By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Who is the God of whom Paul speaks in Rom 1:19 ff., if not precisely the one God of whom he speaks in 1 Cor 8:6 as "the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist;' and who is clearly the same God he characterizes in the doxology in Rom 11:36 as the One from whom and through whom and for whom are all things?
In other words, the God of whom Paul speaks in Romans 1 is the One from whom are all things and for whom all things exist -- their primal source and their final end. And it is what can be known about this One, its structure in itself in its meaning for us, that is manifest to all human beings because the One itself has manifested it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, the invisible nature of this One, its eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived, being understood by the things that are made.
If this unquestionably warrants saying that the One is always already manifested as the primal source of all things -- indeed, that the principle of the cosmological as well as, possibly, the teleological, argument has a clear basis in everyone's experience and understanding simply as a human being -- what Paul goes on to say -- namely, that, although thus knowing God, human beings did not glorify God as God and give thanks to God – necessarily implies that this One is also the final end of all things, and thus that the principle of the argument from the aim or purpose of life also has its basis in common human experience and reason.
15 September 1999
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