By Schubert Ogden
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What does it mean to say that, "though [the Incarnation] came later than the fall, [it] was in God's purpose before it" (Maurice)?
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But if God's purpose is thus ever to create Godself in and through the creation and consummation of others, themselves also self-created and consummative of others, this purpose acquires different accidental aspects contingently upon the others that God creates and consummates. Insofar as these others are understanding, and therefore morally free, creatures who can and must create themselves in and through their own understanding and moral freedom, God's purpose acquires the accidental aspect of creating and consummating creatures who are faced with the fundamental option of either obediently acknowledging the divine purpose and bearing witness to it for the sake of others or failing thus to acknowledge and bear witness to it. But, then, God's purpose must also acquire the accidental aspect of willing its decsive decisive representation, whereby this fundamental option ceases to be merely implicit, or explicated only partially and inadequately, and becomes fully explicit.
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It lies in the nature of the case, however, that there cannot be a decisive re-presentation of God's purpose unless there is some individual or community that takes it to be such. Could this be the truth, perhaps, so badly expressed by all the christologies that focus on Jesus' own personal relation to God instead of keeping their attention focused on the decisive significace significance of Jesus for our personal relation to God?
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