347 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

The Hebraic Void In the University
By Hugh R. Harcourt

THESIS: Almost all academic communities presuppose that the Greeks and the Romans have an exclusive monopoly on the intellectual-cultural life of the university. In the midst of most academic communities, there is usually also a Christian community of faculty and students which needs to be creatively disturbed by this presupposition. The Christian community is the heir in a peculiar way of Hebraic culture, and it needs to remind the university of its whole obligation as the transmitter of what is of lasting value in our cultural heritage. This transmitting function of the university cannot be fulfilled if the Hebraic roots of Western thought are either overlooked or undervalued.

PRESIDENT HOWARD LOWRIE of the College of Wooster, Ohio, has posed a question of staggering proportions in a deceptively simple form: "Three great cultures-the Greek, the Roman, and the Hebrew-have formed the Western world. Why should college men and women be ignorant of one of the three?"¹ Lowrie's question assumes that the college men and women of this generation, including the members of college and university faculties, are ignorant of one of these vitally constituent strands in Western culture. However deficient our understanding and appreciation of the Greek and Roman roots of our modern culture may be, it is surely our Hebrew² heritage which is most sorely neglected in our contemporary cultural self-understanding.

¹ Howard Lowrie, The Mind's Adventure (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950), p. 70.
² Throughout this article the terms "Biblical" and "Hebrew" will be used synonymously, It is the author's assumption that the thought of the Old Testament can be called uniquely Hebraic whatever it may owe to its Semitic environment. See G. E. Wright, The Old Testament Against Its Environment (Chicago: Allenson, 1951). It is also here assumed that the

348 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

I

There is an unconscious and a conscious facet of this problem which makes it an object of considerable and anguished concern for the Church. On the one hand, the university (by which term I mean especially the quantitative burden of higher education in the U. S.) seems to be blithely unaware of such a neglect of our Hebrew cultural heritage. The large modern American university is, for the most part, convinced that the historical roots of liberal education are to be found primarily in Greek and Roman thought. If challenged about the deficiency of his understanding and appreciation of our Hebrew cultural heritage, the average liberal educator is liable to reply that Hebrew thought is "primitive" and atrociously unscientific and therefore cannot be considered in the same academic breath with "sophisticated" Greek and Roman thought. He may go on from here to point out that Hebrew thought is dealt with adequately by the antiquarians in the anthropology department or in the course in "primitive religions" which may pop up in any one of several departments. Or the liberal educator may point to the English department where that alarmingly popular course entitled "The Bible as Literature" is often found. But this course, usually a kind of erotic panegyric on the linguistic glories of the King James Version, seldom attempts to do justice to the essential genius of the Hebrew way of thinking, however valuable the course may be in enhancing our appreciation of seventeenth century English.

Perhaps a good example of the blithely unconscious attitude of the modern university with regard to this issue is to be found in the prevailing persuasion of the "Classics" department. Yale classicist Alfred R. Bellinger was asked to write an essay on "Religious Perspectives" in the teaching of "classics" in the university.³ In his sensitive essay he argues persuasively that we must make every effort to understand and assess properly the religious beliefs of everyone from Homer to Vergil in the "classical" heritage because "what

New Testament thought-world is essentially Hebraic whatever it may owe to Hellenistic influences. In Oscar Cullmann's words, "Obviously, one must reckon with Greek influence upon the origin of Christianity from the very beginning, but so long as the Greek ideas are subordinated to the total view of Heilsgeschichte, there can be no talk of 'Hellenization' in the proper sense. Genuine Hellenization occurs for the first time at a later date." Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1958), p. 18.
³ Alfred R. Bellinger, "Classics," in Religious Perspectives in College Teaching, edited by Hoxie N. Fairchild and others (New York: Ronald Press, 1952), pp. 147-165.

349 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

men believe is always important, and no conception of relation between a man and his god is without significance for the great question of the true relation between God and man."⁴ However true and admirable this argument may be, is it anything less than myopic to limit our "classical" heritage to what is Greek or Roman especially when one's specific concern is the "religious perspective" of this heritage?

Of course, there are notable exceptions to this general rule⁵ but unfortunately not enough to invalidate Dr. Lowrie's original question as to why college men and women should be ignorant of one of the three constituent strands in contemporary culture.

On the assumption that ignorance is bliss, the present situation would not be so disturbing were it not for the increasing number of students in this country who are tasting the fruits of the recent revival of Biblical theology and Old Testament studies. A propitious number of seminary students are-or should be-becoming suddenly aware of the unique and profound way in which the Hebrews thought of reality, and more than a few of these students are beginning to be conscious of the yawning hiatus that exists between the thought-world of the Biblical writers and the apparent assumptions on which contemporary American higher education proceeds in attempting to preserve and transmit the cultural heritage of our generation. Perhaps no one perceives this hiatus more disturbingly than those theologically trained individuals who are engaged in the Church's ministry to and in our colleges and universities, particularly those tax-supported institutions of higher learning which are now struggling with the task of providing a college education for "the masses."

Granted that our modern "chaotic" university, in Sir Walter Moberly's terminology, all but defies any attempt to classify it as one might classify the "Christian-Hellenic" or the "Liberal" universities of the past, the neglect of the Hebraic element in our cultural heritage nevertheless remains a stubbornly constant characteristic of our modern university communities. It may, in fact, provide a sort of negative yardstick by means of which a new clas-

⁴ Ibid., p. 165.
⁵ One such notable exception is Princeton historian E. Harris Harbison who in his essay, "History," in Religious Perspectives in College Teaching, pp. 67-97, demonstrates a marked sensitivity to the Hebrew understanding of history. See also Harbison's excellent study, The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation (New York- Scribner's, 1956), and the several thoughtful articles by the same author in The Christian Scholar.

350 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

sification can be devised! Again, few are more disturbingly exposed to all this than that band of rare ecclesiastical birds known variously as university or campus pastors or chaplains, who are almost universally referred to among the fathers and brethren as "student workers," and who find themselves in the thick of the mutual confrontation between the community of faith and the community of learning.

For at least three years of seminary training the prospective university pastor is injected with heavy doses of Biblical thinking which he soon discovers is about as meaningful to the thinkers of the university as astrology and necromancy (or as more than one academician would put it, "about as meaningful as any other type of astrology or necromancy"). Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that much of what the budding theologian reads on the subject of Biblical thought is written by European or British scholars (Cullmann, Marsh, Bultmann, et al.) whose voices are heard through the prestigious theological faculties of their own universities. There simply is no correspondingly well established, firmly entrenched "institution" in American higher education to which has been entrusted the transmission of the Biblical heritage. Furthermore, most of the competent interpreters of Biblical thought in this country are attached to independent theological seminaries or university "divinity schools" which might as well be independent for all the influence they usually exercise in the lives of their respective university communities. Finally, the "philosophy of religion" courses that a university may allow in the curriculum often manage not much more than a thoroughly Hellenized-or worse yet, an "objectively scientific"-critique of the Biblical materials simply because university and instructor alike sincerely believe that this is the only way in which the course materials can be made palatable to the scientifically critical modern student.

Reformed theology has always perceived clearly the place of Biblical thought in the life of a community of scholars. For what inspiration he can derive therefrom the university pastor can meditate on the theological glories of "the good old days." As Professor George H. Williams reminds the reader in his erudite essay, The Theological Idea of the University, ". . . accomplished humanist that he was, Calvin was never able to concede to the Academicians any area of knowledge in which they might be regarded as com-

351 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

petent, independent of Biblical tutelage."⁶ And Williams' exposition of the Hebraic-prophetic motif in Cotton and Increase Mather's understanding of the function of higher education during the early days of Harvard College will undoubtedly be a source of inspiration for many churchmen. But even a non-Harvardman may wonder how seriously Harvard College takes this sort of thing these days. At any rate, the theological understanding of the university is at best only a curious historical footnote in the thinking of most modern universities. For many modern educators this sort of thing is sheer necromantic gibberish.

II

The university is understandably suspicious of any ecclesiastical attempt to reform its curriculum. Its academic freedom has been hard won and is still under constant attack from "canons to the left of them, canons to the right of them." It is sometimes difficult to refrain from sympathizing with the university's desire for the Church to limit its academic activities to the preservation of moral virtue among students. The Church has often been guilty of trying to turn the university into the Church and has too absentmindedly and unbiblically accused the university of serving only the cause of godlessness. In the past few years the errors of its previous ways have caused the Church some creative soul-searching and not a little genuine repentance. But it takes a long time for news of this sort to penetrate the hallowed halls of ivy.

The late Alexander Miller has summarized the Church's newly awakened sense of responsibility to the university in these appropriate words. "We are bound," he wrote, "to take the academic community to be in some sense 'ordained of God' for purposes of his own and therefore of its own: so that as with the state so with the university, the first form of Christian responsibility is to sustain the order which God has appointed, and to help it do its work well."⁷ The assumption on which this essay is based is that the Church's confrontation with the university must be Christologically conceived and directed. Even as Christ's ministry was one of humble service to the world, so must the Church's ministry to the "world" of the university be conceived in genuine humility and must be

⁶ New York- National Council of Churches, Commission on Higher Education, p. 63.
⁷ Alexander Miller, Faith and Learning (New York: Association Press, 1960), p. 183.

352 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

world-centered rather than Church-centered in its strategy. The university ministry, then, will be guided by this Christologically ministerial consciousness of its function to serve the life of the university by understanding the university as "in some sense 'ordained of God"' and by seeking whatever paths of obedience are open to it to help the university "do its work well."

If someone objects that the Church as a whole does not yet seem to understand its ministry Christologically in this sense, we must reply that it would be disobedient for the Church to postpone living as God's "sent people" until all Christians are of one mind. Such a postponement would render the Church immobile at least until the Second Coming. If it be further objected that serving the university in this sense will be wasted effort until the university finally understands what the Church is trying to do, we must reply that in the Biblical perspective God's dealings with the world through those whom he has elected to service are in no way qualified by the degree to which the world is able to understand what he is doing in its midst.

The understanding of the university as in some sense "ordained of God" must make the Church exceedingly chary about referring too loosely to the university as secular and even more reluctant about ordering its ministry to and in the university according to this secular reference. Labeling institutions as either "sacred" or secular" is not a Biblical but a modern mental reflex.

However helpful it may be to understand the present "chaotic" state of the university as one of the reductionist end-products of the process of secularization in the West that began with the Reformation, the modern university is meaningless to the Church unless it is understood Christologically in the light of such New Testament passages as Colossians 1: 16f.-". . . for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities . . . and in him all things hold together." If someone still objects that this is all nonsense to the mind of the modern university, the reply is that it was also nonsense to the world in which the writer of Colossians lived. This fact, however, must no more undermine our knowledge of the real world into which the Church is now sent than it did the early Church's knowledge of the world in which it was commanded to be obedient to its Lord.

353 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

III

On the basis of these briefly sketched assumptions concerning the Biblically ministerial function of the Church in its confrontation with the world of the modern university, we must now pose again the problem of the disturbing Hebraic void in the university's attempt to preserve and transmit the cultural heritage of the Occident. To what extent ought the Church to concern itself with the problem, and what live options are available to the Church in this situation?

The Church is obligated to involve itself in the problem implied by the absence of Biblical thought from the life of the university in exact proportion to its concern for the wholeness and well being of the university's life. In so far as it comprehends its ministry to the university as a demand for wholeness in "the mind's adventure," the Church must concern itself with the truncated Greco-Roman intellectual context within which the university operates.

A separation of faith and thinking in the Hebraic heritage is, of course, impossible. However zealous a disestablished university's efforts may be to extract the "non-religious" elements from our culture's Biblical heritage, it must be constantly reminded that apart from a belief in the constituting relationship which God has established with man there is no such thing as Biblical thought. There is, in fact, no such thing as man (for the Biblical writers) apart from this relationship. If Biblical thought thus violates the hallowed American doctrine of the separation of Church and state, then the Church and the university will simply have to make the best of this constitutional illegality. A concern for the Hebraic element in our cultural self-understanding need not be confused with the Church's proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The two are not separable in the Church's own self-understanding, but Western culture does share in the Biblical heritage even though Western culture is under no circumstances to be identified with the Church.

The focus of this problem is in the university's curriculum. But since a demand that the university immediately incorporate a substantial number of courses on Hebrew thought in its curriculum is not, in the present state of academic affairs, a live option, we will have to devise-if the reader will pardon the expression-an "interim ethic."

354 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

Professor George H. Williams has performed a valuable service in calling our attention to one of the central themes in the historical development of the university from Jerome to Harvard, namely, the consciousness on the part of the academic community of being responsible for the translatio studii, which included not only Greek and Roman but also Hebrew learning.⁸ If the foregoing assessment of the university's failure to fulfill this transferential function is correct, the conclusion which must be drawn is that the Church will have to act in some way as the transferential agent of the Hebraic heritage in that majority of university communities in which the full transferential function is not accepted by the powers that be. Specifically, those on whose shoulders the responsibility will have to fall are the professors, students, and university pastors who live as the Church in and alongside the university community. Their role as the transmitters of Hebrew thought-which role they share with their Jewish colleagues-will be a highly unofficial one as far as the university is concerned. In this "interim ethic" there can be no question about the community of faith demanding its equal Hebraic rights. It can only hope for the present to act as the Hebraic leaven in the academic dough. But surely this is not an unseemly or unbiblical way for the community of faith to understand its function in any area of life.

At least one recent study attempts to formulate a strategy for such a transferential undertaking on the part of that segment of the community of faith that finds itself in dialogue with the university. This study, Biblical Thought and the Secular University, by George A. Buttrick, embodies the author's Rockwell Lectures delivered at Rice Institute in 1959. Buttrick's work is valuable because it insistently calls our attention to the basic issue and because it deals honestly and equitably with the emotionally loaded facets of the university's present attitudes. Because of the unavoidable limits of his lecture series, Professor Buttrick has not been able to plumb the depths of the basic and radical distinction between Biblical thought on the one hand and Greco-Roman thought on the other.

For the purpose of sketching the outlines of an "interim ethic," a more valuable study in this field is Thorleif Boman's brilliant essay, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek.⁹ Although Boman

⁸ Williams, op. cit.
⁹ Translated from the German by Jules L. Moreau, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.

355 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

limits his treatment of Hebrew thought to the Old Testament and his treatment of Greek thought mainly to Plato, he succeeds admirably not only in pointing to their fundamental divergence but in holding the two in constant tension and even drawing a few bold analogies between them. His approach is of inestimable worth for the problem of Hebrew thought in the university because of his scholarly sane perception of the way in which Hebrew and Greek thought are and must be thoroughly inter-related in mature Occidental thinking. He does not insist on a hasty divorce of the two nor does he raise any sort of quixotic plea for all intelligent men to "think Hebraically" in the sense that the Hebrew prophets of the fifth century B.C. thought Hebraically. Boman's central thesis concerning the distinction between and yet the necessary cohesion of these two basic types of thinking is the very essence of the wholeness which it is here suggested must somehow be restored in the life of the modern American university.¹⁰

What follows here is only the barest outline of several areas of intellectual activity within which the wholeness and coherence of the university's thought patterns, or more precisely, its epistemological assumptions, ought to be challenged. With unpardonable brevity we will touch on only three elements in the intellectual life of the modern university, the problems of "being" and "becoming," appearance and beauty, and time.

IV

The Hebraic manner of thinking about reality is characterized by Thorleif Boman as ". . . dynamic, vigorous, passionate, and sometimes quite explosive in kind; correspondingly Greek thinking is static, peaceful, moderate, and harmonious in kind."¹¹ The way

¹⁰ The reader may be familiar with the sharp and sweeping attack which has been launched against the linguistic methodology of Boman and a host of even more prominent scholars by Professor James Barr. See Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, Oxford Univ. Press, 1961; Biblical Words for Time, London: SCM Press, 1962; and "The Position of Hebrew Language in Theological Education," in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, April, 1962. Barr's strong, well-documented objection to the work of Boman and the "Wörterbuch" school, to mention but two of Barr's array of targets, is that problems of Biblical thought and dogmatics cannot be clarified, let alone solved, by simply pointing to distinctive features of the Hebrew language or by pointing to differences between the linguistic structures of Hebrew and Greek. Without taking sides on this disputed issue, it must be emphasized that whether or not he has done linguistic justice to the problem, Boman's thesis concerning the basic distinction between Greek and Hebrew thought and his plea for a cohesion of the two are fundamentally sound. Professor Barr, if I understand him correctly, has not challenged the commonly held assumptions about the peculiarities of Greek and Hebrew thought but only the linguistic methods which have been used in the discussion of these peculiarities.
¹¹ Ibid, p. 27.

356 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

in which reality is conceptualized determined fundamentally the way in which "truth" is sought for in any academic discipline. Will Herberg has underlined perceptively the extent to which Occidental liberal education is indebted to Greek-idealist assumptions.

The proper [Greek] exercise of reason is, of course, the discovery and contemplation of truth, more specifically the discovery and contemplation of eternal and intrinsic ideas, ideals, and values. Education is thus a paideia, a self-cultivation, designed to bring about an inner harmony of the soul under the kingship of reason. It is surely obvious how neatly this fits in with the dominant tradition of liberal education; indeed, liberal education as we know it in the Western world grew out of the Greek-idealist view of man and has continued through the centuries to be interpreted and developed basically in Greek-idealist terms.¹²

The Western university is no longer devoted to the discovery of the reflection of eternal Platonic "forms" in the midst of the flux of the phenomenal world, but the university's continual search for and promulgation of physical, chemical, biological, psychological, and sociological "laws" is not without striking Platonic analogies. The truth for which a scientifically oriented academician searches is essentially extra-personal and impersonal. Education in this sense is basically a matter of rationally contemplating and apprehending that which is objectively given in reality and of deriving some sort of conceptually harmonious sense of meaning from given reality. The more a conception partakes of objectivity, impersonality, changelessness, and universal validity, the more true it is. Education on these assumptions becomes the quest for what has permanence in the midst of the flux of reality, for what has "being" in the midst of "becoming."

The Greek distinction between "becoming" and "being" is deeply rooted in much of our Western thinking. It would be foolish indeed to suggest that the distinction be somehow legislated out of existence. It is in many ways a useful notion particularly for the natural and social sciences (quite apart from the question of whether or not it is a logically valid notion). What we in Western education have lost sight of, however, is the unique genius of the Hebrew understanding of "being." Boman comes to the conclusion that "the distinction between becoming and being, which is so meaningful for

¹² Will Herberg, "Toward a Biblical Theology of Education," in The Christian Scholar, vol. xxxvi, number 4, December, 1953, pp. 260-261.

357 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

us and even more so for the Greeks, appears to have been irrelevant to the Hebrews or to have been experienced by them as a unity."¹³ "It is really more correct to say that we are dealing here with neither a 'being' or a 'becoming' but with a dynamic third possibility, therefore more an 'effecting'…"¹⁴ The whole dynamic Hebraic conception of "being" centers ultimately in a conception of "being" as personal being," and in this the genius of the Hebraic conception can be seen.

[For the Hebraic mind] "being" is not something objective as it is for us and particularly for the Greeks, a datum at rest in itself. It is, however, quite erroneous to conclude from this that "being" is something subjective, evanescent and dependent upon us. The Israelites like all other ancient peoples were "outer-directed" and did not dissect their psychic life as modern man does. In that sense, even to the Hebrew, "being" was something objective which existed independently of him and stood fast. The "being" of things and of the world as a totality of things was to him something living, active, and effective, a notion which, however, has nothing at all to do with primitive pan-psychism. It is correct to say in the case of the Hebrew that "being" . . . represents an inner activity which is best to be grasped by means of psychological analogies with human psychic life; with that we come to the heart of the matter. In the full Old Testament sense "being" is pre-eminently personal being. . . . What does it mean that a person is? If we try to define that by means of the concepts of impersonal and objective thought, we have to grasp for "becoming" as well as for "being" and still fall far short of the objective. The person, on the other hand, is in movement and activity, which encompasses "being" as well as "becoming" and "acting," i.e. he lives; an inner, ongoing, objectively demonstrable activity of the organs and of consciousness is characteristic of the person.¹⁵

The conclusion which Boman draws from his analysis and comparison of Hebrew and Greek thought at this point has value for the manner in which the university pursues its scientific objectives. "Personal being is a being sui generis which is incommensurable with the 'being of things' . . . and therefore cannot be expressed in terms which are grounded in impersonal and objective thinking."¹⁶ But this in no way limits all scientific research to a sort of pan-personalism since "a system of thought in categories that

¹³ Boman, op. cit, p. 33.
¹⁴ Ibid., p. 31.
¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 45-46.
¹⁶ Ibid, p. 46.

358 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

stem from personal being, mutatis mutandis, does not do justice to objective and inanimate reality."¹⁷

V

The university's evaluation and transmission of the aesthetic heritage of Western culture would no doubt be strengthened if the distinctive Greek and Hebrew ways of reporting the impressions of objects were kept in clearer focus. Like our Greek ancestors we moderns usually try to describe "photographically" our sense impressions of objects. (This is obviously a dominant theme-perhaps the dominant one-in the history of Western artistic endeavor.) "The Israelites, on the other hand, had no interest in the 'photographic' appearance of things or persons. In the entire Old Testament we do not find a single description of an objective 'photographic' appearance. The Israelites give us their impressions of the thing that is perceived."¹⁸ These impressions are primarily auditive rather than visual, as in the case of Greek thought. It is interesting to speculate whether the development of modern art from French impressionism to abstract expressionism might not be an unconscious blending of these two classical emphases on the visual representation and the inward psychological impression of the object perceived.

There is in both Hebrew and Greek thought a general sort of equation between beauty and goodness, but again the distinction between them is unmistakable. For the Greeks, beauty is the characteristic of an object whose form partakes of tranquility, moderateness, and harmony. (The motivation behind Plato's high valuation of geometry is aesthetic rather than philosophical or logical. In fact, the fundamental motif of Plato's thought may well be aesthetics in the above sense.) The Hebrew, on the other hand "finds the beautiful in that which lives and plays in excitement and rhythm, in charm and grace, but also and particularly in power and authority. It is not form and configuration which mediate the experience of beauty, as for the Greeks, but the sensations of light, color, voice, sound, tone, smell, and taste, as... in the Song of Solomon."¹⁹

¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Ibid., p. 74. The sexual candor of the Hebrews and the Greeks was equally uninhibited and un-Victorian. However, the Greeks' sexual candor was visual while the Hebrews' was auditive. Ibid., p. 82 note.
¹⁹ Ibid, p. 87.

359 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

The Hellenistic distinction between the form and the matter of a thing is indelibly stamped on Western thought as is the preference for form. For the Hebrews, as well as for Semitic people in general, the dynamic, substantial, material content of an object constitutes its essence. A concern for form in and of itself was virtually nonexistent or more accurately, meaningless for the Hebrews.

VI

Boman's essay is particularly valuable in pointing out not only the uselessness of our traditionally Western-and Greek-conception of time for understanding the Hebraic notion of time²⁰ but also the inadequacy of our Western conception in general for a coherent understanding of the problem of time. Along with the Greeks we tend to conceptualize time in a spatial and linear fashion, distinguishing time grammatically along the time line as past, present, and future. The past lies behind us and the future lies before us. As Boman suggests, the weakness of our Western conception lies not in the fact that it may seriously undervalue the significance of time but in the fact that we assume, either naively and uncritically or consciously and philosophically, that "our conception of time is the only one possible epistemologically."²¹

Because of our indebtedness to the Greeks, space is for us the great container of existence. It "stores, arranges, and holds everything together; space is also the place where we live, breathe, and can expand freely."²² Time fulfilled the same function for the Hebrews but without the kind of spatially delimiting strictures of past, present, and future that are so dear to us. The peculiarity of things as the content of space in Greek thought corresponds to the dynamic peculiarity of events in Hebrew thought. For the Hebrews time is determined by its content; time is for them the stream of events. In contrast to Hebrew thought our grammatical-linear division of time into past, present, and future does not do justice to the temporal significance of psychical consciousness. Even as Jahveh remains identical with himself (Exodus 3: 14; Isaiah 41: 4; 44: 6; 48: 12), so is the consciousness of a human life understood

²⁰ This aspect of the Hebrew-Greek problem has, of course, been subjected to careful scholarly examination in two contrasting studies, Oscar Cullmann's Christ and Time (London: SCM Press, 1952), and John Marsh's The Fulness of Time (New York: Harper, 1952).
²¹ Boman, op. cit, p. 129.
²² Ibid, p. 137.

360 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

360

as a whole event which cannot be neatly sliced up into segments like a spatial pie.²³

The Hebrews likewise understood the corporate consciousness of the people or nation as a unity identical with itself at every "point." Because of this it is possible for a Hebrew to be contemporaneous with a past event in the life of his people which we would consider to be "historical"-behind us in time-and therefore non-repeatable. This capacity for experiencing contemporaneity with a "past" event is quite natural for the Hebrew. It is difficult if not impossible for most Western minds.²⁴

It is obvious that the radically temporal perspective of Hebrew thought has far-reaching implications for the disciplines of history and psychology within the university. As Boman has pointed out, a few isolated thinkers in Western thought have challenged our traditional sense of time as being a confused mixture of time and space. Henri Bergson's criticism of our notion of time remains unrefuted, but who pays much attention to Bergson any more?²⁵

VII

Our Hellenistic cultural forebearers conceived reality visually as being; our Hebraic forebearers conceived reality auditively as movement. Both of these perspectives (to say nothing of the perspective we may have inherited from the Romans) are necessary, because reality is both "being" at rest and dynamic movement. As Thorleif Boman observes, this is logically impossible and yet quite correct.²⁶ Both Hebrew and Greek thought must pay the price of one-sidedness for their astonishing intellectual achievements. "As their cultural successors and heirs, we can pay them no greater homage than to attend equally to both heritages, to protect them, and, if possible, to find a synthesis between them just as we try in

²³ Ibid, p. 138.
²⁴ Boman, op. cit., p. 148. According to Rabbi Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, "In every age it is the duty of everyone to imagine that he himself fled from Egypt…. Therefore we are bound to give thanks … to Him who has done these wonders for our fathers and for us all, who led us from bondage to freedom, . . ." Quoted by Suzanne de Dietrich in The Witnessing Community (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), pp. 49-50, from Wilhelm Vischer, The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ, pp. 173-174.
²⁵ Boman, op. cit., pp. 126 f. With all the recent enthusiasm for Kierkegaard studies, a profound reflection of the Hebraic conception of time may be slipping in the back door of more than one university philosophy department subtly clothed in Kierkegaard's "category of contemporaneity."
²⁶ Ibid., p. 208.

361 - The Hebraic Void In the Univercity

our own lives to make the most of all five senses if we would understand reality and have a thorough grasp of it all."²⁷

Even though the Church is the heir of Hebrew thought in a crucially different sense than is Western culture in general, it bears the conscious burden of the Hebraic gap in our cultural self-understanding in a way that the modern university is either unable or unwilling to do. Its increasing concern for the order and health of the university commits the Church to work for the restoration of our full Western intellectual inheritance in the life of the university.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 207.