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This means that I need to reconsider – -- and reformulate – -- my way of putting the difference between the functions of the earliest witness, depending upon the two different questions it may be used to answer. Specifically, I need to reformulate the sixth of my ten theses on the two questions that may be asked historically about Jesus and make the other indicated changes as follows:

                      1. To ask about the meaning of Jesus for us here and now in the present is to be related to Jesus as a historical figure just as surely as to ask about the being of Jesus in himself then and there in the past.

                      2. This is so because, in either case, one could not even ask the question, much less answer it, apart from particular historical experience of Jesus – --mediate if not immediate.

                      3. But because Jesus could not be experienced sufficiently to ask either question apart from particular historical experience, we today, who are not his immediate contemporaries, could not possibly have such experience except mediately through those who were (and, of course, those who have succeeded them).

                      4. Since it is also only mediately through their experience that we can ever hope to answer either question, we must sooner or later have recourse to the witness of such immediate contemporaries as well as their successors.

                      5. For all practical purposes, this means that we must eventually recur to the earliest stratum of Christian witness that we today can reconstruct.

                      6. The function of this earliest stratum of witness is significantly different, however, in answering each of the two questions: whereas, in answering the second question about the being of Jesus in himself, it is forced to function as the primary empirical-historical source that it isn't, in answering the first question about the meaning of Jesus for us, it is allowed to function as what it is, in its proper role as the primary existential-historical authority.

                      7. Even the earliest stratum of witness is a primary empirical-historical source only for the witness and faith of the community that bore it, not for the being of Jesus in himself, for which it can be at best only a secondary source.

                      8. This explains why any attempt to answer the second question is and must be peculiarly problematic – -- namely, because, in the absence of any primary empirical-historical source, any control on inferences from the earliest witness to the being of Jesus in himself must itself be reconstructed from inferences that themselves are either uncontrolled, and therefore beg the question, or are really derived from somewhere else.

                      9. But whether empirical-historically authentic or not, the earliest stratum of witness is the primary existential-historical authority for the community of faith and witness that in one sense constitutes it, though in another, more important sense is constituted by it; as such, it expresses the meaning of Jesus for us to which this community exists to bear witness and by which, accordingly, the faith and witness of anyone claiming to belong to this community and/or to represent it must be authorized, causatively as well as normatively.

                    10. Whether or not the earliest witness is true, however, is an existential-historical, not an empirical-historical, question; therefore, any reasoned answer to it requires not only empirical-historical inquiry to reconstruct the witness and existentialist interpretation to determine its meaning, but also philosophical reflection to determine its truth, including metaphysical and moral reflection on its necessary presuppositions and implications for belief and action.

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