By Schubert Ogden
I have reasoned for a long time in some such way as follows:
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I realize now, however, that, in at least one important respect, such reasoning is as misled as it is misleading. What Christian teaching typically includes about credenda and agenda is neither "properly metaphysical teaching about things that are to be believed" nor "properly moral teaching about things that are to be done." Although its teaching about credenda necessarily implies metaphysical teaching, it itself is not "properly metaphysical," but rather "properly religious." This means, for one thing, that it is not teaching about ultimate reality, abstractly and intellectually, in its structure in itself, but rather teaching about ultimate reality, concretely and existentially, in its meaning for us. And so, too, with its teaching about agenda, which likewise is not "properly moral," but rather "properly religious." As such, it necessarily implies moral teaching, although it itself has to do, not, as moral teaching properly does, with what we are to do and how we are to do it, but with who we are and who we are to be--in be—in short, with our self-understanding, with how we are to understand ourselves authentically, given the meaning of ultimate reality for us.
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