By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
I find it interesting that the two so-called religions or ideals of community that Gamwell takes to be competitive with Christian faith in the contemporary USA (Politics as a Christian Vocation, Ch. 5) are the pursuit of (enlightened or unenlightened) self-interest and the pursuit of private virtue. Unless I am mistaken, there is a striking parallel between these two pursuits and the two different ways of missing a genuine life of submission that Bultmann distinguishes in his discussion with KamIah.
Bultmann argues there that a genuine life of obedience is missed either by a way of living in which one simply disposes of what is disposable, instead of submitting, or by a way of living in which one misunderstands even one's possibility of submitting as something of which one can dispose. In this connection, he specifically mentions the "boasting" of Jews who are proud of their being faithful and that of Gnostics who similarly take pride in their wisdom as examples of the second way of living so as to miss one's authentic existence (New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings: 28).
19 December 2003
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