Page History

...

1. I have argued, following Luther, that "Christ is, first of all, a 'sacrament' (sacramentum), only secondly an 'example' (exemplum)," or, in other words, that "before Christ can be rightly taken as the true model for our own liberating love, he must first be taken as the real presence of the liberating love of God" (The Point of Christology: 166). But if this is taken seriously, it is clear that, even as an example, Jesus Christ is precisely that -- Jesus that—Jesus Christ, and therefore other and more than the so-called historical Jesus. It is precisely and only as "the decisive re-presentation of ultimate reality, and hence the explicit primal source authorizing the authentic understanding of one's existence in relation to this ultimate reality" that Jesus is exemplum even as it is only so that he is, first of all, sacramentum (129).

...