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                                                                                            More Obiter Dicta on Christology

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Does the "pragmatic test" of the meaning of assertions entail eliminating the difference between one christological assertion and another? -- What difference would there be in my life, in my being and acting, as distinct from my speaking, or, at least, as distinct from what I might say, if I believed this assertion, instead of another?

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Christology obviously expresses faith in Jesus as the Christ. But this is just as obviously not all it expresses, for it also expresses what has to be the case -- andcase—and, therefore, is the case -- if case—if faith in Jesus as the Christ is a warranted faith. Thus it not only expresses what Christians in fact do believe, but also what they by right -- and right—and every other human being by right -- ought —ought to believe, and, in the power of the Holy Spirit, also can believe. In sum: christology expresses what is worthy of being believed not only by Christians but by everyone else.

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Curiously, Marxsen expresses the content of the earliest apostolic testimony to Jesus in a very formal way -- making way—making God happen, anticipating the verdict of the last judgment, putting persons in the situation of faith, and so on. (Admittedly, anticipating the eschatological meal by table fellowship with the outcasts is an exception.)
I should want to stress its material, existential meaning, rather as Braun does in speaking of the I may and the I should. Thus I should speak of Jesus representing the gift and demand of God's boundless love, and hence the possibility of existence in the radical freedom of faith working through love.

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