Franz Mußner’s Interpretation of the Epistle of James and Its Impact on Jewish-Christian Dialogue

Autor: Marko Jovanović
Jazyk: German<br />English<br />Croatian<br />Italian<br />Slovenian
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Edinost in Dialog, Vol 75, Iss 2, Pp 119-139 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2335-4127
2385-8907
DOI: 10.34291/Edinost/75/02/Jovanovic
Popis: One of the protagonists of Jewish-Christian dialogue in Germany was the late Franz Mußner (1916–2016), who, in 1985, was awarded for his contribution to this field with the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal. According to his own self-reflection, he owed his »discovery« of Judaism to his work on the commentary to the Epistle of James (1964, 67.75.81.87). The motto of Mußner’s commentary is a dictum of Pope Pius XII: »We Christians are also Jews.« These programmatic words of the commentary oppose every strict demarcation and confrontation between Jews and Christians and demand a new questioning of Christian identity, which leads us to the question: What makes Mußner’s commentary on James so important for the Jewish-Christian dialogue? This article shows that Mußner discovered a Jewish (as well as a Christian) profile of James on the basis of a theological closeness between the author of James and Jesus of the Gospels (he also drew a physical closeness between the author of the letter and Jesus). According to Mußner, this closeness was reflected in words about poor people, the image of God, faith, and justification of people.
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