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Theological Table-Talk
By Hugh T. Kerr

BIRTH, DEATH, REBIRTH

The best-selling novel of Robert Penn Warren, The Cave (Random House, 403 pp., $4.95), may be something more than a ripe, lusty story of earthy sexual mores among Tennessee hillbillies. It hardly seems fit for a Sunday School lesson. For most readers it would have little if any religious message. Some reviewers, not too brightly, have tied the title to Plato's myth of the cave in The Republic, Book VII. Not too brightly, because the author himself quotes a few passages from the Greek philosopher before the story begins. But most of us think of Plato's cave with reference to philosophical distinctions between appearance and reality, or what, in textbooks is called "Plato's theory of ideas." All this hardly applies to Warren's tale, except that both he and Plato may mean something symbolic and mysterious about the cave of which they speak.

One thing is clear in this modern novel about the cave: it concerns a group of very mixed-up people, young and old, educated and, primitive, respectable and contemptible. And they are all, every one of them, in search of themselves, of their personal identity, of self-consciousness and meaning and purpose. They are all very much alive and know themselves to have been born into the world to live and love and lust-and they are all lonely and know they are all lost.

The cave in the story draws the characters together in a tragic, absurd episode of life and death, publicity and commercialism, fecundity and sterility. For the cave is man's ancient and universal image of the enigma of darkness and light, of death and life, of birth and rebirth, of consciousness and unconsciousness. It is a mother image, a womb figure, suggesting the mysterious process of creation and especially of self-consciousness, of life, and recreation but also, of danger, dankness, dimness, and death. Superficially it has sexual overtones, for the cave expresses itself in figures of reproduction and

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the processes connected with human birth. Some critics have deplored Robert Penn Warren's excessive sexual preoccupation in this novel. It is sure to make many wince. But sex is a symbol of virility and undue attention to its details may indicate a deep uneasiness about man's loss of vitality and consequently the loss of his identity and selfhood.

The return to the cave, to mother earth's inner recesses, whether literally, figuratively, spiritually, or sexually-this is what the novel is about. If, in one sense, we all emerge into life by coming out of the cave, can we not recover the secret of life by returning to the cave?

Old Jack Harrick, one of the freest of lovers in his youth, now dying of cancer, found a new existence, a new self, a rebirth, with the help of his boyhood pal now turned thumping evangelist. But it was not so much religion that regenerated him as his wife who for the first time in his life called him-not Jack-but John T. "Hearing that other name, even as it answered his need and desire, be new that something was happening to Jack Harrick . . . he wasn't Jack Harrick after all. He was John T." But the others are not do fortunate, if a once virile man with cancer can be called fortunate. Poor Isaac Sumpter! He hated his name and thought his father (the evangelist) had the story of Abraham and Isaac in mind. He finds temporary dignity (if that is the word) in an affair with a Jewish girl who takes him for one of her own because of his name. It is he who goes into the cave in search of life, but he finds death and is himself afraid to be reborn.

Poor Bingham, the banker, and his wife, so far apart, so sterile in their relations, and their full-blown teenage daughter, innocently and pathetically pregnant, standing outside the entrance to the cave alternately leered at and prayed over. And poor old Nick Pappy, the Greek restaurant owner, as physical as they come, with an invalid wife upstairs and a morose waitress in the downstairs back room. Nobody could pronounce his real name, let alone spell it, for it was Papadoupalous. "It looks," he reflected sadly, "like sometime you don't know who you are, maybe." Curiously enough, he's the only strong and likeable character in the story. Does Warren perhaps think that this modern displaced Greek and that ancient Greek philosopher had some inner insight about birth, death, rebirth, and that makes for essential humanity?

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It may be stretching the novelist's intention, but it is not stretching the cave symbolism to recall that Jesus Christ, the new man who came to give humanity a new start, was born in a manger, traditionally represented in art as a grotto or cave. And when he died, he was buried in another cave, a sepulchre. Thus far Robert Penn Warren. But that is not the end of the Gospel story. Out of the cave came the Resurrected Lord to bring life and immortality to light. "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

UPGRADING THE LAYMAN

It has been observed before that publishers of religious books today are trying in one way or another to prepare and print books especially for the layman. There are several series now on the market, and if laymen are actually reading everything that is being published for their edification, they must be neglecting their daily work in a shocking way.

It is easy, commonplace, and a little underhanded for the clergy or the professional "religionist" (a rebuking if accurate description of many of us) to make fun of the layman, to belittle his intelligence, or to refuse to discuss big, weighty issues with him on his own terms as a parent might turn away a child's naive but profound question. There may be some reason for theologians, Biblical scholars (why are the Biblical people always designated "scholars"?), and "religionists" writing monographs for each other. But there is no excuse for them not writing for the layman even on the most "scholarly" subjects.

As a matter of fact, the layman has come a long, long way theologically in the past generation. There are more adult schools and institutes of religion in local churches than ever before, and, with some painful exceptions, most of the newer literature prepared for his special consumption does the modern layman a noble compliment by expecting him to attend to intellectually demanding discussions and beyond that actually assumes that he is able to keep up with and understand the latest in theology and Biblical interpretation. Three current examples of this are worth mention.

Here, first of all, are the first two Volumes of a proposed twenty five volume set, published by the Richmond, Virginia, John Knox

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Press, and called The Layman's Bible Commentary. It has clearly been conceived as a somewhat less grandiose Interpreter's Bible, omitting the Biblical text, technical words, and excessive "scholarly" baggage, such as, references to other scholars, etc. It is a straight-forward commentary on the Biblical books, and the interesting thing that it is scholarly without saying so in footnotes, and it takes the layman along on a tour of what is being thought and discussed in all the theological seminaries throughout the world. The first volume, Introduction to the Bible, and the second, Genesis, pull no punches, never talk down, always take it for granted that critical research regarding the Bible is a good, not a dangerous, thing. Perhaps we professionals take this approach to the layman too much for granted without appreciating the fact that in a few years an enormous advance in theological perspective has taken place.

The second example to be mentioned is the Abingdon Know our Faith series which is a good Methodist "inspirational" (their word, not mine) set of "I believe" books, not all written by Methodists, by the way. The latest in the series is by Presbyterian Homrighausen on I Believe in the Church. But this doesn't mean that he is writing about the Presbyterian or the Methodist Church, but about the Christian Church. This approach while common enough to the ecumenical careerists implies that the laymen no longer think exclusively in denominational categories, and as everyone knows this actually is the case.

Here again a theological advance is obvious, for Homrighausen begins his discussion by saying that the Church "originates in the will of God." To the question, "Was there no Church before Jesus' birth?" he cuts through a whole jungle of scholarly debate during thee past century and exclaims, "Indeed there was!"

The third example is Roger Shinn's brief, probing, unashamedly partisan book, The Existentialist Posture, in the Association Press Reflection Books series. A lesser spirit or a more aloof "scholar" might have disdained from stooping so low as to explain existentialism to the masses. And indeed Shinn notes at the end of his little book that "an all-out existentialist will insist that this kind of book is pitiful mistake." But never mind the all-out variety for the moment, here is an intelligent and stimulating discussion of a much misunderstood mood. And once more, the author takes his reader along with him on his exhilarating journey. Popular piety in

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America may be open to all kinds of criticism, but it can't all be, wrong-headed when books and series such as these are available and quietly at work in our midst.

CLERICAL CHARACTERS

We hear much these days of the role or image of the minister. What we hear is not heartening nor always very intelligible. Sociology and psychology (what Jacques Barzun calls the misbehaviorial sciences) have been invoked to tell us what others think of us, and with tape recorder, computer, and median percentiles, statistics a tabulated to show this and that. All this will do the minister no harm, and it may do him good if he happens to think more highly of himself than he ought. But taking the public's pulse on the ministry is not by itself a very critical or constructive approach, and, of course in the context of the social sciences it does not pretend to be since value judgments of any kind must be resolutely resisted.

A less scientific and statistical approach to the ministry but one, that is vastly more interesting, exciting, and avowedly critical is taken by Horton Davies in his new book, A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels (Oxford Press, 211 pp., $3.75). Professor Davies, who teaches Religion at Princeton University, before coming to this country was deeply interested in English literature, and in this survey of fifteen authors he has put together this earlier avocation and his present professional vocation.

Not to review the book, for that may be done in the proper place later, Davies observes that the Protestant preacher and missionary (unlike his Roman Catholic counterpart) has usually received either "vituperative criticisms" (as in Somerset Maugham and Sinclair Lewis), or "scintillating satire" (as in Peter De Vries). Both approaches have repeatedly stirred the ire of ministers themselves, illustrating perhaps their lack of a sense of humor or their unwilling ness to take seriously the apostolic injunction that judgment should begin in the house of God.

Davies notes that "since complacency is the chief enemy of the Christian Church, the critical novelist . . . can play the Socraties role of a gadfly, stinging the comatose Church into awareness of it dangerous condition." In any case, the novelist's portrait of tiff minister is in "chiaroscuro," what Davies calls "a study in clerical

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gray." On the dark side, the Protestant minister in his fictional stereotype represents "a moralism of respectability" and "the sanction of the status quo." Whether this image is parallel or out of focus with the social scientists's graphs and charts, Davies doesn't say. To relate the two approaches, statistically of course, might prove as enlightening to the statistician as to the novelist and minister.

Beyond this, one wonders if something more profound and far-caching than either observer is aware of is not taking place within he ministry itself. The older stereotypes of pastor, preacher, evangelist, and missionary are still with us and so indeed are the special duties and problems of each. But the Protestant preacher is an orator who sways congregations by the power of his voice or he extravagance of his imagination is perhaps a thing of the past. And the foreign missionary, as once conceived, is as dead as the dodo. Rising nationalism and fading colonialism have taken care of the matter, and the former-in true Reformation style-may once more make his place in the midst of his people not as a pulpiteer but as a teacher of the Word of God in the world of men.

MENNONITE FOCUS

The Herald Press of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, publishers for the Mennonite Church, have recently printed two pamphlets which line pin the same direction to show which way the wind is blowing in the oldest and largest of the Mennonite groups. This left-wing Reformation tradition, with roots in the Anabaptist revolt and more modern commitments to pacifism and the "peace-Church" movement, has found it increasingly difficult over the years to define its distinct witness in the midst of a culture that simply sweeps by without taking notice. So far as the Mennonite Church itself is concerned, two areas of perplexity are brought into focus through one pamphlets just published.

The first pamphlet is The Ecumenical Movement and the Faithful Church, by John H. Yoder (Focal Pamphlet Series No. 3, 43 pp., 60 cents). The first phrase refers to the world-wide quest for unity and understanding among the member Churches of the World Council, and the second to Churches like the Mennonite which tend to remain aloof from others because "the faithful Church" is by definition made up only of true, confessing believers. The problem

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for Mennonites is, then, how to or whether to have any relations with those who think differently on doctrine or polity.

The author, who is Instructor in Biblical Theology, Goshen College, Indiana, tackles the problem head on and makes three recommendations for his own Church which will relate them not only to the World Council but also with other "Historic Peace Churches" (Brethren and Quakers). A less explicit tie is also suggested with the National Association of Evangelicals. The caveat here is not theological but organizational. On the whole, the pamphlet shows an openness to discussions and mutual sharing with other Churches.

The second pamphlet exhibits another special problem for Mennonites, namely, how to live the quiet, rural, simple life of the gathered community in a society so highly organized and industrialized as ours. The booklet is called Following Christ in Our Work, and it was prepared by Lawrence Burkholder (Herald Press, 72 pp., $1.75), who is Associate Professor of Bible and Philosophy at Goshen College. The pamphlet grew out of a co-operative effort of the Mennonite Commission for Christian Education and the Committee on Economic and Social Relations. The existence of such committees is an indication of increasing Menonite concern with social ethics. Burkholder's discussion is restrained on most points, but when he comes to "the organizational revolution" which Mennonites might be expected to denounce, he shows that this modern social force has already penetrated the Mennonite tradition itself, and that it cannot be met, therefore, with indifference.

SYNTHETIC PENTECOST

Aldous Huxley, a versatile man of many gifts and interests, and expatriate English novelist now living in Los Angeles, wrote an essay not long ago on "Drugs that Shape Men's Minds" for the Saturday Evening Post. This essay and twenty others in the same Post series are now printed together in a book, Adventures of the Mind (Knopf, 285 pp., $4.50). It is an exciting and highly disturbing symposium, definitely not recommended for insulated minds.

Huxley has dabbled in experiments with drugs for years. He once said if lie were a millionaire he would endow an institute to find the perfect drug. It would be one that would make life sweet and acceptable, and leave no hangover. In the meantime he tried

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mescaline and found it approaching his earlier ideal, but not quite. There is, however, so Huxley thinks, no question that "biochemistry and pharmacology" will come up with astonishing new drugs and synthetics not only as pain killers but as inducers of "a genuinely religious experience." Aspirin, he reminds us, is a relatively recent discovery; before that all man had were alcohol and opium.

If his conclusion is shocking and disturbing, namely, that the new revolution in religion will come this way rather than through evangelism or theology, his analysis of drugs and drink and their relation to religious experience and self-transcendence is inescapible and fascinating. He quotes De Quincey's report of his opium experience: "What a resurrection from the lowest depths of the inner spirit! What an apocalypse! . . . divine enjoyment suddenly revealed... happiness." These are religious words and experiences, or at least very much like what the religious person and especially the mystic talks about.

Pentecost, Huxley observes, was interpreted by the spectators as a drunken, frenzied orgy. Peter disabused their minds by preaching a sermon on the fulfillment of the prophet Joel's prediction of a new day coining. Huxley thinks that new day may be accelerated by synthetic drugs. Not that this will solve all problems, for such drugs would present new ethical and religious questions.

For those who squirm at the idea that drugs can produce "a genuine religious experience," so that the person who takes LSD dysergic acid diethylamide) may understand for the first time what it means to say "God is love," Huxley notes that religious practitioners from time immemorial have always achieved the same sort of mystical experience through what he calls "the standard mortifications." These may be fasting or abstinence, voluntary sleeplessness or ascetical practices that strain or otherwise affect organic functioning, breathing exercises as in yoga or self-driving dedication and moralism as in Puritanism. These are not only spiritual exercises is devotees may imagine, they also actually induce chemical and physical changes in the person.

Whether agreeing with the Los Angeles sage or not, we may be grateful at least that he has alerted us to what we may expect in the immediate future. He is surely right in saying: "The world's ecclesiastical authorities will have to come to terms with the new mind changers." Mescaline, anyone?