The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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1. What makes the proclamation of Paul gospel is "the historical person of Jesus," understood as the Messiah, and thus as the decisive saving act of God (GV, 1: 202).

2. Correspondingly, faith is a resolve or decision -- namely, to acknowledge "Jesus the prophet and teacher, the crucified one, as the Messiah" (203).

3. The early community had already made this decision insofar as it saw in Jesus the one whom God had assigned the office of Messiah and who would soon come again to hold judgment and to bring salvation. Thus its proclamation is precisely gospel -- the decisive thing in it being not that, in general, the Messiah is coming, and coming soon, but that this Jesus, the crucified one, is coming as the Messiah.

4. Already for the early community, then, the historical person of Jesus was the decisive saving act of God -- however clear or unclear it may have been about the full implications of proclaiming this.

n.d.; rev. 25 January 2005

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