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If my understanding of the beginning of christology is correct, then, already in the case of the first disciples who made the decision to "follow" Jesus during his earthly ministry, the "that" of his proclamation, or summons to decision, as distinct from its "what" (Ii.e., his having spoken it and their having heard it, as distinct from its timeless content of ideas), or, as may also be said, his "person," as distinct from his "personality" (i.e., its being here and now, its event, its commission, its personal address, as distinct from his messianic consciousness, his heroism, or his faith), was understood to be the decisive saving act of God that already inaugurates the new age in the midst of the old.

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But even Bultmann may be said, in his way, to support the same interpretation. For (1) he is as clear as Marxsen is that Christian faith, as faith in God through Jesus Christ, originates before Good Friday and Easter -- namely, in the decision of the disciples, in face of Jesus' own implicit christology, to "follow" him, this decision itself also implying a christology; and (2) he allows as how that there cannot be an operational, but only a theoretical, distinction between what Jesus himself thought, said, and did and what he is represented as as thinking, saying, and doing in the oldest stratum of the synoptic tradition, which is not at all reportage, but is precisely kerygma or proclamation -- in effect, if not in so many words, "Jesus-kerygma."

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