The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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What significance is there to the fact that Jesus appeared as prophet and teacher -- considering that the existential question has both metaphysical and moral aspects and that faith necessarily has implications for both belief (credenda) and action (agenda)?

One could reasonably argue, it seems to me, that the apocalypticism in terms of which Jesus formulated his prophetic teaching, being precisely mythology, was the time-conditioned form in which he expressed the metaphysical aspect of the existential question and formulated the beliefs implied by the answer to this question set forth in his teaching. Similarly, it seems to me, one could reasonably hold that the rabbinic, or Pharisaic, tradition of moral teaching provided the time-conditioned terms -- and problematic! -- in which Jesus formulated the moral aspect of the existential question as well as specified the moral actions implied by the answer given to it in his moral teaching.

Of course, a prophet is not a metaphysician, any more than a rabbi is a moral philosopher -- not, at least, if his moral teaching is radicalized as Jesus' certainly was. But as certain as it is that Jesus' prophetic teaching and moral teaching alike were properly religious and therefore witness rather than either metaphysical analysis or moral instruction in the proper sense of the words, his witness does have two distinct if related aspects corresponding to the two aspects of the existential question to which it is addressed. (On this ground alone, then, one might question Bultmann's statement that Jesus simply proclaimed the law -- unless, naturally, what he means by "law" in this statement includes more than one would ordinarily assume -- "promise," say.)

It may be worth adding that the older discussion of "eschatology and ethics in the teaching of Jesus" seems to provide other but perhaps equally appropriate terms for the discussion of this question.

30 September 1986; rev. 3 October 2003

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