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It is at best misleading, then, to write, as I've written, that what it means to say that Jesus is the decisive act of God is that "in him, in his outer acts of symbolic word and deed, there is expressed that understanding of human existence which is, in fact, the ultimate truth of our life before God" (The Reality of God: 185 f.). What should be said instead is that the possibility that Jesus is taken to re-present by those who take him to be God's decisive act is that possibility of understanding human existence which is, in fact, our authentic possibility before God.

I recognize this, in effect, when I go on to write that "the entire reality of Jesus' history – at —at any rate, as it is presented to us in the Gospels – is —is simply a transparent means of representing a certain possibility for understanding human existence" (186; italics added). Clearly, the qualification, "as it is presented to us in the Gospels," can only mean, in the first instance, as it is taken by those who re-present it to us in the gospels.

15 November 1999 (in connection with re-reading "What Sense Does It Make to Say, 'God Acts in History'?"); rev. 7 December 2008