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Theological Table-Talk
By Hugh T. Kerr

CHRISTIANITY AND RELIGION

How far have we come in thinking about Christianity and other religions since, say, Jerusalem 1928 or Madras 1938? One straw in the wind is the simultaneous publication of two little books on the subject: Why Christianity of All Religions? by Hendrik Kraemer (Westminster, 1962, pp. 125, $2.75) and Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions, by Paul Tillich (Columbia University Press, 1963, pp. 97, $2.75).

If one were to search for two opposite views on the subject, these two books might be supposed to serve the purpose. The doughty "Barthian" Kraemer has become a symbol of Christian isolationism; the reflective "ontologist" Tillich has likewise come to stand for synthesis and correlation. That both designations are over-simplifications becomes clear after a reading of these two books. The opposites are not so far apart; the contradictories are not beyond ceding common ground; the current character of the debate marks a milestone of a sort.

Though both authors use the words "Christianity" and "religion" in their titles, they strive to distinguish these terms. Kraemer says he is not at all interested-as a theologian and as a Christian believer -in Christianity or religion or in Christianity-as-a-religion or in the relation of Christianity-as-religion to other religions. What is of normative importance for him is not Christianity in its historical manifestations or religion in some abstract or cultic sense. It is true that there exists such a "thing" as the Christian religion, but this is because there is a prior "thing" (though it is not a "thing" at all), namely, "the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ."

This tour de force may appear to bring Kraemer right back to the intransigent insulation of his Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938). But in his latest book, there is a difference, at least a more defensive and less authoritarian accent is heard. Now we

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must learn from non-Christians, and be polite to them, and make sure that Christianity-as-religion is not what we are really communicating.

It is on this note that Tillich joins the discussion. He says many things in agreement with Kraemer but from a different perspective. Thus for Tillich, the supreme affirmation of the Christian has to do with "'Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ." But this leads him toward "dialogue" (even between Buddhism and Christianity, an account of which makes up one of the chapters) rather than narrowing, defensive assertions about Christianity-over-against-the-religions.

Tillich reads the history of Christianity as basically tolerant of other religions. He can do this because, unlike Kraemer, Christology for Tillich implies more than revelation or event; it implies Pneumatology-the "Religion of the Spirit."

This may bring Tillich back full circle to Hocking's Rethinking Missions (1932), but with the crucial difference that in the interim Christology has been pushed about as far as it can go. Is it time now in the sequence of a trinitarian theology to allow the Spirit to speak?

POPCORN WITH SALT

According to Webster, that unambiguous theological authority, popcorn " is a type of corn "having kernels which on exposure to dry heat are burst open by the explosion of the contained moisture, forming a white starchy mass." That, apparently, is also a precise description of religion in the corn-belt. Victor Obenhaus, Professor of Christian Ethics at Chicago Theological Seminary, is not so frivolous as to play around with the word "corn." He takes it seriously in a recent book and so must everyone who reads it.

Another in the growing list of sociological surveys on religion, Professor Obenhaus' book is called The Church and Faith in Mid-America (Westminster, 1963, pp. 174, $3.75). Mid-America is literally and representatively "Corn-County." Interviewing over a thousand. people in this largely agricultural area, the author has come up with some devastating statistics. Church and faith, if this survey can be trusted, are just about at the nadir, just about as far away from where they ought to be as possible.

Dispensing with the charts and tables and all the logistic impedi-

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menta sociologists juggle so happily, what does this survey add up to? Put these on your prayer list: (1) denominations: important in "Corn County" but no one knows quite why; "creeds" no longer define denominations; mobility over denominational fences is common; community friendships overleap denominational barriers ("some of my best friends are . . ."); (2) church: community oriented as a fellowship center but no one knows quite why: theological or biblical bases for the church scarcely ever get articulated; ecumenism exists as social-togetherness and is unrelated to official councils, local, national, or world-wide; (3) ministry: the minister's importance is rated on his personality rather than on his preaching or teaching; current emphases in seminaries on worship and counseling find no corresponding interest among "Corn County" parishioners-they couldn't care less; few young people, understandably, train for the ministry.

Most disconcerting is the frustration of the more aggressive ministers. They sense almost no measurable correlation between what they are trying to do and the actual day-to-day lives of their people. Creative biblical and theological insights, which presumably have multiplied in our generation, seem to have next to no impact upon the people of "Corn County." Even less significant, if that were possible, is the relation between Christian faith and ethical or political decisions. Read it and weep.

TWO GENERATIONS OF BARTH

Karl Barth's visit to America last year as a retired but still very active professor of theology reminded some of us of the swiftly passing years-theologically speaking. Any one old enough to remember the 'thirties knows all too well what a controversial figure Barth was in those days. As one who cut his eyeteeth on the early Barth, I remember lecturing a clergy club on "the infinite qualitative difference between God and man," at the conclusion of which a venerable pastor told me that everything he had always stood for was false if what I said was true. In 1938, I think it was, the first series of "How My Mind Has Changed" ran in The Christian Century, and nearly every writer took sides on Barth. Those were the days!

This is another generation, and while some thought (and hoped)

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Barth's influence would wane, it has-as Hugh R. Mackintosh prophesied in 1937 (Types of Modern Theology)-increased. In the meantime, the Dogmatics has relentlessly moved along its ponderous and inexhaustible course, and violent controversy does not so often surround the mention of Barth's name. Is he not a friendly pipe-smoker, a Mozart fan, a "humanist" of a sort, an "evangelical" theologian, a Time cover man?

He is also, curiously, for the new generation of theological students something of an unknown. The name they know and some of the Dogmatics they have had to read. But if they happen to be, say, about twenty years of age, the Römerbrief (in English translation) was already a decade old when they were born!

Not having gone through the original explosion, they now wonder what all the fuss was about. Teachers in their turn now find it necessary to rehearse what is to them fairly recent history. Fortunately, several helps for both students and teachers are available and a measure of Barth's hardy endurance as a theologian. Copies of the Dogmatics are in steady and increasing demand; the American lectures are now in print (Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, Holt, Rinehart and Winston); Arnold B. Come of San Francisco Seminary, who spent a year in Basel, has just published An Introduction to Barth's "Dogmatics" for Preachers (Westminster); a new general introduction of Barth's career is available in George Casalis' Portrait of Karl Barth (Doubleday); Sebastian A. Matczak, a Roman Catholic at St. Johns, New York, has written a critique called Karl Barth on God: The Knowledge of the Divine Existence (Alba House); and, to add another, T. F. Torrance of Edinburgh rightly reminds us of the early days in his Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology, 1910-1931 (S.C.M. Press).

RELIGION AND THE ARTS

"A poet, a painter, a musician, an architect, the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian." So wrote William Blake to a generation that didn't understand very well what such a statement meant. That it is quoted as a sort of text in a recent publication is a clue to the current crop of books on the general theme of religion and the arts.

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The new interest in art on the part of churchmen, theologians, and preachers has not come about as the result of any biblical or theological insights but because of increased artistic awareness in our age. Never before has so much art been available or so well reproduced. Public museums are thriving; daily newpapers write about Leonardo's Mona Lisa; Sears Roebuck with the help of Vincent Price has entered the common art market; color photography, contemporary architecture, dramatic performances on all levels and all kinds of stages and screens-all these and much more have forced a reluctant Protestantism to take a good second look at its restrictive interpretation of the Second Commandment.

Judging from what often hangs on Sunday School walls or festoons church bulletins, we have a long way to go from nineteenth century romantic idolatry. But things are changing gradually for the better. Indicative of the wide range of themes is the symposium edited by Finley Eversole, Christian Faith and the Contemporary Arts (Abingdon, 1962, pp. 255, $5.00). Here are included general discussions on art and religion as well as specific studies on poetry, fiction, movies, TV, music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, and even cartoons and comic strips. It is a rich compilation and would make a fascinating text for an adult study group.

Three useful studies of painting and the Christian faith trace the long, twisting road from early times to our own day. Walter L. Nathan, who taught art at Bradford junior College, Bradford, Massachusetts, died before his Art and the Message of the Church (Westminster, 1961, pp. 208, $5.00) appeared. It is particularly good for a beginning inquirer (will he note that captions for two of the prints have been transposed?). Katharine Morrison McClinton's Christian Church Art Through the Ages (Macmillan, 1962, pp. 160, $6.50) is more advanced and opinionated. As in Nathan's book, there are several black and white reproductions. Both these books unfortunately are not very helpful on contemporary art. They may be supplemented by Frank and Dorothy Getlein's Christianity in Modern Art (Bruce Publishing Co., 1961, pp. 227, $5.00). Printed on slick paper, this volume comes up to date and includes some well-chosen prints. Even at these prices, however, such books are not able to use color reproductions-and in an art book this is a very limiting factor.

In the color field and much more satisfying, and expensive, are

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two recent very large volumes: Treasures of the Vatican, by Maurizio Calvesi (World Publishing Co., 2231 West 110 Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio, 1962, pp. 207, $27.50) and Ecce Homo, by Joseph Jobé (Harper and Row 1962, pp. 189, $15.00).

The list can be extended. For example, Harold Ehrensperger's Religious Drama: Ends and Means (Abingdon, 1962, pp. 287, $6.00) meets a growing need as churches and seminaries experiment with dramatic productions. An unusual two-volume set, printed in Israel, combines history, archaeology, religion, and art. The first is Adam to Daniel and the second Daniel to Paul (edited by Gaalyahu Cornfield, Macmillan, pp. 558 and 376, $13.95 each).

BOOKSTORE LIBRARY

Speaking of books, and that is what we are mostly doing, the new kind of bookstore deserves some reflection. As unlike the old store as the supermarket is unlike the old corner grocery, the shelves and shelves of paperbacks seem to multiply endlessly as a reading explosion quietly goes on in our midst. College and university bookstores are the best index, for in increasing numbers required texts are in paper editions. To browse around a well-stocked academic bookstore is a fascinating and frightening experience.

The scholarship, research, and literary production of a whole generation of twenty-five years ago is suddenly available at reasonable prices in attractive format. Whereas formerly a bookstore mostly carried only current literature and very expensive hardcover textbooks, now the bookstore resembles a library. Anything and everything and much more than anyone could possibly use is there.

The paperback revolution is related to the education revolution. Fears that TV would make modern man a non-reader were premature, perhaps because TV has provided little enough literate competition.

The International Paper Company has been running a series of ads with the slogan, "Send me a man who reads!" In a recent booklet on the subject (address 220 East 42nd Street, New York 17, N.Y.), the assertion is made: "Never before has the average American read as much as he reads today. . . . Every day a million paperback books are sold!" Charting the trends, the booklet provides a graphic story here reproduced.

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How will the libraries cope with this paper explosion? All sorts of plans are being scrutinized, including microfilm which is already in wide use. Beyond this the possibility of reducing the printed page on "microcards" so that a whole book could be printed on a library catalogue card. Beyond this the "microdot" system approaches the optical limit where the printed area can be reduced as much as a million times. Even beyond this there is the possibility of further

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reduction through the electron-microscope. Professor John R. Platt of Chicago, who has been writing about this subject, predicts that "one square millimeter-the area of the proverbial head of a pin-could then hold 1000 books of 500 pages each. An ordinary sheet of paper . . . would then hold all of the 20 million or so different books that are supposed to be contained in all the world's libraries."

Literate man's whole output may soon be available for Everyman on a sheet of paper. Then the only problem will be to find the time to read it. But that's not a new problem.

DOGMA OBSOLESCENCE

Whatever the net result of Vatican Council II will be, it already seems clear that both Catholics and Protestants will need to up-date their stereotypes of each other. There is little likelihood that either side will rescind any ancient dogmas, but many of the fixed-ideas which often passed for dogmas are now seen to be obsolete.

Take the Pope, for example. John XXIII, much to the surprise of many on both sides, turns out to be an affable, humble human being who wants above all to be known as a pastor, and who seems determined to take ecumenicity seriously. In the meantime, Protestantism has learned something at firsthand about bureaucrats, administrators, and authority figures-they are not all in the Roman hierarchy.

Or take that ancient chestnut on the relation of Scripture and tradition. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation appliances are getting near the obsolescence point and require some new model replacement. Catholics are busily engaged in biblical translations and commentaries; Faith and Life of the World Council, in the meantime, has been studying tradition.

What about the church? The institutional trademark of Catholicism against which Protestants have thundered these many generations is giving ground to increasing sociological studies by Protestants on the institutional stratifications of the fellowship of believers. So too for justification by faith and works; so too for grace and sacraments.

A little revision of the stereotypes would do Catholics and Protestants good. It might also give occasion for both to reflect on their Lord's word: "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, in order to keep your tradition!" (Mark 7: 9).