504 - The Power To Be Human

The Power To Be Human
By Charles C. West
270 pp. New York, Macmillan, 1971. $7.95.

Charles West stands in a unique position among American theologians writing in the field of ethics. His conversation partners are mainly within the ecumenical movement, though the book limits its context almost completely to Protestant writings. His experience in the "third world," in the World Council of Churches, and in other situations with Marxists, church leaders, and theologians whose work is often not studied by some of the rest of us, brings a broad scope to this work. He is biblically and theologically oriented, and thus his categories of thought maintain the vitality of confessional theology. He clearly has the political, social, cultural, and religious crises of our time in his view. The church continues to be important in his thought, and his years of the study of Marxism and its philosophical milieu add a dimension to his argument that others often neglect.

In a time when much writing in Christian ethics is preoccupied with how we can proceed to resolve particular moral problems, it is stimulating to read an American author who wishes to provide a basic theological orientation for the action of the churches and Christians. The selection of this task also sets the limits of the book; readers will not find intensive discussions of very concrete issues other than that of revolution. Even that concern is shaped here in broader theological outlines than some persons will find useful.

The first part picks up West's previous provocative interpretation of the basic conflict in the 1966 Geneva Conference, that between technological humanists and revolutionary humanists. Each side is discussed with reference both to its representatives at that conference and to its historical, philosophical, and theological background. This sets the scene for the more constructive second part of the book, in which the author develops a position which he believes avoids the mistakes of each. The range of materials discussed in the first part is extensive: Hume, Bentham, Denis Munby, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger, Marx, Garaudy, Bloch, Kolakowski, Camus, and others. In the process West is building up his case for the importance of his three basic questions: "How can truth be known objectively, and at the same time drive and inspire men to moral action?" "In what power can we trust to bring

505 - The Power To Be Human

forth a meaningful future?" And, "What is the form of a truly human life?" (p. 9).

West finds the keys to his answers to each of his questions within the scripture, and in each case he practices exegesis, converses with other theologians-and to some extent with philosophers--and delineates his own answers on theological grounds. At the heart of the development of each is the idea of metanoia; it is appropriate that the whole second part of the book has this as its title. Two quotations will indicate what he sees the constructive theological task to be. "The task before us then, as a Christian community, is to rediscover the form of our own faith: the style of our living relation to the Christ who, in and beyond the judgments and powers of the world, controls the future of us all, and by the power of whose death and resurrection we may be remade for his use and purposes." "The theologian is an analyst of the human situation, whose very analysis includes the metanoia, the repentance and new direction, required of every man by God, because of the bias, the self-interest, the injustice, in short the sin, of his position. Theological analysis seeks, in cooperation, and also somewhat at odds, with every secular discipline, the place of God's confrontation with man in the structures and problems of the human situation. It is dialogue about man and his future, about the world and its hope. It is repentance that also challenges and promises" (p. 177, pp. 177-8).

West's first question, that of knowledge, presents the familiar claim that there is a biblical way of knowing, that is, "knowledge as commitment." He seeks to support his view with insights from Polanyi and Kuhn, with discussions of physics and "social science" (a misnomer for the materials used). But basically the position is that of Karl Barth, it seems to me. We know in a covenant relation. What is known is the "for-ness" of God in our covenant relationship with him. God's being is event rather than static structure; he is the revealer in his gracious freedom; and our history is drawn into the event of God by his Spirit. West's chapter on this knotty issue, while taking into account certain forms of atheism, does not seek to answer criticisms made of the point of view by epistemologists . Truth, he says, "is an historical relation."

The question of the power in whom we can trust and hope follows from this. Both the technological and the revolutionary humanists trust in the power of man. But, biblically, one knows the power of God, made perfect in weakness, God the sovereign authority in servant form, and this leads to free, creative action in the transformation of the world. This power has the effect of relativizing all human powers and thus opens man to self-criticism and to participation in many forms of power. But it is more than a relativizing power; the God of scripture requires

506 - The Power To Be Human

the transformation of both the self and the enemy. It is this belief, West acknowledges, which is so irrational to non-Christians, even those whose views of the world overlap the effects of Christian faith in many ways. It is this which determines differences in hopes, in attitudes of forgiveness, in the capacities for internal freedom to be flexible, and others that mark Christian faith from other views.

The third question, the meaning of the human, is answered also in biblical theological terms, executed in an interesting dialogue he sets up between the provocative Richard Shaull and Bonhoeffer. "The question of what it means to be human, therefore, is the question of God's redefinition of our self-understanding and his redirection of our freedom. This redefinition and redirection is the heart of what happened in Jesus Christ" (p. 243). Man, divided and self-justifying, is forgiven. He is liberated in the promise of a new relation.

If the consequences of a theology are those of the tests of its validity, we need next another type of writing from West, namely one that shows how this theology, a "secular theology," enables him and the church to act in relation to the hard stuff of particular social and moral decisions. In terms I have previously used, West provides a perspective for Christian moral action, its basic intentionality, and some of the consequent dispositions. But we do not yet see the precise impact of it as one engages in conversation with other moral agents. There is clearly openness to the secular-but how do we proceed to find our way in that openness? I find that a great deal of continental theology, and World Council of Churches theology, is deeply concerned to develop a way to engage in discourse and action with those outside of the Christian community, and yet, almost ironically, its concern to have a biblical foundation for this authorization makes discourse difficult. The question of the meaning of the human, for example, does not arise in theological terms when one is discussing with genetic experimenters, or with social planners. Because of this, the theologian has to enter into a conversation in which questions are asked in their terms, and answers must be given in terms meaningful to them without violating theological integrity. This requires a different sort of discourse than the language (though not the intention) West's book provides, a discourse with its own perils and problems. But without West and others keeping the theological dimensions alive, the other discourse could atrophy into the flatest sort of casuistry.

James M. Gustafson
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut