By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
1. By definition, strictly ultimate reality is strictly universal and strictly necessary. As such, it must also be eminently absolute, in the sense of being relative to nothing, neutral to all relational alternatives. Of course, on the Aristotelian principle that universals have to be instantiated somehow, that there is no alternative actualized at all is not one of the relational alternatives. There is and must be some reality, itself not strictly ultimate, in which strictly ultimate reality is instantiated.
2. But now the question of God as it is raised by radically monotheistic religions is whether strictly ultimate reality, which, being strictly universal and strictly necessary, must also be eminently absolute, is at the same time, albeit in a different respect, eminently relative, in the sense of being relative to everything, neutral to no relational alternative. Is the strictly universal and necessary, and, therefore, eminently absolute also eminently relative, because also eminently individual and, therefore, in this respect, contingent?
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