541 - Which Way Ahead?

Which Way Ahead?

The invitation to offer some reflections on THEOLOGY TODAY, two decades exactly after its first number was being prepared the press, puts one inevitably in a lyrical and reminiscent mood.

When the group of friends who decided to launch a new theological journal met at the Princeton Inn in the fall of 1943, the Second World War was in its darkest hour. But it was felt that no time could be more appropriate to consider "The Life of Man in the Light of God" than a time when tales of terror were nonetheless voices out of God's springtime, "God's Terrible Springtime," as the biblical meditation in the first number was entitled.

It is fitting to ponder the fact that twenty years later theology is confronted with a world-wide revolutionary crisis which military might can never settle. This situation, even more than the crisis that prevailed in the early forties, calls Christian thinkers to look at man's world in God's perspective. It summons them to set forth afresh the abiding concerns which man should cherish, and the timeless principles which should guide and govern his relationship to himself, to God, and to his fellow men.

It has been for the former editor of THEOLOGY TODAY a moving coincidence, and a challenging fact, that he should have been asked to make some comments on the journal's twentieth birthday just as he was getting ready to set out on a special church mission to Cuba. For this island, let it be solemnly realized, constitutes today for theologians and churchmen, for citizens and statesmen, the most ominous revolutionary symbol of "God's Terrible Springtime." Theology is called upon, if it is to fulfill its role, to look at the human problem in our time as it is represented in microcosmic form by a Latin American nation in the Carribean. Christian theologians face the inescapable task of presenting to this generation the authentic standards which should be normative for the guidance of all con-

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cerned people in church, society, and state. For the Cuba issue is symbolical of volcanic forces that are abysmal in their depth and world-wide in their scope. This is all the more imperative because, as I discovered to my joy during my visit, the Christian churches in Cuba, clergy, laity, and youth, were never more dedicated to Christ and the Gospel or more intelligently aware of the church's mission in their homeland and in the world than they are at this moment.

As the clouds gather, the winds roar, and the waves foam in the revolutionary springtime of today, and not least in the Western Hemisphere, theological thought must move beyond sophisticated analysis, and "amid the encircling gloom," interpret in prophetic accents God's awakeness, presence, and will.

May I thank my beloved friend, the editor of THEOLOGY TODAY, who was himself one of the journal's founders, and also my distinguished successor in the chairmanship of the Editorial Council, for their gracious request that I send a few remarks for the anniversary celebration. In doing so, let me express to both these friends, and to all associated with them, my congratulations and gratitude for the growing significance of THEOLOGY TODAY. May I also be given the privilege of repeating once more the Aims that were formulated two decades ago in the Princeton gathering to which I have already referred. These Aims, which were the fruit of agonizing thought and radiant hope, have continued to live in my spirit through the intervening years, as both a sacred memory and a liturgical chant. They ran thus:

"Desiring to honor and serve God in this time, and to turn the thoughts of men to things that are necessary to be known or done, we aim, in humble dependence upon his light and strength:

"To contribute to the restoration of theology in the world of today as the supreme science, of which both religion and culture stand in need for their renewal.

"To study the central realities of Christian faith and life, and to set forth their meaning in clear and appropriate language.

"To explore afresh the truths which were rediscovered by the Protestant Reformation, especially the tradition usually called Reformed, and to show their relevancy to the contemporary problems of Church and society.

"To provide an organ in which Christians whose faith is rooted in the revelation of God in the Bible and in Jesus Christ, and who

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are engaged in different spheres of intellectual activity, may combine their insights into the life of man in the light of God, with a view to interpreting our human situation and developing a Christian philosophy of life."

John A. Mackay
President, and Professor of Ecumenics, Emeritus,
Princeton Theological Seminary,
and Honorary Chairman of the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY.

The Word that once became flesh urgently awaits its renewed and extended Incarnation. Although God's unconditional love becomes flesh only in persons open in trust to him and in concern for the neighbor, the creating, living Word needs the creative, written word to direct experience. The community of faith requires the evaluative promptings of the kindled imagination, illuminating life's meanings and choices. The main Christian vortex for release of life and meaning is the unconditional love of God filtered through the life of Jesus, the Christ.

Man needs God. He needs this love. But an immature, self protective self-love fights or runs from God. Most religious journalism. accordingly is heavily motivated by man's flight from God and the fear of his love. Most "Christian" journalism is more religious than revelational, sharing such self-protective and self aggressive drives. Its forms of escape are absorption in history, acceptance of normal experience as normative, or a frantically negative search for the new, mostly as a repudiation of the past.

True Christian journalism is the bringing forth creatively both old and new as they minister to a fuller trust in God with reference to man's present problems and needs. The Word of God's eternal faithfulness is all-enduring and dependable; the words trying to understand and to convey it are ever frail and slippery. Only the spirit open to God and to others can channel grace with power through creative writing. Christian journalism ever awaits the decisive declaration of the Holy Spirit in contemporary theology.

THEOLOGY TODAY has had a good history. We are thankful that it has had a chance to witness. It has tried to listen to the past; today it is turned to more modern voices. Its basic need is to be so fully open to the Eternal that neither the frustrations of a congealed past nor the impotence of an evasive future will have the last word, but rather that in the light of the living Eternal the past

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may shed its fetters of falsity and the future open its arms to creative newness. Our prayerful hope is that THEOLOGY TODAY may increasingly fill this central need for theological journalism.

Nels. F. S. Ferre
Professor of Christian Theology
Andover Newton Theological School
Newton Centre, Mass.

I look back upon the launching of THEOLOGY TODAY twenty years ago as one of the most exciting ventures with which I have ever been associated. Those of us who had the privilege of assembling at Princeton under the leadership of John A. Mackay were convinced that a new era of theological construction was at hand. After a period characterized by vigorous criticism and detailed analysis, the time seemed to have come for a confident re-affirmation of the Gospel and for a searching inquiry into its bearing upon the wholeness of man's existence in the contemporary world. No journal, it seems to me, could have pursued more faithfully the aim emblazoned on its cover from the beginning: "The life of man in the light of God."

But very great changes have taken place since 1944, and a Christian journal cannot easily keep pace with them. For example, philosophy has become increasingly anti-theological, and the old alliance between the two disciplines no longer exists. I welcome certain recent attempts in THEOLOGY TODAY to come to grips with contemporary philosophical aims and methods, and hope that more will be forthcoming in this difficult field. Again so much has changed in the realm of historical studies, chiefly because of an increased readiness to ask radical questions about the historical task itself. What is the historian really trying to do? How does he select and determine relative importance? Is he concerned to establish fact, event, value, world-picture, or what? I welcome the recent debate in the pages of our journal about history in relation to the Christ, and I hope that this will be taken further.

But of all the subjects of immediate and urgent concern none seems to me more important than that summarized under C. P. Snow's phrase, "The Two Cultures." Through the greater part of its historical experience, Christianity has been related to what might be loosely called humanistic cultures. With these there has always been much in common, for Christianity and humanism are both concerned with man-man in his successes and failures, man in his

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possibilities and limitations. But how is Christianity to relate itself to the rapidly developing scientific or secular culture? How can it illuminate the apparently inexorable forces of scientific development in the life of society, the apparently closed systems of scientific explanation in the life of the individual? If THEOLOGY TODAY can help the Christian to obtain his bearings in our contemporary secular world and to see a way forward through the complexities of our cultural situation, then it will continue to perform that constructive and positive task which has, I believe, been its main contribution to theological studies over the past twenty years.

Frederick W. Dillistone
Dean of Liverpool Cathedral,
Liverpool, England.

A friend remarked to me the other day that we were in the midst of a strange revolution. For several generations it has been the professional theologian who has told the church what to think. Now the time has come for the church to tell the professional theologian what to think.

I am sure that his epigram is exaggerated. Yet I think I am also aware of the real truth which lies behind it. Whatever may be the gaps and the failures, it is the theological giants of another generation who have shaped the preaching and the teaching of the church today. One may seek to avoid pledging his heart to any single master. But it is impossible to preach, teach, or minister as though Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, or Bonhoeffer had never written. It is the professional theologian who has shaped the message of the contemporary church.

Needless to say, in the interpretation of the theologian, THEOLOGY TODAY has played an important role. In summarizing and interpreting the words of the giants, in making them accessible to the American reader, in simply living up to its name by presenting theology today, this journal has enjoyed twenty significant years. Having followed it since almost the beginning of my seminary days, I am grateful for the job that it has done for me in precisely this way. Very often, I must admit, it has not been the giants but the giants as presented by THEOLOGY TODAY that have informed my thinking.

But as a minister of the church in confrontation with the world, I am increasingly aware of the validity of my friend's remark. Unless I completely misinterpret my own mood and that of many of

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my friends, we are now calling back to the theologians (often in anguish) and saying, "Get on your horses, boys! If the church is to be effective in the world, we need a doctrine of the church which frankly states what it is and what it is here to do. If Christians are to be effective in the world, we need an ethic which speaks to the mid-twentieth century and not to the mid-nineteenth. If the Word is to be spoken effectively to the American of 1964, we need fewer homiletic techniques and a sounder theology of preaching." I am sure there are others, but these are some of the things that I hear said and want to say.

And just here, I think, is a function which THEOLOGY TODAY has increasingly to perform in the next decade or two. I could say that even as it has so successfully interpreted the theologian to the church, it must be just as serious about interpreting the church to the theologian. But such a statement would indicate a perpetuation of the dichotomy between the two. And for too long that has been one of our principal problems in American Protestantism.

So I prefer to say that the future task of THEOLOGY TODAY is to bring the theologian and the church, the wise old man and the angry young man, into such mutual conversation that neither will be able to tell which he is. Even as we must continue to publish the theological interpretation, so we must increase our publication of the anguished cry. They have to hear each other.

We live in an age of dialogue. The dialogue between theology and the church (not the monologue of theology to the church) is what THEOLOGY TODAY must make possible if it is not to become theology yesterday.

Howard G. Hageman
Minister of the North Reformed Church,
Newark, N. J.

The four aims of THEOLOGY TODAY stated in the lead editorial of the first issue (April 1944) bear witness to a twofold intention: to restore Christian theology to its historic place as "Queen of the Sciences," and, while doing so, to take into full account the changing world in which the task must be carried out. In other words, to explore "the life of man in the light of God."

As a charter subscriber, my only consistent (though recently diminished) criticism has been: too much "light of God," too little "life of man."

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To state my point more sharply, let me quote a sentence from the same editorial, to wit, "Christian truth has secular relevancy"; let me adopt this as my "text" by reversing the words thus: "Secular truth has Christian relevancy."

It is this note of "listening to the world" that I have been generally missing in THEOLOGY TODAY. To be sure, the editors as well as most of the contributors have exhibited a convincing concern with politics, the fine arts, the life-giving and death-dealing march of science, etc. But such subjects have nearly always been treated from the standpoint of the church and the Christian faith rather than in their own right and integrity.

This "Christ and . . ." or "The Church and..." approach to secular subjects is indeed prevalent. A survey examining the reading habits of pastors disclosed that a pastor was three times as likely to read a book on the arms race or the migrant worker if the title were "Christ and the Arms Race" or "The Church and the Migrant Worker," even though these were quite inferior works compared with others which did not have such a "Christian come-on" in the title.

THEOLOGY TODAY has certainly not engaged in any "come-ons," but it has been examining the "life of man" almost exclusively through the eyes of "professional Christians," rather than inviting into its precincts laymen-experts in their scholarly disciplines and/or secular callings-some of whom might not even be "professing Christians."

I would like to state at this point, in a confessional mood, how enriching the experience of such "listening" has been for me. As a teacher of Practical Theology, I have sampled, I think, every volume on church administration that has been published, from Washington Gladden to Lowell Ditzen; yet I know of not a one that is worth the paper on which it is printed-at least for my teaching. At the same time I have discovered at least half a dozen books on administration (especially business administration) which speak volumes to the church, if we study them for what they are, that is, with a genuine curiosity about, and comprehension of, their secular context, premises, and purposes, and only then set about evaluating them "from the church's point of view" or "from a Christian point of view! "

By the same token, my grasp of the doctrine of the church has been invigorated far more by Protestant and Catholic, Authority and

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Power in the Free-Church Tradition, and Treasure in Earthen Vessels (all of them authored by men who are sociologists as well as theologians) than it has by a whole library of books re-capping for the nth time such hallowed abstractions as "the Bride of Christ," "the Body of Christ" or even "the people of God!" I should add, for consistency's sake, that insofar as Underwood, Harrison, and Gustafson are theologians as well as sociologists, I would include in my "musts" for nurturing one's doctrine of the church: Small Town in Mass Society, by Vidich and Bensman, Crestwood Heights, by Seeley, Sims, and Loosley, Community Power Structure, by Floyd Hunter, or Images of the American City, by Anselm Strauss.

Thus I believe that THEOLOGY TODAY, along with most of the rest of us "professional Christians," has been too eager to give the world the benefit of the theological norms which we possess (or claim to possess) in the "faith once delivered to the saints" and has thus tended to cut short the world's address to us, without mustering (or permitting the proper secular experts to muster) the empirical data which the theological norms may or may not fit.

What would I like to see in THEOLOGY TODAY during the next twenty years? Let me offer a few admittedly off the top of the head samples.

I would like so see a symposium on death, comprising contributions by a physician, a psychiatrist, an undertaker, yes, and an insurance salesman, as well as (perhaps) an ordinary parish minister, summarized and criticized (but not pre-structured or "moderated") by a theologian.

I would like to see a sampler of "garden variety" sermons (rather than gems by polished pulpiteers) on "The Political Responsibility of Christians" expertly demolished by a political scientist, a working politician (holding elective office), a semanticist, and, last (and maybe least) a theologian.

I would like to see an anthology of contemporary poems on some central theme (loneliness, conformity, "the bomb") commented upon by appropriate "secular" authorities not just on poetry but on the theme itself, with a couple of theologians adding their comment.

In short, I would like to see THEOLOGY TODAY "let the world be the world" far more generously than heretofore, not for the Queen's sake, that is, always "in relation to" and therefore usually "subject to" theological norms, but for the sake of the King who has come to

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claim the world, the whole chaotic world, in which the church (including its theology) is so naively, so guiltily, and so inextricably enmeshed.

John R. Bodo
Professor of Practical Theology,
San Francisco Theological Seminary,
San Anselmo, California.

Doubtless the good thing about THEOLOGY TODAY is that it endeavors to reflect those high qualities by which the contemporary theological renascence seeks to bear witness to the living Word of God. More significant, however, is what's wrong about it. And what is wrong about THEOLOGY TODAY is precisely what is wrong with theology today. What is lacking in THEOLOGY TODAY is the lack of a theological reflection that takes seriously the present situation of man-and does this not out of any archaic or even archaizing zeal for what God did in some increasingly alien past, but from the conviction that if God is and is faithful, he is faithfully at work reconciling this world (not that of the Bible) with himself and healing man's present alienation from himself (and not modern man's alienation from the early Christians).

Obviously it would take more than a critic's critique to indicate even from a distance what remains authentic in the testimony of contemporary theology, let alone to lay bare the false crisis of that same theology to whose formulation THEOLOGY TODAY may legitimately claim to have contributed.

In particular, what to me seem wrong, as well as soteriological anachronisms, are both the biblicism and the ecclesiasticism of THEOLOGY TODAY. Though actually biblical rather than biblicistic, THEOLOGY TODAY nevertheless inclines towards a nostalgic bibliolatry. Nor is THEOLOGY TODAY ecclesiastical in the narrow sense of the term (which is not, either, that of Barth's "ecclesiastical" dogmatics, whose revolutionary echoes have often resounded in these pages). What I mean is that THEOLOGY TODAY, when it has not advocated a "bartholatrous" ecclesiasticism, has (perhaps unwittingly) become the herald of what modern man would be inclined to consider superannuated gesta dei per christianos. (Incidentally, it is significant that even Barth grouped his Princeton lectures under the title Introduction to Evangelical Theology a switch from his ecclesiastical dogmatics ?) But let us come to the facts.

Alas, even a quick consideration of them leaves me wondering

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whether THEOLOGY TODAY means what it says. For example, I read in the editorial for Volume I: "God is encountered in the Bible." Very comforting, indeed. But by whom is God encountered-and not in but through the Bible? And, more importantly, how does THEOLOGY TODAY expect God ever to be encountered by the readers of those "modern men of letters" who, as the editorial for July, 1955, states, "have cut themselves off from literature's chief source of inspiration?" The same editorial adds: "For the first time in the history of English letters since Beowulf and Chaucer, we have a generation of writers who are totally ignorant of the Bible."

Nor can THEOLOGY TODAY expect to be taken seriously when it claims to profess that there is "no greater need than to decipher the meaning of this era," but, unlike Daniel, refuses to interpret the handwriting on the wall. Let us face it, this is a post-Christian era, if only because both religiously and culturally our generation has detached itself from the Bible. Modern man's alienation is thus not only religious but, more significantly, it is also cultural. Not to mention the fact that presumably, according to the editorial I have just quoted, until a generation ago men of letters would have understood the intent, if not wholly the content, of THEOLOGY TODAY, whereas modern writers would not, while the journal still dares to speak for and to today, oblivious to the fact that its feet in culture, modern or otherwise, are of clay.

The real crisis of theology today, as well as its golden opportunity, is the urgent task of defining our present cultural vocation. But instead of seizing the opportunity, we transcribe ancient creeds into modern jargon, we dress up our services with some imported liturgical panoply, and we are impelled (by what?) to kind-of-rejoice, malgré nous, about the new atmosphere of fraternization with the Roman Catholic Church (which by the way does not quite know whether translating the Latin mass into the vernacular is going to do the trick or not). "The fault of the Church," wrote Abraham Kuyper, who was quoted in April 1945, "lay not in the fact that she wrote creeds, but in the fact that she stopped writing creeds," and idolatrously dogmatized or insipidly modernized old ones. And it is foolish to expect that a return to a liturgical mood will reinforce the faith instead of embalming it. For the liturgy did not create but was the expression of the Christian community.

Nor does THEOLOGY TODAY assume its obligation to the modern

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world when it does not smash its own idols and frankly proclaim that what divides us from Roman Catholicism may have been theologically valid in the sixteenth century but is no longer so today. More precisely, our divisions have become anachronistic simply because they are now of a sociological or cultural or merely institutional nature, so that they can be sanctified neither internally by any theological justification or self-justification, nor externally by the mutual congratulations of a dialogue between brethren separated by obsolete dogmas. In an age which has detached itself from its biblical moorings such activities as these bear a perilous resemblance to the pseudo-theological babble that went on while Byzantium was taken.

Likewise, by reading THEOLOGY TODAY I don't always know what on the political, economical, social, and cultural scene goes on in the world, except occasionally. For example, once in a while I may come across a piece of literary criticism or a poem (reprinted!), as if I were being shielded from the outside world-or rather as if I were allowed into it on a leash. And yet, if I am not mistaken, one of the mottoes of THEOLOGY TODAY has been that theology is no longer the Queen of Sciences but their servant. Fine servant, indeed, who acts as if she owned the house in which she serves, who at any rate claims to be entrusted with the keys of the kingdom or with the key with which "to decipher the meaning of this era." At the Protestant Academy of Sedan where he taught in the seventeenth century, Pierre Bayle, too, had declared that theology should not be Queen but the servant of every intellectual quest; he also meant it, however, not only by championing the cause of tolerance, but by defending even atheism.

It is time, as in the New Testament parable of the banquet, that THEOLOGY TODAY opened wide its doors to "the poor and maimed and blind and lame," to that "generation of writers who are totally ignorant of the Bible." Who knows? They might help us better understand that redemption always takes place within the context of a given cultural apprehension of the orders of creation; they might help us better understand "the life of man in the light of God," which light shines through but also in spite of the biblical worldview, through but also in spite of the church, because as at Pentecost the church is where the Holy Spirit descends.

Gabriel Vahanian
Professor of Religion,
Syracuse University,
Syracuse, N. Y.

552 - Which Way Ahead?

If the twentieth anniversary of THEOLOGY TODAY forms an appropriate occasion for reflection on the course it has taken, the most comprehensive question to ask would be whether it has justified its raison d'être. As to the previous question, what its raison d'être is, I have always assumed, from my knowledge of its "onlie begetter," that it was founded to serve the cause of ecumenical Christianity, to which he has been so ardently dedicated. The ecumenical movement has its own official organ in The Ecumenical Review, but the diffusion of ecumenical interest through the churches is a crying need of the movement and one that may be best met by an unofficial organ.

Has THEOLOGY TODAY contributed to this purpose? It is certainly one of the most widely circulated, if not the most widely circulated, theological journals in the English-speaking world. And its contents have been representative of a broad spectrum of ecclesiastical affiliation and theological viewpoint. THEOLOGY TODAY has never been denominational or narrow in its outlook. The ecumenical vision of its founder and first editor insured that it would not become the organ of a theological school or party, and that its pages would always be open to anyone who had a contribution to make to "the life of man in the light of God."

Promise and performance, however, are two different things. As I look back over the files of THEOLOGY TODAY, I am inclined to think that the role it has played has been on the whole reflective and critical, rather than constructive or creative. This reflects the character of American theology as a whole; for water cannot rise higher than its source. American theology resembles American foreign policy in that it tends to react to movements originating in continental Europe. America has shown no theological initiative during the present century except in the field of social ethics. Yet the initiative in this field has been hampered by the lack of a solid theological foundation, which is still being sought-and sought in Germany. Does the extraordinary deference of American theology to German sources (notably to the three "B"s-Barth, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer) bespeak an inner immaturity or a recognition of the fact that the Germans still hold the initiative theologically?

There is no doubt that the German theological scene (in which the present writer had recently the opportunity to spend a semester)

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is incomparably livelier than the American, and this owes not a little to the different character of their theological journals, which are frankly organs of theological schools. This is not necessarily a desirable thing for this country; it may be that the more amorphous character of our theological journals helps to protect us from theological fanaticism, just as the amorphous character of our political parties protects us from political fanaticism. But there is no doubt that the German situation makes for keener discussion. It is noticeable that even when we have a mild theological sensation over here ("The Death of God"-"Religion less Christianity"-"Honest to God"), it is made with imported German fireworks. Is this an aspect of our curious American preference for the "imported," and, if so, is there not an element of irresponsibility about it? Are there no theological themes that are indigenous to the American situation and that can be articulated in a native American idiom?

What I sometimes fear is that the more reactionary trends in American theology may gain the ascendancy simply through their more direct relevance to the theological problems that are exercising the American churches at the grass roots, while the others may fail because of their persistent habit of reaction to problems, which, though vastly more sophisticated, are remote both in space and in time.

This is not a plea for theological isolationalism, but only for a greater measure of theological responsibility.

My wish for THEOLOGY TODAY, as it starts on its third decade, is that, without ceasing to be ecumenical-or rather, in order to become truly ecumenical, it should become more sensitive to theological issues which arise out of the American situation, and thus become more relevant to it.

George S. Hendry
Professor of Theology,
Princeton Theological Seminary.