By Schubert Ogden
Where do I depart from the kind of position that Maurice sets forth
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(4) Yet another point of difference, I suspect, is in my treatment of the question of miracles and subjective immortality. With whatever restraint and realism, Maurice seems to have allowed for divine miracle, while there can be no reasonable question that he affirms survival of death and the immortality of the human subject. I, for my part, would wish to allow for both miracles and subjective immortality without taking either to be necessitated by faith in God. Hartshorne says: "I know of no proof that God'sinfluence upon the creatures is only that expressed by the natural laws giving order to worldly happenings. From the unsurpassable power and wisdom of God deduce that if the divine influence would produce better results for the beauty of the world by going beyond the mere ordering in question, then theinfluence does go farther. But I doubt our human wisdom to know if thisfurther limiting of(OOTM:[.§.£.. creaturely] freedom would produce better results" l19~ cf. 126). I accept this reasoning as not only pertinent to any dealing with the question of miracles, "special providence," and the like, but as also indicating the correct way to deal with the question of subjective imoortality. Because, in Hartshorne's words, "as a theist I accept on faith the infallible wisdom and ideal power of God," I infer that if the possibilities of goodness in the world were to be increased without any corresponding increase in the possibilities of evil by subjective survival of death, then God's love would undoubtedly see to it. But I doubt our human wisdom to know if this would indeed be the case.
Correction of p. 2
On p. 2 I say: "talk of the Father's love for the Son or of the Son's love for the Father is all simply an analogical way of saying that the implicit primal source is one and the same with the explicit primal source of authority." Given my reconsideration of the distinction between "implicit" and "explicit," so as to correspond with Wesley's distinction between the "divine" and the "human" natures as both the image of God, I should rather say: "talk • is all simply an analogical way of saying that the meaning of God for us made explicit through Christ as the decisive representation of this meaning is the meaning of God for us implied by the structure of God in itself." It is true that any meaning of God for us necessarily implies a certain structure of God in itself. But it is just as true that the structure of God in itself implies a certain meaning of God for us. Talk about the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father is an analogical way of saying this, as becomes clear from the fact that the Father's love for the Son consists in the Father's giving the Son everything that belongs to the Father, while the Son's love for the Father consists in the Son's giving the Father everything that belongs to the Son.