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                                                                                                                    On Loving and Being Loved

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4. If one can speak, then, of "the remembered love of Jesus for his disciples," in the sense that he was responded to and remembered by his followers as one who loved them, this in no way entitles one to speak of "the moral greatness of Jesus" or of his "having been good and great beyond what we should otherwise have dreamed possible for man," in the sense in which such language would normally be understood (John Knox, The Church and the Reality of Christ: 105, 54, 86). Rather, all that one can mean by such speaking is that Jesus is responded to and remembered by all members of his church as the one through whom they have been decisively confronted with their own authentic possibility – -- the "that" or event of this confrontation being the event of his love for them.

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6. It may be worth asking whether it is not just this that Wilhelm Herrmann also intended to refer to when he spoke, however misleadingly, of "the inner life of Jesus." At any rate, if Hans Grass is right in his interpretation of Herrmann's intention – -- according to which, his whole conception of Jesus is in terms of his meaning for us, as distinct from his being in himself – -- it would appear that this is indeed what Herrmann was concerned to lift up.

7. Still more certain, I think, is that this is what Marxsen very much has in mind when he says that, for the earliest community, Jesus not only taught a possibility but also actualized it (Das Neue Testament als Buch der Kirche: 109 f.). Jesus not only founded a religion that others could join him in practicing and teaching, according to which the general truth about being human is that one has the possibility of faith working through love, but Jesus' having done precisely this – -- the "that" of his having done itconfronted and confronts his hearers with the love that frees them to actualize that very possibility.

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