427 - Religion As Creative Insecurity

Religion As Creative Insecurity
By Peter A. Bertocci
128 pp. New York, Association Press, 1958. $2.50.

This little book is designed to contribute to an understanding of religion at a time when scientism is said to be tranquilizing us into a false tense of security and neo-orthodoxy is offering "security through fiat" (p. xi.) Its four chapters are a cumulative series of definitions of religion. First , religion is the search for maturity. Religion is said to root in the manufacturing experience of the goodness of life; therefore one's religion represents one's whole adjustment to life. Second, religion is the pursuit of creativity carried out jointly by God and man. God's kind of goodness puts creativity before the kind of goodness which is the usual stumbling block of "the problem of evil." One who understands that will have the clue to the problem of evil. Love provides not security but rather the conditions for creativity. In that sense, loving is more important than being loved. Third, religion is creative insecurity. There

428 - Religion As Creative Insecurity

comes a point in the life of everyone when he must choose how he will use the creative possibilities of his life. He must assume responsibility for his creativity and he must surround the lives of others with a climate conducive to their assumption of their role. The forgiving love of God, is the prototype of this method. Finally, religion is worth-while suffering. A Christian must choose between two possible Gods; there is no third alternative. Either God is completely powerful or he is completely loving. The revelation of God in Christ suggests that God is one "who bears the cross," and that suffering love, not power is his way in the world. The author expects the reader to conclude that this suffering is the divine possibility of creativity and power for man's life in the world.

The case made by this book seems very helpful and suggestive, as one would expect of the Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. However, something is fundamentally wrong with the method of the book. Is it that the author has engaged in a super- annuated form of philosophy of religion, describing the essence of religion in general without reference to the unique elements in the faith? No, actually Bertocci is not saying what religion is but what it ought to be, and he is drawing his norm, as he says, from his "efforts to understand the life of Jesus and to be guided by his vision" (p. 123). Is it that he advances a kind of Christian secularism which defines religion in terms more of what man must do for himself than in terms of what God is doing for him? No, for this theme has become patent in these days through such "neo-orthodox" theologians as Bonhoeffer and Gogarten. Is it that the author challenges neo-orthodoxy in the Foreword but fails to show up for the duel anywhere in the volume? No, readers can be good-humored about the anxiety of authors to hold their audience. Rather, I think I first realized what was wrong with this book when I read the footnote on p. 101 analyzing the pantheistic tendency in Tillich's ontology. Here one encounters the author as a philosopher, a real marathoner. By contrast, the aspect of tender homily, arm-chair exegesis, and unguarded generalization in the volume conjures up an image of the marathoner in a wading pool.

Carl Michalson
Drew University
Madison, New Jersey