“Church fellowships that imagine they are indispensable and whose thinking revolves about earthly and eternal survival will have to be told that God allows us all to die, that great churches have gone under, that only the bourgeoisie with its claim to ownership and permanence confuses the resurrection of the dead with its own survival. What is indispensable for our Lord is only that we follow him and shoulder the cross rather than shifting it back to the neighbor or stranger, only to make it heavier there. Put stiffly, but in genuinely evangelical fashion, the Crucified inspires all prophecy that has any right to genuine authority. It is not, as occurred in early Christianity according to 3 John, interchangeable with hierarchy, nor, contrary to 2 Peter 1:20, to be reduced to the message of the printed Scripture and needing official church interpretation. The Crucified is its legitimation at all times, and still is today. But the Crucified should not be made an edifying altar painting. He is present among the least. —E. Käsemann2”