The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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I've long sensed that when Bultmann speaks of God as "the Creator," he means more than I do when I use the same phrase. He means not only -- in my terms -- the "primal source" of all things, and so God "the Creator-Emancipator," but also the "final end" of everything, and so God "the Consummator-Redeemer." For him, then, "the Creator" may be said to be constitutive both of the being and of the new being of all creatures as well as Godself.

More exactly, the Creator, in Bultmann's broader sense, is rightly said to be uniquely co-constitutive of both the being and the new being of all things, of self as well as of all others. For the rule holds good: "nothing whatever, not even God, can wholly determine the being of something else." The creatures, also, are all, in their way, creators -- and insofar also co-constitutive of their own as well as of God's being and new being. But if this explains the above emphasis on "co-," that on "uniquely" is explained by God's alone being co-constitutive of, as well as co-constituted by, all things, everything else being co-constitutive of, as well as co-constituted by, some things only.

24 May 2005

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