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In trying to bring out the distinctiveness of Christian faith, I have argued (a bit misleadingly!) that the explicit understanding of existence that alone is constitutive of the faith (in the sense of fides quæ creditur) "is not, in the first instance, some law or teaching or word of wisdom, but Jesus himself, through whom the meaning of ultimate reality for us is decisively re-presented" (Is there Only One True Religion?: 97). What is misleading in this argument is its apparent implication that Jesus himself simply is the understanding of existence constitutive of Christian faith -– whatever that could possibly mean! The truth, of course, is not that Jesus is simply identical with this understanding but rather that he is the bearer of it, analogously to the way in which not only the teacher of a law or teaching or word of wisdom but also the specific formulation of it may be said to bear it.)

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Clearly, my distinction is simply a special case of Bultmann's -- provided, at any rate, that "Jesus himself" is properly thought and spoken of as "an occurrence." But if Bultmann is right -– and I see no reason to think he isn't -- the Christian religion need not be thought of as the only religion in which revelation is understood, in the first instance, as "an occurrence that happens to us," or "puts [us] in a new situation," rather than as "the communication of knowledge" (60 f.).

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