The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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Bultmann argues that revelation's being an event belongs to its very essence as revelation. Hence his repeated arguments for the essentiality of the event of Jesus, of the "that" of his ministry, and so on. At the same time, he couldn't be clearer that "God is revealed in creation," that "the creation is God's revelation" (TNT: 369).

But, then, what exactly is the "event" involved in God's revelation in creation, as distinct from God's revelation in (the event or "that" of) Jesus? What could it be other than the event of creation itself? And what is that in the case of a human being other than the event of self-understanding, which, as I've argued, is "the constitutive event of human existence" (OT: 26)?

Another possibility, perhaps, is that the event in question is the creativity of the many in creating and thereby being increased by a new one. But how distinct, really, is this possibility from the first? Indeed to understand oneself as thus created by the creative activity of other creatures is eo ipso to understand oneself together with others as all alike parts of the all-encompassing whole, which alone can be said to be "the Creator", either in the sense in which "the Creator" is to be distinguished from "the Consummator," or in the sense, in which "the Creator" is synonymous with "God."

11 October 2006

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