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                                                                            More on Marxsen's Talk about Jesus' Faith

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1. On the one hand, Marxsen repeatedly uses (or implies the propriety of using) the term "Jesus' faith," and he does so without further qualifying "faith" in any way (see, e.g., in this book, 187, 191).
2. On the other hand, he's explicit in distinguishing different senses, or meanings, of "faith," which evidently require that the term be qualified in some way if it is to be used unambiguously (99, 125 f., 144); and he's also explicit in laying down the general rule that the faith of another cannot be controlled, so that one can say whether or not another actually believes, even if the other claims to believe, and he explicitly notes that this also applies historically (125).
3. Whereas a year ago (11 April 2007), I still thought that at least some of the things Marxsen says about Jesus' faith cannot be fairly interpreted as talking only, or primarily, about Jesus' faith in its expressions, or in its community-grounding (sic!not, as I translated earlier, "community-building") function, I now incline to the alternative way of resolving the difficulty created by what he actually says and does not say (as summarized in 1 and 2 above). I'm inclined to say, in other words, that, although he hardly makes it easy to be sure about iteither by explicitly qualifying the term "Jesus' faith" or by explicitly saying of Jesus' faith in particular only what he allows to be sayable of another's faith in general-he very likely uses "Jesus' faith" to mean "Jesus' faith in its expressions," and so does not mean Jesus' faith "as an inner (sic!-better than "internal") process," but rather Jesus' faith "in its community-grounding function."

4. Wiki Markup

   As for my earlier criticism of Marxsen's statement that "one very well can know the _expressions_ of another faith insofar as witnesses to them are available\--namely, that it is "clearly in danger of petitio principii," since "whether such- _{-}expressions{-}_ -of faith as the available witnesses permit us to know are, in fact, expressions of- _{-}faith{-}_ -remains precisely the question" (-{_}{-}Doing Theology Today{-}{_}-: 258)-{-}I now see that it fails to reckon with an important ambiguity that I myself have since come to recognize. "It is one question," I have written, "whether what a person says and does is a consequence of saving faith and, in this sense, is witness \[-{_}{-}sc{-}{_}-. of faith\]. It is another question whether what a person says and does is experienced by another as confronting her or him with the decision of saving faith and, in this sense, is witness \[-{_}{-}sc{-}{_}-. of faith\]" (Notebooks: January 1993; rev. November 1993; 10 September 2003). But if this distinction is to the point, and if by "expressions of faith" is to be understood "witness of faith," not in the first sense, but only in the second, my criticism is obviated. For whether or not certain expressions express the faith of the person expressing them, they can very well be taken by another person as calling for her or his decision of faith-\-and therefore as, in that sense, precisely: expressions of faith.

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