The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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If I understand Bochenski's reasoning, one may say that the intellectual propositions of metaphysics constitute the foundation of the practical propositions of ethics, even as the practical propositions of ethics, in turn, constitute the foundation of certain corresponding moral commands or institutions.

But, then, it would seem that one might also be able to say, by analogy, that the existential propositions explicating a certain understanding of human existence constitute the foundation of a corresponding existential summons to a certain self-understanding. Put in other, more specifically theological terms, the indicative propositions comprising the indirect witness of Christian teaching constitute the foundation of the corresponding imperative propositions comprising the direct witness of Christian proclamation.

Since the understanding of human existence that the indicative witness of Christian teaching explicates comprises credenda as well as agenda—the first constituting the foundation of the second—there is a sense in which Christian teaching is doubly foundational, constituting, in its one aspect as explication of credenda, the foundation of its other aspect as explication of agenda, and then, indirectly, constituting the foundation of the summons to self-understanding issued by Christian proclamation.

30 September 1999

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