The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Can one rightly say that, just as it is God alone whom we are to trust without reservation, so it is also God alone to whom we are to be loyal without qualification -- loving all others as ourselves only in our love for God and solely to God's glory? Yes, I think one can rightly say this -- for the following reasons.

Isn't the one work of God ad intra and ad extra God's unbounded love of self and all others? By God's unbounded love of Godself there arises the threefold distinction among (1) God as the primordial unity of both loving and being loved by Godself (= Father); (2) God as loved by Godself (= Son); and (3) God as loving Godself (= Holy Spirit). By God's unbounded love of all others there occurs the two divine works of creation-emancipation and consummation-redemption.

Salvation is not so much a third divine work as what happens whenever human beings, who have forfeited their possibility for original righteousness by actualizing the contrary possibility of original sin, respond in faith to God's ever-renewed work of consummation-redemption, thereby becoming free to participate once again in God's ever-continuing work of creation-emancipation. As I've said elsewhere, "What is properly meant by 'salvation' is the process that includes not only the redeeming action of God [God]self but also the faithful response to this action on the part of the individual sinner. As Augustine puts it, 'he that made us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves.' We are saved by grace -- by God's redeeming acceptance of our lives into [God's own], notwithstanding the fact of our sin; but we are saved through faith -- through our own trusting acceptance of God's acceptance, whereby [God's] redemption of our lives becomes our salvation" (Faith and Freedom: 87).

The relevant point, however, is that salvation is the whole process whereby the sinner who has been disobedient to God's demand by rejecting God's gift is restored by God's redeeming love to authentic participation in both of God's works ad extra -- creation-emancipation as well as consummation-redemption. Accordingly, not to participate in God's work of creation-emancipation in an authentic way is not really to be saved, not really to participate in God's work of consummation-redemption in an authentic way, either. This is the point of the insistence that "faith by itself, if its has no works, is dead" (James 2:17,26). At the same time, it remains as true as ever that "a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law" (Rom 3:28).

Fall 1983; rev. 10 September 2003

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