St. Matthew Passion

St. Matthew Passion is Hans Blumenberg's sustained and devastating meditation on Jesus's anguished cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Why did this abandonment happen, what does it mean within the logic of the Gospels, how have believers and nonbelievers understood it, and how does it live on in art? With rare philological acuity and vast historical learning, Blumenberg unfolds context upon context in which this cry has reverberated, from early Christian apologetics and heretics to twentieth-century literature and philosophy.

1. The HorizonPacing Off the HorizonThe One Author of the One StoryThe Beginning of WisdomRelief-or Even More?The Theological Generosity of the St. Matthew PassionSaving the 'Implied Listener' from Historical ReasonThe Metaphorical HorizonThe RansomThe LambAnd the Listening Never EndsAn Apostrophe Goethe Could Not UnderstandImagining Nietzsche Listening to the St. Matthew PassionListening to Rilke as He Listens to the St. Matthew PassionWittgenstein's Mother'Never Will This Child Be Crucified...'2. Escalations of a GodIf It Was This One, It Can Be No OtherAn Aesthetics of Creation: How It Justifies the Existence of the WorldGod Refuses to Be TransparentTime and Again: What Happened in Paradise?The Magnification of GodThe Work of the Patriarchs and the Work of MusicAbraham's Fear of God, Thought to the End: The Lamb, Not the Ram3. CorporealityThe Incarnation of the Word as an Offense to the AngelsCountermove: The Angel of the AnnunciationGod's Entanglement in the WorldSince When Am I? Since When Was This One?Why So Late?A Fulfilled Promise4. ApostatesThe Comic Element of Simon PeterThe Denial Becomes DefamationThe One Driven by Great ExpectationsWhen Someone Becomes Too Old to Reach for DominionVisit to a Stone That Almost Cried OutThe Realism of the Field of BloodThe Pieces of Silver5. Between Two MurderersJesus's Susceptibility to TemptationBarabbas and the Authentic Words of JesusThe 'Two Murderers' on Golgotha'He Calls for Elijah!'The Primal ScreamTheological Defense and Human RecoveryNo MartyrdomThe Last Word in the Passion of Saint JohnThe Witness of the Fourth Evangelist6. The Tears'We Sit Down in Tears...'Unto the Sealed TombTears of the Father, Only to Be ThoughtPaul WeepsThe Power of Tears over Omnipotence7. The Imperceptibility of the MessiahCaravaggio's EmmausTracesFrom the UnwrittenA Misinterpreted AgraphonThe Messianic: Prophet and SybilThe Risk of Still Waiting for the MessiahMessianic MinimalismThe Desperate Messianism of the Second RomeThe Sin That Cannot Be ForgivenRemembering Origen8. The Excesses of the Philosophers' God