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                                                                                    THE AGENCY OF GOD: TWENTY-ONE THESES

                                                                                                        Schubert M. Ogden

1. Although "the agency of God" is a topic that may fall to be considered in pursuing different inquiries, our interest in it here arises out of the inquiry distinctive of Christian theology, and, more exactly, Christian systematic theology.

2. This means, among other things, that we can discuss our topic adequately only by putting two closely related but logically distinct questions to everything that not only we ourselves but Christians generally have thought and said on the topic: first, the question whether it is appropriate to Jesus Christ because or insofar as as it either is the witness of the apostles or substantially agrees with their witness as attested by scripture and tradition; and, second, the question whether it is credible to human existence because or insofar as it is confirmed by common human experience and reason as attested by culture and religion generally.

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6. For the purposes of our discussion, we may assume that or·dinarily ordinarily the word "agent" means someone who acts or has the power or right to act; and that the word "agency," accordingly, means the capacity, condition, or state of being an agent in this sense, and hence is roughly synonymous with the word "action."

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9. The love of God reflexively, in relation to Godself, is the agency of God ad intra that constitutes God as essentially triune: God the Father being the primordial unity of God as both loving Godself and loved by Godself; God the Son being God as loved by Godself, . and God the Holy Spirit being God as loving Godself, in their primordial difference -- from one another and from their primordial unity.

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18. This third case of God's mediate and indirect action is concretely instanced by the effective use of any valid means of salvation -- not only the secondary means of word and sacraments, or even the primary means of the visible church as such, but also, and above all, the primal means of Jesus Christ himself, through whom God's intention that all women and men and any other rational beings be saved is decisively re-presented as the gift and demand of faith.

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