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That someone, in fact, represents a certain possibility of self-understanding, together with the claim, implicit or explicit, that it is our authentic possibility, can be verified readily enough simply by appeal to particular empirical-historical experience such as anyone might possibly have. But that this representation is efficacious, in that it is experienced by an individual as confronting her or him with just such a personal decision about her or his self-understanding is not a matter of empirical-  but of existential_-historical experience. The individual has to experience the representation as confronting precisely her or him with this fundamental decision. Moreover, that the claim made or implied by the representation is true, that the possibility it represents is, in reality, one's own authentic possibility, also cannot be validated by appeal to any particular empirical-historical experience or procedures of verification. It can be directly validated, if at all, only by again appealing to one's _ existential_-historical experience that it answers one's underlying existential question about the meaning of one's existence more adequately than any alternative answer. Indirectly, of course, it can also be validated more objectively by following properly metaphysical and moral procedures of verification so as to verify its necessary metaphysical and moral implications respectively, although these procedures, also, go beyond any required to verify strictly empirical-historical assertions._

11 September 2003

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There is no reason to deny that many of the claims made or implied about Jesus in the earliest witness were understood by those who made them as empirical-historical claims. In representing Jesus as saying this or doing that, they quite clearly assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he had in fact so spoken or acted. But the thing to note is that they assumed this, they did not assert it – -- not, at any rate, in making or implying the constitutive christological assertion. So far as this assertion is concerned, all the claims they made or implied were not about what Jesus had said and done, but rather about what God had said and done and was still saying and doing precisely through Jesus, and thence through their own witness of faith. In other words, whatever their assumptions about the being of Jesus in himself as a figure of the past, their assertions all had to do with the meaning of Jesus for us as he still confronts us in the present. They were all assertions about Jesus as the decisive re-presentation of God and, therefore, as the one through whom the meaning of ultimate reality and the authentic understanding of our existence are made decisively explicit. Because this is so, the Jesus to whom the earliest witnesses point as "the real locus of revelation" (Marxsen) is the existential-historical Jesus, and therefore neither the empirical-historical Jesus nor their own witness of faith, save insofar as it is solely through their witness that this event of revelation is now accessible and continues to take place.

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The other thing that must be kept in mind is more important: all christological formulations must be justified as appropriate, and the only way to justify them is by empirical-historical inquiry. Nothing is more obviousr even in the writings collected in the New Testament, than the variety of formulations whereby the constitutive christological assertion has been expressed or implied. Moreover, if one avoids an unhistorical harmonization of these various formulations, one can hardly fail to observe that many of them are sufficiently different in certain respects to be mutually exclusive. Consequently, since all of these formulations purport to express one and the same witness of faith, it is necessary to inquire of each of them whether it appropriately does so. But if this makes clear why christological formulations all have to be justified, it is equally obvious that there is no way to justify them except by testing their claim to express the one Christian witness appropriately. And this can be done only by inquiry back behind each formulation to the formally authoritative and therefore normative witness of faith that it claims to formulate. But this clearly necessary process of empirical-historical inquiry ultimately becomes, not a quest of the historical Jesus – -- nor even, I may add, "a historical quest of Jesus" (Marxsen) – -- but rather a quest of the earliest Christian witness. Because the subject of the christological assertion is not Jesus in his being in himselt but rather Jesus in his meaning for us, it is precisely this earliest Christian witness, in which the decisive significance of Jesus is first expressed, that is the formally authoritative and therefore normative witness of faith by which the appropriateness of all christological formulations must be justified.

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Something very like this account probably provides as reasonable an explanation as one can presently give of the origins of Christianity. By affirming that Jesus' own christology was at most implicit, it takes account of the fact that there is no explicit christology in the earliest stratum of Christian witness. On the other hand, by maintaining that Jesus' own proclamation and summons to decision at least implied a christology, it explains the apostles' faith and witness as well as the early church's explicit christological assertion as the kind of responses to Jesus that they give every apperance of having been. But whether or not this is indeed a reasonable account, it is in no way necessary to a constructive christology that would make the point of christology today. Whether Jesus did or did not imply the kind of claim of which the church's christological assertion is the explication in no way alters the fact that, even in the earliest stratum of witness accessible to us, what is meant by Jesus – -- and the only thing that is meant by him in asserting or implying the christological assertion – -- is the one through whom God confronts all who encounter him with just such a claim. Provided, then, that this earliest witness is what, for us today, must count as the witness of the apostles, and hence as formally authoritative and the formal norm or canon for judging the appropriateness of all Christian witness and theology, the significant thing is not that Jesus at least implicitly claimed to be the Christ, however probable it may be that he did exactly that; rather, the significant thing is that what the apostolic community understood by Jesus – -- the Jesus to whom they themselves bore witness, implicitly if not explicitly, as the Christ – -- was the one through whom they had experienced, and who, through their own witness, was still to be experienced, as confronting women and men with just such a claim.

The sufficient evidence of this is that even the earliest witness of the apostles is precisely that – -- witness of faith to Jesus, not historical report about him. Even if Jesus did in fact assert or imply the very christological claim he is represented as making or implying in the earliest stratum of witness – -- and, as we have see, one can reasonably infer that he did exactly that – -- still, the point of the witnesses in so representing him was not to report what he did in the past, but rather to bear witness to what he – -- or, rather, God through him – -- was doing in the present, not only to them, but, through their witness of faith, also to their own hearers. Jesus, they claimed, is the one through whom both they themselves and then, by means of their witness, all of their own hearers as well are decisively re-presented with the gift and demand of God's love, and thus with the possibility of authentic existence in faith and returning love. Accordingly, to accept their claim in no way requires one to assent to the truth of certain empirical-historical assertions about Jesus – to the effect that he himself asserted or implied the same claim now represented in their witness of faith. On the contrary, whatever the truth or falsity of any such empirical-historical assertions, to accept the claim represented in the apostolic witness as Jesus' claim is to accept a strictly existential-historical assertion – the assertion, namely, that Jesus means love – not that Jesus meant love, however true that may be also, but that Jesus means love, in the sense that, through him, the gift and demand of God's boundless love are made decisively explicit as authorizing our own possibility of authentic faith and love.

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If Jesus who is said to be Christ means love – -- first of all, God's prevenient love for us and then, and on that basis, our returning love for God and for all whom God loves – -- then it must be equally appropriate to say that Jesus means freedom. Provided, at any rate, that what one means by "freedom" is the existence in and for freedom established through faith in God's boundless love, then there is no question that the christology even of the earliest Jesus-kerygma is at least an implicit christology of liberation. The Jesus to whom it bears witness is the one through whom the possibility of just such an existence in and for freedom is decisively re-presented.

As for the further question of the appropriateness of Paul's christology of freedom, which, in its very essence, is christology of the cross, the significant considerations are the following. Despite the fact that the Jesus-kerygma makes no reference whatever to the saving significance of the cross, it certainly does represent Jesus, implicitly if not explicitly, as the decisive representation of God, and thus as the one through whom God has reconciled the world to himself. By thinking and speaking of the cross, then, as the means of reconciliation, and thus as the liberating judgment of God, Paul may be said to do nothing more than make explicit the very claim already made at least implicitly in the earliest stratum of Christian witness – -- the claim, namely, that the Jesus who is said to be Christ is the gift and demand of God's own love become decisively explicit. But if this is a correct interpretation, even Paul's christology of liberation is far from being an instance of inappropriate "modernism" lacking all support in the apostolic witness. In fact, it is an entirely appropriate formulation, given the concepts and terms available in his situation, of the witness of the apostles to Jesus as the decisive event of God's love.

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But even for us today, for whom the kerygma is the primary authority for Christian faith, the explicit primal ontic source of faith is nothing other than Jesus himself. It is precisely Jesus himself as a genuinely historical event by which the kerygma today is legitimated or authorized. The kerygma today acquires its legitimation, not merely from the original and originating kerygma, but, through it, from the past event of Jesus Christ. Therefore, present preaching as well as systematic theology has need of a critical control that secures its identity in substance with the apostolic preaching – -- that control being New Testament theology. What must be secured if the kerygma today is to be legitimated or authorized is its identity in substance with "the apostolic preaching," not with the preaching or faith of the historical Jesus. But even the apostolic preaching is not the primal source from which present preaching acquires its legitimation or authorization, but rather the primary authority by which it is authorized insofar as it is substantially identical with the apostolic preaching. The only primal source of its legitimation or authorization is the past event of Jesus Christ, by which all preaching, including the original and originating and therefore constitutive preaching of the apostles, is legitimated and authorized.

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The essential or substantial foundation of faith is the twofold reality of God as the One who decisively becomes event for us through Jesus, and of Jesus as the one through whom God decisively becomes event for us. The truth that faith knows about this twofold reality, however, is an existential truth, and the assertions in which it formulates this truth are existential assertions. But while the truth of faith and its assertions is thus distinct from any kind of merely intellectual or objectifying truth, there is one kind of such truth – -- namely, metaphysical – -- on which that of faith and its assertions is logically dependent, however independent it may be of such other kinds as those of the special sciences and empirical history. Were this not the case, it would be quite impossible consistently to uphold the extra nos of faith, in the sense precisely of its essential or substantial foundation in a twofold reality beyond ourselves.

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Christian faith in the sense in which the Christian witness understands it may be characterized formally as an existential self-understanding. But it is the only self-understanding explicitly authorized by Jesus, whom Christians assert to be the Christ, the point of their assertion being that it is also the very self-understanding always already implicitly authorized as the authentic understanding of our existence by the utterly mysterious whole of ultimate reality that they call "God." If we ask, then, for the material content of this self-understanding, the only adequate answer is that it is an understanding of oneself and others as all alike objects of the unconditional love of God, which is to say, of the all-inclusive whole of reality of which both the self and others are all parts. It is precisely the gift and demand of God's unconditional love that are decisively re-presented through Jesus, and to understand oneself as one is thereby given and called to do is to actualize the one possibility of selfunderstanding self-understanding that is properly called Christian faith.

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