By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
The constitution of a religion has a threefold structure determined by two correlations. First, there is the correlation between the religious object and the religious subject; and then, second, there is the correlation involved in the religious object itself between its transcendental aspect and its historical aspect.
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The explicit primal source of authority for a given religion has a threefold structure involving two correlations. First, there is the correlation between the ontic source and the noetic source; and then, second, there is the correlation involved in the ontic source itself between its implicit (transcendental) aspect and its explicit (historical) aspect.
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If the Christian religion is precisely that -- a religion -- it is hardly surprising that Christian faith in God, while radically monotheistic, is at one and the same time trinitarian. Given the claim of radically monotheistic faith itself -- as expressed in the dictum, Impossibile est, sine deo, discere deum -- the one and only God is and must be present and active at every point of the threefold structure constitutive of the Christian religion and thus on both sides of its two correlations. Hence the economic trinity: the Father being God as the implicit primal ontic source; the Son being God as present and active in the explicit primal ontic source; and the Holy Spirit being God as present and active in the explicit primal noetic source. And the immanent trinity as well: the Father being the primal unity of God as both universal subject and universal object of love; the Son being God in God's primal difference as universal object of love; and the Holy Spirit being God in God's primal difference as universal subject of love.
21 February 2005
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