By Schubert Ogden
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You'll recall that, as I have defined it, religion – in the sense of any particular religion or religions – is the primary form of culture, or "cultural system," through which the existential question about the ultimate meaning of our existence is somehow asked and answered explicitly, in certain concepts and symbols. But this, clearly, is already to say that the different religions are indeed "cultural expressions" – if not, exactly, of "one phenomenon," then certainly of one reality. I have spoken of this one reality as "existence," explaining that what I mean by this is not simply the human self, taken by itself in abstraction from its relations to others, and to the Other encompassing all others as well as the self, but the human self precisely in these actual relations to others and the whole. "Existence," in other words, is simply another term for "ultimate reality," in the sense of what all of us as selves somehow have to take account of insofar as we are human selves at all, no matter what else we may or may not have to take account which is to say, ourselves, others, and the encompassing whole. But I have also made, or implied, a distinction between existence, or ultimate reality, in its structure in itself and in its meaning for us – when I argued, for example, that the existential sense of "faith," although distinct from its intellectual sense, is nonetheless inseparable from it – and vice versa, that intellectual beliefs about the structure of things in themselves necessarily imply, even as they are also implied by, existential beliefs about the meaning of things for us. So, while I should very much wish to hold that different religions are so many
different expressions of the one reality of our own existence, or of ultimate reality, I would also need to insist that they are existential in their proper meaning, not merely intellectual. That is, they express the meaning of existence, or of ultimate reality, for us, for how we are to understand ourselves and others and lead our lives accordingly, as distinct from merely expressing the structure of ultimate reality in itself – although, as I've just reiterated, they necessarily imply that certain intellectual beliefs about that structure also have to be true.
On this understanding, the terms "God," "love," and so on – at least as they're ordinarily used in Christian witness and theology – are but the way in which one religion, the Christian religion, thinks and speaks about existence, or ultimate reality, in its meaning for us, for our understanding of ourselves and others as all parts of the encompassing whole, and so for how we are lead our lives, given this self-understanding. So I would not wish to say simply and without some such qualification that what different religions are, are simply different cultural expressions of the one reality of God and love, although the terms "God" and "love" are definitely first and foremost among the terms expressing the concepts and symbols through which I, as a Christian, think about the one reality of our existence, or, alternatively, the one ultimate reality with which all human beings have to do.
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I should perhaps add that anyone seeking a more fully developed, and, I hope, proportionately more adequate, answer to this question may want to take a look at a little book of mine, Is there Only One True Religion or Are There Many? (SMU Press, 1992). There is also an essay-length answer to the same question under the same title in my book of essays, Doing Theology Today (2d ed.,Wipf & Stock, 2006): 169-184.
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I've taken the liberty of slightly reformulating this question, so as to make clearer what I take it to be asking. But if I'm mistaken in my interpretation, and the questioner would like to make the necessary corrections, I'll be more than happy to receive them trusting everyone to understand that my prepared answer, in any case, is to the question as I've understood it, not as the questioner asked it
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The third thing I would say is that, from all we know from the long history of expressing Christian faith, or bearing Christian witness, there has never been – repeat: never been – one such expression, or one such witness, but only many – each making the same claims to be adequate and fitting, appropriate and credible. In some cases, the differences between the several expressions, or witnesses, have been, if not merely verbal, then at most conceptual as well. But in other cases, the differences have proved to be more serious, because they are real, amounting in many cases, in fact, to outright contrarieties or contradictions. Withal, those who have expressed the different expressions, or borne the different witnesses, have claimed, implicitly if not explicitly, to be doing what any expression, or any witness, of Christian faith, is obliged to do – and, in this sense, have laid claim to the label "Christian," even if they have not necessarily advanced an exclusive claim to it, which may be quite aptly described metaphorically as "kidnapping" the label. But that and why any such exclusive claim is, in the nature of the case, entirely out of place should be clear enough simply because, whether or not any expression, or witness, of Christian faith, is or is not valid in the several ways in which it claims, and is therefore obliged, to be so is, as I've said, never a closed question, but always an open question. It is, to be exact, the properly theological question that Christian theology ever bears the responsibility of asking and answering as best it can in its historical situation, with its limits and its possibilities.
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First, to say "the Bible says" is always to oversimplify, because the Bible is not so much one thing as many things, not simply a book, but rather a whole library of books, or, even better, two libraries, two collections of writings, which we respectively distinguish as the Old Testament and the New. So, while something like the paraphrased statement is indeed to be found in the Bible, we are less likely to be misled ourselves, or to mislead others, if we recognize that where it is found, more exactly, is in one or another of the writings included in the New Testament, and, more exactly still, in one or another of the many traditions redacted, or edited, in one or another of the New Testament writings. In short, statements asserting the sacrificial character of Jesus' death, although definitely to be found in the Bible as well as in later Christian traditions, are one way, but nonetheless neither the only nor necessarily the most adequate way, of expressing Jesus' decisive significance for human existence. In fact, they are but one of many ways in which Christians have formulated the assertion concerning Jesus that is constitutive of Christian faith. To say this, of course, is to make use of the all-important distinction I introduced in answering the last question, i.e., the distinction between Christian faith itself, which alone is constant, and its many different expressions, which
are – and, in the nature of the case, have to be – variable, and whose validity, as I argued, can never be a closed, but is always an open, question.
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Just war theory is ordinarily developed in two main parts, traditionally called by their Latin titles, Jus ad bellum (which may be somewhat freely translated, Justice in Going to War) and Jus in bello (or Justice in Conducting War). The dominant concept in the first part is "just cause," since having a just cause is the condition that a nation has to meet if it is to go to war justly. But other important conditions include the war's being declared by a proper authority, the nation's having a right intention in going to war, its end's being proportional to the means employed, and there being a reasonable chance of its being successful. In the second part, then, the concern is that justice also be realized in conducting the war, by minimizing, so far as possible, its ferocity and its destructiveness, to both life, property, and resources. Thus the dominant concepts, or principles, in this part are "discrimination," "proportionality," and – in formulations of the theory since the Nuremburg Trials after World War II – "responsibility." The first is concerned, above all, with discriminating between combatants and noncombatants; the second, with using no more force or causing no more destruction than absolutely necessary to attain the war's end; and the third, with individual combatants having to take responsibility for their actions regardless of the commands of their superiors.
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