Ernst Käsemann on the Community of the Word

Ernst Käsemann, 1986

"But no one likes to change of his own accord; there are always traditions to which one can appeal so as to protect oneself from present freedom, and there are always utopias in whose airy expanses one can seek shelter, so as to not have to stand one's ground on earth."

"A theology of the resurrection" needs to "become a theology of the cross" or it is "wrong-headed enthusiasm"; the hope of resurrection "should not be concentrated on serving private devoutness."

"Our thinking, in so far as we have not left it entirely to people called on to do it for us, has grown more and more provincial, and Christianity has become a supporting pillar (now rather fragile) of the bourgeois society."

"But if the word of God is not to be fettered, the church has to find it afresh every day and be judged by it afresh every day. If it turns into the church's self-display, if it gets rigid ... then the pious man has brought it into subjection to himself."

- Ernst Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom: A Polemical Survey
 of the New Testament (1969), pp. 8, 82-83, 99, 129.