The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Modern Western Theology
Wildman's
Weird Wild Web
Ogden, Schubert
Contents
Schubert Ogden: Mann's Quick Notes (Mark Mann, 1997)
Mark Mann, 1997
The existential question: Human beings are defined as creatures who ask and answer what it means to be human: this is the existential question. This question asks not whether life has meaning, but how we are to construe that meaning. Religion is the primary form of culture in which the existential question is explicitly posed and answered. (Ultimate concern!) A right answer to this question will be true and authentic.
Theological Task and Norms:
- Theology must be appropriate to Christian faith and credible to the human experience, it is the fully reflective understanding of the Christian witness of faith as decisive for human existence
- Historical Jesus not recoverable
- NT is tradition; the norm for all theology is the apostolic witness
- Final court of appeal is human experience: Christianity’s claim to universal truth must be supported by universally accessible evidence
- Accepts Whiteheadian epistemology: logically prior to sensory experience is the vague and elementary awareness of self and other included in an encompassing whole; this is a kind of revelation
God: He generally accepts Hartshorne’s neoclassical metaphysics in which divine power is conceived on a social rather than a monopolistic model: God acts persuasively
Jesus as Special Revelation: the point of Christology has not to do with the person of Jesus, but with the God whom Jesus reveals, the key of Christology is the existential significance of Jesus proclaimed in the apostolic witness
Theory of Religions: there may be other true religions, but if there are, they will reveal the God that Jesus reveals: a God of universal love that is the origin and end of all that is or ever will be
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