The Point of Christology

Schubert Ogden was one of my professors at Perkins School of Theology in the mid-1970s and 1980. The book is based on a series of lectures and articles. Ogden demonstrates his incisive razor logic to provide insights and tightly argued reasoning about pitfalls and possibilities in dealing with the concepts of Christology in a modern age. He deftly presents the logic that shows the limitations and logical problems of liberal, neo-orthodox and post-liberal theologies in dealing with the concepts of the Divinity of Christ. He considers options of how each of these viewpoints might overcome some difficulties in dealing with the meaning, both practical and metaphysical, of God in the human life of Jesus, and its meaning for us. He likewise points out the logical problems of classical (medieval) theology of Acquinas, based on pre-Christian Greek philosophical categories, commonly called "orthodox," though over 1000 years after the apostolic witness. He points out the problems with the so-called historical Jesus, a goal defined from the post-Enlightenment concepts of objective history and scientific concepts of "facts." This is a goal he explains as logically unavailable to us, since we have no direct contact with Jesus, except through the apostolic witness, in the New Testament texts. He challenges us to return to the primal apostolic witness, reminding us that the purpose of the preaching, oral traditions and writings in the final N.T. form. He defines Jesus not as the historical Jesus, a source for evaluating the apostolic witness, but the Jesus of the apostolic witness as the Primal Source of the revelation of God in human life. He defines a difference between the empirical-historical data, erroneously sought by rationalist and scientistic investigators after the historical Jesus, and the existential-empirical data of the apostolic witness to Jesus. The underlying point is that the apostles were not modern objective historians writing a history. They were proclaimers preaching and writing a testimony of faith to their experience with and in Jesus. This is the basis of a modern similar personal encounter, an existential experience, with God through Jesus. The book is dedicated to another of my professors, John Deschner, a great friend and colleague of Ogden, with whom he dialogued (argued and sharpened ideas) live before the year-long Systematic Theology class, a very brave and authentic approach to theological training.