By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Maurice's so-called Platonism is not really that at all.
His distinction between "understanding" and "reason" functions much more like Bultmann's distinction between "objectifying thinking" and "existential understanding."
There is the crucial difference, however, that, for Maurice, in contrast to Bultmann, what special or decisive revelation discloses is not constituted by that revelation.
On the other hand, where Bultmann is to be preferred to Maurice is in having consistently broken with the mode of thinking—the "objectifying thinking"—hat leads to confusing the decisive significance of Jesus for our relation to God with the unique character or quality of his relation to God. (That Maurice has broken with this mode of thinking so far as accounting for the authority of the Bible is concerned seems clear enough [cf. 154 and my notes thereon]. The problem, however, is that he does not consistently break with it throughout his theology, especially in his christology.)
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