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Bultmann argues:

The Easter faith of the first disciples in not a fact on the ground of which we believe insofar as it could relieve us of the risk of such faith but itself belongs to the eschatological occurrence that is the object of faith.

In other words, the word of proclamation that arises in the event of Easter itself belongs to the eschatological salvation occurrence. With the judging and liberating death of Christ, God has also established the 'ministry of reconciliation' and/or thc the 'word of reconciliation' (2 Cor 5:18-19). It is this word that is 'added' to the cross and makes it understandable as the salvation occurrence by demanding faith, putting to each of us the question whether we arc willing to understand ourselves as crucified with Christ and as thereby also risen with him. In the sounding forth of the word, cross and resurrection become present and the eschatological now takes place. The eschatological promise of Isa. 49:8 is fulfilled: 'Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation' (2 Cor 6:2).... And of the sermon that preaches Christ, the word of the Johannine Jesus holds good: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgmcntjudgment, but has passed from death to life.... The hour is corning and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will Jive' an 5:24-25). In the preached word, and only in it, is the risen one to be encountered. Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ' (Rom 10:17).

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The other form my analysis takes analyzes the correlation between a religion's explicit primal source of authority and its primary authority. Allowing, as I do, that a religion's primary authority--which authority—which is to say, its earliest, original and originating, and therefore constitutive witness-has the same two aspects that any witness has, i.e., is an act as wen as an explication of a content (or, in Paul's terms, a "ministry" mediating a word as well as borne, and of the witness the church bears--as bears—as well as, of course, by implication, the secondary authorities that the primary authority in turn authorizes.

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