Life Can Begin Again Take God out of the universe and everything is annihilated, every higher joy of the mind, every love, and only the wish for mental suicide would remain, and only the devil and the beast would still desire to exist Jean Paul Richter, Dream of a World without God I have not done what God desired of me, that is certain. On the contrary, I have only dreamed of what I wanted from God. LSon Bloy, Lait Journals LIFE CAN BEGIN AGAIN SERMONS ON THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT BY HELMUT THIELICKE translated by John W. Doberstein FORTRESS PRESS PHILADELPHIA This book is a translation from Das Leben kaim noch ewmal begmnen. Em Gang dwch die Bergpredigt (4th rev. ed.; Stuttgart Quell-Verlag, 1958) Copyright Quell- Verlag, 1956. 1963 BY FORTRESS PBESS Library of Congress Catalog Card Nwnber 63-125$$ Printed in USA Prod 4980 UB934 To my friends at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey Translator's Note This book is the last of a great quartet of "series sermons" on some central, familiar biblical materials: in the order of their appearance in English the parables of Jesus, the Lord's Prayer, the first chapters of Genesis, and now the Sermon on the Mount. In many ways this volume may prove to be the most valuable of them all, for the Sermon on the Mount is so commonly mis- interpreted as a collection of lovely, impossible ideals. Helmut Thielicke makes it clear in every chapter that the Sermon on the Mount can never be understood, indeed, will always be misunderstood, if even for a moment we forget the Preacher of the Sermon. For apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ these marvelous words are the most radical and devastating distillation of God's claims that it is possible to conceive; they leave us in utter, hopeless dismay. Only "in Christ" do these words of the law become the glorious gospel that promises that for every man "life can begin again." The last sermon in this book achieves a compelling beauty which even the hazards and ineptitudes of translation cannot wholly obscure. Again the translator is happy to have a part in helping this great preacher to tell us in our own tongue the mighty works of God. Mount Airy, Philadelphia John W. Doberstein January, 1963 Contents Tijnslator's Note vii To the Reader xi 1 Journey Without Luggage 1 2 The First Installment of Happiness 1 1 1. 24 The Salt, Not the Honey of the World 4. The Costs of Grace 35 5 Every Word an Oath fO 6. No Retaliation 1 63 7. Does Faith Pay Dividends' 80 8. Talking About God or With God> 95 9 Homecoming 108 10. Overcoming Anxiety 122 11. The Judge Accused 147 12 An Elementary Course in Faith 161 1 3 Venturing the Harder Road 1 7 3 14. Time's Up 1 188 15. The Foundation of Life 203 To the Reader real trouble The of modern man expresses itself in two kinds of fear: fear of the past and fear of the future. Fear of the past has been a repeated theme of the existen- tialists. How can I ever get away from all that lies behind me, the points where I made decisions, right or wrong, but in any case unalterable, which now determine my life? How can I get away from the guilt that lies behind me and now can never be undone^ For time is like a one-way street that leads me to the future and never allows me to turn back to the past stations of my life and make revisions. Therefore I am in the grip of my and I cannot it. I of and past undo am the prisoner my own past, the past is dreadfully irreversible. It determines me and makes an object of me. How can I ever disentangle myself from this net of the past perfect^ How can I get the reins of my life into my hands again and guide the steeds according to my will, instead of helplessly hanging on to the reins and being dragged around by these unbridled horses? How numerous the dramas of our time in which this question is the cantus firmus, and how we prick up our ears when this theme of life and the anxiety of life is struck! is time But my relationship to the futwe also broken. The is past when men composed shining Utopias in which technology to and social justice seemed about to lead humanity paradise regained. "The future has already begun." But on its threshold Xll LIFE CAN BEGIN AGAIN hear the scream no joyful bells appear to be ringing, we only into har- of sirens. Quite obviously we are not sailing peaceful bors, on the contrary, we see ourselves becoming ensnared in deadly adventures and nobody knows how it will turn out. If a while at this moment we are not exactly saying, "Tarry (hold up the future for a moment longer') thou art so fair," we still live by the motto, "If the world ends tomorrow, today is today." What we need and what we yearn for is something that will us a attitude liberate us from paralysis and help gain new toward what lies behind us and ahead of us. This yearning for some real help with which to face life is met by the Sermon on the Mount, or better, by the Proclaimer of the Sermon on the Mount himself. Only at first glance could it of appear that here we are being pelted with a great profusion de- ejections and imperatives, often piercingly radical in their mands And yet I must immediately correct myself- it is per- there is fectly true to say they are "piercingly radical." Here no talk of half measures and compromises, and anybody who merely wants to play around with it had better let it alone. Here it is all or nothing. And yet the term "piercing radicality" does not the essential other express point, for people have been radical too. Anybody who knows Kant the cthicist and his cate- gorical imperative knows that his radicality can hardly be sur- passed. With all the skill of a sharp-witted sleuth he ferrets out man m every secret hole in which he seeks a refuge \\herc he can be alone with his urges and his furious thirst for happiness and of power prestige. And how about the fnnatics of every the age, respectable people whose "purity it was to will one thing" (Kierkegaard), who with a manic obsession and yet with an incomparable devotion subordinated everything to the one which goal they thought was right, regardless of losses and letting nothing stand in their way^ moderns are for We the most part activists. We live by our and u will, we accept the principle that if it does not kill me it TO THE READER Xlll will cure me." It may be the dim suspicion that this motivation only makes us whirl ever faster on the carousel of a vicious will with a cer- circle that causes us to respond to appeals to the tain resignation and view all radicalisms with a bit of skepticism. After all, was it not the great men of fanatical will, the "terrible into simplifiers" (the ternbles simplificateurs) who led us the abyss* Therefore, in the Sermon on the Mount we should consider less the piercing radicahty of its directions and give more con- sideration to the Figure who is speaking here and has a definite purpose in view when he speaks m these radical terms. What is this ultimate thing^ Well, whatever it may be and we shall attempt to learn what it is there is one thing that we must take cognizance of in these first pages and that is that we are not given something to do without first being given something. And this really is different from what we hear from Kant and the other rigonsts. Here it is not that demanded we free ourselves from our past by sheer force and a titanic effort of will and simply begin a new life. This would only put us back on the rack again and besides, it would be illusionary. He who into the future leaps Goes down to ruin. And whether the leap success or failure reaps, The man who leaps Goes down to rum Erich Kastner The Sermon on the Mount is uttered against a wholly different background. The Proclaimer of the Sermon on the Mount says to us: before you begin intelligently to strike out on a new path and make a fresh start on life, you must first realize that every- thing that lies behind you has been set straight, that someone else has taken on your burdens, and that now you can really begin your new life to use a phrase of Anouilh which he used LIFE CAN BEGIN AGAIN without with a wholly different connotation as a "traveler luggage." And yet there is something else that must be made clear at the outset. earnest road to which we are The radical, straight, is not so directed, the entrance to which is a very narrow gate, laid out that it will "lead" us into a new future. In nonfigura- tive is intended to language, the radicahty of the demands not force a life new situation in humanity and personal by whipping as it determination. up, were, an increased intensity of zeal and No, what the Sermon on the Mount sets forth is not the kind of dream that Kant, and also the fanatics in their way, dreamed.