The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Will it do to speak of God as ontic (rather than ontological) primal source of authority?

Yes, it will. For while God exists necessarily rather than contingently, and so ontologically rather than ontically, God exists ontologically only because God's essence always is and must be somehow actualized; and the actuality whereby God exists is, like all actuality, contingent, not necessary, and so properly ontic, not ontological.

Moreover, since what is ordinarily presupposed as the context for thinking and speaking about God as source of authority is the context of human (or understanding) existence, and thus of self-understanding and life-praxis, the referent of "God" is not God-as-such, as the primal source and final end of world-as-such, but rather God as my God, and thus God as acting here and now, in relation to just this, that, or the other human (or understanding) decision; and God qua acting here and now is not necessary, but contingent, and so quite properly said to be ontic, not ontological.

27 September 2000

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