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"How is it, for example, with understanding Paul's doctrine of justification, which is an explication of the self-understanding of believing existence? Is it understandable only to faith, or also to unfaith? Must I be sure, if I want to interpret it, that I believe or that I will believe? Is the understanding that I may work out a guarantee to me that I believe? Must I therefore present myself to my hearers and readers as a believer? And am I to say to anyone who has understood my interpretation, 'You believe'? Or, if this is all nonsense, may one no longer interpet scripture at all? In a word: exegesis presupposes the _lumen naturale_; otherwise, it is senseless" ("Die Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins und der Glaube" \[1930\], _Heidegger und die Theologie_: 84; cf. _Existence and Faith_: 101).

"That the Bible, like other historical documents, not only _shows_ me a possibility for understanding my existence, which I can decide either to accept or to reject, but beyond this becomes a word addressed to me personally that gives me existence \-\- this is a possibility that I cannot presuppose and reckon(j\!) with as a principle of methodical interpretation. That it is ever actualized is \-\- in traditional terminology \-\- the work of the Holy Spirit" ("Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung" \[1952\], _Kerygma und Mythos_ 2: 191 f.; cf. _New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings_: 106).

"Existential encounter with the text can lead to a yes as well as to a no, to confessing faith as well as to express unfaith, because in the text the exegete encounters a claim, or is offered a self-understanding that can be accepted (as a gift) or rejected, and therefore has to make a decision. Even in the case of a no, however, the understanding is legitimate, because it is a genuine answer to the question of the text and, being an existential decision, is not to be refuted by argument" ("Ist voraussetzungslose Exegese möglich?" \[1957\], _Glauben und Verstehen_ 3: 149; cf. _New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings_: 152).

"The statement that 'instead of wanting to tmderstand the text within the framework of its supposedly normative (\!) self-understanding, \[one should want\] to understand oneself as one finds oneself understood in the text' misses the point. For 'to understand the text within the framework (better: under the question) of its self-understanding' is precisely the way to understand oneself as one finds oneself understood in the text. Naturally, the only thing I can strive for methodically is an existentialist interpretation; what the _Divinus Spiritus_ works is an existential understanding. . . . Insofar as the latter presupposes or is a peculiar movement of the will, it can only be received \-\- if it is understood radically as self-surrender \-\- as the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Letter to Karl Barth \[11-15 November 1952\]: 189 f.).