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When Bultmann says that "[i]nterpretation of the NT ... has to inquire back behind [sic!] the different formulations in order to construct [or: construe], so to speak, an ideal type of the kerygma," or, in the same context, speaks of what a (NT) scholar today might be able to establish as "the unifying meaning of the NT kerygma," he is indeed talking about a necessary -- indeed, absolutely fundamental -- theological task. (In fact, what he means by "an ideal type of the kerygma," or its "unifying meaning," is evidently not  not different from what I mean by speaking of "the constitutive christological assertion," or of "the NT witness" in the singular.) But it is not a task proper to historical theology in general or NT theology in particular, as he evidently holds it to be, but rather a task that can be properly carried out only by systematic theology.

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