By Schubert Ogden
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One of the important questions that Maurice raises and answers is, How is Christ rather~as Maurice contends, "as the (The Doctrine of 43). Unless I'm mistaken, I raise and answer the very same in a closely parallel, ifnot if not convergent, way in The Point ofChristologyof Christology. _Consider, e.g., such passages as the following:_to be regarded? Is he to be regarded "merely as. a man born at a certain time into thisworldthis world, and the head of a sectcalled sect called Christians," or,Son, the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father"?the Thirty Nine Articles: question, arguing
While there does indeed seem to be a difference in principle between even perfectly actualizing authentic existence and being the incarnation of God asserted by . Nicrea and Chalcedon, these are hardly the only terms in which what is really essential in this difference may be fonnulatedformulated. On the contrary, ... even in the supposedly 'low' christology ofthe of the earliest Jewish-Christian community, the claim made for Jesus was that he is the decisive re-presentation of God and as· such belongs on the divine rather than on the human side ofthe of the relationship between God and human beings generally, .But if I am right about this, the really essential difference, upheld in some tenns terms or other by all New Testament christologies, is the difference between being merely one more authority, even the primary such authority, and being the explicit primal source from which all authority derives. Because even a perfectly authentic human existence need be no mor.e more than one· .. authority among others, on the same level as ourselves, even if rITst and foremost among us, Jesus' having actualized such an existence cannot possibly be the sufficient condition ofthe of the truth ofthese of these christologies. For the essential claim made by each ofthemof them, whatever the concepts and symbols iri which it was fonnulatedformulated, is that Jesus is' rather the primal source of all authority, on the same level as God, even if alsodistinct also distinct from God as this very source now become fully explicit (81).
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There is also the question--to my mind, far more serious-whether the very attempt to understand Jesus· himself as this norm _\[se._ _the norm of appropriateness\] does not implicitly deny the characteristic claim that the Christian witness makes about him by its christo logicalchristological assertion. Even the primary norm of appropriateness can be no more than one authority among others, as distinct from the primal source of authority by which even the primary nonnnorm alone is authorized. But what does it mean to assert that Jesus is the Christ; or any of ofthethe other things that Christians have_ _historically_ _asserted him to be, if not precisely that Jesus is just such a primal authorizing source, and hence inrmitely more than any authority derived from this source, even the primary such authority? I submit that the deeper difficulty with the typically liberal theological answer to the question of the norm of appropriateness is that it assigns to Jesus himself, contrary to the clear intention of the apostolic witness, the role that rightly belongs rather to the apostles. If this is so, however" the way to respond to the challenge posed· by the ongoing development of historical-critical study of the New Testament is not by abandoning the early church's criterion of apostolicity. Quite the contrary, if Jesus is rightly asserted by the Christian witness to be inrmitely more than any nonnnorm, because he is the primal source of all norms made fully explicit, then the early church was exactly right in taking . apostolicity to be the criterion of canonicity. It lies in the very logic of.the concept of. 'authority' that the primal _{_}source_ _of authority, whether implicit or explicit, cannot itself be_ _an_ _authority, at least in the same literal sense of ofthethe word. On the other hand, and by the same logic, there belongs to the original authority authorized by its primal source, and so in this case to the witness of ofthethe apostles as explicitly authorized by Jesus; the unique role of ofalsoalso being the originating authority and therefore the sole primary norm or canon. This is so because it is solely through this original and originating authority that the primal source authorizing it is explicitly available precisely as such (102_ _f)._ |
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