Page History

"'\[W\]hat alone makes anything properly Christian \[is\] that particular experience of Jesus as of decisive significance for human existence which somehow comes to expression in al1 that Christians think, say, and do. To be a Christian is to have experienced Jesus to be thus significant; for it is decisively through him that one's own existential question about the ultimate meaning of reality for us receives its answer" (_Doing Theology Today_: 6).

"\[T\]he Christian _proprium_ . . . is the experience of Jesus as the Christ, or, as we might say today, the experience of Jesus as of decisive significance for human existence. One experiences Jesus to be thus significant insofar as it is decisively through him that one's own existential question about authentic self-understanding is directly and explicitly answered. But the faith that is of a piece with such experience and through which this answer is received is, in purely formal terms, an explicit self-understanding \-\- an understanding of oneself and others in relation to the whole, decisively re-presented through Jesus as the all-encompassing love of God.

"What is distinctive about any instance of Christian witness . . . is its content, which is determined by its _proprium_ in the experience of Jesus as of decisive existential significance. But even here there is a formal similarity to other witnesses of faith, \[and\] to the other specific religions through which such witnesses become explicit. Not only the Christian religion, but any religion is constituted as such by some explicit primal source through which its particular self-understanding is decisively re-presented. At the same time, any religion . . . lays claim to decisive existential authority because it also claims that its particular self-understanding is true and hence of universal significance. So, in claiming as it does to be adequate to its content as well as fitting to its situation, any instance of witness claims in effect to be both authorized by its explicit primal source and worthy of belief by any woman or man simply as a human being. In the case of Christian witness, this becomes the distinctive twofold claim to be both appropriate to Jesus Christ, or to Jesus as Christians experience him, and credible to human existence \[as every woman and man experiences it\]" (24 f.).

"\[F\]aith 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 implicitly authorized as the authentic understanding of our existence by the mysterious whole of ultimate reality that they call by the name 'God.' If we ask now for the material content of this self-understanding, the only adequate answer is that it is an understanding of ourselves and all others as alike objects of the unbounded love of God, which is to say, of the inclusive whole of reality of which both the self and others are all parts. It is precisely the gift and demand of this unbounded love that are decisively re-presented through Jesus; and to understand ourselves as we are thereby explicitly given and called to do is to actualize the one possibility of self-understanding that is properly called 'Christian faith'" (109 ff.).

"Rightly understood, the present proclamation of the kerygma is not some other source of faith to be taken in itself independently of the Jesus of history, but rather the very means by which he himself can be experienced here and now as faith's only \[explicit\] primal source ....

"By considering in some detail each of the three points in ... 'the contemporary revisionary consensus,' we have carried out something like a Heideggerian 'dismantling' (_Destruktion_) of the usual revisionary christology .... That is to say, we have tried to return from the whole long tradition of christological reflection, of which contemporary christologies are typically the revision, to the original experience underlying the constitutive christological assertion. In this way, we have tried to recover the point of this assertion, so as to give an adequate account of its meaning and truth. Thus we have asked about the _question_ to which it is the answer, the _subject_ about whom it is the assertion, and the conditions that must be satisfied in order for any _predicate_ appropriately used in formulating it to be ... asserted \[of its subject truly\]" (_The Point of Christology_: 86 f.).

"\[T\]he point of the first distinction between Jesus-in-his-being-in-himself and Jesus-in-his-meaning-for-us is that the actual Jesus, i.e., the human being Jesus bar Joseph, or Jesus of Nazareth, like any other human being, had a being in himself; he was what he was, and, assuming the objective immortality of everything actual, we may also say that he is what he was, whatever that mayor may not have been, everlastingly. At the same time, this actual Jesus was experienced and re-presented as having a meaning for us, i.e., for any and all human beings, in that his being actual, in the meaning belonging to it, opened up a new historical situation for any and all who experience his actuality in a certain way, either immediately or mediately. Indeed, the re-presentation of the actual Jesus by those who immediately experienced him in that way functions to confront others with the decision of whether they, too, will live in this new historic situation by appropriating his meaning as also his meaning for them. To speak of Jesus-in-his-being-in-himself, then, is to speak of the actual Jesus in the first way, even as to speak of Jesus in-his-meaning-for-us is to speak of the same actual Jesus in the second way. One may also say with Bultmann, that to speak of Jesus-in-his-being-in-himself is to speak of the '_what_' of the actual Jesus, while to speak of Jesus-in-his-meaning-for-us is to speak of the '_that_' of the actual Jesus as confronting others with a decision about the '_what_' of their own actuality.

"Thus, whereas the first distinction between Jesus-in-his-being-in-himself (≡ the '_what_' of the actual Jesus) and Jesus-in-his-meaning-for-us (≡ the 'that' of the actual Jesus) is exclusively ontic, having to do with someone or something prior to and independent of us, the second distinction between the empirical-historical Jesus and the existential-historical Jesus is noetic as well as ontic, having to do with someone or something prior to and independent of us from the different standpoints of someone else experiencing \[the someone or the something\] accordingly" (cf Notebooks, Spring 1991; rev. 9 October 2004).

"\[John\] Knox is moved by a 'sound instinct' when he distinguishes, however confusingly and confusedly, between one kind of remembering and another and insists, in his own way, on 'the reality and importance of an extrascriptural source of knowledge of the Church's own intimate past.' Such an extrascriptural source is indeed real and important because Christian experience is not only distinguishable from scripture, but also prior to it \-\- as well as, indeed, to the formally normative Christian witness of which the scriptural writings themselves are but \[later\] formulations. And this experience is a historical, more exactly, an existential-historical experience, which as such is an experience of the past and, as such, a matter of 'memory,' or 'remembrance' \-\- not, to be sure of the '_what_' of that past, but of its '_that_,' or, to use the slightly different terms that Bultmann also uses to express the same distinction, it is the memory of 'what happened in the past, however it may have happened,' as distinct from a memory of 'how it happened.' Moreover, the proper function of scripture, as well as of the formally normative Christian witness by which the scriptural writings themselves are to be \[authorized\], is to mediate Christian experience as just such an existential-historical experience of the Jesus of history.

"On the other hand, the only way whereby the existential-historical experience, and thus the memory, of Jesus that is constitutive of the church can be mediated from one individual to another is through the first individual's \[somehow bearing\] witness to the second. Because this is so, it is hardly enough to say, as Knox does in speaking of what for him is formally normative Christian witness \-\- namely, the New Testament \-\- that it serves as 'a check upon, as well as a resource for, the life of the Church (including its memory) in every age' (_The Church and the Reality of Christ_: 50). Formally normative Christian witness, whatever is rightly taken to be such, is not simply a check or a resource for the life of the church, but rather is _the_ check (_auctoritas normativa_) and _the_ resource (_auctoritas causativa_) therefor" (Notebooks, 25 January 1997).

"\[T\]he Jesus whom Christians assert to be the Christ is not as such one _with_ whom they believe in God, but rather the one decisively _through_ whom they believe in God \-\- either immediately, as in the case of the apostles, or mediately, as in the case of all other Christians, who actually come to Christian faith only by means, directly or indirectly, of the apostles' prior faith and witness .... There are these two ways \-\- and, in the nature of the case, _only_ these two ways \-\- in which \[Christians\] can so experience Jesus as thereby to come to faith in God decisively through him . . . . Either they experience him _immediately_, as the apostles experienced him \-\- an apostle in the strict sense of the word being someone whose experience of the explicit gift and demand of God's love decisively through Jesus is unmediated by any earlier such experience and witness thereto; or else they experience Jesus _mediately_, by means of the unmediated experience of the apostles and their witness of faith \-\- however few or many the other witnesses by which the apostolic witness itself has, in tum, been mediated before they finally experience it. Thus to be a Christian is always either to _be_ an apostle or else to have come to one's own Christian faith in God only through the apostles and _with_ them.

"Christian witness is the thought and/or speech about God that arises from specifically Christian experience and faith. But, then, what is specifically Christian experience and faith if not the experience of Jesus and the faith in God that is mediated decisively through him insofar as one is either an apostle or else someone who experiences Jesus and believes in God _with_ the apostles, in communion with them? By 'apostles' here \[is meant\] those who were the first so to experience Jesus as to come to this faith in God through him, and whose witness of faith, being the original and originating, and hence constitutive Christian witness, is, accordingly, formally normative" (_The Understanding of Christian Faith_: 27).

"The Jesus who is the subject of the \[christological\] assertion is the historical person or event, even to be able to ask about which is possible only because of particular historical experience of just this person or event. True, this experience need not be immediate, as it was in the unique case of the earliest Christian witnesses, although it cannot fail to be at least mediate historical experience, in the sense of experience mediated by that of the first witnesses as well as any of their successors through whom theirs has eventually come down to us. But if the Jesus who is the subject of the christological assertion is in this broad sense none other than 'the Jesus of history,' or 'the historical Jesus,' we still have to make a' clear and sharp distinction between . . . 'the _empirical_\-historical Jesus' and 'the _existential_\-historical Jesus.' We must make this distinction because, as it happens, we can always be related not only to Jesus in particular but also to persons and events of the past in general in two very different ways: either empirically, in their being in themselves then and there in the past, or existentially, in their meaning for us here and now in the present.

"From a historical standpoint, it can be said without risk of contradiction that 'the sole residuum of the event \[of Christ\] was the church' \[John Knox\] \-\- understanding, of course, that the church, in turn, then left its mark on a much wider history in all kinds of direct and indirect ways. Although the church has always understood itself as the response to an event prior to it and independent of it, it has also claimed \-\- and with justification \-\- that the only access to this event is in and through its own life and witness. Thus, in our own individual faith and experience as Christians, it is always and only in and through the church that we have any share in the event of Jesus Christ, which is not only the origin of the church in history but the very principle of its existence as the church. The church continues to exist _as_ the church only because, or insofar as, it is the community of believing and witnessing response to the event of Jesus Christ. And yet no Christian who understands the conditions of her or his own existence can ever think of playing the event off against the church in such a way as to imply that the church is somehow unimportant. And this is so, regardless of the judgments that she or he may make, and even find it necessary to make, about some one or more of the institutional churches. As critical as we may and must always be of all the Christian churches, our own included, the only ground of the appropriateness of our criticism \-\- because the only source of its criterion \-\- is the church itself as the community of believing and witnessing response to the decisive event of Jesus Christ" (110 f).

"\[I\]n thus developing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I have not at all departed from the procedure I have been concerned to follow in previous discussions. In beginning, as I have ... , with Christian faith and experience, I have still begun, in effect, with Christian witness and its constitutive christological assertion that Jesus is of decisive significance for human existence because he decisively re-presents the meaning of God for us, and so the meaning of ultimate reality for us. I say I have begun with this assertion 'in effect' because it is precisely Christian faith and experience that this christological assertion, in one formulation or another, makes explicit. In the present chapter, however, . . . we have focused our attention ... on the meaning of God for us as the presence empowering our own existence in obedient faith as well as our existence and all other creaturely existence simply as such. But the connection with the constitutive christological assertion should be clear, for we have Paul's testimony that, if' no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit,' it is also true, conversely, that 'no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, "Jesus be cursed" (1 Cor 12:3)"' (I16 f.).

"\[I\]t is at best one-sided to define 'Christian faith and witness' in purely formal terms as I have sometimes defined them \-\- namely, as 'human self-understanding and \[life-\]praxis insofar as they are mediated \-\- immediately or mediately \-\- through Jesus Christ' (_Revisioning the Past_: 17 f.). So formulated, the definition focuses solely on the ontic, as distinct from the noetic, pole of the Christian _proprium_; and as understandable as such one-sidedness may be, it is nonetheless exactly that. Consequently, my definition needs to be reformulated in some such way as this: \[Christian faith and witness are\] human self-understanding and life-praxis insofar as they are mediated \-\- immediately or mediately \-\- through *experience of Jesus Christ* .  . . .

"\[T\]he significance of the orthodox doctrine of the _media salutis_ \-\- given the insight that Jesus Christ himself is the (= primal) _medium salutis exhibitivum_ \-\- is that it allows one rightly to elaborate the distinction (= the difference as well as the unity, and the unity as well as the difference) between Christianity \-\- or, better, perhaps, 'Christianness' (= die _Christlichkeit_) \-\- on the one hand, and authentic human existence (= \[eternal\] life), on the other. Christianness is related to authenticity as means is related to end \-\- as "means of salvation," or, more formally, "means of ultimate transformation" from inauthentic to authentic existence. As such, however, Christianness has two poles: an _ontic_ pole = Jesus Christ, and a _noetic_ pole = faith. The first pole, accordingly, is rightly distinguished as the (= primal) _medium salutis exhibitivum_, the church and its so-called means of salvation being the other -- primary and secondary \-\- _media exhibitiva_ respectively, while the second pole is rightly distinguished as _the_ (= primal) _medium salutis apprehensivum_, hope and love being the primary _media apprehensiva_, and good works, of mercy as well as of piety, being the _secondary media apprehensiva_" (cf. Notebooks, 1 November 1994).