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Corresponding, then, to the usus rei or usus facti is the vis rei or vis facti. In other words, there is a power in the fact of Christ if, and only if, it is used – -- used, namely, by faith. Faith so uses the fact of Christ as to appropriate its power; or, alternatively, the power of the fact of Christ is appropriated by faith's use of the fact.unmigrated-wiki-markup

Question: whatWhat, exactly, is the relation between Luther's concept-term, "the _power \ [vis\]_ of the fact," and Bultmann's concept-term, "the _significance \ [die Bedeutung\]_ of the empirical-historical event"? It seems possible that they could be simply two ways of thinking-speaking about the same thing. On the other hand, recognizing (1) that, for Luther, "the _power_ of the fact" seems to be strictly correlated with "the _use_ of the fact" _by faith_; and (2) that, for Bultmann, _understanding_ the existential significance of the empirical-historical event is one thing, whereas _faith_ in the sense of positively appropriating that significance for oneself is something else \ -\- recognizing this difference, one may well feel the need for a more nuanced answer.

If I'm right that faith in decisive revelation actually involves a "double taking," i.e., (1) a taking of the fact of Jesus as re-presenting a certain possibility of self-understanding; and then (2) a taking of this possibility to be our authentic possibility by actually understanding oneself accordingly, then we may prefer to say that, whereas "significance" properly refers to the result of the first taking, "power" properly designates the result only of the second.

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But be this as it may, Gogarten's interpretation is helpful in bringing out the relation of the word, or proclamation, to the factum along with that of faith. Indeed, the usus facti is made clear solely by the word, even as it is faith alone that uses the factum in accordance with the end or purpose that the word makes clear, thereby answering to the word.unmigrated-wiki-markup

This seems to agree closely with Luther's frequent statement that it is the word that is "added" to the _factum_ and makes it understandable as the salvation occurrence by demanding faith (cf. Bultmann, _NTM_: 40, 119}. It also calls to mind Bultmann's own way of interpreting the word of God as "sober proclamation of the person and destiny of Jesus of Nazareth in their significance as history of salvation." "In the significance that belongs to it, the historical event of the cross has created a new historical situation; the proclamation of the cross as the salvation event asks its hearers whether they are willing to appropriate this meaning, whether they are willing to be crucified with Christ" \ [41,35 f.\]).

December 1995

Luther's distinction between the res or factum, on the one hand, and the usus rei or usus facti, as well as the vis rei or vis facti, on the other, is evidently a particular application of the scholastic distinction between material object and formal object. Its value is to make clear that the object side of the Christian revelatory correlation is not merely the thing or fact of Jesus, i.e., what I call "the Jesus of history as a fact of the past," but this thing or fact experienced and understood in a certain way, i.e., in my terms, as "the existential-historical Jesus," as distinct from "the empirical-historical Jesus."

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On the other hand, all such assertions of a clearly empirical-historical kind could be either true or false without in any way affecting the truth or falsity of the christological assertion, which being of a different logical kind -- specifically, an existential-historical kind -- has a correspondingly different kind of truth conditions. And this is so even in the case of formulations of the christological assertion that are expressed inapproprately inappropriately in terms that, logically considered, can only be classified as empirical-historical, rather than existential-historical -- which, of course, is exactly the defining characteristic of any properly mythical, or mythological, formulation. Although the meaning of any such formulation is existential, or existential-historical, the terms in which its meaning is expressed are -- again, logically considered, by reference to their "deep strucurestructure," as distinct from their "surface meaning" -- empirical, or empirical-historical, terms.

Because this is so, however, something like Luther's distinction between fides histoncahistorica and fides apprehensiva may very well be said to be the sufficient as well as the necessary condition of distinguishing, as I myself do, between what may be assumed to be true empirical-historically in thinking and speaking about Jesus and what is asserted about him existential-historically in making or implying the constitutive christological assertion. Indeed, it is just my distinction that explains why Luther can say -- rightly! -- that fides historica is of "no help at all" -- namely, because its truth or falsity is completely independent, logically, of the truth asserted on the basis of fides apprehensiva. On the other hand, we may be confident of Luther's agreeing unhesitatingly that what is assumed to be true, by Christians or anyone else, in thinking and speaking about Jesus necessarily presupposes that the subject term "Jesus" does indeed succeed in picking out a real historical figure, about whom it is possible to make assertions of logically different kinds that are meaningful whether or not they are also true. And Luther, too, would undoubtedly want to say that this same presupposition is therefore also necessarily made by Christians in claiming, as they do, that the christological assertion is not only appropriate but also true -- although its truth, like its meaning, is logically different from that of any of the many things they may simply assume about Jesus in asserting the one thing about him that they, as Christians, are given and called to assert.

A final word: The difference discussed here -- between the logically different kinds of things that may be assumed or asserted about Jesus, truly or falsely, on the basis of the same necessary presupposition -- is not the only important difference between fides historica and fides apprehensiva. No less important -- certainly, from Luther's standpoint -- is the difference between faith as a merely intellectual matter of holding certain things to be true and faith as an eminently existential matter of laying hold of a word of promise, understanding oneself and leading one's life accordingly, in obedient trust and fidelity. But, clearly, taking account of this difference in no way affects the validity of the account I have given of the other difference, any more than proceeding in the reverse direction would do so. Analysis requires that both differences be accounted for if Luther's distinction between fides historica and fides apprehensiva is to be correctly understood.

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To what extent could one say that Luther's distinction between fides historica and fides apprehensiva (cf. Gogarten: 75 f.) is the sufficient as well as the necessary condition of my distinguishing between assuming to be true and asserting to be true?unmigrated-wiki-markup

That it is at least the necessary condition of my distinction seems clear enough, as comes out in Luther's closely related distinction between the _res_ or _factum_, on the one hand, and the _usus / vis rei_ or _usus / vis facti_, on the other \ -\- this being just the distinction of which I make use when I argue that "the way it \ [_sc_. the witness of the New Testament\] takes the fact of Jesus" is "not with reference to the empirical-historical question, 'What actually happened?' but rather with reference to the existential-historical question, 'What is the significance of what happened (or is assumed to have happened) for human existence?'"

Wiki MarkupBut it seems clear that Luther does not explicitly say, and presumably _would_ not explicitly say, that assertions made on the basis of the _fides apprehensiva_ could be true even though the assumptions made by the _fides historica_ were false. At the same time, one could argue that he definitely implies just this when he says, "_das hilft nichts_ \ [_sic_ \ !\]" if one "_glaubt, diese Historie sei wahr, wie sie lautet_, ... _weil aIle SunderSünder, auch die Verdammten das glauben_" (75). Surely, if it is _of no help at all_ to believe that the history is true, since even the damned do that, it's hard to see how believing the truth of the history could even be a necessary condition of Christian faith.

14 September 1974; rev. 8 September 2003