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That there is a witnessing community is sufficient evidence that there was and is a Jesus, in the sense in which "Jesus" is understood in the community's witness.

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Alternatively, "Jesus" may be said to refer to the "call" to which the witnessing community is the "accepting response" – -- the accepting response to a call being as inclusive of the call as the believing reception of a fact is inclusive of the fact. An advantage of this way of putting the matter, however, is that something may be experienced as a "fact" without the fact's being experienced as existentially significant, whereas to experience something as a "call" is eo ipso to experience it as having existential significance. To experience it as a call is to experience it as re-presenting one's own existential possibility, just as to respond to the call acceptingly is to accept it as exactly that.

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