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The Future Of Christian Anthropology
By Seward Hiltner

THESIS: The time is decisively ripe for the aggressive presentation of a perspective on Christian anthropology that differs, in significant respects, from every anthropological point of view now widely held or advocated. Stated negatively, the thesis finds every widely held point of view in Christian anthropology to be misleading because of its principally compensatory intent, resulting at best in one-sidedness and at worst in downright distortion.

SINCE the modern form of the ecumenical movement began to take shape a half century ago, it has considered, with a mixture of Christian charity and confessional or nationalistic imperialism, a wide range of issues. These have centered in the church, and in such derivative issues as the ministry, the Council's creedal basis, and the relation of churches to culture. From a trinitarian point of view, the controversies have centered so far in Christiology, but the scene has now begun to shift to the Holy Spirit. Yet amid all the discussion of both the central and the more detailed issues there has been virtually no voiced disagreement about the Christian view of the fundamental nature of man, nor even of the categories used to discuss that nature. Indeed one of the ecumenical reports of some years ago noted explicitly that anthropology was one fortunate area where universal agreement already existed.

This seemingly catholic unanimity on Christian anthropology was reiterated at the New Delhi conference of 1961:

" In Jesus Christ, God has shown man his true nature and destiny. Through faith in Christ men receive power to become the sons of God. Christ has taken our manhood into God and 'our real life is

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hid with Christ in God.' So we look forward with eager longing to his glorious consummation of all things, when we shall share the fullness of the life of God. Nothing less than this can be the measure of what it means to be human, the fullness of the stature of Christ."

The statement then proceeds to discuss social solidarity, man's responsibility in relation to his fellow man, and man's responsible relation to nature.

The quoted statement, at a casual glance, looks like a statement of anthropology. But even a brief analysis shows that the promise of its first sentence, to say something about both man's nature and his destiny, is not fulfilled in what follows. Every subsequent sentence is about man's destiny; and indeed it is finally asserted that the destiny defines the true nature, in the sense of the ideal nature. The premise behind such statements, whatever their validity, is positivistic. Having affirmed man's destiny in Christocentric terms, which remain not analyzed and unexegeted, the assumption is that nothing else need be said about man's nature. The fact that few Christians would object to the actual content of what is said in this paragraph, considered as affirming what it affirms, obscures both the positivism and the clichés.

An equally curious fact appears in the New Delhi report focused on service. In it is to be found a good deal of sensible discussion of science and technology, and of the Christian person as living in a world of culture; but not a word is said about any of these things in relation to man's nature. Whereas the previous statement assumed agreement on Christian anthropology, and cemented it with platitudes, the latter statement simply assumes agreement with no articulation.

I

In suggesting that the extent of this agreement on anthropology is exaggerated and even, at times, " phony," I cannot of course deny that something about it is true. Since the advent of Barth and Brunner on the European scene, and of Reinhold Niebuhr in this country, Christian opinion did in fact coalesce concerning some aspects of man's nature. Simple forms of optimism disappeared. Sin as continuing fact was properly re-affirmed. The desperate nature of man's condition was articulated. And, especially with the help of biblical theologians, a good many of the moralistic and legalistic

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accretions to Christian anthropology were resolutely cut away. So far as these agreements go, they are good, and they are important.

Yet despite their importance, those battles and those victories belong to a different war from the one in which we are now engaged. Points such as those mentioned illustratively were very important correctives, signs pointing truly away from humanistic, or legalistic, or rationalistic distortions of Christian anthropology. But they were more compensatory than constructive. Reinhold Niebuhr's blasting of simple liberalism, rationalism, scientism, mysticism, legal ism, and moralism was carried out magnificently, and it had to be done. But his statement of a constructive position, even on the nature of man, was made with a very still and very small voice that did not carry far beyond the need to be dialectical instead of simple minded. What he has told us must not become central in Christian anthropology is, with some exceptions, correct. But even he, the most penetrating student of this subject, has very little to say about constructing an adequate Christian anthropology apart from polemical purposes.

The great and beneficent influence of Niebuhr, and the fact that be really was right about the many cancers that had attached them selves to Christian anthropology, has obscured what has really happened afterwards, as against what should have happened and what still must happen. Metaphorically speaking, what actually happened was like a couple of Americans, let us say, meeting in Zanzibar or Madagascar. With accumulating zest, they discover in succession that, having both been born in Texas, they both dislike New Yorkers, they share an antipathy to the U. S. State Department's foreign representatives, they agree on the threat posed by American business men who are lily-livered enough to let their wives talk them into sharing their foreign trips, and so on through several items of jointly blissful antipathy. Of the positive basis of mutuality there is no sign. Their sense of togetherness has grown apace, and they are under the illusion that they share nearly every idea that is important; yet all they have done is to disclose mutually agreeable prejudices. The present state of Christian anthropology, ecumenically speaking, is too close to this analogy for comfort. And the presence of an aggressive Marxian anthropology tends, after a fashion, to continue the illusion, as if being against it were in itself a constructive Christian anthropology.

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It is high time some one said right out loud that this particular king is naked. Granted that he had stolen his previous garments, which did not fit anyhow, and that these had to be stripped off to see what he was like-the gain is far too minor if every one professes to admire the king's sartorial taste while the poor fellow himself knows quite well that he hasn't a thing to wear.

II

Although the ecumenical movement does not seem to have discovered it, there are in fact several aspirants to the theological honor of putting Christian anthropology in its place. The world's best known theologian, Karl Barth, is quite clear that anthropology is not a proper major category for Christian theology. The substance of what Barth says about man cannot be separated from the studiedly derivative method he follows in saying it. Thus he may tilt with any theologian defiant enough to include anthropology as one of his main categories, but without the necessity of becoming specific about man. Against those theologians who, like himself, use anthropology only as a series of derivative items, he may contend, or even agree, but without the necessity of making basic statements on anthropology. The result is not that Barth is devoid of an anthropology, but rather that the structure of his theology makes it unnecessary for him to think systematically about anthropology; and, therefore, that his anthropology has not been criticized as a whole, and has certainly not been articulated constructively.

My statement is intended to be anti-Barth but not, I trust, simply anti-Barth. With the central service he is still performing for Christian theology-exploring what it means to make Christ central about absolutely everything I have great sympathy and much theological appreciation. But I think his essentially Kantian philosophical premises, unacknowledged as they mostly are, have misled him into his excision of anthropology as a proper main category of Christian theology. His point is that what we know, from revelation and the word in Jesus Christ, is (in Kantian language) the one way in which phenomena are vitally or critically impinged on by noumena; and that, therefore, the question of the nature of the phenomena, in themselves, is in itself misleading, whatever answer may be given to it. What Barth wants to protect, above all else, and in my judgment quite rightly, is that it is not the business of Christian theology to

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consider man apart from the context of his creaturely and sinful relationship to God, and that it is the business of Christian theology to study what God has revealed to be man's need and the actions God has already taken to meet that need. If Barth were to put the matter philosophically, and I wish he would, he could say correctly that a Christian consideration of man and his nature apart from the context of his relationship to God is a straight abstraction from the Christian point of view, and is not to be confused with the concrete ness that revelation is about. Like Whitehead, he is, on this point, actually concerned with the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. But unlike Whitehead, and unfortunately so, he seems to conclude that the peril may be averted by not giving a name or acknowledging a category. As any social work agency could tell Barth, the perils of a child's growing up, whether he is legitimate or otherwise, can hardly be averted by withholding a name until the child is old enough to choose a nice one for himself.

At least on a basis of categories, of looking directly at Christian anthropology and not just at a series of discrete and purely derivative phenomena, Emil Brunner offers more structural assistance to the future of Christian anthropology. Like Barth, he assumes correctly that anthropological statements made outside the context of man's relationship to God are abstractions, and are not proper to Christian theology. Also like Barth and rather more explicitly, he regards the understandings about man that emerge from non-theological disciplines as "lower" than those emerging from Christian theology but as important in their own context. Since a statement like this is patronizing unless it is followed by analysis of the sense in which other contexts may be important, we may be justified in concluding that Brunner too is influenced by a Germanic culture, and an exaggerated hierarchical sense, as well as by the Christian revelation.

The dynamic and constructive aspect of Brunner's thought about man's nature, that must find its way into any adequate Christian anthropology, is its "personalism," its emphasis on relationship, responsibility, encounter, love, community, and related notions. Not only does this make a separate existentialism unnecessary by introducing existential dimensions from the start. It also provides bridges between individual and community on the horizontal level that have kinship with the bridges between God and man at the vertical level, yet without confusing the two kinds of relationships.

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It provides, therefore, the first basic step from the Christian con textual point, that man may be considered concretely only in relation to God, in the direction of specifying man's and men's nature and need, always within that acknowledged context.

But Brunner, in effect, stops here so far as Christian anthropology is concerned, despite his further and helpful movement into ethics. Although his personalistic approach to theology is mostly realistic except in regard to marriage, where romanticism still prevails, his lack of specificity at the anthropological level enables him to be invoked, no doubt to his horror, by the "Follow the Gleam" crowd on the one side and by aggressive evangelistic exploiters on the other. If Brunner really took seriously the concreteness within personalistic material that may begin from other contexts, but which may, according to his own theory, also be viewed from within a Christian con text, he might not only ward off these distortions of his intention but also make a much greater contribution to constructive Christian anthropology than has thus far appeared.

Paul Tillich is correct in asserting not only that contributions from scientific and other partial contexts about the nature of man need to be discriminatingly included in Christian anthropology but also that this is, admittedly or not, already being done by all theologians. His own forthrightness in the procedure would better serve the future of Christian anthropology if he did not insist that all such contributions must first be filtered through philosophy to a master discipline of "systematic theology," after which purification rites they eventually lead, by correlational osmosis, to a superior Christian anthropology. Tillich's view of anthropology unintentionally distorts anthropology by its neglect of the concrete findings from other contexts while rightly asserting the determinative significance of the theological context.

So far as Christian anthropology is concerned, Dietrich Bonhoeffer seems to offer a mood and a stance but not content. Like Barth, he is Christocentric, but in a free-swinging way. While Barth takes measured steps around the room in geometric pattern, Bonhoeffer prances and leaps. In alleging that Jesus Christ is "real man," he is really stating a case about where perception should focus-toward Christ and not toward man's insides. Yet Bonhoeffer does not rule out the need for a Christian anthropology so long as it begins by looking at Christ as real man. The fragmentary and

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unsystematic character of his thought leaves us here, and means that, while Bonhoeffer may stimulate a Christian anthropology, it is not possible to derive one solely from his published writings.

In stopping the Parade of Great Modern Theological Minds at this point, I do not imply that those named exhaust the subject and the contributions from which an adequate anthropology may proceed. Indeed some seeds are to be found in some sons of the prophets that are obscure in the giants. But since this essay is in tended, finally, to get at constructive statement, and not necessarily to be fair to everybody, we arrest the discussion of the views of others at this point.

III

A statement about man can be part of a Christian anthropology only if it declares or implies that his concrete nature lies in his relationship to God, and to the attendant declarations of Christian revelation. Statements about man's nature, apart from this context, explicit or implicit, are by no means necessarily false when seen within their own contexts. But from the Christian point of view, they are literally abstract-torn out-until and unless they are examined from within the Christian context.

There is no such thing as looking at man in and of himself with such alleged objectivity that existence of some particular context may be denied. Every statement about man implies some context. To allege that man is an animal, or a hedonic animal, or an organism, or a social animal, implies some context that makes the statement meaningful. These statements are all true within their proper contexts. But trying to lift any of them bodily into a Christian anthropology, without acknowledgment of the contextual difference, distorts and falsifies. By the same token, a refusal by theologians to examine their truth or significance because they are initially set within another kind of context is a misunderstanding of the problem.

From the point of view of Christian theology, looking at man apart from the divine-human context is an abstraction and not in itself a true Christian anthropology, even though it may be of the very greatest importance to take some looks at man from within other contexts. The corollary of this point is, as Calvin made clear at the beginning of the Institutes, that an alleged look at God, outside the divine-human Christian context, is also an abstraction. Man

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knows nothing about God in himself, in contexts that exclude man entirely. What he does know, through revelation however defined, is something about the God in the God-man relationship. Statements about God outside that context are purely speculative, even if they are biblical quotations.

If we take these assertions seriously, there is no escape from the conclusion that Christian theology may not properly be defined simply as a "study of God," and that Christian anthropology may not be simply stated as a "study of man." Christian theology is the study of God in the context of God's creative, redemptive, etc., relationship to man. And Christian anthropology is the study of man in the context of man's creaturely, sinful, etc., relationship to God. The full concrete subject matter of theology is, therefore, the relationship that obtains between God and man. Statements about God alone or man alone abstract from that total concreteness. Here the Bible, but not necessarily its interpreters, is our greatest resource.

Human reflective thought, well illustrated by the existentialist explosion in our own time, has always been suspicious of abstractions not recognized as such. Yet the best thought, theological and other wise, has never drawn the absurd conclusion that, because one may be tempted to forget that his abstraction is abstract, therefore he should indulge in no abstractions at all. It is the capacity to pick out from the whole of the concrete, something for special study and attention that has made possible not only the rise of science but also such basically human capacities as speech and art. The patient with a severely injured brain cannot distinguish the pencil ness that is common to the concrete red pencil and the concrete yellow pencil. Yet pencil ness is an abstraction. We cannot do without abstractions. But any abstraction, however valuable or necessary, contains a perspective, acknowledged or not. It has some kind of slant or bias.

The focal test about whether an anthropology is Christian is, there fore, contextual. If it approaches the relationship that God has created between himself and man as the concrete reality, then such statements as are focused, abstractly, around man within that context constitute a proper Christian anthropology, provided of course the content of the statements is consistent with the over-all revelation about God and man, as found within the Bible but not necessarily in accord with every biblical interpreter. However such statements may be structured or organized within a theological system, they may

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lay claim to being just as indigenous to Christian thought as do statements about God. A set principle or organization is not determined by the critical factor of context. Various such principles are possible and may be equally effective in clarifying the Christian message. Imperialism concerning one such structure is suspect. It may be possible, as Barth demonstrates, to have a Christian theology, including at least some Christian statements about man (in the concrete God-man relationship), without a major structural category of anthropology. But in view of the whole history of Christian thought, such a structure seems, while perhaps useful for certain polemical and compensatory purposes, tempted with artificiality. But the denigration, on the other hand, of the value of a major category of anthropology-or of the chronological place of such a category within the theological system-has absolutely nothing to do with an inherent anthropological leaning toward humanism, or anthropocentrism, or any similar position in which the proper Christian view is clouded by contextual foreshortening. If I am against Barth's exclusion of a major category of anthropology from his theology, as I am, I must take this position on other than absolutistic grounds. By the same token, any attempt on the part of Barth to accuse those who do make anthropology a major theological category fails if it carries the suggestion that such a category is itself a leaning toward humanism or anthropocentrism, i.e., toward preference for a non-Christian context.

IV

Christian anthropology, in most cases, constitutes statements about man, chronologically speaking, up to the time when he is saved by Jesus Christ, enters the true church, and sees his life in eschatological dimensions. What happens to him later, as "man sanctified," is a proper subject of theology, but it is barred as a topic of anthropology.

The motive for this arrangement, which reached its peak in Calvinism, is not far to seek. If the slightest aid and comfort were given to continuity between the old man and the new man, it was feared that some reasonable facsimile of natural theology might rear its smug head, and new defenses might be found against the need for radical and decisive change. In modern times, Reinhold Niebuhr has drawn upon a similar theory of motivation in his warnings to good Christians not to lose their uneasiness. The inevitable incon-

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clusiveness of Calvinistic discussions of "assurance" has also stemmed from similar motivational presuppositions.

This well-intentioned but arbitrary exclusion from Christian anthropology of anything felt to be properly normative by Christian standards has necessitated some artful dodging. It may be noted, in passing, that both Barth and Bonhoeffer have eluded this problem through their Christocentrism. Christ is "real man," but he does not seem to belong under anthropology. If, for example, we had asked Calvin whether redeemed man is still man, he would have replied that he is then entirely new man. If we had acknowledged the force of the adjective "new," but had persisted in asking in what sense he is still man, the answer would have been along two lines. Either man's continuing temptation to sin would have been stressed, thus making sainthood uneasy; or it would have been asserted that man's new relationship to God makes him, on all crucial points, radically different. If we continued to press for the difference between what is crucial and what is not, it would eventually be conceded that man's diet, blood circulation, and other comparable items are the same in man before and after redemption, although such concessions would have been regarded as irrelevant and meaningless. If we asked, finally, whether the crucial ought not systematically to be distinguished from the peripheral, and a branch of theological anthropology created to do so, we should probably have been told that such a procedure would entirely miss the point. So far as I can see, that point is about where Calvinistic anthropologies have left this problem. It is a thoroughly unsatisfactory stopping point, for it separates Christian vision from Christian analysis.

The time has come when Christian anthropology should deal directly and constructively with the whole range of subjects that are pertinent from its perspective: man saved as well as unsaved, man seen in himself, and man in fellowship. The errors against which our forefathers rightly tried to guard do still need to be watched. But for this purpose there is only one proper bastion anyhow, namely, that there can be no Christian anthropology that does not begin by regarding the God-man relationship as the concrete datum, and hence seeing Christian anthropology always within this context, from which it (anthropology) is one important abstraction,

If some one objects that pursuit of this suggestion would mean that there is no further use for the categories of soteriology, eschatol-

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ogy, and ecclesiology, I should reply that the asker misunderstands the problem. If the concrete datum of all theology is the God-man relationship, then every major category of theology is properly an examination of that relationship from some particular perspective. If there is not some overlap of content between, for example, anthropology and soteriology, we should be alarmed lest one be more properly aware of its perspective than the other.

If someone objects further that my proposal implies presenting the whole basic content of Christian theology from the perspective of anthropology, I would agree that I am arguing in favor of that course, but not for that course as the sole course. I am also advocating, implicitly, the presentation of the whole of Christian theology from the perspective of each major category. The genuinely basic content of theology proper should be the same as the basic content of anthropology, soteriology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. Detailed contents may show much variation; but when they do, it is because of a division of labor, a practical sharing of tasks. It is not because man is man up to his heeding of grace and then, subsequently, something that cannot be named. It is not because man as a historical creature and man as a future-oriented creature are in capable of consideration under the same heading. And it is not because man seen as individual and man seen in social relationships can be separated for anything more than purposes of convenience.

V

When we ask what content is proper to a Christian anthropology (as well as to a Christian theology proper, a Christian soteriology, etc.), the first answer must be not in terms of content as such but of theological method. For the criteria for discerning truth or relevance of content are themselves methodological in nature. What is to be the method of a proper Christian anthropology?

On one point the theological events of the past thirty years are a great help in answering this question. Here Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, Tillich, Bultmann, biblical theology generally, and many other concurrent theological trends all declare, each in its own way, that theological method "begins" with the Christian revelation. At least in the sense of first finding out what we can about some aspect of theology like anthropology by whatever means we can, and then acknowledging that another dimension should be added, "natural

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theology" as a starting point in theological method is universally dead. Instead, we discover, from biblical, doctrinal, historical, or ethical analysis what the unique revelation says and implies; and it is from that point that our theologizing "begins."

Put in this fashion, we make it appear that the theological questions relate only to consequences, to what is done methodologically after every one who is any one begins at the same point. The fact is of course otherwise. For there are different meanings ascribed to "begins." Barth, for example, wants the theologian to "begin" his theologizing after a good arts course in which he has become acquainted with philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines of culture. And although part of the reason why he should be familiar with these is to prevent his being led to the wrong solutions, another part of it regards the substance and method of these disciplines as good mental furniture, as antechamber equipment for theologizing. The man who was entirely ignorant of philosophy, etc., would probably not be regarded by Barth as capable of effective theologizing, however honest and sincere his Christian convictions. Nevertheless, once theologizing has "begun," Barth would make the findings and methods of these other disciplines irrelevant. This is a curious definition of "begin." It is a little like saying that surgery begins when you start to cut, or that law begins with your first appearance in court, or that architecture begins with your first blueprint.

It is plain that what Barth wants to guard against is any tendency that would make prevailing criteria in philosophy, psychology, or other cultural disciplines, theologically normative so that the theological context would become simply one factor among others. With this intent I am in full sympathy. But his way of going about this defense is something else again, and contains overtones of obscurantism. The very notion that theologizing begins not when you get the furniture but only when you ask who is to be entertained in the room is itself a revelation of the Aristotelian presuppositions inherent in the mode of thought. If the total process that produces a theologian includes, at earlier stages, acquaintance with philosophy, etc., but excludes philosophy, etc., after you have begun cooking with revelational gas, the problem lies in the relative adequacy of the models with which you are approaching your task. It lies in your ability abstractly to define your method. On this point Barth

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claims to be presupposition less, while I declare him to be pressed down and running over with Aristotelianism, with smears of existentialism, and Kantianism left over.

How can Christian theology (and in this instance, Christian anthropology as a branch of Christian theology) profit from what the psychological and social sciences are discovering without falling into the dangers that Barth fears? Whatever the answer, I hope it will not be the Barthian practice of wearing a revelational belt, suspenders, and manila rope all at the same time. The trousers, after all, have not read Pelagius.

What Christian theology and Christian anthropology must do, at all costs, is to begin from the context of the God-man relationship and what the Christian Scriptures and revelation say basically about that. There can and should be no escape from the priority of special revelation at the point where self-conscious and disciplined thought begins. But once it has begun, there should be no nonsense about excluding facts turned up by people who may not be fraternity brothers. And it is an indefensible compromise to say you will take into account, at least in a vague sort of way, what the brothers turned up before your mind became theological. What you must do is to take into account anything genuinely relevant that turns up from any source. What you must, at all costs, not do is to let your basic criteria of truth, importance, and relevance come from outside the key given by revelation. In other words, your method, once begun, must be free, open, and not restricted as to where you look for data; but it can be precisely this only when it has rightly distinguished between revelation and various other things such as provincialism, details, or biased implications.

To assert that we hold the treasure in earthen vessels is not, in my judgment, a polemic against ceramics. It is both a call to make the distinction clear between vessels and treasure, and to study the quality of our containers as well as the truth of the treasure. Barth throws us off by so stressing our being hit by the treasure that we come to regard ceramic analysis as secular. Tillich also throws us off by insisting that the sole respectable earthen vessel is ontology or categorical generality. The fact is that all earthen vessels, including Barth's and Tillich's and mine, are very breakable and earthy. But Barth's excludes theological ceramics from theology; Tillich includes ceramics only in its ultimate dimensions, which is a bit hard on the

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oven. I, in contrast to both men, take theological ceramics as a necessary part of theologizing, and important for both big and little jugs.

The implication of taking seriously analysis of the earthen vessels is that any and all learning that may contribute to better under standing of something theological should be explored with the utmost freedom. In the instance of Christian anthropology, the protection that shall make this exploration Christian is the awareness of its context within the relationship between God and man, and thus of the perspectival limitation in the investigation. We should now note that this contextual and perspectival point has methodological implications.

From the point of view of method, what it bars is a sequence like the following: first, immersion in the man-science material; second, only then asking what may be its theological significance. Such a method in itself contains concealed Aristotelian presuppositions and must be rejected.

The proper sequence is more dialectical: first, articulation of the theological question to which, or to some aspects of which, the man science material may speak; second, free exploration of the man science material (in its concreteness) in the light of the theological question; third, return to the theological question, and its theological answer, with reflections upon the man-science material; and fourth, reformulation or re-affirmation of the validity of the theological question and the theological answer. There is no point in the sequence at which the theological question is forgotten. Yet exploration of the man-science material is made without any let or hindrance. Asking of it a theological question, far from being a bar to free exploration, makes that possible because it eliminates conflict with presupposition elements in the man-science material that may not be stated or acknowledged.

Is it possible that exercise of this method could result for one or another theologian in the final repudiation of the Christian context? Certainly it is. A risk is involved. But it is a risk very much like trusting in justification by grace through faith. As with justification, a compulsive attempt to take no risk at all results in something far worse than the risk. Having no commerce with the man-sciences can lead to sterility, aridity, and communicational irrelevance. And it is theoretically wrong as well, for it refuses to make suitable dis-

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tinctions between the treasure and the earthen vessels. Risk there is indeed, but that kind of risk is inherent in the entire Christian view of life. And a careful articulation of theological method, stemming from a firm grasp of the theological context, can give all the guarantees needed to take the risk.

I hesitate to conclude without at least one concrete instance, and for this purpose I have decided to comment on the meaning of God's providence. The first thing to be noted is that this topic belongs under anthropology, as well as under theology proper and soteriology, in my conception, because the human responsiveness, or lack of it, to God's providential care is a concern of anthropology. To Barth I am indebted for the suggestion that Lot's wife is the perfect paradigm for lack of faith in God's providence. For the next couple of points I am indebted to the exegetes. For example, the intimate connection between the two meanings of "provide," namely "to see before" and "to supply," is to show us that God's intent and God's benevolent power are coordinate, and that they thus, jointly, form the basis of trust. The next exegetical point is that Lot and his family are given some choice. At first the angels start them for the hills; but when Lot elects Zoar instead, he is permitted to change direction. What the angels seem concerned about is the principle of trust, not necessarily its details. The third point is that, once the Lot's are outside Sodom, down comes the brimstone behind them. As Barth notes, there is always fire behind us; and trust in providence does not imply unawareness of that fact. Yet we are, if we trust, freed of the compulsion to look back. Lot's wife was not so freed; hence she is the prototype of lack of trust.

It is just at this point in the story, however, that we feel a need for a deeper delineation of what it means to look back, and of how distrust can foster that kind of looking back. If we keep our theological question in mind, then the materials about compulsion, regression, and fixation are abundant in the man-sciences; and at least indirectly they shed some light on the nature of discriminating trust. By exploring these, details can be filled in and warnings given which the biblical story alone and of itself cannot and ought not to supply. Result: the anthropological dimensions of providence as God's seeing before and supplying man's basic needs is illuminated, and thus a contribution is made to the theological and the soteriological dimensions of providence as well. There is no equation of any trust what-

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ever with trust in God's providence. Nor is it concluded, either in question or answer, that man's ability to trust is the sole important thing about providence. But the whole meaning of God's providential care of man is illumined by analysis of its anthropological aspects in their theological context.

Before this kind of Christian anthropology comes in a wide-spread way, as I believe it will eventually, it may very well be that the present phony peace will have to be broken by some battles. If they are open and honest, such battles can help the cause. What they ought not to do is to carry hidden agenda, implying, for example, that a category of Christian anthropology is automatically humanistic or anthropocentric in intent and performance; or that the man sciences can teach theology nothing; or that revelation tells us every thing; or that a truly dialectical method is bad because it takes risks. It may be that the future Christian anthropology can actually explode the defensive and self-defeating motivations that lie behind such distortions.

I hope and believe that the future of Christian anthropology is bright, but first I hope for some battles.