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"How is it, for example, with understanding Paul's doctrine of justification, which is an explication of the self-understanding of believing existence? Is it understandable only to faith, or also to unfaith? Must I be sure, if I want to interpret it, that I believe or that I will believe? Is the understanding that I may work out a guarantee to me that I believe? Must I therefore present myself to my hearers and readers as a believer? And am I to say to anyone who has understood my interpretation, 'You believe'? Or, if this is all nonsense, may one no longer interpet interpret scripture at all? In a word: exegesis presupposes the lumen naturale; otherwise, it is senseless" ("Die Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins und der Glaube" [1930], Heidegger und die Theologie: 84; cf. Existence and Faith: 101).

"That the Bible, like other historical documents, not only shows me a possibility for understanding my existence, which I can decide either to accept or to reject, but beyond this becomes a word addressed to me personally that gives me existence -- this is a possibility that I cannot presuppose and reckon (j!) with as a principle of methodical interpretation. That it is ever actualized is -- in traditional terminology -- the work of the Holy Spirit" ("Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung" [1952], Kerygma und Mythos 2: 191 f.; cf. New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings: 106).

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"The statement that 'instead of wanting to tmderstand understand the text within the framework of its supposedly normative (!) self-understanding, [one should want] to understand oneself as one finds oneself understood in the text' misses the point. For 'to understand the text within the framework (better: under the question) of its self-understanding' is precisely the way to understand oneself as one finds oneself understood in the text. Naturally, the only thing I can strive for methodically is an existentialist interpretation; what the Divinus Spiritus works is an existential understanding. . . . Insofar as the latter presupposes or is a peculiar movement of the will, it can only be received -- if it is understood radically as self-surrender -- as the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Letter to Karl Barth [11-15 November 1952]: 189 f.).