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                                                                                                                     Faith and History:

                                                                                            Theses Preparatory to a Theological Discussion

1. By "faith," in the first instance, is properly meant, not the acknowledgement acknowledgment of and assent to certain propositions as true, but rather, subjectively, a self-understanding and, objectively, an understanding of existence, involving trust in and loyalty to strictly ultimate reality in its meaning for us.

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5. These two kinds of statements may be distinguished as "empirical-historical" and "existential-historical" respectively – -- the first kind of statements having to do with actual events of the past, or the actual course of past events, in their being in themselves then and there in the past, prior to any and all representations of them; the second kind having to do with actual events of the past, or the actual course of past events, in their meaning for us here and now in the present, as authoritatively re-presented by the normative witness of some community of faith.

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7. It is characteristic of religious traditions generally, and certainly of the Christian religious tradition in particular, to include both logically different kinds of historical statements \-\- or, at any rate, what appear to be such. (By the qualification, I want to take account, also, of what are properly distinguished as "legends," because, although they do indeed _appear_ to be empirical-historical statements, they are not really such after all, but rather a certain way of expressing an existential-historical representation of actual events of the past, or the actual course of past events. Moreover, even statements that are not legendary, but properly empirical-historical, may owe their place in a religious tradition, not to an empirical, but to an underlying existential, interest. This may well be true, for example, even of reports in the earliest stratum of the synoptic tradition that Jesus so spoke of the imminent coming of God's rule and of the Son of Man as to imply an extraordinary claim for the decisive significance of his own person and words \[Lk 12:8 f.; Mk 8:38\]. Even if such sayings could be shown by empirical-historical evidence and argument to be authentic sayings of Jesus himself, there remains the possibility that the reason they were attributed to him was not empirical-historicat but rather existential-historical.)

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9. As such, existential-historical statements can and must be verified – -- namely, by strictly existential, and therefore also metaphysical and moral, procedures of verification.

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