{"id":6679,"date":"2025-06-03T20:01:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T20:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=6679"},"modified":"2025-06-06T20:52:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T20:52:26","slug":"book-review-notebooks-by-shubert-m-ogden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/book-review-notebooks-by-shubert-m-ogden\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Notebooks by Schubert M. Ogden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[1] Throughout his long and productive career Schubert M. Ogden, who died in 2019 at the age of 91, distinguished himself as one of American Protestantism\u2019s finest theologians.\u00a0 This book is his final publication.\u00a0 It consists of a relatively small selection of entries from his personal notebooks that were written over decades, in which he reflects on questions of both a theological and a philosophical nature.\u00a0 The bulk of these notebooks is housed in the archives of Drew University and has been made easily accessible online to interested readers at: <a href=\"https:\/\/uknow.drew.edu\/confluence\/display\/ogden\/Ogden+Notebooks+Home\">https:\/\/uknow.drew.edu\/confluence\/display\/ogden\/Ogden+Notebooks+Home<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[2] The present publication in book form of some of these notebook entries is divided into three parts: 1) philosophical analyses, 2) transcendental metaphysics, and 3) God.\u00a0 Readers who are familiar with Ogden\u2019s published books and articles will not be surprised by the space given to philosophical questions and specifically to metaphysics.\u00a0 Unlike most Protestant theologians, Ogden argues that a responsible theology must of necessity be philosophical, asking about the truth of Christian faith and not merely about its meaning.\u00a0 To rephrase this point in terms of a distinction often made by theologians, in Ogden\u2019s view theology has to be apologetic as well as dogmatic.\u00a0 Only in this way can theology critically validate the claim made by Christian witness that the gospel of Jesus <em>re<\/em>-presents (presents anew) the gift and demand of God\u2019s love that are originally presented to each and every human being simply as such.<\/p>\n<p>[3] Ogden\u2019s conviction that a fully critical theology must seek to validate the claim to truth made by Christian witness solely by appeal to reason and common human experience sets his model of theology apart from virtually all other current proposals for how the theological task is to be understood and implemented.<\/p>\n<p>[4] Ogden\u2019s view of theology\u2019s task also presupposes a quite different assessment of the philosophical possibilities available to us than that which is assumed by most theologians and philosophers since Kant (with the exception of Hegel).\u00a0 Standing in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, Ogden affirms both the possibility and the necessity of metaphysics. \u00a0Accordingly, he develops a \u201cneo-classical\u201d metaphysics that understands reality at the most basic or fundamental level in terms of \u201cprocess\u201d or \u201cbecoming.\u201d\u00a0 This is the new element in <em>neo<\/em>-classical metaphysics by contrast with classical metaphysics, which sought to understand reality in terms of \u201csubstance\u201d or \u201cbeing.\u201d\u00a0 Unlike Whitehead and Hartshorne, however, Ogden insists that a defensible neo-classical metaphysics must be austerely \u00a0\u201ctranscendental\u201d rather than \u201ccategorial.\u201d\u00a0 Instead of deriving metaphysical categories by generalizing from some particular region of experience and then applying these categories analogically to the whole of reality, metaphysical claims are strictly transcendental in the precise sense that, if properly formulated, they articulate the necessary presuppositions of the condition of the possibility of anything whatsoever, whether actual or possible.\u00a0 Their truth is demonstrated by the self-contradiction that results from their denial. Thus, they are ineluctably presupposed by all truly conceivable thought and activity.<\/p>\n<p>[5] One of Schleiermacher\u2019s students said of his teacher that he taught theology the way Socrates would have taught it had he been a Christian!\u00a0 Readers of Ogden\u2019s published notebooks will realize that this is also an apt characterization of Ogden.\u00a0 Like Socrates, Odgen insists upon conceptual clarity in the definition of terms and logical rigor in the development of arguments.\u00a0 These notebook entries give the reader an opportunity to witness a truly first-rate mind at work tackling some of the most difficult questions of theology and philosophy in a manner reminiscent of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas.\u00a0 Anyone who believes that theology\u2019s claim to express the ultimate truth of human existence is rationally redeemable will welcome this volume.\u00a0 I can only hope that even more entries from Ogden\u2019s notebooks will be published in a second volume.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[1] Throughout his long and productive career Schubert M. Ogden, who died in 2019 at the age of 91, distinguished himself as one of American Protestantism\u2019s finest theologians.\u00a0 This book is his final publication.\u00a0 It consists of a relatively small selection of entries from his personal notebooks that were written over decades, in which he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: Notebooks by Schubert M. 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