By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
In Rom 1: 18-25, Paul argues that "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth." This is so, he reasons, because "what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and deity, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever."
What does it mean to say that "ever since the creation of the world [God's] eternal power and deity, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things [God] has made"? It means, I would argue, that to experience oneself and others as all of us do is to experience them as absolutely dependent, for their meaning as well as their being, on the all-encompassing whole, understood as the universal individual. But for this individual's creative activity of making whatever else comes to be really possible, in fact as well as in principle, there would be neither self nor others. And but for its consummative activity of incorporating whatever comes to be into its own all-inclusive being, neither self nor others would be really real or have any abiding meaning. So, to experience self and others is to experience through them the One of which they are all parts, and but for which they would neither be and be really real, nor have any meaning at all -- and, in this sense, to understand and clearly see (!) "the invisible things of [God], even (God's] eternal power and deity."
30 April 2008
Overview
Content Tools