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1. We learn that the earliest Christians seem to have understoood understood themselves as the promised eschatological congregation of God, which God had already called into being through the decisive event of sending Jesus as the Christ. Because of this event, eschatological existence -- existence as human beings will live it in the eschaton, seated around God's table, and so on -- is already possible here and now. Thus the earliest community bore witness to Jesus as the Messiah, or the Christ, of God, whom God had appointed to this office by raising him from the dead. No doubt the full christological implications of their self-understanding and witness dawned on them only gradually. But implicit in their understanding of themselves as the elect community of the last days, and hence the true Israel of God, was an understanding of Jesus as well as of themselves as eschatological phenomena.

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