"Mark and Bev Tindall" <> wrote in message news:<>... from Rudolph Bultmann "Jesus and the Word" ( Fontana, Collins: London: 1934)

p. 76 Jesus desires no asceticism ... The ideal of virginity indeed entered Christianity early; we find it already in the churches of Paul. But it is entirely foreign to Jesus; he required only purity and the sanctity of marriage. ...There is no word from him which declares the sexual life, the physical as such, to be evil, or which ascribes to the state of virginity an especial sanctity. ...Moreover, fasting as an ascetic exercise was not required by Jesus. ... He was reproached as a glutton and drinker, in contrast to John the Baptist, who was an ascetic. (Matt 11:19). ... Jesus, then, in no sense desires asceticism, and this is highly characteristic of his whole attitude and shows how he regards the position of man before God. The demand for asceticism really rests on the assumption that man through his behaviour can attain a certain ideal or saintly quality which remains with him as a possession. The emphasis shifts accordingly from the behaviour, the action, to that which is achieved thereby.

p. 77 ...the assumptions of religious dualism, that the material world, the body, the senses, are evil, and that man must rise himself out of this lower nature to the divine nature. Since Deity neither eats nor drinks, neither sleeps nor begets, man must as far as possible renounce all these things in order to attain divine holiness. In a heightened emotional life, in visions and ecstasies, as they are induced or furthered by such abstinence, the ascetic believes he already finds traces of this divine nature in himself. This kind of asceticism may be called the asceticism of sanctification. Jesus is far removed from ... asceticism. ... In the concrete situation, that is, in this world, in this nature, man stands before God; there is no need of escaping beyond the present or outside of nature. Nowhere does Jesus say that nature is evil, that therefore one ought not to have this or ought not to do that.

p. 78. And all asceticism of sanctification, which aims to attain for itself the divine nature, must be foreign to Jesus. For him there is no such thing as a divine nature; that is specifically a Greek idea. ... for Jesus the will of God in no sense means the demand for asceticism ...