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My question about all this, however, is whether the distinction I've been led to make between the efficacy of a means of salvation and its effectiveness isn't yet another way of making the same distinction Bultmann makes in these various ways. On the analysis lying behind my distinction, whether or not a person or an event or the witness thereto is efficacious for x depends on whether x so experiences it that it confronts x with the existential decision, i.e., the decision either for the authentic understanding of xself re-presented by the person or the event or the witness thereto or for some other inauthentic self-understanding. Whether beyond that, the same person or event or witness thereto is effective for x depends on whether x decides for the self-understanding for which the person or the event or the witness thereto calls x to decide. But this analysis of the point of my distinction clearly seems to confirm that it really is an alternative way of making just the distinction Bultmann makes, in various ways, between (a) x's experiencing a person or an event or the witness thereto as existentially significant; and (b) x's deciding to appropriate this significance positively by understanding xself as the person or the event or the witness thereto gives and calls x to do.

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