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3. Beyond these several ways in which God may be said to act mediately and indirectly as Creator-Emancipator and/or Consummator-Redeemer, there is another way. In this way, the point of reference is not a creaturely act corresponding to God's act, but rather a creaturely experience of a distinctive sort -- namely, an understanding experience for which some other creature is experienced as re-presenting God's own immediate and direct act as gift and demand. If, for whatever reason, one creature is so experienced by another understanding creature that this other creature thereby experiences God's gift and demand as Creator-Emancipator and/or Consummator-Redeemer, then the creature so experienced, like the experience itself, is properly said to be God's act, albeit, again, God's mediate and indirect act through God's creature.

Wiki Markup4. Obviously, it is this last way in which God acts mediately and indirectly that is most significant for christology, although not only for christology. The point of reference so far as the christological assertion is concerned is not a creaturely act corresponding to God's act either as Creator-Emancipator or as Consummator-Redeemer, i.e., as the actualization either of good or of faith, or even as the re-presentation of the possibility of faith, but rather an understanding experience on the part of one creature for which another creature is experienced as the decisive re-presentation of God's gift and demand. In other words, the Jesus who is the subject term of the christological assertion is not "the so-called historical Jesus," viewed in some way or other in terms of _his_ actualization of good or of faith or his representation of the possibility thereof, but rather "the historic, biblical \ [_sc_. apostolic\] Christ," viewed in terms of our actualization of faith and our representation of it as a possibility through him. For whatever reasons, the earliest Christians so experienced Jesus that through him they experienced the real presence, the gift and demand, of God Godself. But this is sufficient to explain, then, why this last way in which God acts mediately or indirectly is also significant for ecclesiology and sacramentology and for the doctrine of the means of salvation generally. Experiencing an act as a sacrament \ -\- whether or not it is intentionally performed as such \ -\- is a matter of one creature so experiencing another as thereby to experience the gift and demand of God as Creator-Emancipator and Consummator-Redeemer.

n.d.; rev. 10 November 1997