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Marxsen says, "'Jesus ist auferstanden' hei13t heißt nichts anderes als: Der gekreuzigte Jesus ruft heute in den Glauben" (Die Auferstehung Jesu von Nazareth: 130). I say, in response, "This is a dangerously elliptical formulation that fails to do justice to the meaning of Jesus' resurrection, even as Marxsen himself understands it."

Accordingly, I should wish to refonnulate reformulate his statement-whose positive pointI point I unhesitatingly take--as follows: "'Jesus is risen' means that the crucified Jesus, by the ~action of God, is God's Messiah Q!IiKlwho, as such, calls to faith today through the Christian ... witness of faith." Alternatively: "'Jesus is risen' means that the Jesus who calls to faith today through the Christian witness offaith of faith is the crucified Jesus who, by God's own action, is the Messiah of God."

Of course, these fonnulationsformulations, with their talk of "the action of God," "God's Messiah," and so on, are, in part, mythological and require to be demythologized and understood symbolically. But they are not "only symbols" because the meaning they express, in part, symbolically can also be expressed in literal terms by saying: "'Jesus is risen' means that the crucified Jesus made really present through the Christian witness of faith is the decisive re-presentation of the meaning of ultimate reality for us and is therefore ofdecisive significance for human existence, including your existence here and now."

In other words, whether or not "Jesus is risen" is credible depends entirely upon the same condition upon which any other formulation of the constitutive christological assertion necessarily depends: whether or not the possibility of self-understanding that the Christian witness explicitly calls its hearers to actualize is one and the same with the possibility that ultimate reality itself always already implicitly calls every human being to actualize."only symbols" because the meaning they express, in part, symbolically can also be expressed in literal tenns by saying: "'Jesus is risen' means that the crucified Jesus made really present through the Christian witness of faith is the decisive re-presentation of the meaning of ultimate reality for us and is therefore ofdecisive significance for human existence, including your existence here and now." _._

1 May 2008