[223] I can express myself sharper, after all the other lectures. I didn't speak of personal sacrifice ^aas an ethical act of a person sacrificing himself, but I spoke of the content of his finite ^bmessage which, with all the finite elements in his religious life, are negated by him in the moment in which the Disciples wanted to make them absolute--- THAT was the idea. And this idea means that the Jesus of the Gospels is the greatest enemy of theological "Jesu-ology"---a theology of Jesus---THAT's what He denied radically, in His fights with His disciples and in the rejection of their attempt to make Him, without the Cross (without the sacrifice^c of His individual existence) the Messiah, the bringer of the New Reality. He knew that this was the great temptation, and I think TO KNOW THIS WAS THE GREATEST in Him---to know that every finite truth, even the truth of His own being, if it is directly elevated to ultimacy,^d misses the really ultimate. This is the ultimate criterion, and THEREFORE He sacrificed ^eit. And Paul^f, as always, gives the formulation for it: we don't know Him any more according to the flesh, but the Lord is Spirit. And as Spirit---although it is the Spirit of Jesus-as-the-Christ--- is also the Spirit which liberates from a Jesu-logical subjection to that which is finite IN Jesus-as-the-Christ. Now this is the criterion which l would apply, and wherever this criterion is reached--- more, or less---we are in the realm of highest religion. There is something of it in Buddhism,^g and therefore Buddhism is one of the great competitors of Christianity. There is something of it in Stoicism^h, even modern stoicism, in our present world---therefore this is a great