The Understanding of Christian Faith

Schubert M. Ogden

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781608993260
  9781498212540
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621892687
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

As an introduction to Christian systematic theology, this volume treats all the main theological topics-from God to last things-seeking to explicate critically the understanding of them implicit in Christian faith itself in terms at once appropriate to Jesus Christ and credible to human existence. Its criteria, accordingly, are the ultimate criteria of on the one hand, specifically Christian experience of Jesus as expressed by the apostolic witness, and on the other hand, generically human experience of existence as expressed by a sound philosophy. And, as befits an introduction, it employs these same criteria to clarify the process of actually doing Christian systematic theology. Thus it begins by explaining both what such a theology has to do and how it is to do it, and ends by considering what it means to do theology as a Christian calling, particularly as a professional theologian.

2

On God

2.0. Preliminary Remarks

Christian systematic theology, I have argued, is critical reflection on Christian witness with a view to validating its claim to be adequate to its content because it is both appropriate to Jesus Christ and credible to human existence. It is appropriate to Jesus Christ, if it is, because it is in substantial agreement with the formally normative witness of the apostles attested by scripture and the rest of Christian tradition; and it is credible to human existence, if it is, because it both confirms and is confirmed by the truth about existence attested more or less adequately by all human culture and religion.

But just what is Christian witness? Considering the starting point of our reflections, in the definition of “theology” suggested by the literal meaning of the word as thought and/or speech about God, we could say that Christian witness is the thought and/or speech about God that arises from specifically Christian experience and faith. But, then, what is specifically Christian experience and faith if not the experience of Jesus and the faith in God that is mediated decisively through him insofar as one is either an apostle or else someone who experiences Jesus and believes in God with the apostles, in communion with them? By “apostles” here, I should perhaps explain again, I mean those who were the first so to experience Jesus as to come to this faith in God through him, and whose witness of faith, being the original and originating, and hence constitutive Christian witness, is, accordingly, formally normative.

The interesting thing about Christian witness, however, is that its constitutive assertion—the assertion that constitutes it explicitly as such, that makes it Christian witness—is really two assertions. It is not simply an assertion about God, but also an assertion about Jesus Christ. It is logos about christos as well as logos about theos, christology as well as theology. Nevertheless, the first thing to be considered now, in this presentation, even as in most of the classic formulations of Christian faith in both creeds and theologies, is not Jesus Christ but God. How does one account for this? Why, if one is a Christian, does one’s theology properly begin with God rather than with Jesus Christ? Or does it?

I believe it does—not, however, because any theology can be other than thoroughly christocentric and still be an appropriate Christian theology. On the contrary, theology properly begins with God, not in spite of the constitutive christological assertion, but precisely because of it. I say this for two reasons.

First of all, because, as I have said, Christian witness is constituted explicitly as such, not merely by one, but by two assertions: by the theological assertion about God as well as by the christological assertion about Jesus. But I say it, secondly, because, when the christological assertion itself is understood as it should be, in relation to the question it is intended to answer, it is not only, or primarily, an assertion about Jesus; it is also, and above all, an assertion about God—about who God is and, precisely thereby, about who each of us is and is authorized to be in relation to God. In other words, a certain understanding of who God is, or, better, of what strictly ultimate reality is, in its meaning for us, is not only the most important implication of the christological assertion but also its most fundamental presupposition.

This is clear, I believe, from an analysis of the predicate term of the christological assertion and of how this term actually functions in it. In the classical formulation of the assertion, “Jesus is the Christ,” this term is “the Christ,” which, as is well known, derives from the Greek translation of the Aramaic term “Messiah,” meaning “the anointed one,” and, specifically, the one who, according to certain late Jewish eschatological expectations, is to rule as God’s vicegerent in the last days. But this implies, naturally, that it would make no sense to say that Jesus (or anyone else) is the Christ unless there were a God and unless this God had a meaning for us that Jesus (or someone else) could be said to re-present in a decisive way. This is why I say that a certain understanding of who God is, and thus of what strictly ultimate reality is, is the most fundamental presupposition of the christological assertion itself, in this or any other formulation. But if we ask just how the predicate term “the Christ” functions in this formulation, it is clear that, while it certainly functions to interpret the subject of whom it is predicated, and thus to tell us who Jesus is—namely, that he is the chosen one of God through whom the meaning of God for us is decisively re-presented—it also functions in such a way as to be interpreted by this selfsame subject, Jesus, so that we are told at one and the same time who the Christ is, and, therefore, who God is, and who, accordingly, we ourselves also are and are to be.

Consequently, I say that a certain understanding of who God is, is also the most important implication of the christological assertion. It is its most important implication, because it is precisely the question about who God is, or about what strictly ultimate reality is, in its meaning for us, that is our most important question as human beings, solely and simply because we are human, because we share in the universal reality of humanness.

2.1. The Question about God

The main thesis I shall now explain and argue for is that the question about God is a special form of the more general question about ultimate reality and, more exactly, about strictly ultimate reality. By the term “reality” in general, I mean, in William James’s words, “what we in some way find ourselves obliged to take account of.”1 Accepting this definition, we may infer that “ultimate reality” covers everything that we are all finally obliged to take account of insofar as we exist humanly at all, whatever other things we may or may not have to take account of in each leading our own individual lives, all of which we may distinguish as comprising “immediate reality.” In this sense, ultimate reality includes everything necessary in our experience or self-understanding, as distinct from all the other things that we may or may not experience and understand because they are merely contingent relative to our own existence simply as such. So, whatever else it includes, ultimate reality includes our own existence as selves, together with everything that is in any way a necessary condition of the possibility of our existence, whether other human selves or the still larger world of subhuman and possibly even superhuman beings, along with whatever they in turn all necessarily imply. Among the conditions that are thus necessary, obviously, is any reality that can be said to be “strictly ultimate,” because it is a necessary condition of the possibility not only of human existence, but also of any existence whatever. Thus strictly ultimate reality is what not only we, but any being that is so much as possible, is obliged somehow to take account of, if only in the completely general way of being really, internally related to it and therefore dependent on it and affected by it.

But now we can ask about ultimate reality, including strictly ultimate reality, in two clearly different, if nonetheless closely related, ways. We can ask about it more concretely or existentially, insofar as we ask about its meaning for us and therefore ask, at one and the same time, about both it and about how we are to understand ourselves and conduct our lives in relation to it. Or we can ask about it more abstractly or intellectually, insofar as we prescind from ourselves and our relation to it and ask only about it, in its structure in itself. The more concrete or existential way of asking our question necessarily includes, or implies, the more abstract or intellectual way. For in asking about the meaning of ultimate reality for us, we are by implication asking about its structure in itself. But if the existential way of asking the question thus has intellectual—and, more exactly, metaphysical—implications, it has moral implications as well. Why? Because in asking how we are to understand ourselves in relation to ultimate reality, we are also asking—in part, directly, and in part, by implication—how we ourselves are to act and what we are to do. On my analysis, then, the existential question about ultimate reality has these two aspects, metaphysical and moral, in which it is at once closely related to, and yet distinct from, the properly metaphysical question, on the one hand, and the properly moral question, on the other.

If we ask, then: What makes our asking the existential question about ultimate reality possible? my answer is: a basic faith in the meaning of life, or in the meaning for us of ultimate reality, including strictly ultimate reality. This means that, in asking our existential question, we do not ask whether ultimate reality has a meaning for us, and so authorizes us to understand ourselves in one way and not in another, but only what meaning it has for us, and thus how it authorizes us to understand ourselves and lead our lives.

But why is asking this existential question necessary? Here there seem to me to be at least two factors that need to be taken into account. First of all, the negativities of our existence as we actually live it—such things as guilt, suffering, solitariness, and death—all call into question the answers that we are accustomed to give to the question, mainly because of the way in which we have been brought up in our particular society and culture, including our particular religion. But, then, secondly, insofar as we become aware of the plurality of answers that have, in fact, been given to the question by different human groups and individuals, we are apt to find ourselves seeking the answer to it, in the sense of the decisive answer—the answer that, being true, answers our question and also enables us to decide responsibly with respect to all of the other answers.

My thesis is that the question about God to which the Christian witness, and so both assertions constituting that witness, christological as well as theological, give answer is a special form of this existential question about the meaning of ultimate reality for us. It is the form that this existential question takes, once a certain answer to it has already been given—namely, the answer given by what I call “radical monotheism,” according to which God is strictly ultimate reality, which means, of course, conversely, that the strictly ultimate reality with which all of us somehow have to do is the One radical monotheists call “God.”

At the risk of making an awfully complex story far too simple, let me put it this way: the concept “God,” as conceived by radical monotheism, includes two aspects: on the one hand, God is the strictly ultimate reality that not only we, but also everything else that is so much as possible must somehow take account of; and on the other hand, God is the kind of reality that can and does take account of us, that is really, internally related to us, affected by us, even dependent on us—to which we, in some way, make a difference. In other words, God is not only a reality, indeed, strictly ultimate reality, God is also a concrete reality, more exactly, an individual reality, which, as such, may be more or less aptly symbolized in personal terms. Thus, for radical monotheism, God is understood as the one strictly universal individual, whose field of interaction with self and others is absolutely unrestricted, being action on and reaction to all things, possible as well as actual. Not only is it true that all things are really, internally related to God, but it is also true that the God to whom they are all related is really, internally related to all of them. In short: for radical monotheism, the truth that is ever in dispute in the open dialogue involving the vast plurality of claims to truth in different human situations is not only, or primarily, the God-relatedness of all things, but also, and above all, the all things-relatedness of God.

Once, however, strictly ultimate reality is conceived in this radically monotheistic way, the existential question about it, and thus about its meaning for us, takes the special form of the question about God, about what God means for us and, therefore, about how we are authorized to understand ourselves and everything else in relation to God.

2.2. God Who Gives Us the Victory
through Our Lord Jesus Christ

Up to this point, I have been trying to clarify and justify my claim that a certain understanding of God is the most fundamental presupposition of the Christian witness, being necessarily presupposed by both of the assertions explicitly constituting this witness, christological as well as theological. The question to which this witness gives an answer, I have argued, is not only, or primarily, the question, “Who is Jesus?” but also, and above all, the question, “Who is God?” which always means, of course, “What does God mean for us?” How are we to understand ourselves and lead our lives in relation to the strictly ultimate reality properly thought and spoken of as “God”? But, then, the most fundamental presupposition of asking this question is, as I have said, a certain understanding of God, of the strictly ultimate reality of our own existence as God, as the God of radical monotheism, the one universal individual, whose field of interaction is with all things and who, therefore, is at once their primal source and their final end—in Paul’s language, the One “from whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6; cf. also Rom 11:36: the One “from whom and through whom and for whom are all things”). Unless this most basic presupposition of radical monotheism were valid, the question about God to which the Christian witness gives an answer could not even be asked.

But if some such understanding of God is the most fundamental presupposition of the Christian witness, its most important implication, also, is likewise a certain understanding of God, which is expressed or implied by both of the assertions explicitly constituting this witness. If Jesus is, indeed, the Christ, who the Christ is, is decisively re-presented through Jesus, and this can only mean that it is also through Jesus that who God Godself is, is decisively re-presented—i.e., re-presented...

Table of contents

• The Understanding of Christian Faith
• Preface
• Prolegomena: On Theology
• 1 On God
• 2 On Creation
• 3 On Jesus Christ
• 4 On the Holy Spirit
• 5 On the Church
• 6 On Salvation
• 7 On the Last Things
• Epilegomena: On Theology as a Christian Vocation
• Bibliography