1 - What Are the Issues?

What Are the Issues?
Hugh T. Kerr

When politicians prepare for their election campaigns, they usually state that they will discuss "the issues." The skeptics among us have learned by bitter experience that they seldom do. Theologians and preachers also claim to discuss the issues. Do they perform better than politicians? We would like to think so, and we hope that THEOLOGY TODAY deserves its reputation for taking on the controversial issues of the day and setting them in clear and intelligent focus.

I

A recent informal discussion among a dozen concerned editorial consultants may be of interest to our whole readership. Invited to select some of the current topics of theological concern for today and tomorrow, several themes came up for sustained and repeated discussion. In no priority, here are a few.

(1) The increasing peril of the nuclear arms race. This, it was noted, represents something different from the anti-war protests of the '60s, and the recent rise of European sentiment in favor of curtailing further stock-piling implies an expanded fear of this apocalyptic technology. Special attention must be given to this issue by biblical and doctrinal theologians as well as by ministers, preachers, and church leaders.

(2) The collapse of academic morale. Several of our group, standing within the educational circle of teaching and research, sense a failure of nerve among colleagues. The reason for this intellectual despondency relates to the fact that basic, elemental issues of life, morality, and culture go begging for serious discussion. Interdisciplinary studies that promised a lot have produced only a little. Younger faculty, bucking for promotion and tenure, hide behind the safe barricades of specialization. More mature teachers often become less venturesome because "values" and "issues" can prove disruptive.

2 - What Are the Issues?

(3) The once traditional Christian humanism of colleges and universities appears no longer viable. Try to name two or three outstanding university presidents known for their advocacy of humane letters and liberal arts. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, about to retire, comes to mind. Brewster of Yale, Pusey of Harvard, Goheen of Princeton have already retired. "Christian humanism" may be an ambiguous designation, but what is the alternative? When a neo-gothic college chapel is required to minister to every and no faith, the result is confusion and ridicule.

(4) Young people today want to know how to make a faith. That is the way a Catholic campus chaplain put it to us. They want faith; they respect it; they wish they had it. How do you go about getting it? One way is to attend liturgical services, which Catholic students still do with some regularity. But, alas, even Catholics have lost much of their traditional language, and Protestants suffer from theological amnesia. Apparently the thirst for faith goes unassauged. How to meet that need?

(5) The ecumenical ideal, persists, but there is no confidence today in structures or ecclesiastical programs. Here we are confronted with the head-on collision between the power of the Spirit and the mechanism of organization. To be, with Paul, "in Christ" is to be alive to a whole new world of existence, but, as Luther warned the "spiritualists" of his day, we must beware of swallowing the Holy Spirit, feathers and all.

II

These and other issues certainly must be discussed these days. Perhaps it should be noted that we are talking mostly about problems and negativities. Are there positive signs of the theological times? Well, one overarching emphasis across the board is the new spirituality. "How to" books on Christian meditation and inner contemplation descend on an editor's desk like an avalanche.

Publishers presumably publish what the public will purchase. People are without doubt buying books on spiritual nurture, discipline, and experiential religion. We don't know quite what to make of this trend. It is partly an anti-intellectual protest, reflecting the failure of impersonal, academic theology as well as a sterile and inconsequential biblical criticism. It often divides student from professor, pew from pulpit, and the loner and free-wheeler from the establishment.

With all its vulnerable subjectivities, the new spirituality emerges out of several generations of silence. IF we list the great theological names, such as Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, Tillich, Temple, Kraemer, Baillie, Bultmann, and many others in the last half-century, scarcely anyone said anything significant about this area of personal religious experience. And the same would be true for the great preachers, Buttrick, Fosdick, Luccock, McCracken, Scherer, Sheen, Sizoo, Sockman, etc.,

3 - What Are the Issues?

etc. We have lived through a time, as John Mackay liked to put it, of a theology of light, but not a theology of life.

Both Protestants and Catholics have allowed this dimension of the faith to lapse-the former, forgetting the Reformation emphasis on the ordo salutis, and the latter, cringing before criticism of the mystical presence in the sacraments and even within the church building itself. And what we have forgotten in our respective traditions, others have reclaimed, sometimes with excess and often without theological substance.

Christian truth is primarily personal truth. God came to us in a human person to make us better human beings. Christian truth is also philosophical truth, doctrinal truth, biblical truth, historical truth, and social-political truth. But the good news of the Gospel is that God can do something in and for us, personally and experientially.

What are the issues? One way to take a test on this question would be to respond to the invitation-"If I had but one article to write." Look for some responses to that query in future numbers of THEOLOGY TODAY.

E. G. HOMRIGHAUSEN
1900-1982

We regret to report the death, on January 4, 1982, of our esteemed Contributing Editor, Elmer George Homrighausen. Known everywhere as "Homy" or "Homey," and almost never by his first name, our distinguished colleague appeared in the first issue of THEOLOGY TODAY (April 1944) and in frequent subsequent issues. His name was associated for years with our "Church in the World" section, and his reporting, commentary, and criticism were everywhere acclaimed as authoritative. He was "at home" wherever he went throughout the world, and he counted a multitude of church leaders, pastors, and theologians as personal friends.

A pioneer in the now-familiar fields of evangelism, pastoral theology, and Christian education, Homy was ever on the move from one enthusiasm to another. His desk, always piled high with books and papers, reflected his good-natured complaint that there was never enough time. He refused to quit on retirement, and being something of a squirrel, his library spilled over into the attic and the basement, and he was pushing his pen until the day he died.

Pastor, teacher, dean, church administrator, author, editor, recipient of honorary degrees, Homy combined in happy harmony the theologian's head and the pastor's heart. Coming out of America's heartland, Iowa and Indiana, he made the whole world of ideas, by the gospel of grace, his parish. Old-timers will remember that the name Homrighausen first came to attention through early translations of Karl Barth. His own first book bore the title Christianity in America: A Crisis (1938). "Crisis" for Homy always meant both challenge and opportunity.

So many of us will miss him so much. They don't make them like Homy anymore.

PRINCETON, N.J.

EDITORIAL COUNCIL

Diogenes Allen
Professor of Philosophy
Princeton Theological
Seminary

Carlos Baker
Professor of Literature
Princeton University

Peter L. Berger
Professor of Sociology
Boston University

James H. Billington
Woodrow Wilson Center
Washington, D.C.

Phyllis Bird
Professor of Old Testament
Southern Methodist University

Eugene Carson Blake
Stamford, Conn.

Robert McAfee Brown
Professor of Theology
Pacific School of Theology

Bernard J. Cooke
Professor of Religious Studies
Holy Cross College

John Deedy
Rockport, Mass.

Edward B. Fiske
Education Editor
The New York Times

Roland Mushat Frye
Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania

Theodore A. Gill
John Jay College
City College of New York

Howard G. Hageman
President
New Brunswick Theological
Seminary

Seward Hiltner
Professor Theology and
Personality
Princeton Theological
Seminary

Jorge Lara-Braud
Council Theology and Culture
Presbyterian Church, U.S.

Stanford R. Lucyk
Eaton Memorial Church
Toronto, Ontario

Jack M. Maxwell
President
Austin Theological Seminary

Richard P. McBrien
Professor of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Bruce M. Metzger
Professor of New Testament
Princeton Theological
Seminary

Marianne H. Micks
Professor of Theology
Episcopal Theological
Seminary, Alexandria, Va.

Daniel L. Migliore
Professor Systematic Theology
Princeton Theological
Seminary

Richard J. Mouw
Professor of Philosophy
Calvin College

John M. Mulder
President
Louisville Theological
Seminary

Paul Ramsey
Professor of Christian Ethics
Princeton University

Joseph L. Roberts, Jr.
Ebenezer Baptist Church
Atlanta, Ga.

C. Shelby Rooks
President
Chicago Theological Seminary

Katharine D. Sakenfeld
Professor of Old Testament
Princeton Theological
Seminary

Nathan A. Scott
Professor Religion and
Literature
University of Virginia

James H. Smylie
Professor of American Church History
Union Theological Seminary
Richmond, Va.

Leonard I. Sweet
Colgate-Rochester
Theological Seminary

David W. Tracy
Professor of Theology
University of Chicago

Charles C. West
Professor of Christian Ethics
Princeton Theological
Seminary

E. David Willis
Professor of Theology
Princeton Theological
Seminary