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If Christian faith itself is a medium salutis – -- namely, the medium salutis apprehensivum; -- and if "the Christian proprium" is "the experience of Jesus as the Christ, or, as we might say today, the experience of Jesus as of decisive significance for human existence" (and I have argued that both of these are the case), then it is at best one-sided to define "Christian faith and witness" in purely formal terms, as I have sometimes defined them – namelythem—namely, as "human self-understanding and praxis insofar as they are mediated – -- immediately or mediately – through mediately—through Jesus Christ" (Revisioning the Past: 17 f.). So formulated, the definition focuses solely on the ontic, as distinct from the noetic, pole of the Christian proprium; and as understandable as such one-sidedness may be, it is nonetheless exactly that. Consequently, I need to reformulate my definition in some such way as this: "human self-understanding and life-praxis insofar as they are mediated – immediately and mediately – mediated—immediately and mediately— through experience of Jesus Christ" (cf. the reformulation in Doing Theology Today: 24).

Wiki MarkupElsewhere I have written that "what alone makes anything properly Christian \ [this being an exact definition of "the Christian _proprium_"\] \ [is\] _the particular experience of Jesus_ as of decisive significance for human existence, which, from the apostles onward, has provided the basis for everything that Christians have thought, said, and done" ("Toward Doing Theology": 7; italics added). "_One experiences Jesus_ to be thus significant insofar as it is decisively through him that one's own existential question about authentic self-understanding is directly and explicitly answered" (_Revisioning the Past_: 18; italics added). This means that "\[t\]o be a Christian is _to have experienced Jesus_, immediately or mediately, as thus significant, because it is decisively through him that one's own existential question about the meaning of ultimate reality for us receives its answer" ("Toward Doing Theology": 7; italics added). The evident importance of the noetic pole of "experience" in all these formulations calls to mind my characterization of what is attempted in the first four chapters of _The Point of Christology_: "By considering in some detail each of the three points in what I have called 'the contelnporary contemporary revisionary consensus,' we have carried out something like a Heideggerian 'dismantling' (_Destruktion_) of the usual revisionary christology . . . . That is to say, we have tried to return from the whole long tradition of christological reflection, of which contemporary christologies are typically the revision, _to the original experience underlying the constitutive christological assertion_. In this way we have tried to recover the point of this assertion, so as to give an adequate account of its meaning and truth" (86; italics added).

As I have written elsewhere, the significance of the orthodox doctrine of the media salutis – -- given the insight that Jesus Christ himself is the (= primal) medium s. exhibitivum – -- is that it allows one rightly to elaborate the distinction (i.e., the difference as well as the unity, and the unity as well as the difference) between Christianity – --  or, better, perhaps, "Christianness" (die Christlichkeit) – -- on the one hand, and authentic human existence, on the other. Christianness, arguably, is related to authenticity as means is related to end – --  as "means of salvation," or, more formally, "means of ultimate transformation," from inauthentic to authentic existence. As such, however, Christianness has two poles: an ontic pole = Jesus Christ, and a noetic pole = faith. The first pole, accordingly, is rightly distinguished as the (= primal) medium s. exhibitivum, the church and its so-called means of salvation being the other media s. exhibitivaprimary exhibitiva primary and secondary respectively – -- while the second pole is rightly distinguished as the (= primal) medium s. apprehensivum, hope and love being the primary media s. apprehensiva, and good works, of mercy as well as of piety, being the secondary such means.

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