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According to Schleiermacher, "God" in the properly religious sense of the term means "the whence" of our feeling of absolute dependence and of the absolute dependence of all things. By analogy, then, "Jesus" in the properly Christian sense of the word means "the whence" of our specifically Christian feeling of absolute dependence on God, understood religiously as "the whence" of our feeling of absolute dependence and of the absolute dependence of all things. The relation here can only be an analogy, however, because "the whence" referred to by "God" is transcendental or, more exactly, existential-transcendental, while "the whence" referred to by "Jesus" is historical or, more exactly, _ existential-_historical.

This analogy implies, among other things, that, just as all that we can say about God religiously must somehow derive from our simply human feeling of absolute dependence and of the absolute dependence of all things, so all that we can say about Jesus as well as God Christianly Christianity must somehow derive from our specifically Christian feeling of him as decisive for our feeling of absolute dependence and of the absolute dependence of all things on God.

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