The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

SCANNED PDF

It seems ever clearer to me that the controversy that Luther says "has existed from the beginning and will continue to the end" is indeed the controversy over the true worship of God. But it seems equally clear that all religions, including the Christian religion, are ever in danger of winding up on the wrong side of this controversy, i.e., the side of the "pseudo-saints," rather than the "true saints."

( I wonder, by the way, whether there isn't an instructive convergence between what Luther means by "pseudo-saints" and what H. Richard Niebuhr calls "henotheists.")

Jesus, for Paul, is of decisive significance because he is the liberating judgment of God upon Jews as well as gentiles and, therefore, "the end of the law." But to feel the full force of Paul's point requires saying that Jesus is also the liberating judgment of God upon Christians as well as non-Christians and, therefore, "the end of religion," of all religions, including the Christian, as the way of salvation.

29 January 2008

  • No labels