By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
1. I have argued, following Luther, that "Christ is, first of all, a 'sacrament' (sacramentum), only secondly an 'example' (exemplum)," or, in other words, that "before Christ can be rightly taken as the true model for our own liberating love, he must first be taken as the real presence of the liberating love of God" (The Point of Christology: 166). But if this is taken seriously, it is clear that, even as an example, Jesus Christ is precisely that—Jesus Christ, and therefore other and more than the so-called historical Jesus. It is precisely and only as "the decisive re-presentation of ultimate reality, and hence the explicit primal source authorizing the authentic understanding of one's existence in relation to this ultimate reality" that Jesus is exemplum even as it is only so that he is, first of all, sacramentum (129).
2. But, then, to take Christ as our example, or as the model for our own liberating love, is not really different from taking God as our example. Thus Paul's injunction in Phil 2:5 ff., "Have this mind among yourselves that you have in Christ Jesus," has exactly the same meaning as the Matthean Jesus' imperative in Mt 5:48: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." This means that all talk of Christian faith's being a matter of following the historical Jesus (as, e.g., in Mackey or Sobrino) is profoundly misled and misleading. The example Christians are called to follow, in the first instance, is not the example of the man Jesus, but the example of the God who, through Jesus, has decisively confronted them with the gift and demand of authentic human existence (cf., e.g., 1 Thess 1:6; 1 Cor 4:16, 11:1). This becomes particularly clear in John 13:1-20, where the one who gives the disciples "an example" is their "Lord and Teacher," the "master" of whom they are but "servants" or "slaves." It is not only as Jesus has done that the disciples are to do, but also, and primarily, because Jesus has done that they, too, are given and called to the servanthood of love.
3. In this connection, we do well to follow Luther's lead in thinking about "Christ the man." "Darumb ists nit der menscheit Christi tzutzuschreyben, das sie uns lebendig mach, sondernn ynn dem wort ist das leben wilches ynn dem fleisch wonet und durchs fleisch unss lebend macht" (WA, 10, I, 1, 199, 14). "Die menschheit were keyn nutz, wenn die Gottheit nit drynnen were" (10, I, 1, 208, 22). "Gott hat mehr auffs Evangelium und diese offentliche zukunfft durchs wort, denn auff die leyblich geburt odder tzukunfft ynn die menschheit acht gehabt. Es ist yhm umb das Evangelium und unssern glauben tzu thun gewesen darumb hatt er seynen son datzu lassen mensch werdenf das das Evangelium mocht von yhm predigt werden" (10, I, 2, 7,12). "Fides catholica hæc est, ut unum dominum Christum confiteamur verum Deum et hominem" (39, II, 93, 2). "Christus homo significat personam divinam incarnatam" (39, II, 10, 30). "Christus homo, id est, persona divina, quæ suscepit humanum naturam" (39f It 117f 35).
4. Generalizing, one may say that whenever the same things are predicated of Jesus as of Christians, the sense in which they are predicated of Jesus is an analogical, not a univocal sense.
n.d.; rev. 5 December 2000
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