612. I have explained for years that to represent is to re-present, to make present again...

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I have explained for years that to represent is to re-present, to make present again,
a second time. But it suddenly came home to me that to make present again, or a second
time is in either case to make present-indeed, to make really present.
That I was already more or less aware of this seems clear from the way I regularly
expounded the meaning of "real presence" in my lectures in systematic theology.
Consider, for example, the following from my lectures for 1989-90:
Jesus Christ is really present in preaching and sacraments in the same way in which any person is really present in the words and deeds ofdirect address that re-present her or his meaning for us. Insofar, then, as preaching and sacraments are representative fonns of the direct witness offaith, Jesus Christ himself is really present-namely, re-present, present again, a secondtime-in them, even as he himself, in turn, is the decisive re-presentation of God's own gift and demand of saving grace. The power ofthe word precisely as direct address is always to re-present him in this way. So wherever the word that Jesus Christ himself is, is itself re-presented-as it clearly is or should be, first of all, in the visible church as such and then, secondly, in both its preaching and its administering the sacraments-he is not merely talked about, as he is in Christian teaching, but is himselfreally and personally present, as is the saving grace of God ofwhich he is the decisive re-presentation.
5 May 2008