her former German colleagues call her mad, of course.