The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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That human beings universally are not theists in anything like the sense of "theism" sensu stricto is clear enough. Therefore, if they can be said to be theists at all, it is only in a broader, heuristic sense of "theism."

But theists in at least that sense they must be said to be, because sin in the proper sense of aversion from God toward the creature is not a necessary structural defect of our humanity, but a contingent fault for which each and every one of us is responsible. So, at any rate, Paul reasons in Romans 1:18-32.

Question: How plausible would it be to say that, when Paul refers to "what can be known about God," i.e., "his eternal power and divine nature," which he asserts to be manifest in all persons because God has manifested it to them "ever since the creation of the world," he is referring, in effect, to God qua the universal individual, as distinct from God qua the personal God of Jewish and Christian tradition? In other words, how plausible is it to say that Paul's "η θειοτης" in vs. 20 is used in very much the same way in which Meister Eckhart uses "deitas"?

6 February 1999

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