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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The Christian faith, according to Alfred North Whitehead's familiar premise, ‘has always been a religion seeking a metaphysic’. Although it is debatable whether one should accept this thesis in a constructive sense, it does not appear that Christian belief from either an offensive or defensive position has the option of escaping from its philosophical implications. If, for example, a meeting with Christ occurs—either in an initial New Testament sense or through secondary channels in a contemporary moment—which functionally produces an existential consciousness of liberation that one may even dare to call ‘forgiveness of sins’, what confidence may he have that the experience is real and not only apparent, enduring and not just exuberance of mood, an encounter with life that touches the whole of his concern and not merely one atomistic fragment? These are surely questions which admit varying degrees of solution; yet they are genuine experiential issues which call for a recognition of ontological depth if they are to retain their functional effectiveness. This necessity which theology has of fulfilling its task within the comprehensive context of ontology is portrayed convincingly by Gerhard Ebeling in his essay entitled ‘Theology and Reality’ when he affirms:
‘Theology has to do with reality as a totality—not with the sum of all the realms of reality and all the ways in which reality encounters us…. However much theology is based upon the testimony of Christian faith, it has yet to make good faith's claim by bringing to expression what unconditionally concerns every man in his totality.’
page 137 note 1 Whitehead, Alfred North, Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan Co., 1927), p. 50.Google Scholar
page 137 note 2 Ebeling, Gerhard, ‘Theology and Reality’, inaugural lecture at the University of Zürich, 10 November, 1956, in his Word and Faith (London: SCM Press, 1960), p. 199.Google Scholar
page 138 note 1 The reader wi11 find an informative historical treatment of the relationship between ontology and theology as interpreted particularly from the contemporary continental theological perspective in Diem, Hermann, ‘Dogmatik zwischen Personalismus und Ontologie,’ Evangelische Theologie, 15 (1955), 408–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 138 note 2 Randall, John Herman Jr,., ‘Metaphysics: Its Function, Consequences and Criteria‘, The Journal of Philosophy, XLIII (18 July, 1946), p. 401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 138 note 3 Quine, Wilard V., ‘On What There Is’, Review of Metaphysics, Vol. II, No. 5 (September 1948), p. 29.Google Scholar
page 138 note 4 Paul, Tillich, Systematic Theology, I (Chicago: University Press, 1951), p. 71.Google Scholar
page 138 note 5 Gabriel, Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, in The Philosophy of Existence (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1949)Google Scholar, quoted in Jerry, Gill (ed.), Philosophy and Religion (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1968), p. 39.Google Scholar
page 139 note 1 Gabriel, Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, in The Philosophy of Existence (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1949)Google Scholar, quoted in Jerry, Gill (ed.), Philosophy and Religion (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1968), p. 39.Google Scholar
page 139 note 2 Tillich, , op. cit., p. 101.Google Scholar
page 139 note 3 Torrance, T. F., Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 53–4.Google Scholar
page 139 note 4 An illustration of this principle on the scientific level is provided by Max Black when, in dealing with the relationship between scientific models and their subjects, he confesses, ‘we pin our hopes upon the existence of a common structure in both fields.’ Max, Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 238.Google Scholar
page 140 note 1 Karl Barth, preface to the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans, as it appears in Moltmann, Jürgen, Theology of Hope (London: SCM Press, 1967), p. 380.Google Scholar
page 141 note 1 Montifiore, Hugh, ‘Towards a Christology for Today’ in Vidler, A. R., ed., Soundings: Essays Concerning Christian Understanding (Cambridge: University Press, 1966), p. 167.Google Scholar
page 141 note 2 For example, Philippians, 2: 5–11Google Scholar; I Corinthians 1: 30, 8: 6; II Corinthians 4: 6, 8: 9; Colossians 1: 15–20; Ephesians, 1: 3, 19–23Google Scholar; Hebrews, 1: 1–4, 13: 8Google Scholar; Mark, 13: 24–27Google Scholar; Matthew, 11: 27, 24: 42Google Scholar; John, 1: 1–18, 10: 30.Google Scholar
page 141 note 3 Emil, Brunner, The Mediator (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1947), p. 310.Google Scholar
page 141 note 4 Ibid.
page 141 note 5 Stammler, Gerhard von, ‘Ontologie in der Theologie?’ Kerygma und Dogma, 4 Jahrgang, Heft 3 (Juli 1958), p. 159.Google Scholar ‘Wer vor der Ontologie in der Theologie kapituliert, beweist damit nur, dass er in diesem Augenblick keine Vollmacht des Geistes spürt.’
page 142 note 1 Heinrich, Ott, ‘Objectification and Existentialism,’ in Bartsch, Hans-Werner, ed., Kerygma and Myth, II (London: S.P.C.K., 1962), pp. 317–18.Google Scholar
page 142 note 2 Fuller, R. H., The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1965), pp. 248–9.Google Scholar
page 142 note 3 Karl, Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1949), p. 487.Google Scholar
page 142 note 4 Ibid., p. 490.
page 143 note 1 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Jesus—God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), p. 136.Google Scholar Cf. Gerhard Ebeling£s interpretation of the Hebrew meaning of truth where he offers this definition: ‘Real is what has a future’, (op. cit. p. 208), and notice further his approval of the following description from H. von Soden: ‘Truth is not something that lies somehow at the bottom of things or behind them and would be discovered by penetrating their depths or their inner meaning; but truth is what will transpire in the future. The opposite of truth would so to speak not really be illusion, but essentially disillusion (in the commonly accepted sense of disappointment). What is lasting and durable and has a future is true, and that holds supremely of the eternal as being imperishable, everlasting, final, ultimate.’ ‘Was ist Wahrheit?’ Urchristentum und Geschichte, Ges. Aufsätze und Vorträge, ed. Campenhausen, H. von, Vol. I (1950), 10 f.Google Scholar, quoted by Ebeling, , op. cit. p. 209.Google Scholar
page 143 note 2 Oscar, Cullman, The Christology of the New Testament, translated by Guthrie, Shirley C. and Hall, Charles A. M., (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), p. 9.Google Scholar
page 143 note 3 James, Barr, Old and New in Interpretation (London: SCM Press, 1964), p. 86.Google Scholar
page 145 note 1 Torrance, , op. cit., pp. 67–8.Google Scholar
page 146 note 1 Lehman, Paul, ‘Logos in a World Come of Age,’ Theology Today, XXI (October, 1964), pp. 275–6.Google Scholar
page 146 note 2 Holmer, Paul L., ‘Philosophical Criticism and Christology.’ The Journal of Religion, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 (April, 1954), p. 99.Google Scholar
page 146 note 3 John, 1: 1, 1: 12.Google Scholar
page 146 note 4 Ebeling, , op. cit., p. 200.Google Scholar
