292 - Communism and the Theologians: Study of an Encounter

Communism and the Theologians:
Study of an Encounter
By Charles C. West
399 pp. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1958. $6.00

Of making of Christian books on Communism there is no end; and even during that last few years when the phenomenon of domestic Communism has lost both appeal and power they have continued, most of them ephemeral, some of them plain mischievous.

This is one of the two or three direct discussions of Communism which have real and abiding value. It may well be the most indispensable of them all. For it is not simply an "occasional" book, written to fill a slot in a publisher's catalogue or to meet the ad hoc needs of curious (in the sense of enquiring) Christians. It is the deposit of a personal encounter stretching over many years, in which a man of profound Christian sensitivity has drawn upon the best resources contemporary theology could provide to help him and those with whom he worked perform the work of God, in both thought and life, in the very presence of a Communism potent both in theory and practice.

Charles West has lived about as close up to the Communist phenomenon both in Asia and in Europe as any living man-close enough is brotherly identification to understand those whose minds and bodies have been marked by the encounter, yet with sufficient detachment to weigh the events of our time in the scales of a steady Christian judgment. And he has matured this judgment by sitting at the feet of the most informative Protestant theologians of our time, testing the validity and adequacy of their witness not only by their own preferred criteria but by their capacity to speak to the human and contemporary condition as it is both shaped and tried by Marxist thought and Communist pressure and persecution.

The result is a discussion of Brunner and Hromadka, of Tillich and

293 - Communism and the Theologians: Study of an Encounter

Berdyaev, of Niebuhr and Barth which is informed by his own profound sense of personal and intellectual indebtedness to the theological work which they represent, and sharpened by a critical concern for their contemporary relevance which is rigorous without being censorious, remorseless without being impertinent. And in addition to a full and documented account of these massive representatives of the contemporary Church, the book is filled out by reference to the vast literature of the encounter both at the theoretical level and at the level of personal engagement and personal anguish.

The book which issues from all this is in matter a transcript of the contemporary theological debate as it concerns the deepest issues of our time; and in manner a model of care and thoroughness. It may be that the close-knit bulk of it will mean that for the most part it will be a resource book for teachers rather than a tract for the times, though the intrinsic interest of the material may, hopefully, win for it a wider readership. There has been some complaint about the style: but it is in fact well suited to the material, with a strong thrust and power.

Brunner probably fares worst of those familiar figures who come in for particular attention. He is charged with ideological bias identical but opposite to that which affects Hromadka, but with infinitely less excuse. West's judgment on Paul Tillich is of particular interest in view of the public discussion of Tillich which is the order of the day. Tillich "never quite came to grips with the kind of revolution which Communism is. His categories did not provide for it" (p. 109).

"In the long run Tillich remains enclosed in his own ontological system and the encounter which he has with such a movement outside this system as Marxism, is encounter with a Marxism which has been religiously re-explained so that it is no longer true to itself" (P. 111).

It is on Niebuhr and on Barth that the author's attention fixes finally; not only because he clearly finds their theological constructions most worthy of attention on their own massive merits, but because in their fashions they speak most pointedly to the kind of issues which Communism poses. But even Niebuhr is too preoccupied with the problems of power to give useful guidance to Christian communities in the more characteristic situation of powerlessness; while Barth is innocent of any real understanding of those political and economic dynamics which constitute certainly one ingredient of Christian judgment at the political economic level. Yet it is the dogmatic realism of Barth which has provided those who learned from him with a frame of faith in which to "place" the Communist phenomenon.

Alexander Miller
Stanford University
Stanford, California