By Schubert Ogden
Why is there – -- and why must there be – -- such a thing as an "a priori' or "transcendental" "christology"?
...
Even so, the truth of the a posteriori christological assertion, "Jesus is the Christ," could never be already deduced simply from premises that are properly moral or metaphysical. There is all the difference between a christology that seeks and one that has found, or between a Christianity that remains nameless and one that is properly so-called. This is because not even the christological question, properly so-called, could ever be simply existential. Because it could never so much as arise except on the basis of a particular experience of Jesus, it is and must be historical as well as existential; and the truth of the christological assertion that answers it could only be an a posteriori, not an a priori, kind of truth.
June 1991
8/8/1