447 - The Living Truth

The Living Truth
By Hugh T. Kerr

WE HAVE heard it so often, it must be true: "The age of theological giants is long gone, and no one would dare these days to write a summa." But the other day, as I gazed idly at a sagging bookshelf, four hefty volumes side by side caught my editorial eye. They were Hans Küng's On Being a Christian (1976, 720 pp.) and Does God Exist? (1980, 839 pp.) with Edward Schillebeeckx's Jesus, An Experiment in Christology (1979, 735 pp.) and Christ, The Experience of Jesus as Lord (1980, 925 pp.).

Surely these make a weighty theological foursome simply as to size and subject matter. When we also add up the mostly laudatory reviews which these books have generally received, the case for current theological substance becomes almost persuasive. No doubt four books, no matter how massive, do not a theological renaissance make. But, speaking editorially, we may hazard that books such as these suggest two promising, inter-related trends worth watching.

I

Let us note, to begin with, that the two authors are well-known European Catholics with distinct Vatican II trademarks identified with their church as well as their academic associations. Beyond this, they represent the fresh excitement among many Catholic scholars in rediscovering the normative truth of the Scriptures and the living and self-renewing tradition of the church. So they combine historical classicism with contemporary questioning, and they are committed to the theological task of correlating the two.

Can such an evaluation suggest some thing of more general theological application? It would be invidious to cast Catholics against Protestants or vice versa on this basis, but my own impression is that the creative way forward for both church and academe must be of this sort. It must take the tradition with utter seriousness while moving into today

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with expectation and a sense of enthusiasm. It may well be that Catholics, at least some, are more providentially poised to do this than those Protestants, at least some, who break away from the past to launch out in search of new norms and untried truth. If it is true, as James I. McCord has put it, that Protestantism today suffers from theological amnesia, then the road ahead will be gloomy indeed if we do not recover our biblical and theological memory.

But there is another editorial observation that can be ventured. If we look at Küng's Does God Exist? alongside Schillebeeckx's Christ, two different but parallel approaches to truth become apparent. The one asks Pilate's question "What is truth?" and the other answers, as it were, in the subtitle, "The Experience of Jesus as Lord." The philosophical-existential question, for the Christian believer, must be addressed through the biblical-experiential reality of the Christ figure.

If Pilate's enigmatic query, which we all ask at one time or another, questions even the possibility of knowing truth or the existence of God, the response of Christian faith seeks to personalize the quest by pointing to the One who affirmed, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." That is not to put Küng and Schillebeeckx on opposite sides, for the former's On Being a Christian and the latter's Jesus, with its impressive critical apparatus, reverse the typology of philosophical questioning and experiential assurance. The issue goes beyond particular thinkers or current best-sellers. An illustration may help.

II

The "great south" stained glass window of the Princeton University Chapel bears the theme "Christ the Truth," and the motivating text for the whole window, chiseled in stone beneath, reads "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).

The other three great, or compass windows also picture Christ as the central figure, as martyr, as sacrificial love, and as the source of eternal life. But the south window, symbolically the warm or Gospel side, relates the biblical- Christian tradition to the academic search for truth. So, surrounding the Christ are such representatives as Alcuin, John of Salisbury, Erasmus, John Witherspoon (this is Princeton, after all), as well as numerous Christian saints and an emblematic grouping of the seven liberal arts (the trivium and quadrivium of medieval learning), corresponding, by the way, with the seven gifts of the Spirit in the overhead rose.

There is a sub-theme to the window that deserves special attention. Below the central Christ figure, there are three small panels. The first is of Pilate, on the left, with Thomas, the third figure, on the right. Pilate, we can imagine, is asking "What is truth?" and doubting Thomas, not having recognized truth when he saw it, is just beginning to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Between the two is the Emmaus Christ, and the inscription in glass reads "Via et veritas et vita" (John 14:6).

We must hasten to note that the two figures are not set over against

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each other as if one were right and the other wrong. The perennial, ultimate question about truth can never be side-stepped by appealing to experience, no matter how vivid or convictional. Otherwise there would be no classroom building next to the chapel. Experience, as Schillebeeckx is at great pains to demonstrate, involves encounter and revelation, not merely personal assurance or emotional afflatus. And Küng's question about God's existence should remind us that he has already written extensively on what it means to be a Christian believer.

As a matter of fact, the position of the truth window in the University Chapel is deliberately meant to suggest that the Christ has been and continues to be the inspiration for literature, philosophy, poetry, and science, as the subsequent sequence of the clerestory windows illustrates.

Although set in neo-gothic patterns that may seem strange for us today, "Christ the Truth" still compels our intellectual and spiritual allegiance. For he is not only the way, but the way to truth and to life.

III

From the Christian perspective, the living truth finds its ultimate consummation as incarnate and personalized. That is why the person of the believer, as of the theologian, can spell the difference between remote abstractions and vital experience.

Several articles and special features in this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY relate to this theme of the living truth. This is especially apparent in the poetry section, larger than usual, for here the appeal comes from the person of the poet to the experience of the reader of the poem.

We hope in future issues of the journal to speak at greater length on the implications of the person of the theologian.