NOTES for Luk 4:16-22
Throughout two thousand years of Christian history, theologians and philosophers have debated what Christianity is and where its novelty lies. They have spoken of a new type of religion, new theological approaches, and a new morality. Yet the Gospel evidently offers us nothing new, and Jesus' preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth is the best proof. He simply reads a Messianic prophecy from the Book of Isaiah and then says: now all this has been fulfilled—evidently referring to Himself. This is the whole meaning of Christianity and the entire content of the new covenant: the Messiah promised by God through the prophets has come and brought the Kingdom that God likewise promised through those same prophets. Christianity has no other meaning and no other spiritual content.
Why, then, have so many theologians, philosophers, preachers, and simply those usually called “ordinary Christians” today sought this meaning for so long and continued to seek it? Perhaps everything is too complicated and the new revelation needs numerous explanations and commentaries? Hardly. Rather, it is too simple, sometimes frighteningly so: simply the Messiah, simply the Kingdom, simply new life in that Kingdom together with Him. And this simplicity devalues much of what existed before, both spiritually and intellectually.
This is not surprising, for in all the philosophy, theology, and religion that existed before and still exists today there is much that is human: not only sincere searching, since one who sincerely seeks answers rejoices when they are found, but also what is now called “self-expression,” and sometimes more or less open self-assertion. In the light of Christ and the Kingdom, all this—including, to a considerable extent, religiosity itself—turns out to be unnecessary ballast. No wonder it causes confusion! Then begin the “explanations” of Christianity, whose only task, though those doing the explaining do not always realize it, is to squeeze the Messiah and the Kingdom into familiar earthly frameworks—explanations that contrast sharply with the Savior's preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth.