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Theological Table-Talk
By Hugh T. Kerr

IS GOD UP OR OUT OR IN?

John A. T. Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, England, has written a little book on Christian faith which, like the proverbial straw in the wind, indicates which way the theological drift is headed. It is called Honest to God and was first published by the S.C.M. Press in London (an American paperback edition is available through Westminster Press, Philadelphia, for $1.65).

The Anglican Bishop tries to take his ecclesiastical responsibility seriously as a defender of the faith, but he realizes that in our day "it is going to become increasingly difficult to know what the true defense of Christian truth requires." The reason for this is simply that a widening gulf separates orthodox, traditional doctrine from what the modern man is prepared to understand and accept.

The elemental illustration of the problem is the "location" of God. If modern man can no longer use spatial, mythological language to describe God as "up there," he finds it almost as futile to define God as spiritually or metaphysically "out there." Listen to the Bishop's way of putting it:

"But suppose such a super-Being 'out there' is really only a sophisticated version of the Old Man in the sky? Suppose belief in God does not, indeed cannot, mean being persuaded of the 'existence' of some entity, even a supreme entity, which might or might not be there, like life on Mars? Suppose the atheists are right-but that this is no more the end or denial of Christianity than the discrediting of the God 'up there,' which must in its time have seemed the contradiction of all that the Bible said? Suppose that all such atheism does is to destroy an idol, and that we can and must get on without a God 'out there' at all? Have we seriously faced the possibility that to abandon such an idol may in the future be the only way of making Christianity meaningful, except to the few remaining equivalents of flat-earthers (just as to have clung earlier to the God 'up there' would have made it impossible in the modern world for any but primitive

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peoples to believe the Gospel)? Perhaps after all the Freudians are right, that such a God-the God of traditional popular theology is a projection, and perhaps we are being called to live without that projection in any form."

To leave the matter there is of course to suggest a betrayal and denial of the Bible, the church, and the history of faith. The Bishop's point is not to solve this question but to state it honestly as part of his own faith-anxiety. It is, he thinks, a Copernican revolution through which we must move, even though we may not yet see what the results will be.

Drawing largely from Bultmann and Tillich, Dr. Robinson tends to interiorize much of faith that traditionally has been up or out there, and at the same time he leans on Bonhoeffer for support as he redefines conventional morality in terms of "worldly holiness."

A shocker for "flat-earthers" who have never been challenged this way, Honest to God may seem somewhat tame and domesticated for American theological students and pastors who have been thinking this way for a long time. For an Anglican Bishop to speak out so honestly is unexpected confirmation of the accelerating drift of theological thinking away from the conventions toward really radical questions and issues.

ECUMENICAL CRITIQUE

Another index of wind drift is the current state of analysis and interpretation of the ecumenical movement. Recent excitement from the Vatican for this supposedly "non-Roman" crusade may well open an entirely new chapter in what William Temple long ago described as "the great new fact" of our age. And just in time perhaps, since the now older ecumenical movement stands at a crucial crossroads. It has "come of age" in many ways-some promising, some perilous.

A recent thoroughgoing symposium critique of ecumenism is to be found in a new book, Unity in Mid-Career, co-edited by Keith R. Bridston and Walter D. Wagoner (Macmillan, 1963, 211 pp., $4.95). Recognizing gains all along the line, the authors nevertheless pry into every sort of issue with critical objectivity, raising pertinent and often embarrassing questions. This is not the place for a review

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of the book, which will appear later, but some comments on Walter Wagoner's final excursus dealing with theological education may be allowed.

Noting the tremendous curricular interest in ecumenics among the seminaries in the past ten years (one could surely go back even farther), it is observed that theological and personal leadership in the unity movement has often stemmed directly from the divinity schools, Courses on ecumenicity are now recognized requirements in nearly all seminaries. The official Reports of the World Council, of Faith and Order, of the Interseminary Movement, and other such bodies have become part of the student's bibliography. The development of graduate programs has thrown American students into contact with many overseas students, and in denominational schools this is often the most immediate and challenging ecumenical confrontation.

But while all this and more is true, there are other less heartening features of the contemporary situation. The still strong denominational character of much theological training seems anachronistic in today's world despite vigorous rationalizations to the contrary. Walter Wagoner states the case: "In order to reform the church, as it surely is being reformed under the ecumenical revolution, theological education must be, in all of its structures, more representative of the church universal."

The issues, however, are even more complicated than mere denominational hangovers or this essay would suggest. What, we may ask, is to be made of the following factors: (a) the student's loss of confidence in the institutional church and the parish ministry; (b) the very obvious cooling off in recent years of ecumenical excitement on the part of students; (c) the apparent failure of a much publicized federated theological school; (d) the inability of the Interserminary Movement to capture the enthusiasm of more than a token force on seminary campuses; (e) the almost complete absence of ecumenical dialogue at the student or faculty level among seminaries in the same geographical location; (f) the remoteness of local councils of churches to theological education; (g) the new ecumenical prerogatives occasioned by the resurgent non-Christian religions; (h) the maturing in this generation of graduate programs of theology in colleges and universities unrelated to the churches?

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IS ANATOMY DESTINY?

Two current best-sellers are addressed to the problem of woman in her search for self-identity: Elisabeth Mann Borgese's Ascent of Woman (Braziller, 1963, 247 pp., $5.00) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (Norton, 1963, 410 pp., $5.95). Very big, very solemn, with little humor or intuition, the authors analyze trends and statistics, quote from scientists and sociologists, and generally view with alarm.

The Ascent book, the title reminiscent of Darwin's Descent (no doubt Mrs. Borgese never heard of Henry Drummond's Ascent of Man) is a fanciful theory, allegedly based on scientific evolution, to the effect that as life on earth was originally either sexless or female there is no reason why the present distinction between the sexes is to be regarded as normative or final. Indeed, both evolution and sociology suggest that wherever individualism is strong, so also is masculine domination. But, as in our day, where the trend is to ward the collective social unit, female dominance takes over-the "crowd" (or any social congregation) being essentially feminine.

Not beyond the range of imagination, at least of Mrs. Borgese's , is a time coming when we will again enter a sexless or female dominated stage of evolution. It is not altogether clear whether the author (who happens by the way to be Thomas Mann's daughter) regards this as a good thing or not. Many males might say tomorrow is already here; many females, according to the second volume, would be horrified and completely dislocated by the prospect.

The Feminine Mystique details, in at times tedious fashion, the gradual formation of a female in contemporary American society who is anything but a dominant or ascending type. Mrs. Friedan traces a long quest for feminine identity through the suffragettes, the Freudians, the disciples of Margaret Mead, and more recently the Kinsey sexologists.

The present level of this line of evolution is vigorously maintained by the appliance manufacturers, the fashion designers, the editors of women's magazines, and countless other interested promulgators of the feminine mystique. In a word, the "mystique" is compounded of housewifery, multiple child bearing, suburban gracious living with other members of the outdoor barbecue and station wagon set.

American women are marrying much younger, have more sexual

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freedom and extramarital adventures, and are much less interested in education and careers. Here anatomy is destiny in the sense that woman's role is to marry young, have lots of breast-fed children, learn the know-how of keeping the house clean, dress feminine, make marriage exciting, and-if there is time left-support good causes in the community.

The trouble with all this is that women apparently feel more trapped than ever, less purposeful about the meaning of their lives, even less sexually adjusted. This, says Mrs. Friedan, is "the problem without a name." It is the "housewife's syndrome" and it is couched in the lament, "I just don't feel alive." Searching for self-identity, the modern woman tries to emulate the feminine mystique and ends up with more loneliness and frustration than ever.

Where do theology, religion, church fit into all this? That's the reason for commenting on these much-read books; they don't fit in at all, in fact, aren't ever mentioned. If the new mystique sounds like the old "Kinder, Küche, Kirche," the difference is in the conspicuous absence of the third category. Both Mrs. Borgese and Mrs. Friedan quote extensively from all sorts of books, studies, and authorities. It seems neither of them ever heard of the copious literature on the place of women in the church, books on the theological and biblical view of sex, the church-sponsored marriage and family studies.

Does that mean that these two authors are simply unaware of this side of the problem? Or does it mean that all that the church has said over recent years seems to them irrelevant?

A RAW SLICE OF LIFE

If, as Tillich has said of Picasso's Guernica, a "Protestant" picture means not covering up anything but looking at "the human situation in its depths of estrangement and despair," then we could call Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a "Protestant" play. On any other definition it might be difficult to justify its religious significance except as sheer nihilism.

The New York Times sedately capsulates: "Mr. Albee's play contains elements of adultery, profanity, and strong colloquialisms." That may be the mildest description of the year for such a controversial piece! The play, which has been running on Broadway

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since last October, ran away with the New York Drama Critics Circle "best play" palm, and Uta Hagen won the Antoinette Perry Award for the year's best performance by an actress. But when two members of the Drama Committee, John Mason and John Gassner, recommended Albee's play for this year's Pulitzer prize, the jury rejected their suggestion, declined to make any drama award, and Mason and Gassner resigned from the committee.

In the meantime, the text of the play is available and merits reading (Atheneum Press, New York, 1963, 242 pp., $1.95.) Set in a small New England campus, the story involves two academic couples, one old-timer, the other newly added to the faculty. Martha, the wife of the older couple, is the president's daughter and her hen pecked husband, George, is never allowed to forget it or his own frustrated academic career. The young couple, eager to please, are thrust into an after-party with Martha and George, and on top of too many drinks, the "fun and games" of the first act ruthlessly cut through the nerves to the bare bones of academic life. And what lies exposed under the dramatist's scalpel? Loveless acrimony, deceit, preferment, personal ambition, intellectual sterility. Not very pretty, is it? And it's obviously not supposed to be, though often it is very, very funny.

As in all Edward Albee's other plays, The Zoo Story (1958), The Death of Bessie Smith (1959), The Sandbox (1959), The American Dream (1960), the dialogue is perfectly tuned to the action, both pouring scorn on our unctious, self-righteous, sentimental romanticism about life and human nature. In Who's Afraid?, Albee picks an American academe where popular opinion assumes everything to be on the up and up, and he shows with the first lines of the first act that this too is an American dream far removed from reality.

Yet there is a moral of sorts in the play, though it is perhaps the least satisfactory dramatic part. It is to be found in the third act, cryptically entitled "The Exorcism." After the embarrassingly frank talk in the first act and the utter degradation of "Walpurgisnacht" (Act Two), the end of the play, so it seems, must surely be on the downbeat. And it is, mostly, but not quite.

Part of the unreality of this academic inferno is a play within the play. George and Martha are childless, but they have been pretending to themselves for years that they have a son away from home at school. In the drunken orgy with the younger couple, this secret

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inadvertently comes out, and in cruel retaliation while his wife commits adultery, George decides to tell her that their son has been killed in an accident.

Just when it looks like the last pretense has been stripped away, and perhaps the dramatist is saying that only when it has been ex posed, then we see unexpectedly that George and Martha share a physical intimacy which, in spite of all differences, unites them and holds them together. After the guests have gone, they go up the stairs, no wiser, no better, but in their own exorcised if fractured world, they have found a small measure of reconciliation.

SPIRIT IS LIKE THE WIND

Modern attempts to rehabilitate the doctrine of the Holy Spirit into the structure of theology have been largely ineffectual. Perhaps that is inevitable, and every such attempt ought to recognize the absurdity of codifying something as elusive and arcane as Spirit. In our day, there is another reason for difficulty in theologizing about the Spirit and that is the dominance of Christology. So long as the second article of the Creed is normative, theology tends more and more to remain exclusively Christology. The Christocentric approach is the trademark of our times, and it has produced notable theological insights. But not, so far, in the area of pneumatology.

In the Christological context, all that can be said about the Spirit is that it (or He!) testifies to Christ and makes efficacious his redemptive work. This is to say much, but the net effect is theologically anticlimactic.

A typical effort in this direction, and as good as any, is a recent pamphlet prepared by the Geneva office of the Alliance of Reformed Churches. It is called Come, Creator Spirit! and was written by Dr. Terrence N. Tice, the Theological Secretary of the Alliance. The pamphlet is a study guide in preparation for the General Council meeting of the Alliance scheduled for Frankfurt, Germany, August 3-13, 1964.

The Spirit, we are told, brings no new revelation but is always the Spirit of Christ, is given to Christ's church, makes us Christians, and renews Christ's mission to the world. For further study, four sub divisions of this theme are suggested: (1) the Remaking of Man,

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(2) the Renewal of Worship and Witness, (3) the Calling of the Churches Together, and (4) the Redemption of the World. It is not clear why all these topics and themes could not be studied Christologically without more than a conventional acknowledgment of the Spirit.

Years ago, in this journal, the late H. Richard Niebuhr published an article on "The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Unity of the Church" (THEOLOGY TODAY, Volume III, No. 3, October 1946). His point was to analyze what he called the three "Unitarianism's" of theology, each isolating one of the Persons of the Trinity and theologizing accordingly. Niebuhr's point was not only to expose the effects of such one-sided approaches but to insist that the doctrine of the Trinity demands the "interdependence" of the three Persons. Perhaps nothing more can be said, though as yet not much has been done to show how the doctrine of the Spirit is theologically crucial for, say, the doctrine of Christology.

A much more radical and possibly heretical suggestion comes to mind. It is found in Alan W. Watts' Myth and Ritual in Christianity (1954). Speaking of Christ's resurrection and ascension, Watts says: "The mission of Christ is not, therefore, fulfilled until the historical Jesus has vanished into eternity, until man finds God supremely revealed in the Now, and no more in the mere record of the Gospels."

Noting that the promise of wisdom and understanding came only after the resurrection and ascension, Watts adds: "This may explain the fact that to this day the Holy Spirit has played a very minor part in Christian symbolism as compared with the Father and the Son, remaining, as it were, the submerged and occluded Person of the Trinity." Has anyone the imagination equal to the task of trying a theology of the Spirit which, like the wind, blows wherever it will?