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                                                                                               Who                                                                                                Who Is Jesus?

1. By its very nature, all Christian faith and witness -- including the earliest, constitutive, and therefore formally authoritative Christian witness -- are the believing and witnessing response to an event -- namely, to the event of the implicit or explicit assertion of Christian faith as our authentic possibility as human beings. To this event the Christian witness, from the earliest witness on, gives the name "Jesus." But it is just as true that what the Christian witness means by "Jesus" is nothing other than this event of the actual assertion of Christian faith, implicitly or explicitly, as our authentic possibility, i.e., the event to which all Christian faith and witness are and must be the believing and witnessing response and which is itself represented, or presented again, a second time, in all Christian witness, insofar, at least, as it is conformed to the formally authoritative, because constitutive witness of the earliest Christian community. In other words, it is as true that Jesus is nothing or no one other than the event to which all Christian faith and witness are the response as that all Christian faith and witness are nothing other than the believing and witnessing response to the event named "Jesus."

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