513 - Covcepts, Symbols, and Sentences

Covcepts, Symbols, and Sentences
By Robert P. Scharlemann

"Ontology is the explanation of what it -means to say 'x is' and theology is the explanation of what it means to say 'God does x.' If, however, the sentence form conveys a content in addition to that of the terms which constitute it, then the combination of the universal subject and the universal object into 'God is' describes a domain that is neither simply theology nor simply ontology. It might be called theontology."

USUALLY theologians do not give special attention to the sentence form in which concepts and symbols are united. But the sentence form itself contributes a content to thought that is distinct from and additional to the contents of the parts of the sentence. Apparently no contemporary theologian has dealt directly with the question of the distinctness of the sentence form although it is indirectly suggested at several places and is closely intertwined in the problem of objectification in theology.¹ As a general epistemological problem, of course, it goes back at least as far as Kant's recognition of the difference between knowledge of an object and knowledge of the conditions of the knowledge of all objects. But I am interested here in the specific question whether the movement of thought through a subject-and-verb combination, which is the sentence form basic to all Indo-European languages, has a content underivable from the thought of the subject and the thought of the predicate.

I am proposing that besides concepts and symbols there are basic sentence forms which cannot be reduced to their constitutive con-

¹ For example: "'Believing' is not a thing, but an event; it is primarily as a verb and not as a noun that its reality is seen.... Being affected [by the communication of faith] is not adequately expressed, or at least not without a possibility of misunderstanding, by the phrase, I have faith; nor by the expression, I am a believer; but simply by the words, I believe." Gerhard Ebeling, The Nature of Faith, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), p. 109.

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ceptual or symbolic elements and which, therefore, must be given distinct treatment. This is not to say that concepts and symbols should be replaced by or transformed into sentences but rather that sentences have a function which is related to their form as sentences and which supplements that of concepts and symbols.² In the following paragraphs I shall develop this proposal with specific reference to Tillich and Barth.

I

In Tillich's theology the issue arises at two places. In connection with the ontological question there seems to be an omission that is difficult to account for except by reference to the role of sentence forms; and in connection with the subject-object, or self-world, structure of being there is a problem which can apparently be eliminated only if one introduces a sentence form to supplement the concepts already there.

The ontological question, which is basic for philosophy as well as for theology, is the question of what it means to say that anything is. This question introduces the concept that expresses the unity of all things, the concept of being. For the first and the last thing that can be known of anything is that in one way or another it is. The concept of being thus is the most universal, implied in all others, and the absolute prius of all thought. Thinking must start with being, it cannot get behind it, as is clear simply from the self-contradiction contained in the attempt to deny that there is anything at all.

Now the aspect of this question with which Tillich does not deal can be stated in the following way. If the ontological question is the question of what it means when we say "x is," where x is an infinitely variable particular subject, then the concept of being refers to what is the action of any and every subject; and we perceive the unity of the world through this universal action. To say that x is a being is to acknowledge it as an individual subject of this universal action. Is there also a universal subject for an infinitely variable action? Tillich does not seem to ask this question, but I think that it is legitimate and that the answer is affirmative. There is such a universal subject and the traditional term for it is "God." If this

² By "concept" I mean a word (idea, phrase, etc.) through which I grasp reality and by symbol" I mean a word (idea, phrase, etc.) through which I am grasped by reality. But ;be distinction between concept and symbol is not significant for the present purpose.

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is the case, then there is, supplementing the ontological question, a theological question: What does it mean when we say "God does x," where x is an infinitely variable action? Here we perceive the unity of the world through the universal subjectivity in it. To say that x is an action of God is to acknowledge it as the individual action of this universal subject. The ontological answer to the ontological question is an explication of the structure of being; the theological answer to the theological question is an explication of the activity of God.

The two terms, "being" and "God," thus convey the two basic ways of apprehending the unity of what is outside us, over against us as well as involved with us. Historically, the discovery of that unity as "being" belongs to Greece and the discovery of it as "God" belongs to Israel. Both of the terms presuppose the power of radical abstraction. The concept of being is an abstraction of the objective unity in all things; the concept or symbol of God is an abstraction of the subjective unity. The one term refers to the universal objectivity and the other to the universal subjectivity in the world. Thus, every object is an embodiment of being and every subject is a bearer of God. The step from an apprehension of objects to an apprehension of being is an abstraction parallel to the step from an encountering of subjects to an encountering of God.

How are these two universals related? Tillich's answer is that they are correlative; they interpret each other as question and answer interpret each other. "God is being-itself" expresses this correlation in its basic form. It combines the thought of being and the thought of God in a definite order.

Without contesting the validity of this correlating procedure, which seems to me basically sound and immensely fruitful, I would suggest that a step is omitted.³ It seems to me that the thought "God is" cannot be conveyed by the combination of the thought of being (as a question) and of God (as an answer). Between the symbol "God" and the concept "being" on one side and the combination into "God is being" on the other side there is a movement and content of thought conveyable only by the sentence "God is." Tillich, of course, does not object to saying, "God is."⁴ But he does

³ For reasons I have given elsewhere I think, however, that the terms of the correlation are reversible.
⁴ See Theology of Culture, ed. by Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 12.

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not ascribe any special significance to the sentence form, and this is what seems to me to occasion the suspicion now and then voiced that the gap between the two poles of the correlation is bridged too easily or arbitrarily.

From another part of Tillich's thought one seems to arrive at the same conclusion. The basic ontological structure, which is the condition implied in asking the ontological question, is the self-world polarity. The most fundamental question possible-what it means to be-presupposes an asking subject and an object about which the question is asked. This fundamental duality, accordingly, can only be "accepted" since it can be neither evaded nor derived from anything else.⁵ It cannot be evaded because even a denial presupposes a self who is denying and an object being denied. Both I who think and that about which I think are inescapably and underivably given.

This point being granted, however, the question arises whether "the self" of which one speaks in the self-world polarity is not something different from "I" who am speaking or thinking of it. As soon as I speak of the self-world structure of being, the self in that structure is already the object of "I" who am speaking of it and is therefore part of my world. If this is so, then the I, who am always the agent of my thinking and speaking, remain on the outside of the self-world structure of being. The structure of being is an object for me, even though it includes my self as the subjective pole in that objectivity.⁶ Is this inevitable? Must the agent of thought and speaking always remain on the outside? I think it is clear that as long as one is dealing with concepts (whether they are words or phrases) the agent of thought is unaccounted for. But this is not the case with a sentence containing the word "I" If the word "I" in the sentence "I am" is taken as an anticipatory form for a subject that is there only in the act of thinking or speaking the sentence, then this sentence form conveys a content that can never be conveyed by the concepts of self and world, separately or in combination. As a written sentence it is, of course, as much a part of my objective world as are the words "self" and "world." But as a form for my thinking or speaking it becomes more than objective in my act of repeating the sentence.

⁵ Systematic Theology, Vol. I (University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 174.
⁶ Elsewhere I have developed this point at greater length, relating it to the fact that the two terms, "structure of being" and "objective reason" (that is, the structure of the world), do not seem in fact to be distinguishable in Tillich's usage although he intends them to be distinct.

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Both of these points (the question of the universal subject and the question of the relation of "I" and the self) in Tillich's theological system, therefore, support the contention that a sentence form conveys a content distinctly connected with its form as a sentence. In Barth's theology there are at least three places which provide similar support.

II

According to one of the dominant strains in his thought, Barth pictures the theologian as faced with a basic alternative in his conception of God. Either he can, like Barth, define God as "he who, according to the Holy Scripture, exists, lives and acts, and makes himself known"; or he can set forth "conceptually arranged ideas of an infinite, supreme being. "⁷ This latter is a "radically wrong road which can never lead to God but to a reality called so only in a false sense."⁸ The basic alternative is, thus, to define God as he who is spoken of in the Old and New Testaments or to define him as a supreme being. The first refers to a way of speaking of God who proves himself, the second to a way of speaking of a God who can be proved. In the first case God is "the name of a living, acting, working subject who makes himself known." In the second case God is a timeless being, "surpassing the world, alien and supreme," and capable of being grasped by our concepts.⁹ Such a being is not the biblical God, for that God is not only "unprovable and unsearchable" but also "inconceivable."¹⁰

It seems to me what is expressed in this Barthian contrast is the fact that a spoken or thought sentence conveys something that cannot be conveyed by the terms in that sentence alone. If the definition of God is that he is the "living, acting, working subject who makes himself known," it seems to follow that he can be spoken of in only one way-by sentences in which the word "God" is always the subject. For as a definition this is as much a concept as is "a supreme being." To come to know the subjectivity of God who is always subject requires not that we expand our conception of a perfect being to its utmost degree nor that we conceive him as the subject rather than the supreme being but that we speak or think sentences in which he is the subject. Even the concept of the universal subject

⁷ Dogmatics in Outline, trans. by G. T. Thomson (Harper Torchbook, 1959), p. 37.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid., p. 38.
¹⁰ Ibid.

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is, as a concept, distinct from what is conveyed through a sentence or narration which speaks of the doing or action of that universal subject.

Barth never expresses himself in this way, partly because this particular point is always inseparably. connected with the biblicist motif in his thought. But disengaged from that biblicism, it can, I think, be stated as I have just done. That is to say, there is a difference between the formal definition and the actual meaning of "God." God can be defined formally as the term which functions as the subject of certain basic sentences; the meaning of the term cannot be conveyed apart from the act of saying those sentences. The connection between this definition of God and the Christocentric strain in Barth's theology is provided by the statement that it is the "man Jesus Christ" in whom "God himself has become visible and active on earth."¹¹ The formal definition of God becomes concretely substantial as the person Jesus Christ.

Another place at which the capacity of a sentence form to convey a distinct content seems to be implicitly decisive is Barth's exposition of the root of the Trinitarian doctrine. This doctrine, he says, is rooted in the three questions of the subject, the predicate, and the object of the sentence Deus dixit.¹² By this he means not that the grammatical distinctions are the principles from which a Trinitarian dogma is derived but that the act of revelation involves three elements which can be indicated by the grammatical parts of the sentence "God speaks"-the subject of the speaking, the act of speaking, and the effect (Wirkung) of the speaking. Of immediate interest for our purpose here is his emphasis upon the identity of the act of revelation and the subject of revelation. "This God is precisely not only he himself but also his self-revealing"; revelation is indeed the "predicate of God" but it is so in such a way that "this predicate is entirely identical with God himself."¹³ Is this not a way of saying that "God speaks" is a unitary whole and not a combination of "God" and "speaking"? Again, Barth says God is not only he himself but also that which he works with men. "Therefore," he continues, "the word that the biblical men hear and pass on can be called God's word even though, as heard by their ears and

¹¹ Ibid., p. 39.
¹² Die kirchliche Dogmatik, Vol. I/1 (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1955), p. 312. Hereafter this work will be referred to as KD.
¹³ KD I/1, 315.

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formed by their mouth, it is doubtless their word."¹⁴ What characterizes revelation is not that they speak but that he speaks; "he comes as angel to Abraham, he speaks through Moses and the prophets, he is in Christ."¹⁵

Abstracted from the context of Barth's biblicism, this description of the root of the Trinitarian doctrine implies that the difference between a word in revelation and a word apart from revelation is the difference between its being related to the universal subject (God) and its being related to a particular subject. Yet it can be related to the universal subject only as his action and not as an entity that stands apart from him; and, conversely, he cannot be known as an entity apart from the action through which he makes himself known precisely as the universal subject of that action. That is to say, the content of the term "God" can be conveyed only through such sentences or stories in which he is the subject of every and all action.

To state it thus not only abstracts it from Barth's biblicism but also indicates how to correct a problem which in Barth's language is parallel to the problem of the gap between "I" and the "self" in Tillich's thought. If it is true that the "God" who gets conveyed through stories in which lie is the universal agent is distinct from the "God" who is conveyed by any concept, then the difference between the two is exactly parallel to the difference between "I" in a sentence like "I am" and "I" as the self. Speaking of the self does not take account of the active I who am speaking; similarly speaking of God as "the one who is always subject" or as "the one who proves himself" does not take account of God who is in that moment acting or proving. Thus, if we say the import of the biblical conception of God is the fact that according to it God is the "living, acting, working subject," we have not yet left the arena of conceptualization. The concept of God as a subject is still as much a concept as the concept of God as a supreme being; indeed the concept of a supreme being can, if defined correctly, quite well include the concept of the universal subject. It is another matter to speak sentences or stories in which God is the subject and through which his subjectivity is potentially or actually conveyed.¹⁶ If theology is a conceptualization

¹⁴ Ibid.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Cf. Ebeling's statement in Wort und Glaube (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962), p. 370: "Darum ist das die Gotteserkenntnis konstituierende Sprachgeschehcn, recht verstanden, nicht Wort fiber Gott, sondern Wort Gottes. Denn nur als selbst zu Worte Kommender kann Gott sich als Gott offenbaren."

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of revelation, the "subject who makes himself known" is a theological concept of God. In distinction from theology, revelation would be a way of speaking through which God gets spoken and heard. The distinction between the two is the distinction between speaking of God as the subject and speaking sentences in which "God" is the subject; or it is the distinction between the content of the concept of a subject and the content conveyed by the word that serves as a subject in a sentence actually thought or spoken. If this is the case, then maintaining the distinction between theology and the Bible as an objective form of revelation depends upon maintaining the distinctiveness of a sentence form as over against the parts that constitute it.

A third place in Barth's theology where this contention seems to be supported is his exposition of the doctrine of creation. There the notion of central significance for our purposes is that of nachsagen-of saying-after the words which have been given us. In his foreword to the volume in which he sets forth the doctrine of creation, Barth calls attention to what happened to his plans while he was preparing the exposition. He bad intended to deal with questions raised by the natural sciences, he says, until it became clear to him that they had nothing to offer-whether as questions or as objections or as aids -to what the Scriptures and the church understand by creation. "I saw," he explains," the proper (sachgemäss) task for dogmatics to be, indeed, exclusively that of re-saying (nachsagen) that [Hebraic] 'saga.'"¹⁷ This re-saying is, of course, not a mechanical repetition of biblical words but a way of answering to revelation.

In what way the idea of nachsagen is important for our present subject can be seen in three points that Barth makes in connection with the doctrine of creation. First, the affirmation of God as creator, he grants, does involve the conception of a relation between God and the world, a relation of absolute sovereignty on one side to absolute dependence on the other.¹⁸ But the Christian doctrine of creation does not aim at presenting a "mythological or speculative" sharpening of that concept. Rather it speaks of an action, through which heaven and earth are posited; and this, in Barth, seems to mean that we use creation as a verb of which God is the subject. Thus he writes, "Creator means creavit, and this creavit characterizes the proposition

¹⁷ KD III/1, ii.
¹⁸ Ibid., p. 13.

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(Satz) of creation as a proposition of faith in the strict sense of that concept."¹⁹ The content of the doctrine of creation is, accordingly, conveyed by re-saying the story of the happening and not by a conception of the relation involved-not even by a concept of the subjectivity of the subject who is God.

Secondly, an unavoidable choice is involved in the doctrine of God as creator.²⁰ Either one proceeds according to what is inherently thinkable, or one proceeds by re-saying the story. If one proceeds according to what is thinkable one can arrive at no more than a hypothetical or possible conclusion. It is possible that God is eternal and the world is not; it is also possible that the world is eternal and of itself divine. Since either of these two ideas is thinkable, neither of them can disprove the other. Moreover, even if one should be convinced that the contingency of the world implies a Weltgrund, there are still two thinkable possibilities: that Weltgrund may be the creating God or it may be something else. As long as one works within the frame of what is thinkable a decision among the possibilities is always a matter of hypothesis or assumption or probable conclusion. The fact that God could have done so does not prove that he did create the world as really distinct from himself. I may, of course, conclude for myself that God did, in my opinion, create the world; but "it would be questionable to think further, and finally to have to live and die, on the basis of this hypothesis."²¹ The acknowledgment of God as the creator of a real world can cease to be hypothetical only when it is an affirmation of faith, that is, a Nachsagen of the creation saga as a response to revelation.

What then does the choice come to? It seems to be the choice, on the one hand, of dealing with the notion of creation as something about which I can think or draw conclusions or have opinions and, on the other hand, of leaving the position where I think of objects or even of facts for a position where I repeat a story of the action of creation in which God is the agent. To put the alternative in these terms once more partially abstracts it from a Barthian context; yet the direction in which Barth's discussion moves seems to justify doing so.

This conclusion is corroborated by a third point. Barth issues a

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 14.
²⁰ Ibid., pp. 5 f.
²¹ Ibid. p. 6.

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caution against answering the question of the origin of the world with "only half-way sure steps" even if the answer coincides almost literally with the words of the doctrine of creation.²² For, "conceived and expressed as only an opinion or supposition, even the statement of the dogma is small comfort.- Thereupon Barth asks the decisive question: "Or might it be that lie who repeats this sentence (diesen Satz nachspricht) is giving answer to the divine self-witness and thereby confessing his faith?"

That it is repeated in answer to revelation-where revelation is the subjectivity of God becoming manifest-is what determines an affirmation as a faith-affirmation, removed from the realm of possibilities and conjecture. But what is re-said is a story, not a concept, and this implies that the content of the doctrine of revelation comes through its narrative form. This content, of which one is immediately certain in speaking the narrative, is distinct from the content of the ideas to which it is related when they are treated as objects of thought.

However, Barth also believes, according to his words just quoted, that it is possible to use language virtually identical with the dogma and still not be making an affirmation of faith. Does this not seem to contradict the contention that it is the sentence form which contributes the distinctive content? Possibly it does, but not neccessarily. What is Barth saying? He could be saying that it is not the words but the attitude or intention of the speaker that determines whether a given statement is one of faith or one of conjecture-the speaker intends them as a response to revelation. Yet the contrast between words and attitude and the emphasis this contrast would place upon something as subjectivistic as attitudes seem to go so much against Barth's outspoken opposition to subjectivism that it is difficult to take this as his meaning here. So it seems preferable to take hull to be saying that if I treat the content of the statement "God created the world" as something about which I can think or discuss apart from the actual saying (nachsagen) of the words, then I am treating the content of a sentence as though it were the content of a concept. The distinctive character of the affirmation of faith, which is a matter of re-saying the action of creation, is that its faith-content is that of which I am immediately aware-and therefore certain-in the act of speaking the words, when I speak them not mechanically but

²² Ibid.

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thoughtfully. The movement of thought through those words is the movement of knowledge distinctive of faith.

In sum, then, an analysis of central points in Barth's theology and an analysis of similar points in Tillich's theology lead to the same conclusion. In both cases 1 have urged the formulations beyond expressed intentions of the authors but not beyond their inner logic; and in both cases, drawing a distinction between the content conveyed by a sentence form and the content contained in the parts of the sentence eliminates a difficulty otherwise present. At this juncture I should like,. therefore, to assume that the conclusion has been established and to show how it would be brought into a description of the basic forms with which theological thought must work; for I think that by deliberate employment of sentence forms some otherwise perplexing problems in theological construction can be eliminated. I have suggested those problems and possible solutions in the course of this presentation, but it will be useful to restate them here.

III

All thinking must work with a minimum of two terms, subject and object or, more precisely, I and my object. It is therefore advisable to circumscribe the domain of theological thought by reference to those absolutely basic terms. I who am thinking and that about which I am thinking mark the two poles given in the act of thought. But that about which I think includes my self as well as my world, and therefore my object includes both a subject-pole and an object-pole. For any self-conscious being, accordingly, the two basic terms involve three-"I" as the active subject, and self and world as my object.²³ All of these terms are implicitly involved in any thinking.

Now, I may be related to my object as a subject to an object in the sense that I act upon it. Conversely, it may be related as a subject to me; as acting upon me it is a subject and 1, as acted upon, am its object. In the latter relation, since it is my object acting upon me it is tile object as subjective toward me, and since I am the subject acted upon I am the subject as objective toward it.²⁴ Furthermore,

²³ Tile rather awkward phrase, "my object," is used here for the pole opposite rue in the act of thinking.
²⁴ Schlciermacher was, if I am not mistaken, tile first theologian to make use of these relational possibilities. He calls the first Selbsttätigkeit and the second Empfänglichkeit, for which the feeling of freedom and the feeling of dependence are the designations, as it were, from the inside. See his The Christian Faith, §4.

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the subjective and objective elements in my object can be two distinct objects for me, thought of as standing in polar relation to each other (self and world), or they can be related to each other as subject and action. In this latter case my object may be a particular subject with a universal verb or a universal subject with a particular verb. Using "is" as the universal verb (or action) and "God" as the universal subject, we can say that my object is either "x is" or "God does x."

From these basic terms and relations two definitions of God (and theology) and being (and ontology) arise. One of them is related to a basic term, the other is related to a basic sentence.

Thus, the definition of God can be given in one sense as the subjectivity in my object. Any particular subject is a bearer of God, and to the extent that I encounter the subjectivity of such a subject I encounter God. If I encounter the whole of my object as acting upon me, it is, in its subjectivity, the bearer of God; and should any particular subject in my object face me as only subjective and never as objective, it would be God incarnate. In Tillich's theology the picture of Jesus as the Christ is such a subject; in Barth's theology the proclaimed message of Jesus Christ is.

A second definition of God is related to the sentence form, "God does x." God is the word used for the expressed or implied subject of every and any action. Any particular happening may be related to a particular subject, but it may also be related to the universal subject who is, by definition, God. I do not come to know the meaning of God in this sense by conceiving a subject called God since he is never a particular subject of an action but always the implied subject of which particular subjects are representatives. Nor do I come to know the meaning by encountering the subjectivity in my object which objectifies me. Rather I arrive at the meaning of this "God" by the exercise of ascribing all actions to him as the "invisible" subject; I do not first know God and then know him as acting. This subjectivity, in other words, is conveyed-although not mechanically nor necessarily-only through sentence forms.²⁵

For purposes of classification one might call the first definition of God the "religious" definition and the second definition the "theological," but I think it is wiser to avoid such classifications-at least

²⁵ A third definition of God would relate to the subjectivity which simultaneously acts upon me and upon my object, but this aspect of the definition would take us beyond the limits of the present paper.

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at this point-because theology, like God (of which it is the "logos"), can be given two different definitions, In relation to the first definition of God theology is the rationale of the subjectivity in my object. In relation to the second definition of God it is the explanation and explication of what is implied in saying "God does x." Whether the first kind of theology is, for any given person, a significant undertaking will depend upon whether he has encountered the subjectivity in his objective world. Whether theology in the second sense is significant is dependent upon whether the person has seen the unity of his object in terms of its being the action of a single subject. But the question of whether theology may seem significant for any given person is different from the question of whether it is of itself significant. This latter question can be answered by saying that theology is permanently significant (even though it may be forgotten) from that moment on in the history of mankind when someone, by a process of radical abstraction, encountered the subjectivity in his object or when someone perceived the unity of his object by means of the thought "God does x." From that time on a domain is distinct and correctly definable as theology; for once the subjectivity in the object has been encountered, or once the unity of the world has been apprehended by means of the universal subjectivity in it, there is no way of denying the significance of theology except theologically.

These two definitions of God and of theology are derived from the basic terms and sentence forms involved in all thinking. One can approach the definitions of being and ontology in a similar way. Being can be defined as the objectivity of my object-as that upon which I am acting whenever I act-and then it designates the objective unity of my object and is a counterpart to God as the subjective unity. The definition of being can also be drawn from the sentence form "x is," where being occurs as the action implied or expressed in every action. I come to know the meaning of being in this sense not by looking for an object-even if it be the whole world-which I might designate as being, but rather by the exercise of ascribing this action to any and every particular subject. In this case I come to know being by thinking "it is" rather than by picturing or conceiving the character of an object called being. And I come to know the being in particular subjects not by thinking of them as beings but by thinking them as being; that is to say, I think the thought of each one, "It is."

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The conception of non-being Arises, I think, in connection with both meanings of being. Related to being as the objectivity in my object, non-being is not another object but the transitional point between the objectivity and the subjectivity in my object. Related to being as the content of the action in "x is" it refers to the fact that I can think two thoughts of anything in My world at different times and at different places-"x is" and "x is not." Non-being is the term which refers to the possibility of thinking "x is not" and it marks the transition to the thought "God does x."

Ontology has a double meaning corresponding to the double meaning of being. In relation to the first definition of being ontology is the rationale of the objectivity in my object; in relation to the second definition it is an explanation and explication of what it means to say "x is." Like theology, ontology is permanently significant (though it may be forgotten); it is significant from that moment on in the history of mankind when someone, by a radical abstraction, grasped the objectivity in his object or when someone apprehended the unity of his object by means of the thought "x is." Thus, ontology is the rationale of the objectivity of my object; theology is the rationale of the subjectivity of my object. Or ontology is the explanation of what it means to say "x is" and theology is the explanation of what it means to say "God does x."

If, however, the sentence form conveys a content in addition to that of the terms which constitute it, then the combination of the universal subject and the universal object into "God is" describes a domain that is neither simply theology nor simply ontology. It might be called theontology, but whatever its name it is devoted to setting forth basic sentence forms which convey what the rationale of subjectivity and the rationale of objectivity do not convey and what cannot be conveyed apart from speaking or thinking those sentence forms,

Derived from the basic subject-object polarity of thought, these basic sentence forms would be at least the following:

"I am," in which "I" marks an empty place that is occupied by an active subject only when the sentence is spoken or thought.

"Something is," which is the thought corresponding to the concept of my object.

"God is," which is the form for thinking the unity of the thoughts "'I' am" and "something is."

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"'Jesus' is the Christ," which is the form for thinking the unity of " 'I' am" and "something is" and "God is."

This last sentence form (" 'Jesus' is the Christ") is, of course, speakable in the first place only within the Christian community, in so far as "Jesus" is a definite subject-center of my object, as well as the subjectivity of my object, as well as the subjectivity which I as a subject bear; and the Christ is an object as well as the objectivity in my object. Any person who, in speaking the name "Jesus," is speaking only of some person other than himself is not speaking the name "Jesus" as meant in this sentence form. Thus, it is no more possible actually to think " 'Jesus' is not the Christ" than it is to think " T am not," although both of these may be ways of thinking the transition from " T am" and "something is" to "God is." Whatever is being denied by anyone who does not identify himself with the subject Jesus, it is in any case not the Jesus conveyed in speaking the sentence " 'Jesus' is the Christ."