By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
What happens to the appeal to scripture and tradition once scripture itself is seen to be tradition?
The appeal to scripture and tradition-at least on the usual Protestant understanding-is, in principle, the appeal to fonnally nonnative witness and merely substantially nonnative witness respectively. (This is so, at any rate, if "tradition" is understood in its eulogistic sense, as distinct from its merely descriptive, noneulogistic sense.) But, then, if scripture itself is seen to be tradition, Le., merely substantially nonnative witness rather than fonnally normative witness, the appeal to scripture can no longer function as it usually was and still is understood to do.
The point, in any case, is to understand that the appeal to nonnative witness, not only merely substantially normative witness, but also formally nonnative witness, is entirely justified-indeed, indispensable. This is what I tried to say in the section on "The Validity of the Scriptural Principle" in On Theology: 57-62.
September 1987; rev. 23 June 2002
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