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

Were phenomenology and conceptual history ever meant to be quite so magnificent? In this study of Bach's 'implied listener' and of our distance from him, Hans Blumenberg offers a moving depiction of the forces, from the Protestant God to the congregation to redemption, that gave meaning to the movements of the St. Matthew Passion, and examines the religious, emotional, psychic, even physical force 'in' Bach's music. Helmut Müller-Sievers and Paul Fleming's resplendent translation conveys Blumenberg's prose and, in particular, the astonishing effort he put to molding us in turn, so we might read, hear, and understand the chorus of theology's ideas.