By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Eschatological terms, like protological ones, function to express what is source of authority, but not in the same sense merely an authority. Thus whether one speaks of primal source of authority or rather final source of authority, the referent is the same.
It seems clear that "Christ" (= "Messiah") is an eschatological term designating the final, overriding source of authority -- the last word, if you will. By contrast, "Word" (= "Logos"), or "Wisdom," or "Spirit," or "image," or "firstborn of all creation" are all protological terms designating in some way the primal originating source of authority, and thus the first word. In either case, the terms function to designate, not merely an authority, not even the highest, but rather the source of authority (i.e., the source of authority). For this reason, they are all functionally equivalent and interchangeable, any of them serving more or less as well as any other to designate one and the same thing.
1 January 1991; rev. 26 August 2003
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