St. Matthew Passion

Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) was one of the most important German philosophers of the twentieth century. Among his many books that have been translated into English are Paradigms for a Metaphorology and Rigorism of Truth. Helmut Müller-Sievers is Professor of German at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of several books, including The Science of Literature. Paul Fleming is the L. Sanford and Jo Mills Reis Professor of Humanities and the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. He is author of The Pleasures of Abandonment and Exemplarity and Mediocrity.

1. The Horizon

Pacing Off the Horizon

The One Author of the One Story

The Beginning of Wisdom

Relief—or Even More?

The Theological Generosity of the St. Matthew Passion

Saving the 'Implied Listener' from Historical Reason

The Metaphorical Horizon

The Ransom

The Lamb

And the Listening Never Ends

An Apostrophe Goethe Could Not Understand

Imagining Nietzsche Listening to the St. Matthew Passion

Listening to Rilke as He Listens to the St. Matthew Passion

Wittgenstein's Mother

'Never Will This Child Be Crucified...'

2. Escalations of a God

If It Was This One, It Can Be No Other

An Aesthetics of Creation: How It Justifies the Existence of the World

God Refuses to Be Transparent

Time and Again: What Happened in Paradise?

The Magnification of God

The Work of the Patriarchs and the Work of Music

Abraham's Fear of God, Thought to the End: The Lamb, Not the Ram

3. Corporeality

The Incarnation of the Word as an Offense to the Angels

Countermove: The Angel of the Annunciation

God's Entanglement in the World

Since When Am I? Since When Was This One?

Why So Late?

A Fulfilled Promise

4. Apostates

The Comic Element of Simon Peter

The Denial Becomes Defamation

The One Driven by Great Expectations

When Someone Becomes Too Old to Reach for Dominion

Visit to a Stone That Almost Cried Out

The Realism of the Field of Blood

The Pieces of Silver

5. Between Two Murderers

Jesus's Susceptibility to Temptation

Barabbas and the Authentic Words of Jesus

The 'Two Murderers' on Golgotha

'He Calls for Elijah!'

The Primal Scream

Theological Defense and Human Recovery

No Martyrdom

The Last Word in the Passion of Saint John

The Witness of the Fourth Evangelist

6. The Tears

'We Sit Down in Tears...'

Unto the Sealed Tomb

Tears of the Father, Only to Be Thought

Paul Weeps

The Power of Tears over Omnipotence

7. The Imperceptibility of the Messiah

Caravaggio's Emmaus

Traces

From the Unwritten

A Misinterpreted Agraphon

The Messianic: Prophet and Sybil

The Risk of Still Waiting for the Messiah

Messianic Minimalism

The Desperate Messianism of the Second Rome

The Sin That Cannot Be Forgiven

Remembering Origen

8. The Excesses of the Philosophers' God