By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
On the Interplay of Original and Decisive Revelation
John Oman says: "The revelation of the Father testifying to the Son, and the revelation of the Son witnessing to the Father are the adequate grounds for our assurance" (Vision and Authority: 132).
Evidently, what Oman means by "the revelation of the Father" is something like what I mean by "original revelation" -- interpreted, of course, from the standpoint and in the terms of the decisive revelation of God through Jesus; while his term,"the revelation of the Son," means something like what I call "decisive revelation" -- understood as decisively re-presenting original revelation.
Piet Fransen says: "It is the Father who brings us to Christ through the inner attraction of the Spirit" (Christian Revelation and World Religions: 95). I should like to think this statement together with Oman's toward one of my own -- as follows:
It is God the Father who brings us to Jesus the Christ through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, just as it is Jesus the Christ who brings us to God the Father through the external testimony of the Holy Spirit in the apostolic witness of the church.
25 July 1975; rev. 24 August 2003
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