The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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What has always been at stake for me in insisting on "the reality of God" comes out particularly clearly and directly in my essay, "The Promise of Faith," especially in my criticism of "a certain misunderstanding" of Bultmann's approach to the meaning of eschatological symbols (RG: 215-219). I argue against this misunderstanding by appealing to the New Testament, making my point "over-simply" as follows: "whereas for this kind of existential theology, 'resurrection' designates a human possibility, for [s]cripture, it also refers, and, indeed, primarily, to a divine actuality" (216).

"[O]ur resurrection is never an authentic understanding of our existence until it is first a gracious action of God, which is real quite independently of our self-understanding. God first raises us up, first makes us the objects of [God's] limitless love, and only then do we have the possibility of participating in that 'new creation' which [God's] love ever and again makes possible for us and all our fellows. In a word, before resurrection is our decision, it is God's decision; and our faith does not create the risen life, but simply accepts it as already created by God through Christ and participates in it (218 f.)."

Post's revisionary interpretation of theism, for all its subtlety, is, finally, no better, even if no worse, than all of the earlier "left-wing" responses to the theology and falsification challenge, including Van Buren's "historical perspectivism" (c.f. 218, n. 20). It, too, involves completely changing the subject from "what [objectively] there is" to "what objectively there ought to be," or, better, "how [objectively] we ought to talk about it and how we ought to see it" (The Faces of Existence: 19,330). This strikes me, just as much as all the earlier views do, as at best a matter of destroying what is at stake in order to save it. For what is at stake is honestly coming to terms with the utter fragmentariness, and, in itself, complete meaninglessness, of human existence as well as creaturely existence generally. To ignore or forget such fragmentariness and meaninglessness, as Post also does, in his way, is precisely not to come to terms with either ourselves or the whole point of belief in God, as well as, one may surmise, of all profound religious belief.

5 July 2005

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