By Schubert Ogden
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I have explained for years that to represent is to re-present, to make present again,
a second time. But it suddenly came home to me that to make present again, or a second
time is in either case to make present -- indeed, to make really present.
That I was already more or less aware of this seems clear from the way I regularly
expounded the meaning of "real presence" in my lectures in systematic theology.
Consider, for example, the following from my lectures for 1989-90:
Panel |
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Jesus Christ is really present in preaching and sacraments in the same way in which any person is really present in the words and deeds |
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of direct address that re-present her or his meaning for us. Insofar, then, as preaching and sacraments are representative |
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forms of the direct witness |
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of faith, Jesus Christ himself is really present -- namely, re-present, present again, a |
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second time -- in them, even as he himself, in turn, is the decisive re-presentation of God's own gift and demand of saving grace. The power |
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of the word precisely as direct address is always to re-present him in this way. So wherever the word that Jesus Christ himself is, is itself re-presented-as it clearly is or should be, first of all, in the visible church as such and then, secondly, in both its preaching and its administering the sacraments -- he is not merely talked about, as he is in Christian teaching, but is |
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himself really and personally present, as is the saving grace of God |
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of which he is the decisive re-presentation. |
5 May 2008