218 - Protestant Thought and Natural Science

Protestant Thought and Natural Science
By John Dillenberger
310 pp. Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1960. $4.50.

The author's main contention is that, by and large, existing books on the conflicts between theology and science have been written either by those who had little regard for theology, or by those who were satisfied to vindicate religious views of their own which may have had little if anything to do with Christianity. As a result, the real issues, those which actually have confronted Protestant thought throughout the ages, have mostly been ignored down to this day. The task at hand, then, is to penetrate behind those concrete issues with a view to detecting the problems underlying them, and set the same into their proper historical perspective. This task must remain a limited one, that of considering the issues which have been unrecognized or pushed aside; not that of dictating the solutions. Answers are not to be expected from this book, whose only positive conclusion is that it is particularly important to work slowly and carefully.

Dillenberger's study should be approached in the awareness of this declared strategy. What we have here is a critical interpretation of the conversation which has been going on between Protestant thought and the natural sciences in the course of a five hundred year debate. As the same progresses, the representative men dialectically considered are increasingly epitomized as a single individual, namely, the author himself, who lives on and keeps on learning. And this is culture at its best. No wonder the concrete issues and the fundamental problems that underlie them are not spelled out at the outset, or in any way summarized. The only thing the reader can do is to plow his way through the text and allow the development to bear its own witness. No short cut is provided. Anyone who would take Dillenberger to task for not having

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worked out the expected systematic type of exposition so familiar to theologians, would merely stand exposed as having completely misunderstood both the author and his book.

While no answer is given nor final solution offered, a great deal may yet be learned as the reading proceeds, helped along by the ease and fluency of the historical narrative and the reward of striking formulations-a harvest of "quotes" for filing cards. Again and again, deep and even shrewd insights find adequate expression: "Luther and Calvin interpreted the Bible in respect to scientific matters in such a way as to make possible the acceptance of new theories" (p. 32). "The Protestant Aristotelian Scholasticism … came to classical expression at the precise time when the new science received its first genuine confirmation in the work of Kepler and Galileo" (p. 93). "Nietzsche, in looking at the Christianity of his day, declared that God was dead; he could have said the same of man" (p. 263). The author excels in the art of condensation. His presentation of Drummond, for instance, is a gem. His introductions to Barth and Tillich are luminous. His section on contemporary physics reveals a remarkable knowledge and faculty of evaluating essentials. The work as a whole bears witness to real competence and to a high degree of intellectual honesty. Even when Dillenberger's erudition betrays on his part a scepticism akin to what Albert Schweitzer has called, "this pessimistic result of knowledge," there comes to mind Luther's "God help me, I cannot otherwise."

Freely granting the relevance of the author's admonition to be wise and henceforth work with patience and circumspection, were it only for the sake of avoiding former mistakes, the Christian reader is likely to close the book with a heavy heart. Not only has any thought of possible recourse to natural theology faded away, but so has the very idea of what used to be known as apologetics. And yet, the necessity for theology not to speak as if nothing had ever happened in the realm of science, we have always with us. Accordingly, both Barth and Tillich-to whom due tribute is otherwise paid-are shown to have gone to dangerous extremes by so separating the spheres of theology and science as to disregard the knowledge of the world contributed by natural science. While it is true that what happens in science cannot become normative for the essential content of theology, and still less, imply that this essential content has been affected by scientific happenings, the fact remains nevertheless that "the history of science does mean that the old ways of putting things are no longer viable" (p. 290). Should one then, following Bultmann, interpret Cross and Resurrection to be synonymous with what happens when the Word is preached, and assume that it is inappropriate to ask what lies behind such eventfulness? Dillenberger seems to lean in that direc-

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tion when he states in his final page: "Resurrection stands for the reality of the new life which is known in the present, and which in Christ is trusted for the future. But the symbols for expressing this are less adequate in our culture than in certain other periods of history." It may be so. But then, the moment the word "resurrection" is turned into a mere symbol, not only has theology allowed natural science to become normative, but by the same token it has allowed its own essential content to be adulterated beyond recognition. The clue to this situation may be found on page 268, where "the more conservative theologians" are taken to task for proceeding as if science did not exist; or as if the new science now once again made all things possible: "They speak of the Resurrection in objective terms," the author explains; then he adds, "In that direction lies the danger of a new orthodoxy." This admittedly is a hard saying, inasmuch as it suggests the illusory character of the genuinely extant Reality of the invading Presence of Him whom the disciples actually saw. Nay, apostolic Christianity is at stake in this issue of objectivity. Both historically and theologically, the Gospel message proceeds from it. In the words of Paul, "if Christ be not risen [objectively speaking, that is], then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." Never did Paul lose sight of the objective character of the Resurrection. Neither did Origen, Jerome notwithstanding. Neither did his eminent disciples, from Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa down to Bishop Westcott. These giants, incidentally, were neither "suspicious of theology" nor "interested in a religion which had lost its classical form"-to use Dillenberger's own phrases. They represented the historic faith of the Church in a spirit of scholarly discipline. They were the true pioneers in the field now under consideration. What is at stake, ultimately, is the author's main contention as stated in the opening sentence of the present review.

We are now in a position to detect the element which may have deceived the author as he reached the contemporary scene. As we do so, we readily grant that the coincidence involved absolves him to a large degree, for the deceptive element under consideration has become a major source of disturbance in our ways of thinking. To put the matter briefly, we are increasingly inclined to allow our imagination to hinder our intellect. Whatever we cannot mentally make pictures of, we feel inclined to pronounce inconceivable. Whereupon we proceed to reduce mysteries to sets of pictures accessible to our sense experience-that is, to advocate demythologizing, just because we otherwise cannot satisfy our anthropomorphic ways. As Dillenberger puts it in minimum terms, a more imaginative use of traditional rational language becomes essential to us (p. 290).

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Granting the extreme possibility that the activities of nature may be illusory, and what we call "reality" but a subjective geometry which we have discovered in ourselves, natural scientists nevertheless continue to work on the assumption that there is something there. An irreducible and stubborn sense of objectivity carries them along. Their steadfast quest is bent upon the use of their intellect. This is why they become so wary of models likely to be confused with pictures of "reality," that henceforth they restrict the use of the word "model" to a set of mathematical symbols. In other words, they become increasingly aware of our human propensity to substitute "imaginable" for "conceivable," and vice versa. As they further come to see it, the correspondence or correlation of our concepts and our sensations becomes all the more indirect as purer mathematical models are devised. Yet it is this very remoteness which allows a closer, more adequate approximation of this world. It therefore would never occur to a genuine scientist to pronounce reality inconceivable merely because it does not prove "picturable," to use a term coined in this connection by Dirac in The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Neither would it occur to him to deny objectivity to that reality on the ground that it is not imaginable. Contrast now the frame of mind of an existentialist theologian who reduces such mysteries as that of the Resurrection to the mythical, on the ground that our apprehension of them does not square with the ways of anthropomorphic picture making. Even as he deigns continue to use traditional language, provided the same be transposed in terms of "meaningful symbols" accessible to his subjectivity, does not such a condescendent defeatism on his part provide an important clue to the plight of Protestant theology today?

Because he ultimately leans in the direction of the existentialist symbolism associated with the name of Bultmann, Dillenberger has allowed his scholarly presentation to grind to a halt amid unbearable tensions. His timely warning to us all to work slowly and carefully would prove still more compelling if it did not betray signs of a creeping paralysis.

Emile Cailliet
Cape May, New Jersey