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What is the ground of faith?

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At the same time, Kähler's position, which he sets forth over against Herrmann's, has its limits. As true as it is that God's revelation takes place through the word, Herrmann's point is nevertheless sound that the word is also the expression of experienced revelation and, often enough, a highly time- and situation-conditioned expression at that, which can become word for us today only by being critically interpreted. Still, Kähler is undoubtedly right over against Herrmann that it is a forced abstraction to want to ground faith on the historical Jesus apart from his being the risen and exalted one. But when Kähler, in opposition to Herrmann's isolation of the historical Jesus, explains that the ground of faith is the whole biblical Christ, i.e., the whole New Testament witness to Christ, this, also, is not without difficulties. For aside from the time-conditioned form of the New Testament witness, it contains elements about which one must indeed ask whether they really belong to the ground of faith or whether they aren't merely ideas of faith – -- such as, for example, the natus ex virgine and the ascension. The slogan, "the whole biblical Christ," only too easily becomes a license for an uncritical biblicism and a massive orthodoxy in which the heteronomous moment of faith is unbearably enlarged.

But if the resurrection must be unconditionally reckoned to belong to the ground of faith – -- simply because it belonged to this ground from the beginning and, what's more, is the real ground of the whole New Testament witness to Christ – the question as to how it can be appropriated by faith becomes all the more urgent. And at this point, Bultmann's formulations are not entirely happy, with their appeal to the authoritative character of the witness and the obedience- or risk-character of faith. One ought not to overlook, to be sure, that Bultmann typically embeds these formulations in a context that makes clear that, in calling us to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ as the eschatological event, the kerygma at the same time opens up a possibility for understanding ourselves. In other words, Bultmann is not content to speak only of the claim of the witness, but goes on to speak of the person on whom the claim is made.

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The problem here is the term, "the historical Jesus" (der historische Jesus); and this is why I hold that it is necessary to distinguish more clearly and systematically than Bultmann does between the empirical-historical Jesus who could at most be the primary authority for Christian faith, witness, and theology and the existential-historical Jesus who can be and is their explicit primal ontic source. By clearly and consistently employing this distinction, one can argue that the ground of faith – -- of the apostles' faith as well as our own – -- is the existential-historical Jesus in this sense, Easter being the moment when he was experienced anew as faith's ground, notwithstanding his crucifixion.

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