The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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HRN's answers to two important questions:

Who is Jesus Christ?—Jesus Christ is "[t]he person through whom Christians have received access to God, the one who so reconciled them to the source of being that they are bold to say 'Our father who art in heaven,' the one who in unique obedience, trust, and loyalty lived, died, and rose again as Son of God" (RMWC: 59; cf. 42: "Jesus Christ represents the incarnation of radical faith to an even greater extent than Israel. The greatness of his confidence in the Lord of heaven and earth as fatherly goodness toward all creatures, the consistency of his loyalty to the realm of being, seem unqualified by distrust or by competing loyalty . . . His confidence and his fidelity are those of a son of God – the most descriptive term which Christians apply to him as they contemplate the faith of their Lord. The word of God as God's oath of fidelity became flesh in him in this sense that he was a man who single-mindedly accepted the assurance that the Lord of heaven and earth was wholly faithful to him and to all creatures, and who gave wholehearted loyalty to the realm of being").

Who is a Christian?—A Christian is "a man [who] through the mediation and pioneering faith of Jesus Christ . . . has become wholly human, has been called to membership in the society of universal being, and has accepted the fact that amidst the totality of existence he is not exempt from the human lot." In other words, a Christian is not one who "has become a member of a special group, with a special god, a special destiny, and a separate existence" (60).

3 December 2006

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