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5. Now there is nothing original about this basic christological position. Not only has it been vigorously represented by Rudolf Bultmann in our own century, but it has clear antecedents in the christological reflections of Ritschl and Schleiermacher in the last century and may appeal both to Melanchthon's famous dictim dictum that lito to know Christ is to know his benefits," and to Luther's own insistence that Christ is properly preached only "when that Christian freedom which he bestows is rightly taught." (As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to break a lance or two in defense of the proposition that it is just such a christology that one finds in Mr. Wesley's sermons, with the one notable difference that Wesley never leaves any question that the freedom of faith is always precisely as such the obedience of faith.) But, while the claim that it is the existential question, finally, to which the christological assertion answers is not new, what may very well be new is the claim that I should want to make that this is the only question to which the christological assertion finally intends to be an answer, or, in other words, that the point of christology is a strictly existential point.

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