Only Sinners have Faith and Understanding

     "Faith in the New Testament sense is the way by which the past phase of redemptive history becomes effectual for me.  In this connection it is, to be sure, necessary for me to believe that this entire process concerns me personally, me as the individual, as sinner and as redeemed in Christ.  This presupposes that the consciousness of sin and guilt is not only a 'general' thing which applies to 'mankind,' but that it is real, and it is real only when I am conscious of my own sin and my own guilt.
      The faith of Primitive Christianity in the redemptive process presupposes such a consciousness of sin and guilt.  Only on this basis can the redemptive history be related to the individual.  The entire redemptive history, indeed, is intelligible only on the basis of this consciousness of sin; for it is on account of the sin of man that this entire process is necessary.  Here is the reason why redemptive history not only can be related to the individual but must be so related.  Without this relation it cannot be understood at all."

-Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time (London: SCM Press, 1946) p. 219