What is the shortest answer to the question, Who is the existential-historical Jesus?
The existential-historical Jesus is Jesus (taken) as re-presenting a certain possibility of self-understanding as my (our) authentic possibility.
Faith in Jesus as being decisively significant for my (human) existence involves a twofold free decision, or, as may also be said, a double taking: (1) a taking of the fact of Jesus as re-presenting a certain possibility of self-understanding as my (our) authentic possibility; and (2) a taking of this possibility as exactly that by understanding oneself accordingly. The existential-historical Jesus is Jesus as taken by the first part of this double taking. It is precisely the existential-historical Jesus, then, who is the "objective" component of the revelatory correlation, or, more exactly, the historical, as distinct from the transcendental, aspect of that "objective" component
21 April 2008
