By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
1. To be a Christian is to be called to bear a valid witness to Christ in and for the world.
2. But to determine whether or not one's witness is valid, in the sense of being both adequate to its content and fitting to its situation, requires theological reflection.
3. Therefore, to be a Christian is also to be called to engage in theological reflection, which engagement itself is a way of bearing a valid witness.
4. This means that among the things that one must think, say, and do in order to bear witness are the things that one must think, say, and do in order to do theology.
5. It is only to be expected, then, that among the things on which theology has to reflect in order to determine the validity of witness are the things involved in theological reflection.
6. Therefore, whatever may be implied by the reflexive character of theology as, like philosophy, a self-constituting mode of critical reflection, theology would in any case have to reflect on theology itself simply because doing it is, or, at any rate, can be, one of the ways of bearing witness on which theology has the task of critically reflecting.
May 1988; rev. 21 September 2009
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