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No doubt my greatest problem with Maurice is in understanding whether he is, after all, a (more or less consist~ntconsistent) pluralistic inclusivist, such as I.could be said that rather simply another (more or less inconsistent) monistic inclusivist, such as a number of my contemporaries certainly could be said to be.

Early on, I was pretty clear that Maurice's intentions, if nothis realization of them, were closely convergent with mine. And I was confrrmed confirmed in this interpretation by my reading of Torben Christensen's The Divine Order, which seemed to me to be a persuasive argument that Maurice intended so to interpret Christian faith that my later call for thoroughgoing demythologization/existentialist Interpretation could be seen to be but the consistent realization, in our situation today, ofhis own intentions. But I was never entirely comfortable with this interpretation, and, as a result of subsequent rereadings, I have come to judge Maurice as bemg rath~r less clear or consistent than I once thought he was. So, when I wanted to work out my position on baptism in Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? it was with F. W. Robertson's views that I chose to associate myselfrather than Maurice's. 

. Now, after my most recent rereading, I am still uncertain. about how his intentions are to be interpreted. What I have not f{)undfound (although a more completesear~h complete search might very well tum it up!) is any place where he di~tinguishes distinguishes as clearly and sharply asI do between (1) the. constitution of authenticity (or salyation) itself and (2) the constitution of Christianity as the putativede~isivemanife,sfation putative decisive manifesfation of authenticity (or salvation). Altho.ugh Although many of the things. that Maurice . says, or clearly itnplies implies can perhaps be read as allowing for such .a distinction, whether they can be read as also requiring it, in any sense other than that in which a monistic. inclusivist like Clodovis Boff also requires it, remains . ' doubtfuL

Some examples ofthe sort ofthingsIhave of the sort of things I have in mind:

Wiki Markup
\[A\]II gOQd which is in me, or inanyin any one, is.derived from the perfect humanity of ofChristChrist, and ... , apart from that, I am merely evil _(Life,_ 2: 408). All the Churches throughout the Roman Empire were so many witnesses that the Incarnation has established human society upon this deep and eternal basis and that there is none other upon which it can be established
(The Church as a Family: 29).
[T]he Bible [is] the history of ofthethe establishment of ofaa universal and spiritual kingdom, ofthatof that kingdom which OodGod had ever intended for men, and of which the universal kingdom then existing in the world was the formal opposite
(Kingdom o/Christ,1:254f.).
OfyourOf your relation to this Church you cannot rid yourselves, any more than you can change the law under which your natural bodies and the members of them exist.
ItisIt is one which you must confess along withuswith us, because you are human beings as well as we are(Lincoln's Inn Sermons,5: 241).,
We are children ofGod; Christ, by taking our nature, has assured that title to us _(Lincoln's Inn Sermons,_ 1: 89). Troubling to me meinin such statements is the constitutive, not to say causal, significance with respect to salvation apparently attributed attrlbutedtoto "the Incarnation," Christ's' "taking our nature," or "the perfect humanity ofChristof Christ." But, of course, I, too, could, and would, say that Jesus Christ _is_ constitutive in "the establishment of a universal and spiritual kingdom," ifbyif by that is meant, _not_ the invisible church oftheof the choseli\~ but rather "the kingdom of ofChristChrist;tt or what I should distinguish as the _visible_ church of ofthethe called, which; I take it, is also what Maurice intends to say. Moreover, although he can speak speakasas it appears, indifferently-\--'-\-Of "the Atonement" as tithe foundation of ofitsits _\[sc._ the ' universal Church Churchtsis\] being" and of ofitsits being "grounded upon our Lord's incarnation," he also typically goes on to say something like, "and ultimately resting upon the name oftheof the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," or otherwise refers to the trinity, as distinct from the incarnation and the atonement, as the church's _ultimate_ foundation _(Kingdom of Christ_ \[1838\], 1 :58; \[Ev. ed\], 2: 1). Still, the trinity itself, in its way, belongs to "the order oftheof the _manifestation_ of ofsalvationsalvation," as distinct from "the order of ofitsits _constitution"_ (Boil). And the question remains whether Maurice's appeal to it as the ultimate ground isn't really consistent, after all, with what is, in intention, a monistic monisticinclusivistinclusivist position, or whether it is to be understood as more like my distinguishing between constituting authentic existence itselfanditself and constituting what Christians believe and attest to be its decisive re-presentation.

In any case, I stand by the judgment I expressed earlier (Notebooks: 15 August 2007) that neither Maurice's appeal to the trinity nor anything else he says has anything like the clarity ofTillichofT illich's distinction between "symbol" and "symbolized." and thus between "the redeeming action ofGodof God" and the "experience ofthe unconditionedtranscendentof the unconditioned transcendent," of which talk ofGodof God's redeeming action is "itselfa itself a symbolic expression."

31 October 2007