Theology Today - Vol 31, No. 1 - April 1974 - CRITICSCORNER - Karl Menninger and the Dimensions of Sin

59 - Karl Menninger and the Dimensions of Sin

Karl Menninger and the Dimensions of Sin
By Albert C. Outler

WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN? is an "event" and may become a landmark: a great psychiatrist turned prophet, calling upon the clergy to join him in a gallant effort to turn back the whelming tides of moral confusion and disorder. For forty years now, Karl Menninger has been a dauntless pathbreaker in the moral revolution that has altered the mores of western society past all remembrance, or hope of restoration. And for two decades, at least, he has led the way in fruitful collaborations between psychiatrists and clergymen-especially in the upgrading of clergy competence in pastoral counseling. Menninger (like many of his fellow psychiatrists) is a moralist at heart-deeply concerned to find constructive and more truly human alternatives to the ethical systems of the past and their unhealthy side-effects. Whatever Became of Sin?, therefore, is best understood as a sequel to his earlier essays in ethics, Love Against Hate and The Vital Balance.

It is a highly personal "airing of his own views" (cf. p. 17) and also a passionate "address" to the "moral leaders" in modern society, especially the clergy. He recognizes that the victories of the permissive society have produced some truly ironic and unacceptable consequences. He is keenly aware of the paradox of the most nearly "liberated" generation in human history that is still discontent with its human lot and justifiably anxious about its human future. Accordingly, he undertakes to explain our demoralization's, analyze our current moral lapses, and then add a hopeful word as to what may be done (cf. the wry title for the concluding chapter, "The Bluebird [of Happiness] on the Dung Heap"). Thus we have an analogue to medical procedures: a case-history, a diagnosis, and a prescription.

It is not, however, a "scientific" treatise by any means. For all its technical allusions (and occasional technical lapses, as on pp. 10, 25, 29, 52, etc.), it is a moral diatribe (in the literal and original sense of that term, which was not at all pejorative!). Like Calvin Coolidge's preacher, Menninger is against sin; he knows what he is against; and he is intensely interested in a revival of morality and morale. He cites St. Paul and St. Augustine in his "definitions of sin" (and has learned much from Seward Hiltner; cf. pp. 19-20), but he explicitly rejects all notions of "innate sinfulness" (p. 18), deliberately avoiding the biblical emphases on "sin" as against God. What "sin"

Albert C. Outler is Professor of Theology at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. He is the author of The Christian Tradition (1957) and Who Trusts in God (1968) and has edited works by Augustine and John Wesley. Here he reviews Karl Menninger's recent book, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York, Hawthorn Books, 1973), 230 pp., $7.95.

60 - Karl Menninger and the Dimensions of Sin

comes down to, therefore, is "aggression and self-destruction" (p. 23), lapses from "moral concern and personal responsibility" (p. 48). "Sin" is thus conceived in social terms, and it is steadfastly assumed that "sinners" retain the power not to sin if, as, and when they choose (Pelagius' posse non peccare). There is, therefore, no real hindrance, in principle, to "the revival or reassertion of personal responsibility in all human acts, good and bad"-and this "might turn the tide of our aggressions and of the moral struggle" in the world (p. 178).

Menninger then turns to diagnosis and produces an eloquent and edifying sermon on human sins and sinning (a fascinating predilection in the human species that needs more explanation than it gets). The sermon is a sort of updated "catalogue" of sins (old and new, personal and collective), plus pungent value judgments on each and all. Most of the traditional sins are included (pride, sensuality, anger, acedia, etc.) with some interesting new ones added (cruelty to animals [pp. 163ff,], handguns [p. 123], and pilfering ["an unadulterated sin," p. 158)). Gambling is not a sin (p. 65), but tobacco is -more sinful" than marihuana (p. 142). Beverage alcohol is not so much a "sin" as "a social problem," to be judged by its social effects (pp. 69-70); there is a distinction here that I missed. The really piercing insight in all this is the conclusion: "the germinal word that links all these sins together is hate" (p. 172).

The doctor-prophet really warms to his work when he starts swinging away at the big sins of "collective irresponsibility" (ch. 7). Here, "the great, prototypical example of group sin is war" (pp. l0lff.). Close behind comes Menninger's special abhorence of "the crime of punishment"-viz. our penal system (ch. 5). Then follow the sins of slavery and racism (pp. 107-14), of Big Business, sins against the environment, and sins of "affluence" ("our greatest national sin is waste," p. 156). There are a few whoppers that are, however, unaccountably ignored; for example, the "sins" of our national health-care delivery system, of school systems that stifle creativity, of mass media that manage the news, etc. Moreover, Menninger never quite comes clean on the "sin" of male chauvinism!

Even so, what we have is a magnificant outpouring of moral indignation and human compassion, and one feels almost ungrateful to raise a demurrer or two about the presuppositions at work here and their implications. And yet one cannot help wondering at Menninger's soaring confidence in moral exhortation as a method of conversion and his unfaltering trust in human autonomy as an ethical principle. Thus, his "prescription" for our troubles turns out to be a rousing challenge to our [ present] "moral leaders": clergy, lawyers, police, teachers, "the Press," statesmen and politicians, doctors, et al. (pp. 189-219). Their "moral leadership languishes and upon moral leadership we still rely for salvation" (p. 192)! It is almost as if Menninger had not noticed how completely the new society has

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turned away from ex officio authority and authority figures, on principle-and obviously in practice as well.

One of the ingredients in his prescription that some will find surprising-as I did-is Menninger's focus on the clergy as holding the key to a prospective recovery of morale and morality. One of his prime motives in the book, he tells us (pp. 223-8), is "to elevate the image of the minister. I want to stimulate an increase in his appreciation and self-esteem. He is far more influential than he realizes" (p. 199). He "is a very special 'some one'; he has special authority" (p, 198). These, surely, are the kindest words about my profession that I have heard from any psychiatrist in my lifetime, and they are almost pathetically welcome in a group of men who have become notoriously dispirited as to the real importance of their public roles and status. But one of their most painful learning experiences-taught them in part by the psychiatrists!-is that denunciation and exhortation, even as far ranging as Menninger's, rank near the bottom on any list of effective means for behavioral transformations. Besides, it has begun to dawn on them and their people that a gospel of moral self-improvement, as such, is not actually "good news" for the truly despairing or the deeply anxious. And there is no denying that, at bottom, Menninger's "good news" is an updated version of the eighteenth century "gospel of moral rectitude." "If we believe in sin-as I do-we believe in our personal responsibility for trying to correct it and thereby saving ourselves and our world" (p. 220). Even Pelagius would have choked on that!

I can readily imagine this book serving a host of useful purposes. It reopens a whole cluster of moral questions for any psychiatrist newly troubled about pluses and minuses of the human potential. It might infuse fresh dignity and courage into clergymen who have buckled under the pressures of the new antinomianisms. It holds up a brilliant mirror to the opinion makers and the opinionated in our deeply riven society. It will act as a stout prod to the apathetic (whose name is "legion"!).

But its readers must carry their own ethical probes much further into the depths of the human predicament, if they are really concerned with human hope. Sin is a mite more radical than mere social dysfunction. Its remedy calls for something far more drastic than moral counsel and self-fulfillment. This is what St. Paul discovered at the end of Romans 7, and it is still a home truth about the human condition. Unless the clergy (and the other "moral leaders") press beyond the paradox of human good intentions that so regularly miscarry, to something like a gospel of reconciliation that hallows life and redeems it by grace and faith, then "the bluebird of happiness" will remain an endangered species (on the dung heap, or wherever!).

Now that we know Whatever Became of Sin?, we need at least two more sequels (but with a different nuance?): (1) Whatever Became of Guilt? and (2) Whatever Became of Grace?