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Is Jesus Christ available only in the Christian witness?

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But, surely, as true as this may be for all Christians after the first – -- all "disciples at second hand," as Kierkegaard calls them – -- it can hardly be true of those in whose responding faith the Christian witness itself originated. No, indeed, it cannot. The first Christians, properly called apostles, responded immediately to the decisive saving event itself, not to the witness of faith authorized by it. How so? The witness borne by the earliest community that Jesus has been made Messiah by God's raising him from the dead and will soon come as such, reflecting as it does their self-understanding as the eschatological community of the called, makes clear that, for them, the decisive saving event has already occurred in their encounter with the historical person of Jesus. They understand Jesus' word – not "what" it says, in its timeless ideal content, but "that" he says it and says it now, his having spoken it and their having been addressed by it – as the decisive saving act of God.

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In any case, so far as the first witnesses are concerned, the ground of their faith is not an already existing witness of faith to Jesus Christ but the witness of faith of Jesus himself – -- understood, however, in its "that," rather than in its "what," as the decisive saving event by which both their faith and their witness of faith are authorized.

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