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On Theology
By Schubert M. Ogden
New York, Harper & Row, 1986.160 pp. $19.95.

In this slim volume are collected eight essays in theological prolegomena that Schubert Ogden published during the period from 1971 to 1982. The author assures his readers that the essays have been "thoroughly rewritten," making them expressions of his current thinking on the subjects discussed, and giving them a unity of purpose and theme. While systematic revision has not entirely rid the book of the stylistic

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differences and redundancy from which such collections habitually suffer, the book does provide a convenient introduction to the thought of one of this nation's premier Protestant theologians.

Ogden's variety of theological prolegomena is presaged by the book's dedication to "Colleagues at the [University of Chicago] Divinity School" with whom he has taught and continues to converse. He conceives Christian theology to be "the fully reflective understanding of the Christian witness of faith as decisive for human existence." Two essays, "Theology in the University" and "Theology and Religious Studies," deal expressly with the status of Christian theology in the curriculum of the modern university, while another pair, "What is Theology" and "The Task of Philosphical Theology," especially concern Ogden's requirement that theological assertions be credible in the sense of meeting conditions of truth universally established and applied. Two others, "On Revelation" and "The Authority of Scripture for Theology," reveal the continuing influence of Rudolf Bultmann and biblical themes on the author's thinking, stressing as they do a second requirement that theological assertions be appropriate in the sense of representing the same understanding of faith as expressed by the primary symbols of the normative Christian witness. The two remaining essays articulate the methodological import of what the author has learned from liberation theologians; they are entitled "Prolegomena to Practical Theology" and "The Concept of the Theology of Liberation."

On Theology has many of the qualities readers have come to expect from Ogden's books: a forthright advocacy of a "revisionary" theological agenda, a lucid organization of inquiries and their answers, and a determination to slight neither the claims of the Christian witness of faith nor the demands of contemporary intellectual scholarship. In each chapter, there is the stuff of sharp theological controversy.

A difficulty in appreciating Ogden's conception of theology is the way some logical and theological concepts tend to merge with one another. The author writes: "In the case of the existential question, there logically cannot be any sharp distinction between question and answer and that the same is true as between the necessary presuppositions of a religious assertion and the assertion itself." Yet, in arguing that a Christian theologian need not be Christian nor a professor of religious studies be religious, the author relies heavily on the question/answer distinction, insisting that such persons need not affirm the answers of a Christian or religious person, but must only ask the questions of faith. Likewise, the presupposition/assertion distinction, minimized in one context, is in another crucially deployed: "Logically speaking, then, one may say that the relation of the Old Testament to the earliest Christian witness is like that of the necessary presuppositions of an assertion to the assertion itself." In my view, Ogden risks inconsistency in these passages and ignores relevant logical distinctions. For example, the presupposition/assertion relation cannot be properly assessed without deciding between Russell's and Strawson's views of presuppositions, and, more

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generally, without specifying whether they should be treated as semantic or pragmatic phenomena.

A loose sort of equivalence is also accorded to key theological notions. It is expressed in several ways, via the positing of overlappings ("philosophy and Christian theology are not only closely analogous but...also overlap"), compatible disjunctions ("faith or understanding" and "witness or praxis"), mutual implications ("an understanding of faith precisely as praxis...both implies and is implied by an existential theology"), and adverbial identifications ("faith as liberating praxis"). Certainly any system of theological concepts involves complex interrelationships. My criticism is that the locutions listed above are insufficiently precise to preclude deleterious ambiguity. For instance, if faith and understanding are allowed to overlap in an inexact way, and faith and praxis as well, it becomes difficult to preserve Marx's insight, crucial for liberation theologians, that intellectuals should not only understand the world but change it.

This line of criticism is especially germane to Ogden, who so greatly stresses theology's self-reflective character. Readers approaching his work from either an evangelical or liberationist point of view may feel the absence of a determinate object for theological reflection, in the former case, of an objective notion of God's revelation in Jesus Christ,

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and in the latter, of an empirical conception of historical praxis as an object of social analysis. If perceived to lack a sufficiently concrete engagement of either sacred or social reality, a conception of theology is vulnerable to the criticism of excessive intellectualism. Clearly, Ogden does not intend to shrink from either sort of engagement. Nevertheless, the way some concepts devolve into loose equivalence allows his conception of theology to appear as an "understanding of understanding" insufficiently beholden to a gracious God and an oppressed neighbor. Ogden says "all answers are really only ways of formulating questions," yet this insight should not preclude that theological beliefs are also preludes to action-actions glorifying God and aiding others.

Peter H. Van Ness

Union Theological Seminary
New York, New York