629. Whether a witness is explicitly religious is one question, whether it is explicitly Christian...

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Whether a witness is explicitly religious is one question, whether it is explicitly Christian, another. To this extent, the phrase, "explicit witness," is systematically ambiguous.
If Christian witness is constituted explicitly as such only by the twofold assertion that Jesus is of decisive significance for human existence and that the God Jesus decisively re-presents is strictly ultimate reality, then explicitly religious formulations can be explicitly Christian formulations if, and only if, they somehow explicate the Christian prapriUt1l, together with its necessary presuppositions and implications, including this twofold assertion. By "the Christian praprium" I mean "what alone nmkes anything properly Christiannamely, that particular experience of Jesus as of decisive significance which somehow comes to expression in all that Christians think, say, and do" (Doing Theology Today: 6; cf. also 24 f.).
10 December 2007