By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
There would appear to be two distinctions with respect-to authority that are important for christology:
(1) the distinction between being an authority (including being the primary authority) and being a source of authority (including being the primal source of authority); and
(2) the distinction between being a nonexecutive (epistemic/exemplary) authority and being an executive authority.
The problem is to understand exactly how these two distinctions are related – and different. The best I can do at this stage toward solving the problem is to say only this.
The first appears to be required in order to bring out the difference between anything, person or thing, constituted as properly Christian, on the one hand, and the one thing or person that explicitly constitutes everything as properly Christian, on the other, i.e., the Christian proprium, or, more exactly, the ontic, as distinct from the noetic, aspect of that proprium—in a word, Jesus Christ. The second distinction seems necessary in order to account for the difference between the "what" and the "that" of Jesus in terms of authority. With respect to his "what," Jesus is not only an authority (one authority among others, even if the primary such authority), but also a nonexecutive (epistemic/exemplary) authority. On the other hand, with respect to his "that," Jesus is not only the explicit primal ontic source of authority, but also an executive authority.
30 April 1999
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