By Schubert Ogden
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I argued some time ago that "one must be careful not to mislocate \[the\] 'objective' component \[_sc_. of the revelatory correlation\] .... \[T\]he 'objective' component is not simply the something taken, but the something taken _in that particular way_ \-\- namely, as re-presenting a certain possibility of self-understanding, which itself is then taken to be the possibility of understanding oneself authentically. Accordingly, the relevant question in determining whether or not what is taken to be revelation really is so is not whether someone has _re-presented_ our authentic possibility by what she or he has intended to say and do, or has, in fact, said and done, but whether the possibility that someone _is taken to re-present_ is correctly taken as that authentic possibility" (Notebooks, 15 November 1999; rev. 7 December 2008). |
But I must say that I had not clearly realized an important implication of this argument until relatively recently, in the course of reflecting further on my principle that meaning-for-us is, in an appropriate sense, determined by structure-in-itself. To apply this principle rightly in christology requires carefully distinguishing the structure-in-itself of the empirical-historical Jesus from that of the existential-historical Jesus. Why? Well, because the only structure-in-itself that is relevant to determining the truth of the christological assertion is that of Jesus re-presenting the possibility of self-understanding that he is experienced as re-presenting – -- as distinct from the structure-in-itself of the possibility that he himself re-presented by what he in fact thought, said, and did, not to mention the possibility that he himself actualized.
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