The Great Commandment

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By Klaus Bockmuehl on January 1, 2010 ,

The Great Commandment

Jesus is under investigation. A scribe and Pharisee gives him an examination in ethics. He tries to catch him teaching some moral heresy.

But his question concerning which commandment was to be looked at as the highest of them all is at the same time an honest question. Pharisaism reckoned with roughly six hundred commandments, none of which was to be neglected. But could somebody really respect them all alike and to the same extent?  Should one not be permitted to assume some order or rank of the commandments? This man, then, addresses to Jesus (the apparent innovator in ethics) a question which he had been discussing long and fruitlessly with his own colleagues. . .

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Klaus Bockmuehl

Professor

Klaus Bockmuehl, (1931 — 1989) was a Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Regent College, Vancouver. After receiving his doctorate, Bockmuehl was ordained in 1961 and served as a pastor in a Reformed Church in Düren, Germany. He held various posts in Heidelberg and Schmieheim, and from 1965 to 1971 worked part-time as a lecturer at St. Chrischona seminary in Bettingen near Basel. From 1977 until his death in 1989, Bockmuehl was Professor of Theology and Ethics at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

 

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