manifests our honouring the Lord.^221 While Bultmann does not label
God’s act in this context as an act of recognition, the close mutuality is
a distinctive feature of the act of faithful recognition.
In the New Testament,pisteuein(to believe) andhomologein(to
confess) are often equivalent; thus faith means ‘acceptance of
the kerygma about Christ’. In this respect,‘acknowledgement (Aner-
kennung) of Jesus as Lord is intrinsic to Christian faith along with
acknowledgement of the miracle of His resurrection’.^222 The accept-
ance of this proclamation‘also includes acknowledgement of Jesus
Christ as Kurios’.^223 Bultmann does not want to identify recognition
with confession, his intention being rather to show that faith means a
‘personal relation’ with Christ. Such a relation can properly be
expressed in the phrase‘to recognize Him as Lord’.^224 As a personal
relation, the human act involves a mutuality that is not merely
obedience but appropriation:‘Faith embraces the conviction that
there is this Lord Jesus Christ. For only in faith does this Lord meet
it...faith in the kerygma is inseparable from faith in the person
mediated thereby.’^225
Bultmann’s article onpistishighlights the mutuality involved in the
act of human recognition. God or Christ is a person who initiates this
relationship and enables it through being a person. Bultmann con-
tinues the long religious tradition of upward recognition as a rela-
tionship between lord and servant. At the same time, he pays
particular attention to the divine act as a personal act that can be
expressed in terms of downward recognition. This feature is most
apparent in his idea that God’s knowledge can be expressed as
election. The mutuality account also shapes his discussion of faith
as a personal relation between Christ and believer. While this idea as
such is nothing new, the understanding of faith as recognition adds a
new quality to it. Thus we obtain a stronger reciprocity of recognition
than is available in Ritschl or Herrmann.
While Bultmann does not explicitly teach a universal human
need for recognition, he emphasizes that‘existence as believer’is
dynamic and transforms the individual. In a sense, faith as recogni-
tion is a person-transforming reality, a‘radical re-orientation to
God’in which‘the new eschatological existence of Christians is
(^221) Pistis, 187; E, 187. (^222) Pistis, 209–10; E, 208–9.
(^223) Pistis, 212; E, 211–12. (^224) Pistis, 212; E, 212.
(^225) Pistis, 212; E, 211–12.
160 Recognition and Religion