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                                                                                           On                                                                                            On Remembering Jesus

1. Perhaps one must say that, just as there is memory and there is memory, in general, so there is memory of Jesus and memory of Jesus, in particular. In other words, even as there is a distinction to be made between what is empirical-historical and what is existential-historical, as well as the further distinction between what Christians may assume about Jesus and what they assert about him in making or implying their constitutive christological assertion, so there is a distinction between what they remember about him in one sense of "remembering Jesus" and what they remember about him in another senst:; sense of the same phrase.

2. In one sense, remembering Jesus may be said to belong to the essential structure of Christian faith as such (and, for that matter, to the essential structure of the form of Christian unfaith constituted by any explicit rejection of the Christian witness that really rejects it). For what is Christian faith? It is coming to explicit faith in God by experiencing, immediately or mediately, the gift and demand of God's love decisively through Jesus. But this means that to be a Christian, in the sense of having such Christian faith, is eo ipso to remember Jesus as the one decisively through whom one either immediately or mediately so experienced the gift and demand of God's love as to have come to faith. Why? Because what faith means by "Jesus" -- and the only thing it means in asserting him to be the Christ, i.e., to be of decisive significance for human existence -- is the one decisively through whom one either immediately or mediately so experienced the gift and demand of God's love as to come to the explicit faith in God that is Christian faith.

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