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The Ambiguities of Transcendence

Transcendence is "in." It bids fair to become a cant term in popular and theological parlance. The more the world is seen as pressing people down, with never-ending crises and numbing boredom, the more the idea of transcendence flourishes. It is apparently a dimension of experience that holds enormous promise for escape from the mundane level.

This new preoccupation with transcendence is prompted less by a scientific outlook than by human satiety with the world as it is. Transcendence appears as a flight to a more rewarding realm of experience. Perhaps Charles Fair’s comment about Eric Hoffer’s true believer is not far off the mark. The true believer is "a man determined to drag the supernatural back to life by the sheer power of wishing, or failing that, to vent his desolation on those around him -- on reality itself for being such a cheat" (The New Nonsense [Simon & Schuster, 1974] p. 75).

In the past several years we have been assailed with reports of the benefits derivable from the transcendent dimension. We have been instructed by Harvey Cox and his disciples on the values inherent in festivity and fantasy that lift us above prosaic ways of thinking and feeling. We have been encouraged by Sam Keen to enjoy sensuous transcendence in the name of dancing gods. We have been urged to develop a theology of the unimaginable. And along with these symptoms of dis-ease with the world, we have devils, exorcism, witchcraft, charismatic experience and the dictum of Pope Paul VI that the devil is real.

A recent book blurb assures us that the author has nailed down his argument for God’s existence with the contention that it is impossible to go beyond oneself unless there’s a "Beyond (ideal or real) toward which man can transcend" (note well the reification bought cheaply by capitalizing the B in Beyond!). William A. Johnson believes that the search for transcendence is prompted by the desire for a "deeper and more profound meaning of life and for a sensitizing and intensification of human experience" (The Search for Transcendence [Harper-Colophon, ‘974]’ p. 1). Robert Bellah is heard to say that society needs symbols of transcendence if it is to be capable of creative and healthy activity. Peter L. Berger, enthusiastic proclaimer of the appearance of transcendence, suspects that "there is something close to an instinct for transcendence in human beings" and that "the reality policemen" and "reality definers" that throng our colleges and universities have helped to repress this valuable resource ("Cakes for the Queen of Heaven: 2500 Years of Religious Ecstasy," The Christian Century, December 25, 1974, p. 1220). The "Appeal for Theological Affirmation" promulgated by the Hartford theological group also paid its respects to the subject of transcendence by affirming the loss of a sense of the transcendent, and by distinguishing false transcendence from true (Worldview, April 1975, p. 40).

I

Obviously, since such a diversity of results is claimed for transcendence, it behooves both critics and defenders to proceed with caution in assessing the value and nature of transcendence. Where so many and so variant phenomena are attributed to transcendence, one is permitted to suspect that some multifarious features of the world, supposedly left behind by transcendence, are nevertheless imported into the essential character of transcendence itself. It seems probable, despite the denials issued by defenders of transcendence, that the mundane world they deprecate revenges itself upon them in the last analysis.

Some common themes link most advocates of transcendence. Essential to many types, if not all, is the belief that there is a supernormal state of consciousness in which a breakthrough of the normal limits of consciousness raises one to a dimension where a new state of being comes about. Thus, in his comments on defining religion, Berger approvingly refers to Rudolf Otto’s idea of the holy, and suggests in the light of that concept that religious experience must be recognized as distinct from "the experiences of ordinary, everyday reality." Religious experience, then, is almost equated with transcendence. "The reality of everyday life is ever again breached, as other realities force themselves upon consciousness" ("Some Second Thoughts on Substantive versus Functional Definitions of Religion," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. X, No. 2, pp. 129-130).

As Berger’s comment shows, transcendence is not merely a transformation of the mind; it stands also for an "objective" reality not accessible to daily, ordinary experience. This point becomes salient for those who would wish to convince us that there is a larger, deeper "reality" than could be produced by mere mental operations. Furthermore, many proponents argue that transcendence issues in beneficial consequences: it leads to creativity, to a sense of the hollowness and flatness of daily life as one sees beyond it, to an opening of perceptions and sensitivity to the normally unseen "realities" beyond the trivialities of worldly existence.

II

The implications of this way of thinking for Christian religion and theology become clear. If the religious life is to be accurately assessed as religious, it must be lived in the presence of "two realities" -- the sacred and the profane, the holy and the secular, the supernatural and the natural. God inhabits the realm of the sacred, the holy and the supernatural -- accessible only, if the logic be followed, in a state of consciousness which opens the way to the reality of the transcendent. God is behind the scenes. He is not where human beings do their daily work, where they live, think, feel and die. The richer world of the supernatural and transcendent lies beyond the dumpy, dull world that we inhabit most of the time.

There is no need for argument if all that is claimed for transcendence is that human beings can move psychologically from one state of consciousness to another. Such self-transcendence is obvious and needs no defense. Memory, reasoning, the use of signs and symbols, self-awareness, the exercise of imagination, the sense of depth or height of certain crucial experiences, the sense of humor, the realization of what Karl Heim called the nonobjectifiable ego -- all are forms of self-transcendence, as are despair and madness. Transcendence conceived as self-transcendence is the ability we have as human beings to move psychologically from some time-confined present patch of sense or mental datum to some datum or proposition not available within the bounds of the previous present. In this sense one transcends or goes beyond any present content of the mind for the sake of a new "present." As such, there is nothing extraordinary or even notably religious in self-transcendence, although without it we would be less than human.

Now a distinction already hinted at must be made clear. Advocates of transcendence too easily slide over this distinction as they assimilate self-transcendence to the idea of an ontological, independent realm of the transcendent. Thus, Johnson states:

"Whether transcendence is conceived of in a technical philosophical sense (as that metaphysical realm above the rational) or in an ordinary sense (as that phenomenon or experience found within the natural world, but which appears to point beyond that world) the meaning is about the same" (op. cit., p. 2).

However, it is far from obvious that the ordinary sense of self-transcendence counts as evidence of an ontological transcendent realm or that self-transcendence provides "pointers" to or "signals" of such a realm, as Berger would have it (A Rumor of Angels [Doubleday Anchor, 1969], pp. 55 ff.). Psychological experience of self-transcendence cannot legitimately be converted into an objective ontological transcendent. The mere fact that I have a certain self-transcending experience does not forthwith establish that the experience is a veridical experience of an independent reality. The conversion of psychology into ontology cannot be accepted unless we are willing to accept the Berkeleyan dictum "To be is to be perceived." Furthermore, to make psychological experience identical with independent reality is to convert psychological operations into causal categories -- a move of dubious logic at best.

III

Another matter that poses an interesting problem for those who obscure the distinction between self-transcendence and ontological transcendence is the fact that inference (a self-transcending act) intervenes between the primary self-transcending acts of, the mind and the final conclusion that such "signals" or "pointers" are valid indicators that there is a transcendent realm. A short-circuited line of argument is implicit in the effort to conclude forthwith that such a realm exists. Even if we are told that the move from psychology to ontology or metaphysics is an act of faith, a judgment is tacitly involved. What seems to happen is that explicitly or implicitly one affirms that a state of mind is either factually identical with an ontological reality or that from a state of mind one can logically posit the existence of an ontological realm.

In either case, inference (i.e., this is that) derives its efficacy from that daily, ordinary, secular world so often put down by the defenders of ontological transcendence. Ecstatic experiences still conceal argument behind their transcendent faces! And that is to say that the criteria of good judgment and argument, all resident in an ontologically nontranscendent world, demand their legitimate price eventually. Would it not be wise to remind the advocates of ontological transcendence that there is a difference to be observed between perceiving things and events differently, more deeply or broadly, and perceiving different things, events or objects outside this common world?

We have learned that transcendence in either of its two forms has beneficial consequences. It frees persons from the routine, prosaic level of daily life. It opens the way to new insights and elevates the mind and soul to higher aspirations. It cannot be gainsaid that some forms of self-transcendence do refresh the mind and open the way to creative thought and action. The arts, philosophy, theology and science are unthinkable without them.

What is more questionable is that all forms of transcendence, but for the moment self-transcendence in particular, are uniformly beneficial. For example, daydreaming, in distinction from mind-wandering, is a form of self-transcendence. It may lead to connections between ideas that have been disparate and bring them into a coherence that no intellectual frontal assault could achieve, thus serving a productive end. However, daydreaming can also be a waste of time or a danger when in one’s daydreams there appears a seething reservoir of evil imaginations concerning oneself and one’s relation to the world. It is as easy to argue that self-transcendence opens the way to despair or to the demonic within one as it is to maintain that self-transcendence is an unmixed blessing. Self-transcendence carries no guarantee that its products will always be beneficial to the self or to the world. It is a capacity neutral about the value of its product.

IV

The borderline between self-transcendence and the ontological transcendent, as we have seen, is a hazy one. However, some claim for the ontological transcendent even greater and more important benefits than for self-transcendence alone. The term "God" is often identified with this realm; the two become interchangeable concepts. But the demonic, as we have noted in the case of self-transcendence, can also appear in the ontological dimension. The pope is apparently willing to deposit the devil there. And Berger finds in his study of contemporary transcendence that the "current occult wave (including the devil component) is to be understood as resulting from the repression of transcendence in modern consciousness. Repressed contents have a way of coming back, often in rather bizarre forms" (Worldview, op. cit., p. 37).

Perhaps the whole intent of this quotation is that although self-transcendence can take odd forms when repressed, it may be that civilization and religion depend upon such repression! In one sense the comment does not bear directly upon the content of the ontological reality. However, if such "bizarre" consequences are produced by repression and then are taken as "signals" of the transcendent, we have a strange situation in respect to the benefits of the transcendent. We also have a curious state of affairs in which repression from the bonds of the "reality definers" determines the content of the ontologically transcendent!

When fulsome credits are attributed to the transcendent, my mind goes to a newspaper item describing a young student’s self-immolation, According to the report, she set herself on fire to experience death and the world of spirits beyond -- i.e., the transcendent. Surely such an act is not simply self-transcendence, but self-transcendence motivated by a belief in the realm of the transcendent. It is more "bizarre" than playing with exorcism and devils. It raises ethical questions about norms in respect to the transcendent realm. Without such norms, the result is tragedy rather than the enhancement of human life. Clearly the world can be drained of value as well as enriched by the transcendent.

Doubt about the beneficial effects of belief in the transcendent is raised by last winter’s Hartford Theological Affirmation. That document challenges the assertion that emphasis upon God’s transcendence is a hindrance and preventive to Christian social concern and action. The framers of the document claim that this assertion denigrates God’s transcendence, but admit that some people shrink back into a "false transcendence" of privatism, withdrawn from social responsibility. This interesting defensive move on the part of the Hartford signers is tantamount to distinguishing false and true transcendence. Because the Bible, they are convinced, supports God’s transcendence, they retire to it as though an unassailable conviction determined the case. Of course, the fact that all biblical evidence of God’s transcendence occurs only within history does not seem to bother the authors.

But more important is the question of what basis there is for distinguishing "false" transcendence from "true" except, as the authors finally do, by reference to the realm of ordinary moral judgment and their own collective and informed insight. The transcendent itself is subject to this judgment; it is not the resolution or determiner of that judgment. The criteria of false and true at last derive from the nontranscendent and subject transcendence itself to the realm of the ordinary!

Is transcendence, either as self-transcendence or as ontological reality, so chaotic in consequence, so formless as to its dimensions, so blind as to direction, so vacuous as to structure, that only as we return to the realm of the ordinary can we make sense of it, introduce criteria of truth or falsity, beneficence or evil into it? The imagination is a wondrous capacity for self-transcendence, but as Puritanical skepticism often maintained, it not only elevated the mind and heart to God, but provided a lurking place for the devil with all his blandishments. Without imagination there is no self-transcendence, but it is far from being a self-justifying exercise of the human personality unless harnessed to the realm from which it begins its airy journeys into the beyond.

What then are we left with, beyond merely a sociological reading of the present interest in transcendence? What function in the theological enterprise does transcendence as ontological reality have for our workaday world? I would submit that at a minimum -- which is a lot -- the ontological transcendent legitimately stands for the objectivity of God. It means that God is not to be reduced to a function of the human mind, as a Feuerbach or Freud contended. It is not because he is in some seldom-visited realm beyond nature and human relations, but because we have experiences of him as supreme in value and being in the world we know. He is the power over against and within that world sustaining all that is in it. We fight him as well as become reconciled to him. His transcendence is his ever-present objectivity, whereby our subjectivity and nature are created.

As such, he is, for Christianity at least, the object of our search, as he is the one who constantly searches us out in the secular. He does not call us to flee to another world, but to hallow this world where we are placed. As Kierkegaard, in the words of Victor Eremita, says of the mystic in disdaining "the reality of existence to which God has assigned him," he "thereby disdains God’s love" (Either/Or, Vol. II [Princeton University Press, 1971], p. 248). So religion cannot be defined solely in the rubrics of sacred and secular, holy and profane, supernatural and material -- a world bifurcated into two entities (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, op. cit., pp. 125 ff.). If God is necessary to the living of this life and the understanding of this world, then surely he is not so far from us that we must dig a gulf between him and a world in which he is only spasmodically present. If we define God out of this world, we have little reason to wonder that so few are aware of his presence, and so must be counted as irreligious. Whitehead’s dictum is still relevant to this situation: "Out of relation, ignorance" -- that is, total ignorance.

The words of Second Isaiah resound with reassurance: "They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary; They shall walk and not faint" (Isa. 40:31) -- in this world where most of life is walking without fainting and running without becoming weary. So after all, this ordinary world may not be so flat, dull and uninteresting as some proponents of transcendence claim, since by walking and running we may see and enjoy much which, in our haste to leap into transcendence, we have overlooked or deprecated.

A Religious Naturalist Looks at Death

Apparently from the very beginning, death has presented a problem to humankind. It is likely also that of all animals only human beings have had the equipment with which to foresee death and to try to understand it. There have usually been two problems in understanding death: on the one hand, the belief that life is rendered meaningless if it is cut off in death and, on the other hand, the belief that human beings, unlike other animals, are too valuable to suffer the fate that awaits all other living forms.

Underlying both These beliefs is the assumption of a radical disjunction between humanity and the rest of nature with regard to value, being and destiny. I would challenge the assumption that human beings are in any way outside of, radically different from, or even more valuable than the total nexus of which we are a part. I call myself a naturalist because I cannot conceive of any useful theory that makes humankind unnatural. I call myself a religious naturalist because I am sure that the religious values of transcendence and ultimacy can best be preserved on the basis of this unitary assumption.

There are three responses which mortals can make in regard to death: to deny it, to accept it as an unpleasant but inevitable fact, or to affirm it not only as inevitable but also as a valid and joyous part of the natural process of which birth, living and death are equally important. I favor the third position. However, a brief review of the more orthodox positions, pointing out why from my viewpoint they fall short of validity, is in order.

I

One way of denying death stems from Plato. In The Republic he writes: "The wise man will not count this life of man a matter of much concern, so for such a man death will have no terrors." In this view, life becomes a poor adumbration of true life, which comes after death. This attitude found its way into Christianity via neo-Platonism and persists among many orthodox Christians today. The Buddhist position is that all life is suffering which one can overcome only by realizing that the suffering results from attachment to the ego; thus, ridding oneself of the illusion of self makes death an illusion.

The orthodox Christian and the orthodox Buddhist both regard this life as a preparation for another kind of life, although the Christian seeks to purify the self while the Buddhist carries the purification so far as to be rid of self altogether. In neither case is life, here and now, taken seriously enough. Both views seem to lead to a kind of covert escapism from what I would call the real business of living. From a metaphysical point of view these positions seem to create such a dichotomy between ordinary experience and "reality" that for many the only recourse is a kind of lobotomy which divorces reality from rationality. As to these doctrines’ religious value, it seems that human beings are enjoined not so much to have faith as to regard themselves, as they are here and now, as unworthy of having faith.

A more recent denial of death that has attracted some attention is the position taken by Alan Harrington in The Immortalist (Avon, 1970), which, appropriately enough, first appeared in Playboy. Harrington maintains that life could be made over to eliminate death altogether through human engineering (genetic and otherwise). Going even further, he says that "the primary source of our fears, and all evil and meanness afflicting the human spirit . . . was death all the time, and nothing else." This new version of the Fountain of Youth myth seems about as attractive as the prospect of sitting on a cloud playing a harp and consuming milk and honey throughout eternity.

One could raise an almost inexhaustible number of questions; at least a few of them should be noted. At what point in the life cycle (or death cycle) would one wish to be stabilized? Considering the problem of overpopulation it would seem necessary -- if human engineering did not alter the reproductive cycle -- to fix human life before puberty or after menopause. Can one imagine a valuable, or even interesting, existence if growth for everyone were halted at either of these two developmental levels? Who could really wish for the monotony that would be a necessary consequence of our being rendered immortal in this curiously naïve sense? Hans Jonas has pointed out (in The Phenomenon of Life [Dell, 1968]) that the very essence of what we mean by life is mortality: "Mortality is the very condition of separate self-hood which in the instinct of self-preservation shows itself so highly prized throughout the organic world." How can life be envisioned as lacking the complete process of birth, development and death? Whatever else we mean life, we mean change; without it, what remained would be a mere semblance. Ethically, we hope that lives will change for the better. But whether or not this is the case, the capacity to choose, to react to new conditions (both within the self and in the environment) , is the process of living that makes possible the worth of living.

II

At least since Epicurus some have viewed death as obviously the end, and the conviction that it is not as merely immature wishful thinking. To Freud, belief in immortality was part of what he called a socialized neurosis from which humanity would eventually recover. The existentialists make an ethical obligation of the notion that death is all and that "living in the face of death means living such fashion that life can be broken off at any moment and not be rendered meaningless by such an accident," to quote Glenn Gray’s "The Problem of Death in Modern Philosophy" (in The Modern Vision of Death, edited by Nathan A. Scott, Jr. [John Knox, 1967)).

There is something very attractive about the existentialist position. To face life naked of any solace seems brave and upstanding. Perhaps, better than almost anyone else, the existentialist expresses the individual’s responsibility to live well now. However, anyone who is aware of natural process will find that position unrealistic. Atheistic existentialism holds that there is no meaning in the universe apart from our obligation to create meaning in our own lives -- and somehow that seems very pretentious.

More reasonable is the Bantu concept of Muntu, "meaning-giver," a class to which people, spirits and God all belong. Thus, individuals are part of a continuity in spiritual as well’ as material aspects. Just as there are beings with less understanding and less capacity to ‘give meaning in the world, so there are likely to be those who have greater capacity to understand the totality of meaning into which their own meanings fit or do not fit -- a concept that seems reasonable, if not easily provable. Moreover, if our living is related to and dependent on other life of all sorts, as it certainly appears to be, to assume that this interrelation ends with what is called death seems preposterous.

Ethically, existentialism seems to foster arrogance in relation to the rest of nature. Metaphysically, it neglects people’s entire setting and’ creates an impassable chasm between them and all that they depend on to live. Nothing that we know of natural phenomena supports that position. Religiously, existentialism denies the possibility of awareness of that which transcends the "now" and without which the "now" cannot have significance.

III

Death and life are inexorably bound up with each other. If we deny one, we deny the other and will inevitably live poorly (in the sense of less than fully). Frances Wickes puts it well:

Life and death are concerned with the eternal process of becoming, the process of growth, transition, regression, transformation: a process where the unexpected is forever breaking through the pattern of the seemingly established, and at every turn of the river of life new vistas may be opened enabling the soul to glimpse the country where ultimate mysteries, unknown and unknowable, abide [The Inner World of Childhood (New American Library, 1968)].

We, know that, biologically, death begins in embryo. There is a constant sloughing off and generation of body tissues, a process that goes on throughout what we call life and continues after we die. Spiritually a similar process seems to be natural. We die to the old and are born to the new throughout life. Some of these deaths and births are more cataclysmic than others, but whether dramatic or gradual, the process of spiritual living is essentially the same as that of bodily living.

Moreover, as we know, that which went together to make us what we are biologically was a product of a long existence before we were born, and whatever we are. biologically will nourish and develop long after we die. But our influence on our world also goes on producing changes long after we are forgotten. As we live, we nourish or poison the lives around us, although to most of us it is not clear how or to what extent or in what ways. But each of us knows in his or her heart that this is so. In our most conscious moments we feel our responsibility to be aware of the meaning we have for others.

But many are unsatisfied with this description of meaning and value. Many want to persist as self-conscious selves. Why? The problem here ‘seems to be a profoundly ethical one. Jesus said that one must lose his life to find it. The Buddha said that one must outgrow attachment to the self. Many Christians seem to turn Jesus’ admonition around and seek so hard to find themselves that they never lose themselves. And, as many Buddhist writers warn, to strive for detachment is to fail to reach it.

There is a Taoist story that illustrates the ethical problem. Two men are walking together when they notice that a man ahead of them has dropped his umbrella. They pick it up and hand it to him. But, says the teacher, this act is not a good one if the men who pick up the umbrella are interested in gratitude from the umbrella-dropper, or if they feel satisfaction for the act. In other words, the only really good act is one in which the self has been forgotten. This tale, it seems to me, applies equally well to the desire for personal immortality. One who feels the need to be recognized, to be a self in the hereafter to watch what happens, is not really living fully. Just as it seemed to the Hindu that for the good life to eventuate, ambition and competition must be relinquished and inner knowledge sought, so it seems that the only person who has really learned enough to live well is the one who has in some sense surmounted self.

IV

The essential philosophical problem concerns what we mean by meaning. Or, to put it another way, religious significance must be described in terms that do justice to our human response to the distinction between what is essential and what is ephemeral. Any adequate description of humanity must note our peculiar tendency to contrast what will pass away with what will not, especially with regard to value. As Whitehead puts it in Science and Philosophy, "The world which emphasizes Persistence is the World of Value. Value is in its nature timeless and immortal. . . . The value inherent in the Universe has an essential independence of any moment of time; and yet it loses its meaning apart from its necessary reference to the World of passing fact. Value refers to Fact and Fact refers to Value."

This view, as he points out, is the direct opposite of Plato’s and the theological tradition derived from him. If we neglect either side of the distinction, we lapse into unreality not only in our description of humanity but also in our description of reality. Humanity shares to some extent in the capacity to apprehend the transcendent in the now -- shares, as the Bantus believe, in the capacity to give meaning and to apprehend meaning. But where we err is in the assumption that the fact on which meaning is based is eternal. We do not live forever, nor does any part of us. Yet our acts may, or may not, have eternal significance.

To Hans Jonas the Book of Life is filled with deeds rather than names -- an observation that to me expresses a part of the truth. Although Jonas overemphasizes the contrast between life and death, I would not quarrel with the "submersion of discontinuity" he finds in Whitehead. The danger of forgetting the relation between the two seems as great as, if not greater than, the danger of overemphasis on the relation. One of the psychological concomitants of our capacity to grasp meanings is the tendency to overdramatize sudden awareness, as if suddenly understanding is the same as suddenly creating. This tendency is a residue of the instinct for self-preservation which carries with it an overemphasis on the importance of the individual. René Dubos ends his little book The Torch of Life (Simon & Schuster, 1962) with a magnificent statement of the importance of recognizing this continuity without ego investment. He speaks of the mysterious sense of responsibility toward the future which has made so many willing to work for causes that transcend their selfish interests:

Concern for the future is the mark and glory of the human condition. Men come and go, but however limited their individual strength, small their contribution, and short their life span, their efforts are never in vain because like runners in a race, they hand on the torch of life.

Nikos Kazantzakis in The Saviors of God (Simon & Schuster, 1960) states our ethical responsibility better than most when he describes the individual as seed. The seed has continuity with the past, but has one unique responsibility: to blossom as only that seed can and thus to "save God."

You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain. . . . Out of an ocean of nothingness with fearful struggle, the work of man rises slowly like a small island. . . . With his knees doubled up under his chin, with his hands toward the light, with the soles of his feet turned toward his back, God huddles in a knot in every cell of his flesh. . . . Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless he is saved. . . . It is not God who will save us -- it is we who will save God, by battling, by creating and by transmuting matter into spirit.

V

Metaphysically, there is no evidence for sharp discontinuities in reality. Religiously, the demand to know the future turns faith into a smirking mask. Ethically, to cling to identity destroys the value of any and every act.

It is essential that each of us be aware that we make -- or rather, contribute to -- what is eternal. We should not fear death, for then we cease to live fully now. Our desire not to die -- to live forever or live again -- must be put away lest we not live at all. Our need to be there in the future, to be "rewarded," vitiates our acts and turns them into ego trips instead of experiences of loving and living. We must return the umbrella without wanting to be noticed or we have done nothing for our neighbor, or our God.

Reconsidering Albert Schweitzer

The hundredth anniversary of Albert Schweitzer’s birth has been marked by observances commemorating his contributions to medicine, music, theology and world peace. Perhaps the most notable of these celebrations were the blue-ribbon conference hosted by UNESCO in Paris and the Atlanta Symposium of the Albert Schweitzer Centenary. The latter featured performances by the Atlanta Symphony, working conferences on tropical diseases, discussions of Schweitzer’s ideas by theologians and philosophers, and associated concerts, films, panels and receptions throughout the Atlanta area, all under the leadership of a committee headed by Schweitzer’s daughter, Rhena Schweitzer Miller. Biblical scholars have also taken time to commemorate their famous colleague and his legacy in the field of New Testament research.

Voices of Praise and Scorn

These expressions of gratitude recall the immense wave of admiration which welled up toward the end of Schweitzer’s life. Scholarly tributes, flattering biographies and eulogizing photographic essays poured out. He was the recipient of an unprecedented number of international trophies, awards and honorary degrees.

As might be expected, attending this paean of international commendation were voices of criticism and scorn. Theologians on both sides of the Atlantic had long since written Schweitzer off as an intellectual lightweight who had succeeded in attracting the public eye by striking a dramatic pose: jungle doctor. Musicians had come to find his rendering of Bach dull and stodgy. Doctors visited the hospital at Lambaréné and pronounced it unbelievably filthy and undisciplined. Black African nationalists declared that Schweitzer’s 19th century missionary outlook was offensive. European radicals rejected Schweitzer’s cultural philosophy for its vagueness, and his personal example as a cop-out; he fled when the heat was on. Meanwhile, conservative Christians continued to stigmatize Schweitzer’s ethical pantheism as a betrayal of historic Christianity. In fact, Schweitzer’s declining years were accompanied by a veritable cacophony of praise and blame, during which time he sought to maintain a dignified silence.

Curiously, Schweitzer’s intellectual influence, except among New Testament scholars, is still negligible. For example, contemporary theologians are just beginning to realize that Western thinking lacks any adequate concept of "Nature." It is either something that humanity "subdues" (science) or that God "created" (theology). Yet current discussions scarcely make note of Schweitzer’s perceptive observations on precisely this problem, let alone his solution to this lacuna in modern theology. Likewise, specialists in Asian religions long ago dismissed Schweitzer’s publications in that area: Indian Thought and Its Development (1935) and Christianity and the Religions of the World (1923). The books he himself thought most important -- namely, the first two volumes of his projected four-volume philosophy of culture: The Decline and Restoration of Civilization (1923) and Civilization and Ethics (1923) -- aroused little sustained interest when they first appeared, and are now gathering dust in libraries.

A Foreshadowing of the ‘70s

Despite the publication of numerous Schweitzer biographies, there still remains to be written a critical study that will locate him within the turbulent currents of social protest and religious innovation in Europe at the turn of the century. Clearly Albert Schweitzer foreshadowed many important developments of our own time:

(1) Dismissing academic theology and study of the historical Jesus as blind alleys, he insisted on the freedom to set aside traditional Christian God-talk in favor of a more poetic ethical pantheism, evocative of Asian insights and attitudes, focused on a Christian mysticism. This strange mixture has so far defied attempts to reduce it to neat categories, although one of the better recent studies places Schweitzer among the death-of-God theologians, who exhibit similar kinds of eclecticism (see Schweitzer: Prophet of Radical Theology, by Jackson Lee Ice [Westminster, 1971]).

(2) His discovery of the concept "reverence for life" is a major addition to the contemporary literature aimed at deepening our concern for the cosmic biosphere’s fragile balance. In his day, Schweitzer’s adamant refusal to kill unnecessarily any form of life, no matter how minute, was regarded as a quaint eccentricity. Today, we are finally beginning to see how our callous disregard of the biosphere may have already caused irreversible damage to the environment.

(3) Like many of our contemporaries, Schweitzer read the great Asian religious texts not as a historian only, but as one whose profound sense of the failure of Christianity led him into a genuine religious quest. In fact, the concept of "reverence for life" occurred to him at a moment when, as he later told a friend, he was meditating not upon Jesus Christ but upon the Buddha.

(4) He was completely at one with the thoroughgoing metaphysical skepticism usually associated with modern existentialism. Ridiculing the notion that modern science and/or Christian theology had "explained the universe," Schweitzer insisted upon a rigorous agnosticism:

All thinking must renounce the attempt to explain the universe. . . . What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united with what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive -- it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle [The Christian Century, November 28, 1934].

(5) Despite his own unconscious racism, Schweitzer was one of the few important European intellectuals of his day who unhesitatingly directed attention to the unpopular issue of Europe’s profound moral guilt in its treatment of the Asian and African colonies.

Physical misery is great everywhere out here. Are we justified in shutting our eyes and ignoring it because our European newspapers tell us nothing about it? We civilized people have been spoiled. If any one of us is ill, the doctor comes at once. . . . Ever since the world’s far-off lands were discovered, what has been the conduct of the white peoples to the coloured ones? . . . Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they have suffered at the hands of Europeans? . . . If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible [On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, p. 115].

(6) Finally, his groping efforts toward fashioning some sort of communal existence in Lambarene, dedicated to service and nonviolence toward all, still rank as one of the noblest experiments of the 20th century. Schweitzer identified and rejected an astonishing range of useless or dangerous Western habits, proprieties, expectations and customs, replacing them with more humane, more spiritual ones in Lambaréné. For example, Westerners visiting the hospital were displeased at Schweitzer’s insistence that the animals be allowed to go wherever they wanted without harm -- animals were in fact often cared for as tenderly and thoroughly as any white settler. Asians and Africans visiting the hospital seemed not at all surprised at this policy. The pictures in Erica Anderson’s beautiful volume The Schweitzer Album (Harper & Row, 1965) illustrate how strikingly Schweitzer’s village and hospital resemble a Hindu ashram with its code of gentleness and hospitality toward all life forms. But Westerners could not grasp the revolutionary idea that health-care professionals must reach out to help more than human forms of life.

These rich and diverse innovations and discoveries, many of them only now beginning to dawn on mainstream Western thought 50 years later, suggest that a thorough reappraisal of Albert Schweitzer is called for, so that we might "rediscover" him as a remarkable index to the religious breakthroughs needed in our own time to revitalize our spiritual vision.

Why Scholars Dismiss Schweitzer

But first certain obstacles to the task of reappraisal must be recognized -- obstacles in the style and content of Schweitzer’s writings. These are, in my opinion, largely responsible for the widespread dismissal of Schweitzer by contemporary scholars. First of all, there is the formidable problem of grasping the unity and consistency of his motivations. A quick survey of his publications indicates the extent of this task. Schweitzer produced two editions of a magnificent two-volume study on Johann Sebastian Bach which is still a classic, as well as a small technical treatise on organ construction. There are five or six books on New Testament subjects, including The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Ironically, it is the first edition of this book which is in wide use among English-speaking scholars, although the second edition is unquestionably more mature and important. There are several speeches on Goethe, two autobiographical books, two volumes of a projected four on a general theory of civilization, smaller tracts on atomic testing and world peace, a collection of sermons, numerous anthologies of his sayings, and a half dozen books and pamphlets on his experiences in Africa.

So diverse are his writings that those who read his contributions in one discipline hardly ever read what he wrote in other areas, and those who do rarely seek to relate Schweitzer’s concerns in one field to his efforts in another. Consequently, few have seen the essential unity and self-consistency of his whole life. To avoid this pitfall, one should first read his autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, and the first volume of his theory of culture, The Decline and Restoration of Civilization; these two works supply the background and perspective necessary to understand all the others.

But there are other obstacles. After he left the University of Strasbourg in 1913 to go to Africa, Schweitzer increasingly felt compelled to communicate with the literate public rather than with his academic colleagues. Thus his books and speeches were couched in simple and clear terminology that nonspecialists could understand. One consequence of this otherwise laudable decision is that his later books all suffer from a vague glibness verging on banality, even while the author is discussing the most complex and profound sorts of issues. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that his writings have found scant interest among professional theologians and philosophers, for one can easily arrive at the conclusion that, despite all the fanfare, Schweitzer’s mind was shallow.

But the reader should not be deceived by appearances. As the extremely sophisticated books on Bach and on New Testament problems should warn us, Schweitzer was anything but shallow. He may have used quaint, 19th century language when writing about Life and Will and ethics and civilization (Kultur), he may have dispensed with footnotes and other academic panoply, but what he chose to write about were issues of central importance. I dare say a more informed study of his major theoretical writings will show them to be far more perceptive than they seem from a superficial reading.

Atoning for Europe’s Sins

An equally distressing obstacle is that one cannot read his many books on Lambaréné and the Africans without being continually put off by his unconscious racism, his white male paternalism, and his constant self-serving moralism. Quite apart from the fact that these attitudes were not as objectionable in his own day as they are to us today -- and that does not excuse them -- there are a couple of things that we should not forget. Schweitzer’s decision to go to Africa as a medical doctor stemmed from a powerful urge to counteract the centuries of rape, pillage, murder and hatred "Christian" Europe had perpetrated against the "colored" nations of the world. Schweitzer sensed that medicine was one of Europe’s most prized developments, and so out of his own sense of moral compulsion he decided to give up his other flourishing activities, learn medicine, and use that skill for the benefit of Africans.

Admittedly, he did not root out all of his racist bias or his condescending attitudes, but he did stress repeatedly that he wanted to have done something to atone for Europe’s sins against the Africans; his way of doing that was to offer this gift of highest value: health and freedom from pain. That decision has to count for something, if we are to arrive at a fair estimate of the man. We should not lose sight of the fact that, once he got to Lambaréné he did what he came to do, managing to devote the incredible span of 50 years to the health care of the Africans and Europeans living within a 200-mile radius of his hospital.

Second, despite his sense of European superiority, Schweitzer startled his colleagues by refusing to build a typical white European hospital. From the first, he took the unusual position that since a sick person is in a peculiarly vulnerable situation, the health-care delivery system should place as few extraneous demands upon the patient and his family as possible. He refused to insist that patients wash in strange ways, eat strange food, live in strange, white surroundings, remain isolated from their relatives, and so on. Instead, Schweitzer sought to build a hospital compound that would resemble as closely as possible the villages from which the natives had come, so that whole families could bring their sick and help care for them during convalescence.

Naturally, he incurred the shock and disgust of the other medical missionaries up and down the coast, but time and his meticulously kept medical log proved that his unusually perceptive policy was not as lunatic as it seemed at first. Indeed, even our own doctors and hospital staffs are beginning to admit that there may be much more to health care than white sheets, antiseptic corridors, white gowns and surgical schedules -- namely, the dignity of the patient and attention to the burden of stress on the family.

Overwhelmed by Africa

Whoever reads On the Edge of the Primeval Forest or the chapters in Schweitzer’s autobiography dealing with his life in Africa, as if they were the sort of glib, humorous travelogue stories one finds in National Geographic, is missing a great deal. For everywhere between the lines are signs of shock and personal crisis that began the moment he laid eyes on his African destination: the Ogowe River and, in the distance, Lambaréné. Far away now were the familiar European surroundings, and the doctor’s ego-tripping fantasies about showing Europe a true Christlike example. He was eye-to-eye with Africa -- and the jungle.

Its omnipresent reality came to obsess him more and more as he struggled daily against its unpredictable and unfamiliar powers, its seething maelstrom of submicroscopic organisms, its incredibly lush vegetation, the bizarre animals. His very first day at Lambaréné he discovered to his horror that the abandoned chicken shed given to him for his hospital was crawling with giant spiders as big as his hand and hundreds of poisonous snakes. He had to kill them all. He tells of mould destroying his precious medicines, of endless, heartbreaking epidemics of dysentery within his own hospital wards, of midnight battles with hordes of army ants marching for hours through camp destroying every living thing in their path.

On one occasion he was returning late at night from a sick call to a distant village, navigating , a small tributary of the Ogowe by canoe and hurrying to make Lambaréné before midnight. Suddenly his native paddlers froze. In the murky light of the moon, Schweitzer discerned two large bulks floating in the water ahead: two murderous, unpredictable hippos, "glaring at me," not 15 feet away. A wave of pure terror flooded over him. Somehow the paddlers slid the canoe past without mishap; as Schweitzer later wrote, it was an unforgettable incident. But each such incident was unforgettable, contributing its own indefinable pressure toward breaking down his complacent, civilized façade.

Remember, it is the ultrasensitive and accomplished musician of the Bach volumes who lies awake in the sweaty night listening to nature’s "music" -- the terrifying cries from the forest, the aimless humming of the mosquitoes in his room. And it is the brilliant young theologian, author of a world-famous book on the historical Jesus, who cannot find a way to make his patiently listening native parishioners understand that "Lord Jesus" was an actual person who lived long ago -- or even what the category "history" means in the first place. But notice how laconically he comments upon this problem:

The historical element in Christianity lies, naturally, outside their ken. The Negro lives with a general view of things which is innocent of history, and he has no means of measuring and appreciating the time-interval between Jesus and ourselves [On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, p. 103].

So much for this young theologian’s chief claim to fame -- totally lost on these Africans! In fact, most of the time Schweitzer could not communicate directly with them at all; since he did not speak any of the half-dozen dialects around Lambaréné What is a theologian to do when he cannot speak?

All of these experiences point toward a period of intense culture shock and readjustment. Add to this his despair over the outbreak of World War I just after he arrived in Lambaréné, and his subsequent incarceration, along with his wife, in a French concentration camp, and one begins to understand why Schweitzer in the period after 1913 gradually questioned and then renounced one chunk of Western "conventional wisdom" after another, choosing instead to travel by dead reckoning toward some distant continent of Promise across all sorts of uncharted, trackless wastes.

Out of this period comes his formulation of the concept "reverence for life," which still needs to be rightly interpreted. I suspect that it derives from an observation found at the end of his collection of anecdotes titled From My African Notebooks, where he expresses his amazement at the great contrasts between Europe and Africa. In Europe, in his train journey to the coast, he would pass mile after mile of neat, tidy farms and bustling, orderly villages. When he reached Africa, he was confronted by harsh, forbidding jungle; brackish water; villainous insects; rakish, haphazard villages; illness and misery. In Europe it seemed that human beings could control Nature, but as soon as he arrived in Africa, it became obvious to him that, as he put it, "man was nothing and Nature was everything." That realization gradually worked its way to the very center of Schweitzer’s being, and the sign of its victory was the momentous day on the Ogowe River when the concept of "reverence for life" flashed before him. What a terrible illusion Western society has labored under -- what colossal naivete about "conquering nature"!

The Futility of ‘Historical Jesus’ Studies

The valuable insights available to those who seek to discern the interrelatedness of his writings can readily be illustrated by turning to another of Schweitzer’s major books, probably the most well-known: The Quest of the historical Jesus. In this case, the conventional interpretation of his intentions is virtually 180 degrees away from what he meant to accomplish. The customary view among New Testament scholars and theologians is that Schweitzer set out to delineate the true picture of the historical Jesus because his predecessors and contemporaries had overlooked Jesus’ preoccupation with eschatology. Scholars have tended to ignore the final chapter of the book, assuming it to be no more than the customary pious ending to a scholarly attack on Jesus and the church.

There is little awareness that Schweitzer articulated in this conclusion his central motivation for writing the book. To be sure, Schweitzer stated it in such terse and abbreviated fashion in the first edition that few could grasp it. It was only in the second edition, which appeared six years later, that he spelled out his intentions in considerable detail. But this edition was never translated into English, although Henry Clark tried to remedy the lack by translating all the conclusion’s new material in an appendix to his book The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer (1962).

In this second conclusion, Schweitzer boldly demands a moratorium on all further efforts to achieve a scholarly, historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus; He claims that his research has proved the futility of all such attempts, and in any case, such studies are not what the modern world or Christianity needs. What is needed is a direct and unmediated faith response to the Jesus of the Scriptures! In other words, his book was not intended as a contribution to the "life of Jesus" literature (although that is what it is commonly thought to be), nor was he trying to demonstrate that he could do better what had been poorly done before -- namely, get at the truth of what Jesus was "really" like. The book is actually a summary of the miseries of the "life of Jesus" movement, concluding with a trumpet call to scholars to renounce all further attempts at defining "the historical Jesus" and to return to the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels.

From this perspective, one is amazed to discover Schweitzer’s close kinship with his predecessor Martin Kähler. But how on earth did he come to write such a book as this? For the answer, we need to look at his other writings.

A Pessimistic Turn of Mind

From his autobiography we learn what was going on in Schweitzer’s mind while he was a student at Strasbourg, busily studying New Testament research at the feet of the famed scholar Heinrich Julius Holtzmann.

As early as my first years at the University, I had begun to feel misgivings about the opinion that mankind is constantly developing in the direction of progress. My impression was that the fire of its ideals was burning low. . . . On a number of occasions I had to acknowledge that public opinion... approved of as opportune inhumane courses of action taken by governments and nations. . . . I had to infer the growth of a peculiar intellectual and spiritual fatigue in this generation which is so proud of what it has accomplished. It seemed as if I heard its members arguing to each other that their previous hopes for the future of mankind had been pitched too high, and that it was becoming necessary to limit oneself to striving for what was attainable. The slogan . . . Realpolitik meant the approbation of a shortsighted nationalism, and compromises with forces and tendencies which had hitherto been resisted as hostile to progress. . .

It seemed to be assumed everywhere not only that we had made progress in inventions and knowledge, but also that in the intellectual and ethical spheres we lived and moved at a height which we had. never before reached. . . . My own impression was that we were not only below the level of past generations, but were in many respects only living on their achievements . . . and that not a little of this heritage was beginning to melt away in our hands. [Thus] I was always, along with my other work, inwardly occupied with another book, which I entitled Wir Epigonen [which one might translate "We Hangers-on," and which was finally titled The Decay and Restoration of Civilization] [Out of My Life and Thought, pp. 146 f.].

It was in this pessimistic and agitated frame of mind that Schweitzer decided to take a careful look at the history of research on Jesus for a course he was teaching. His discoveries appalled him. He felt impelled to spend several years meticulously examining every facet of German scholarship on Jesus to demonstrate how worthless and sterile it had become. This conclusion stands as the very first sentence in the final chapter in both editions of The Quest of the Historical Jesus:

Those who are fond of talking about "negative theology" can find their material here. There is nothing more negative than the result of [200 years of] the critical study of the "life of Jesus."

In his second edition, Schweitzer explained why this great effort had proved so fruitless. His words did not make pleasant reading.

Our age and our religion have failed to apprehend the greatness of Jesus. . . . There was simply no resonance between their worldview and his. . . . His ethical enthusiasm and the directness and power of his thought remained inaccessible to them, because they knew nothing similar to this in their own thought. They continually tried to make of this "fanatic" a contemporary man and a theologian, who would always decently observe the accepted norms of moderation and propriety. . . . [There can] be no vital fellowship between him and a generation utterly devoid of all directness and all enthusiasm for the ultimate aims of humanity. In spite of all its progress in historical perception, it really remained more foreign to him than was the rationalism of the 18th or early 19th century, which was drawn close to him by virtue of its enthusiastic faith in the advancing moral progress of mankind [from the translation by Henry Clark, Ethical Mysticism, pp. 198 f.].

Bitter words indeed! But they presage the opening dirgelike phrases of his Decline and Restoration, the "other book" that weighed upon his heart from his very first days at the university but which he did not actually begin to write until after the outbreak of World War I, in 1914:

We are living today under the sign of the downfall of civilization. . . . It is finally clear to everyone that the suicide of civilization has begun. What still remains of our civilization is no longer safe. It is still standing, indeed, because it was not exposed to the destructive pressure which overwhelmed the rest, but, like the rest, it is built upon rubble, and the next landslide will carry it away [pp. 1, 3].

Once The Quest of the Historical Jesus is set in the context of his other writings, and once we begin to discern the fundamental concerns that weighed upon Schweitzer’s mind during those years; we can only marvel at his prescience -- for we too are finally coming to realize that "the suicide of civilization" is imminent. From this vantage point alone can we grasp why Schweitzer would say, at the end of his survey of the German theologians’ quest for a historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus:

The truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men who is sufficient for our time and can help it. Not the "historical Jesus" but the Spirit that goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the [terrible modern] world [p. 401].

How Affirm the World?

It seems evident that Schweitzer’s dominant motivation, both before as well as during his African mission, was to find a way to bring the nations of the world back from the brink of self-annihilation. And Schweitzer had grasped, from his very earliest days, the truth that all culture, all human interchange and social life, what we comprehensively call civilization, springs from nothing more substantial than our visions and dreams, our religious beliefs and convictions. When these atrophy, then civilization will inevitably collapse.

This insight explains the vehemence of his attack upon the German quest for the historical Jesus, just as it illuminates his behavior’ during his first years at Lambaréné, when he ransacked the intellectual storehouses of the world’s religions in order to find some way to conceive of an affirmation of the world that was not merely mindless hedonism, a way that could motivate a powerful urge toward human betterment, toward perfection within the structures of natural existence. His search impelled him to ask the question of all the other religious traditions (some of which were hardly prepared to entertain such a goal), as well as the great philosophical traditions of the West. But here one sees why his books on Indian and Chinese thought seem superficial and one-sided: he was writing these books not as a historian but, if you will, as a drowning man looking for something -- anything -- to grab onto. His urgency had long since driven him beyond the luxury of mere historical knowledge, just as his sense of moral despair had earlier driven him beyond the luxury of a life devoted to art and music.

Once in Africa, Schweitzer gradually came to understand what well may be the most important mistake made by the Europeans (and Americans) since the rise of Western civilization -- namely, their pride in their superindustrialized "mastery" over the forces of Nature, a much-vaunted control which is leading to the destruction of our biosphere. It was only in Africa that Schweitzer could see the enormity of what was happening, and realize, precisely because of the great contrast, how superficial Western culture had become, and therefore how dangerous.

It was from his African outpost that Schweitzer began calling out to awaken the world. And it may be, as more and more of us begin to understand this man whom so many already willingly admire, that we will be able to do some of the things his example encourages us to try.

A new Renaissance must come, and a much greater one than that in which we stepped out of the Middle Ages; a great Renaissance in which mankind discovers that the ethical is the highest truth and the highest practicality. . . . I would be a humble pioneer of this Renaissance, and throw the belief in a new humanity like a torch into our dark age [Civilization and Ethics, p. xxiii].

TM Comes to the Heartland of the Midwest

In July 1967 I came to Fairfield, Iowa, as pastor of a Presbyterian congregation. As my family of seven was arriving on one edge of town, the former president of Parsons College was making his exit at the other edge. From that time forward, enrollment at the college, which had at one time anticipated 5,000 students, dwindled until finally it was forced into bankruptcy and had to close its doors. Many members of our church were students, staff, faculty or alumni of Parsons College. Its closing was a blow to the life of the congregation. Not only did lay leadership falter, but attendance declined, and giving fell slightly.

I

In the fall of that first year in Fairfield, a teacher of "Transcendental Meditation," or "TM," came to the college to address students informally, and to speak to some of the religion classes. After his presentation to the students, the teacher indicated that there would be additional presentations, interviews, and an "initiation" for anyone who desired to become a "meditator." I had heard of TM, of course, but now I began to accumulate all the material I could on the technique and its proponent, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. During Parsons College’s remaining years, there were "meditators" on the campus, though few townspeople were aware of their presence.

Members of our congregation and community were deeply concerned over the future of the Parsons property. There was much speculation as to potential buyers; I even suggested to the United Presbyterians’ Synod of Lakes and Prairies that an offer to take over the premises for a one-dollar consideration could keep the facilities in the nonprofit category and enable the owners of the college to avoid paying enormous taxes on the property.

Then we began hearing rumors that a college in Santa Barbara, California, referred to as "MIU," was interested in buying the property. Finally we learned what the initials stood for: Maharishi International University. That was all we needed: a university whose name we could not even pronounce! We had visions of flowing robes, burning incense, long hair or shaved heads, prayer beads and sandals (and sandals would be unthinkable inside a pair of overshoes on a cold January morning in Iowa!).

The first opportunity for the townspeople to meet people from the university came at an open meeting of our church’s Session in May 1974. Two representatives of the university were to make a presentation and then answer questions from the floor. The two neatly dressed young men with attaché cases who were the university’s emissaries to Fairfield looked as though they had stepped off Madison Avenue into the cornfields of southeast Iowa. Their speech was serene yet assured. Their fiscal and educational knowledge satisfied the business and college contingent present.

After the meeting, the Session voted its support for a study and evaluation of the proposed Maharishi International University, to be located on the former Parsons College campus.

II

As MIU approached a decision on buying the campus, I was coming into contact with more and more TM persons each day. They possessed an inner serenity, external calmness and assurance which were almost enviable. I was busily writing and calling state and national officials on behalf of MIU, hoping that the way would open for MIU to move from Santa Barbara, California, to Fairfield -- despite the forceful and violent opposition of a vociferous minority group that included a few members of our congregation.

Finally, financial arrangements were agreed upon, and it was announced that MIU was coming to the "heartland of the midwest" -- Fairfield, Iowa. Students and faculty were coming by plane, train, car, bus and van. It would be less than accurate to suggest that there was no apprehension on the part of townspeople. Rumors abounded. Fundamentalist churches drew crowds from 50 and 60 miles away to hear a "specialist on satanism" who had been called in to disclaim the virtues of TM and the leaders of MIU.

But everyone seemed to be able to sleep better after a picture appeared on the front page of the Fairfield Ledger, showing a dozen or more students getting off the plane at Des Moines -- the fellows all in shirts and ties and jackets and, best of all, short hair; the girls in dresses, not jeans.

At our "welcoming service" for students and faculty in our congregation, more than 200 students and faculty members were present. For the first time in the history of our church, the front parking area was lined with bicycles. Inside the sanctuary, the balcony was full, and many were sitting in the aisles. The electrical vibrations which ran through the congregation that morning were fantastic. It was a real spiritual happening, a celebration of the highest order.

The university’s long-range plans included the planting of 10,000 trees on the campus. But what a campus! For over a year the property had been dormant. The grass was waist-high. The rooms in both the dormitories and the classrooms were filthy. Water pipes and heating systems were said to be unusable.

So townspeople lent their support to students and faculty to give the physical plant a thorough going-over. Everyone pitched in to make things at least livable. Some MIU faculty members and students, together with their families, were still in quarters without water or electricity. The electricity was restored much sooner than the water. At the end of October, when temperatures were well below freezing, the administrative offices were still without heat.

Now, however, MIU is an established reality in Fairfield. MIU persons are found in our Presbyterian sanctuary on Sunday mornings, and at Protestant services at MIU’s Interfaith Chapel on Sunday evening. Some are active in our choir or church school. Statistically, the majority of the MIU students are Episcopalians.

III

In April 1974 I was given a catheterization of the heart. I had suffered my first heart attack in 1970, my second in 1973. As I entered the University of Iowa’s department of cardiology, I was mindful that my future in the ministry was largely dependent upon the result of the testings. An arterial bypass was being considered. At the entranceway of the lecture auditorium for the Department of Cardiology, there was a large sign: "TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION AND CARDIOLOGY." Later I discovered that there had been a series of lectures on the relationship between TM and the function of the heart. Among the findings on that topic are these: "Transcendental Meditation produces superior physiological rest and causes the heart to maintain a restful pace even outside of meditation. This gradually brings about a permanent and beneficial reduction in heart rate, indicating less wear on the heart: improved cardiovascular efficiency in meditators" (Fundamentals of Progress [MIU Press, 1974], p. 23). TM is also beneficial for persons suffering from high blood pressure: "Systolic and arterial blood pressure was recorded 1,119 times in 22 hypertensive patients before and after learning Transcendental Meditation. The decreases in blood pressure after practicing Transcendental Meditation were statistically significant and indicate the clinical value of Transcendental Meditation in helping hypertensive patients" (ibid., p. 35). Finally, the evidence reveals that "during Transcendental Meditation cardiac output markedly decreases, indicating a reduction in the workload of the heart" (ibid., p.17).

It was in light of these findings that a team of doctors asked if I had ever heard of Transcendental Meditation. I replied that I had studied it with great interest for the past eight years. They suggested that I give serious consideration to practicing TM. There was only one hang-up: neither a minister nor a psychiatrist may be initiated as a meditator unless special permission is granted by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or unless the person goes through the complete course of "The Science of Creative Intelligence." I knew, however, that for a very selfish motivation -- namely, concern for my health -- I would become a meditator.

In my ministry I had referred others to the practice of TM for a number of reasons -- drug dependency, hypertension, or a situation in which a person was carrying around a lot of "spiritual and mental garbage" from the past which was causing undue tension and stress. In each case, Transcendental Meditation was helpful. While I was in a position to commend the practice to others, I stood on the outside looking in.

In spring 1974 notices went up throughout our community that, a series of introductory lectures on Transcendental Meditation would be presented. As a family we went to the first two lectures. When we asked which members of the family could become meditators, we were informed that only our oldest son, Joel, who was then 17, could receive personal instruction. Joel, then, was the first member of our family to become a meditator. Within the first week there were discernible changes in Joel. He had been "going to" write some record reviews for several months -- but never got around to doing it. The first week after he began practicing TM he wrote a record review and got it in the mail. Within a few weeks it was published. Again he wrote a review, and it too was published. He was able to accomplish tasks with a much greater ease and to accept disappointments with less stress.

The practice of Transcendental Meditation is effortless, natural and easy. It is a spontaneous use of the progressive nature of the mind. TM is not prayer, nor does it replace or even relate to prayer; quite the contrary, it clears the mind so that in prayer the mind and spirit move more naturally toward God. The practice allows the mind to become more aware of its full potential.

IV

Our entire family have become meditators, and we have found no compromise in our commitment to Jesus Christ and to his church. Indeed, we have found that our entire life style has become more Christian as we both give and receive love with less tension in our lives.

On the day our family was to be initiated, my wife, LaVonne, and I were more concerned with the mechanics of the initiation than with the benefits. All of our efforts were "times six." We needed six long-stemmed fresh flowers -- one for each of the six of us being initiated. We needed six new white handkerchiefs. I tried to persuade my wife that clean, freshly ironed handkerchiefs were sufficient, but she encouraged me to "go all the way," so we bought six new ones. We also tried to get some of the less expensive varieties of fresh fruit needed for the initiation.

The hour arrived, and we proceeded to the appointed place. The four children were giggling and getting their fruit mixed up. We tried to get into the building, but each door seemed to be locked. Finally I pushed on a door, anticipating that it too would be locked, and I found myself immediately on the inside with my new handkerchief underfoot. My shoes were still freshly shined. A young lady greeted us in whispers -- like an usherette in a theater. She took our flowers, fruit, handkerchiefs -- and money. We were told to be seated and to remove our shoes.

As our turns came, we were ushered into separate rooms. As I entered the room, I was welcomed by my "teacher" Dennis Heaton -- and by my fruit, flowers, and shoe-scuffed handkerchief. There was the sweet smell of incense, the soft flicker of candlelight, a white cloth on the table, and a picture of "His Divinity Swami Brahmananda Saraswati Jagadguru, Bhagwan Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math." I was impressed. Soon Dennis began a very soft sing-song chant in a language I surmised to be Sanskrit. Then he began to utter a very soft-sounding word, and with his hands moving toward my mouth, I knew I was supposed to repeat the word which was to be my mantra. It sounded strange to me. I was encouraged to say it more and more softly, then, only to think it. I was taken into another room. I started to think the mantra, but was told not to "cling" to it.

What a fantastic ensuing 20 minutes! Thoughts and no-thoughts. Sounds and no-sounds. Sights and no-sights. I heard a semitrailer racing by out on the highway, and the tires seemed to be humming the mantra. A train went by on the tracks not far from the building, and again I heard the mantra. I was aware of it without being attached to it. I was warm, yet cool. I sensed an inner and outer harmony.

I became aware that someone was in the room. It was Dennis, and he indicated that I was to go back into the initiation room. We sat on chairs as we had done when he first gave me the mantra. He made a few general observations, asked a few questions, and I was released to the bondage of my shoes once again. Each member of our family was similarly initiated. As the six of us were leaving the building, we were each given a piece of the fruit we had brought for the initiation. I was embarrassed at how inexpensive and tiny the fruit looked.

That was almost a year ago. Morning and evening our family has meditated daily since then. In our home it is most convenient to do it before our morning and evening prayers and Scripture readings. I have missed meditating only three times since my initiation.

During Transcendental Meditation the mind settles down to a state of no activity, yet there is full awareness. The analogy is used of a bow drawn with a fixed arrow. The individual is in a state of restful alertness. Like the arrow on the bow, the mind is steady and nonactive, yet it is ready to move into action. Nonaction is not understood to be inertia. Preparation for activity, then, begins with a withdrawal from activity. Again to use the analogy of the bow and arrow: the arrow is drawn in so that it may be projected out and away.

The body is seated comfortably in a chair. The mind temporarily fixes itself upon the mantra. Soon the mantra disappears. If thoughts enter the mind, they are not clung to. This form of meditation is different from both concentration and contemplation. "Transcendental" should not be confused with transcendentalism, nor should "Meditation" be confused with the usual Christian usage of meditation as a part of one’s devotional time. The process is determined not by what the mantra is, but by what the mind is. If the tendency of the mind is to expand, evolve, progress, and find fulfillment, then the mind rides the enjoyable vehicle of the mantra to attain the goal of the mental process. Thus prepared, the nervous system attunes the body so that physical activity is done with vigor, and mental activity is undertaken with a keen alertness.

I do not pretend to know exactly how and why it works, but I can attest to the fact that I have never felt so great in my 20 years in the ministry. Essentially, the meditation supplies me with a deeply satisfying rest which prepares me for extended and increased activity. It is a technique that works. One does not have to believe in anything for it to work, not even in the technique. Simply employ it and enjoy it!

V

There are now more than 250 meditators among the citizenry of Fairfield. New introductory lectures are conducted each week, with increasing numbers attending.

A calm has settled over this Iowa town with the coming of the Maharishi International University. The 185-acre facility has residence accommodations for 1,500 students and teaching facilities for 5,000. Seven hundred undergraduates, along with 200 master’s degree students, began the new academic year in September 1974. The faculty has expanded to 50. Today, in addition to the undergraduate and master’s students and faculty, there are 452 students on campus taking "special programs" and a staff of 326. The MIU board of trustees has been joined by two prominent persons: Alfred Le Sesne Jenkins, former director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Asian Communist Affairs, who organized the diplomatic initiative which established friendly relations between the United States and China; and Major General Franklin M. Davis, former commandant of the U.S. Army War College, who introduced TM to the army while director of military personnel policies in Washington in 1969.

Some have expressed concern that Transcendental Meditation is a form of religion. I would refute that claim categorically. A Hindu monk in Switzerland made the technique available to millions of people. But he is a Hindu, and he is a monk. I am a Christian, and I am a minister. The technique is equally applicable for both of us, although we are thousands of miles apart both geographically and theologically.

Perhaps the greatest thing that TM has done for our family is to unify us. We previously had devotions on a hit-or-miss basis, depending on who was around at a particular time. We always had the blessing at the table, but we found it difficult to corral the entire family for prayer and Scripture reading at one time. Now, we are all up early in the morning, we meditate for 20 minutes (not quite so long for the younger children), and then we have morning devotions with prayer and Scripture reading. Similarly, in the late afternoon, just before the evening meal, we meditate and again have our family’s evening devotions. Every aspect of our life has changed. Scripture reading is more meaningful. Our prayers are more real. Our relationships are more harmonious. Our entire life style has been changed. TM works! It is not a compromise with one’s own personal faith or religious convictions. It does, however, give additional release from pressure and stress which allows our minds, bodies and spirits to soar to greater heights than previously experienced.

Transcendental Meditation has come to the heartland of the midwest, and I am thankful that it has come not only to our community but also into our lives. As our family completed devotions recently, we read the words of Joshua: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." This is our renewed exclamation as we continue to practice TM and continue to manifest the love of Christ to those about us.

Legalisms or Logos?

Text:

During a talk at a large suburban church, I refer to Christ’s first and great commandment and the second which is like it as a basis for discussing who our neighbor is, and some of the ways in which we can express our concern for that person. At one point a man in the group raises a hand in protest. "You have been speaking a lot about the neighbor, and what we can do for him," he says, a bit testily. "But I would remind you that loving God is the first commandment. That’s where the emphasis must be."

"Can we really separate the two?" I ask. "Isn’t the second equally important? Doesn’t it authenticate and implement the first? Without the second, don’t we run the risk of piety and preoccupation with ecclesiastical law -- even idolatry?" He shakes his head in disagreement.

"‘For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen,’" I quote, "‘cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.’ Can we lightly dismiss our role of Samaritans if we really take Christianity seriously?" Clearly, he is not convinced.

The scene shifts to London’s St. Mark’s Church. Before preaching to the congregation of the American Church in London, which worships in the British church’s sanctuary, I speak to an adult class. When we come to the question-and-answer period, a good-looking teen-ager, his brow furrowed, asks a perceptive question which has troubled many people twice his age: "There have been many great religious teachers besides Christ, and millions of good people have followed them. Are all of these people doomed? Where does Christ stand in comparison with, say, Muhammad or Buddha? And how about the people who never heard of Christ? Are they doomed, too?"

In reply I express may own conviction that no one who believes in God, and seeks to do his will through prayer, worship and loving acts, is doomed. As for Christ, we who call ourselves Christians regard him as the uniquely great teacher and very special manifestation of God in our midst: one who shared our existence on planet earth, bore our sins, gave his life for us, and miraculously reappeared to his disciples and others after death -- in what form, we do not know.

Instantly several hands are up. Eyes flash and lips are taut:

"John 3:16 tells us that ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.’

"He who does not believe is condemned already."

"He who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him."

The scene shifts again, this time to a dell-like setting on a warm summer Sunday evening. A worship service sponsored by 15 area churches has just ended. As guest speaker, I am greeted by a handful of persons as the congregation files out of the glen. One is a man of 35 who looks at me intently as he clasps my hand. "Are you born again?" he inquires.

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, you spoke about God tonight, but you spoke a lot more about social issues and becoming involved in them. It made me wonder if you’ve been born again."

"You mean in a flash -- some sudden overwhelming conversion experience?" He nods. "In that sense, I haven’t. With me, it continues to be a gradual process -- a pilgrimage. I hope I am reborn every day as I strive to become, in the words of Paul, ‘mature in Christ.’ But I can assure you I have an unshakable faith in God and his concern for us."

He looks dissatisfied. "You heard me quote Elie Wiesel this evening," I remind him, "and his words about the horrible holocaust in which 6 million Jews were put to death. This happened in a so-called Christian nation. If I stress the need to be concerned about those who are hungry, ill-treated, and without power, it is simply because it is so easy for all of us who feel we have been saved to be maneuvered into doing some very unchristian things out of fear, indifference, or a lack of sensitivity or compassion. In fact, down through history the church itself has been guilty of many of the sins it piously condemns."

He turns away, a troubled look on his face.

I

Encounters such as these invariably fill me with sadness, for they reflect religious attitudes which through the years have brought controversy, tension, bitterness and divisiveness to many churches and denominations, yet continue to be held by sincere persons convinced of their allegiance to Christ and his church. Such attitudes gravely weaken the church and all it should stand for. They misrepresent Christ and his gospel. They alienate sensitive people concerned for the human race, its survival and future welfare. And because they gain so much visibility -- take on such an aura of authority and religious "truth" -- they lead people outside the church to conclude that Christianity really is irrelevant to the world and its problems, confirming them in their resolve to shun organized religion and go their way as humanitarians, free-thinkers or iconoclasts. The church is immeasurably poorer for the absence of these creative, imaginative people.

Yet today there seems to be a growing preoccupation with personal salvation, with biblical literalism, at the expense of ministering to the neighbor -- unless, of course, that ministry is "evangelistic." We see it in the flourishing of fundamentalism; in the controversy raging in the Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod; in the phenomenon of the Jesus freaks, the spreading charismatic movement, the popularity of Transcendental Meditation; in attacks on the National and World councils of churches and the cooling of ardor for such social issues as racial justice, world peace, and the abolition of hunger and malnutrition.

What are the theological and psychological roots of this preoccupation with "being saved," with being "born again," with deploring involvement in messy political, social and economic problems of the day? The line separating theology from psychology can be a tenuous one. After all, theological "truths" are usually sought after by very fallible human beings, whose reasoning can be warped by all the misapprehensions, distortions and prejudices fostered by their egos. One difference between a saint and a practicing theologian is the saint’s ability, to shed -- for the moment, at least -- the personal hangups that beset ordinary mortals, enabling him (or her) to receive, clearly and sensitively, the penetrating insights that God would have one grasp. Although it may be presumptuous to seek to analyze theological motives apart from the psychological, let us attempt it -- without benefit of sainthood!

II

Those who affirm with certainty that they are saved seem to be making three theological assumptions. First, they are categorizing themselves as members of what Peter calls "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people" (I Pet. 2:9-10). Second, they are implying that they have entered into a covenant with God which unconditionally binds the party of the second part to the terms of the contract. They regard themselves as the party of the first part: it is they who made the contract, not God. It never occurs to them that God might insist on inserting a theological escape clause, to be exercised by him in the event of nonperformance on their part! And third, they are basing their claim to salvation on their own evaluation of their personhood vis-à-vis God’s grace. All these assumptions, they would insist, are rooted in the Scriptures and therefore are beyond challenge. But surely this is a self-serving misinterpretation of Christ’s teachings and life!

For isn’t God -- and not man or woman -- the sole judge of any person’s ultimate destiny? Isn’t it presumptuous for us to look upon the gift of grace as a promissory note, payable upon demand? George Caird, principal of Oxford’s Mansfield College, illumines this point in Principalities and Powers by relating the story of a former bishop of Durham, accosted one day by a member of the Salvation Army. "Are you saved?" asked the Salvation Army worker. "That depends," replied the bishop, "on whether you mean in the past tense, the present tense or the future tense. If you mean ‘Did Christ die for me,’ undoubtedly; if you mean ‘Are my feet firmly set upon the highway of salvation,’ I trust so; but if you mean ‘Am I safe home in the blest kingdom meek of joy and love,’ certainly not."

Christ offers us a God-centered gospel, not a self-centered religiosity designed to bolster our complacency and smugness. He underscores this by warning that "not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7:21). in the same vein, he cautions that many are called but few are chosen." And he compares the difficulty of a rich man’s entering the kingdom of God with a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle. At the same time he holds out hope for even the worst of us. When the disciples ask him "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looks at them and says, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:26-27).

As for the assumption that a covenant with God automatically assures preferential treatment, the author of Hebrews comments on the failure of the first covenant by paraphrasing Jeremiah’s words: "for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I paid no heed to them, says the Lord" (Heb. 8:9). In much the same way, the new covenant also requires a commitment on the part of each Christian. It must be considered not a basis of privilege for the "in" people, but a call to service. Jesus spells out the nature of this commitment when he says: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:37-38). John reinforced the significance of this second commandment by observing, "If any one says ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (I John 4:20).

Perhaps of even greater significance is the way in which Jesus responds to the question put to him by a lawyer: "And who is my neighbor?" He might have been expected to reply: "Your colleagues at the Bar Association" or "the members of your temple" or "your friends of the Coliseum Athletic Club." Instead, he relates the story of the stranger who fell among thieves on the Jericho road and was stripped, beaten and robbed. And he is specific and eminently practical in describing what a Samaritan should do to help a stranger. The neighbor, then, is simply a stranger -- any stranger -- in need. Jesus makes no reference to his race, his color, his religious beliefs.

III

Finally, the assumption that those who are "saved" belong to an exclusive and privileged class is refuted by Jesus in many biblical passages. Referring to the scribes and Pharisees, he deplores the fact that "they preach, but do not practice . . . they do all their deeds to be seen by men . . . they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men. . . . He who is greatest among you shall be your servant" (Matt. 23:3-11). Even more pointed were Jesus’ remarks while dining at the home of a ruler who belonged, to the Pharisees: "When you give a dinner or banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you" (Luke 14:12-14).

If God is the God of all humanity, and if God is in Christ, sent to this planet to experience and share in the burdens of humanity, then our Christ clearly has a compassionate concern for all peoples, be they Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, agnostic or atheist. Paul reflects this all-inclusive God when he writes: "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality" (Rom. 2:9). Moreover, if we dare to call ourselves followers of Christ, surely it must be our mission to have a similar concern for all peoples. We cannot be members of a tribal enclave, a privileged or "superior" group. We must share in the problems and inequities that afflict our brothers and sisters.

But here is where we so often encounter a reluctance on the part of those who stress being "born again" to acknowledge our responsibility as Christian citizens of a world in trouble. Too often they shun involvement in the dirty affairs of politics, business, and social issues. Critics of Jesus expressed the same point of view when they asked: "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" (Matt. 9:11).

Basically the "born-again" Christian regards the world as evil and secular, and his church as elite and sacred. Through evangelism, individual souls may be "won to Christ," but social issues are so complex that the Christian should leave them in the hands of the politician, the economist, the industrialist, the social scientist. Although we daily pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," these words are seen less as a call to social action than as a prediction of the second coming. Prophecy becomes a challenge to find in global events the catastrophes predicted in the Bible as the precursor of Armageddon, rather than a prophetic call to a nation’s leaders to repent and work for justice and human betterment. Because creation ostensibly ended with the biblical era, we who follow are not considered a part of the ongoing creative process, but are to function as the custodians of religious dogma and ritual, oblivious of Christ’s words, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandments of God, in order to keep your tradition!" (Mark 7:9).

Such thinking would appear to eliminate organized religion from any concerted effort to deal with world hunger, poverty and illiteracy, public health and sanitation, and prison reform, despite the disturbing implications of Christ’s warning: ". . . for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. . . . as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me" (Matt. 25:35-45).

IV

If there is any validity to these biblical and theological interpretations that seem so at variance with religious conservatism and fundamentalism, how is it that conservative denominations and sects are showing phenomenal growth? Can an explanation be found in psychological traits deeply ingrained in the American character? Are there forces at work in our society which foster such growth?

I would suggest five concepts that appear to wield a powerful psychological influence on Christianity as practiced in contemporary America.

1. A yearning for simplistic answers to spiritual questions. Amid the mounting tensions and complexity of our computerized society, more and more people seek a simple, positive, authoritarian brand of religion. In one sense, it is a nostalgic desire to recapture the warmth and coziness of "the little church in the wildwood." In another sense, it is a vague longing for a religious "fix" -- what Marx liked to call "the opiate of the people." In either case, it results in a flight from religious pluralism and an insistence on rigidity of belief, conformity with biblical literalism, acceptance of often sterile dogma.

2. A static "frozen" religion, in which the Bible is viewed as the final revelation of God. The concept of a spiritual journey during which the pilgrim strives to come to grips with tough questions, and to become more "mature in Christ" as he finds his relationship with God and with other human beings taking on new and deeper meaning, is rejected, as is the Teilhardian concept that we are evolving spiritually toward "omega." This attitude squeezes out what Henri Nouwen refers to as "space" -- the area needed to permit the meaningful interchange of ideas and insights which can lead to spiritual growth and understanding.

3. Pietism or religiosity as opposed to secularism. Essentially this is a compartmentalizing or "bottling up" of religion so that the sacred and the secular are safely separated. Because this separation can lead to elitism and holier-than-thou attitudes, it somewhat parallels the class distinctions we maintain in our secular society. Keeping the church divorced from politics, from business ethics and from controversial social issues assures the purity of the religious body and prevents the contamination of its members. But how often the leaders of conservative denominations resort to political chicanery to win internecine battles and preserve the sanctity of their positions! The illusion of religious vitality frequently is maintained by arguing the legalisms of biblical stories which were written to lift us allegorically to insights about great truths. And evangelism is emphasized at the expense of serving "the least of these." An extreme but significant example is the TV evangelist who deplored the sending of rice to feed the starving millions of India because "a day or so later they will starve anyway -- so let’s send them, instead, the Bible!"

4. The cult of "success" based on rugged individualism. Those who founded our nation were pioneers who stressed self-reliance, the conquest of a new and virgin land, and a machismo based on force, power and schemes to outwit the opponent. As the nation grew and we experienced the opening of the west, the pangs of the industrial revolution, the exploitation of natural resources, the advent of wars, the abolition of slavery, and the enslavement of urban minorities, the Christian church adopted the success criteria used by industry and finance. Size, wealth and prestige were worshiped more religiously than all that the cross symbolizes. In conservative congregations, ministers surrendered their prophetic duty to expose the evils of society in order not to offend members for whom the church had become a badge of respectability. Washington prayer breakfasts and invocations at banquets became a pleasant way of tacitly endorsing the status quo. In the meantime, churches became innocuous, irrelevant, ineffective and inbred.

5. A preoccupation with personal salvation at the expense of Christian social concern. If only the individual can be converted, it is said, he will make his Christian witness felt in his vocational life, eliminating any necessity for the church to become directly involved in the messy issues that plague society. This can be true, to some extent, provided the church member is in a position of secular power and authority. But as persons move up the executive or political ladder, their involvement with the church unfortunately tends to diminish. Moreover, conflicts of interest inevitably appear. With the issues confronting society so intertwined with power structures, only organized efforts by thousands of aroused Christians, using modern communications techniques, can register on the public opinion meters of corporations, unions and legislative bodies. Anyone holding to the hope that more simple methods can be effective is invited to read the daily headlines chronicling the scandals and corrupt practices of public and private officials, most of whom, sad to relate, are church members technically in good standing. And if we really are striving to find God -- the God who is not locked up in some sterile sanctuary -- we are likely to encounter him while "on mission" in a hospital, a slum, a prison or a counseling center.

V

What conclusions can we draw from all this? First, in view of the appalling gap separating Christ’s example and our performance, we church people -- conservatives and liberals alike -- need to declare a moratorium on pious platitudes, admit our hypocrisies, and re-examine what we really are living for in the context of Christ’s imperatives. Will our personal gods continue to be nationalism, vocations, sports, the stock market, power and wealth, and the church itself?

Second, with our world in economic, political, sociological and psychological turmoil, are we Christians willing to place the needs and welfare of disadvantaged peoples ahead of maintaining our own plush standard of living? The Arab nations have forced us to glimpse what a more austere life might be like. For Christ’s sake can we, an undisciplined people, begin to think in terms of a self-disciplined life, foregoing some of our transient pleasures for the deeper joy of helping humanity -- to the point, even, of casting our votes for proposals which are contrary to our self-interest but which can help to alleviate poverty, promote peace, and confer dignity and self-respect on those less fortunate?

Third, in view of scattered signs among some evangelicals of an awakening concern about national and world problems, can all of us in churches -- liberal as well as conservative, laity as well as clergy -- have the grace to seize every opportunity for dialogue, to the end that we may begin to realize that behind our pluralism lies a God-inspired hunger for a better, more just world? And can we vow to do this with humility and a willingness to admit that our version of "truth" may not be the only valid one?

In offering these suggestions, I must confess that they confront me with a difficult struggle. We liberals too often mount soapboxes and voice lofty ideals, but avoid the nitty-gritty work of implementing them. A friend frequently uses the expression, "He’s an orthodox liberal!" Could he be referring to me?

Morality-in-the-Making: A New Look at Some Old Foundations

In the past the Christian Century has asked religious thinkers to tell us either "How My Mind Has Changed" or "How I Am Making Up My Mind." The current series belongs more in the latter than in the former category. We have asked more than a dozen people who range anywhere from "promising" to "mid-career" to describe their work in progress and to project it into the future. Beyond saying that they are people about whom most of you probably had not heard ten years ago but about whom we think you’ll be hearing ten years from now, we would rather not describe their generation in too great detail. Let common themes and differences unfold in the course of the series, just as they did exactly ten years ago when we last asked a generation to speak up.



The turbulence of the past decade has had a confounding effect both on our individual lives and on our collective life in society. As is apparent to those of us who teach undergraduates, youth in particular has suffered because of the confusion and conflicts that characterize these times. The events that have brought about our present condition are so painfully familiar that they need no recounting. Only the most ardent optimist will suggest that we shall soon be "out of the woods."

For my own part, I am convinced that we will not be able to cope effectively with the kind of world we live in unless we are willing to deal seriously and constantly with what I want to call the "foundational questions"; i.e., the questions that point toward at least relatively satisfactory answers to why we are what we are and do as we do. I have come to this conclusion partly because of the influence of the University of Chicago’s approach to graduate education, and partly because of the view of the purposes of liberal education to which my teaching has led me. Foundational questions can, of course, be so formalized that we fail to get to the substantive, practical questions of day-to-day living, but unless we are somehow willing to cope with the basic assumptions and beliefs which serve as the justifications for what we think and do, we are virtually certain to become the victims of whatever forces happen to be dominant at any given moment of our lives.

Grounds for Judgment: The Prior Question

As teacher, ethicist and theologian, I am particularly concerned about the moral and religious foundations on which we base our lives. I have been even more concerned about this problem in recent years because of the array of popular fads that have attracted and confused so many. I take seriously the "radical monotheism" of my teacher H. Richard Niebuhr. At the same time, I recognize the validity of the problem of "relativism" with which he and a host of others -- among them his brother Reinhold and my teachers at Chicago, Joseph Haroutunian, Langdon Gilkey and Alvin Pitcher -- were and are preoccupied. Thus the central and essential foundational question for me has to do with the basis on which each individual person (and each purposive community) resolves the issues of meaning and value for his or her (or its) life. It is this question with which I attempt to challenge my students, and it is this question which I have attempted to answer for myself from the time of my student days at Yale and Chicago.

Stated formally, we may put the question this way: On what grounds are we to base our judgments of value and thus our moral, social and political decision-making? As I have already implied, this is the prior question which must be addressed before we can approach the equally important but second question, What are we to do? (or What ought we to do?). During the past year, I have attempted to answer this question (among others) in a book-length manuscript. In this essay, then, I shall undertake to provide something of an introduction to this larger work and, at the same time, to stimulate further discussion of the theological foundations of moral value. Students of ethics will recognize in this piece continuities not only with some of the men mentioned above but also with Paul Tillich, James M.Gustafson and others -- including, as I am discovering, Karl Rahner.

Three Options

In the intellectual and cultural history of the West, competing answers to our question have emerged. It has been proposed that value is determined by cultural forces and social expectations; that values have their roots in the history, traditions and circumstances of a people and constitute the form of that people’s integrity. This is the view of the cultural anthropologists, and it has had a significant impact on the thinking of modem man. Moral and legal rules are the product of society, and, though they may have validity in a particular cultural setting, they ought not to be "universalized" to apply to all peoples in all societies. Values are "conventional" and therefore "relative" to the situation out of which they arise. This perspective can lead to either of two positions regarding the source and justification of moral judgments.

One position is that value is simply what any given individual says it is; hence there can be no "external" justification of morality (virtue, justice, etc.) in anything other than one’s own desires or feelings; i.e., value is entirely a matter of "taste." This point of view has been popularized by the phrase "Do your own thing," and it has resulted in an affirmation of just about every goal imaginable within the plethora of possible objectives that people could choose -- pleasure, power, wealth, prestige, even violent activism for social betterment.

The other position stemming from a recognition of cultural relativism is a positivism or "conventionalism" which says that, even though there may be no "transcendent" basis for moral values, they have a basis in the will of the society as such. That is, it is necessary to affirm the socially established and accepted norms for the sake of social order, social responsibility, and/or the advancement of one’s interests and welfare within the society, with respect both to oneself and to the groups one is loyal to.

Alternatively, and in contrast to the first two positions, there is the view that value is rooted in a "moral universe" which can be at least fairly well known and approximated by man through his rational capacities; this moral universe participates in, yet in its fullness transcends, the actual shape of culture, history and human will; and the task of moral agents is to discover and act on the principles, laws and rules that this universe contains and reveals to the discerning moral conscience. This moral universe has been variously described as a Platonic world of "Forms" (or "Ideas"), a cosmologically rooted "natural law" or array of "natural rights" defining the essential conditions of human nature, and a divinely given "will of God" or set of "divine laws" to which man is required to conform simply because God is God and man is man subject to God’s rule.

It seems clear that any one of these approaches to the justification of a moral stance can be made into a parody. Indeed, more often than not it is the zealots of a point of view who provide living parodies of their own positions, thus leaving their opponents with the task of simply pointing a finger in their direction and saying "Aha!" The relativist who acts only on his own desires can easily be exposed as a "nihilist" or "anarchist" or "dangerous deviant" (or, assuming him to be a benign influence on the established order of things, a mere eccentric). The conventionalist can easily be caricatured as an establishmentarian" whose conformity to "the system" can only be explained in terms of his own self-interests. And finally, the idealist (using Reinhold Niebuhr’s term for this position) can easily be made to resemble a "rigid legalist" with no appreciation for the complexities and novelties bf "the situation." Or, if he is a "liberal," he can be shown to be a starry-eyed idealist" who is not capable of understanding "the realities" of the world of human affairs.

Appreciation and Critique

At the same time, if we look more closely, each view does seem to have a finger on something that is true about the foundations of moral discernment and decision-making. The relativist can be appreciated for the concern he expresses for the "autonomy" of the individual and the requirement that moral value be subjectively meaningful to the person. Aristotle’s emphasis on "habits" of virtue and the existentialist’s concern for "passionate commitment" and "authentic choice" have something in common here, though they are surely expressed in different moods and from different sets of presuppositions. Nonetheless, if there is no possibility for appeal to some transcendent referent or "ground" of moral value, then there is no way to justify a particular set of habits or commitments. In the end, therefore, the relativist is the victim of his own inclinations" (Kant), and though we may want to think of these as subjectively "located," they remain the product of external determination, since inclinations tend, in the final analysis, to be biologically and/or socially conditioned responses (cf. Monod and Skinner).

In regard to the conventional moralist, there is a recognition that we are the product of our cultural heritage. In this respect, we are determined to live within certain finite limits of moral possibility, and it would seem to be in our best (not necessarily our "baser") interests to accept the standards which are provided for us. At the same time, we need to ask how these culturally enmeshed orders of value came to be what they are. Are they the willy-nilly product of mechanical and/or evolutionary causation? Or are they, at least to some degree, the product of human rationality, initiative and choice? One can argue, I think, that not only the forces of circumstance but also men and women acting on their circumstances make the future what it is. If this is so, we can recognize that the "stuff" of our moral lives is only partly what is given; and it is partly what we make of it. Still, in the final analysis, our history makes us what we are now, and the conventions of our present social, political, economic and moral world constitute a realm of external determination on our lives.

And third, the idealist is quite right in pointing to the "existence" of a moral universe. In terms of both the natural and the historical conditions of human life, there are continuities that can be discovered -- albeit falteringly and incompletely. Without the affirmation of a moral universe, without the recognition of some kind of realm of "ultimacy," there can be no ontological basis on which we can justify making moral judgments at all. If we do not believe in and affirm the reality of "moral universality," however we conceive of its shape, we are left with no ontological basis on which we can justify recommending a course of moral action to others, except that of our own desires and interests. In short, without a moral universe, there is no moral appeal that can be made. (This is the point made by the "absurdist existentialists," such as Sartre and Camus, though Camus qualifies his absurdism significantly.)

Still, it is exceedingly easy to think of "natural law" or the "will of God" in terms of absolute and immutable laws. In this respect, even though we might want to affirm that man has some degree of free choice as to whether or not he will abide by such laws, the moral universe would still be a realm of external determination which would, in the final analysis, depend on some nonhuman rationality, if it were assumed to be rational at all. The concept of "acquired freedom," as Mortimer Adler defines it (in his two-volume The Idea of Freedom), is such a view, and this permeates much of theological as well as secular ethics, particularly of a Platonic-Augustinian variety. In this view, one is accomplishing the "good life" when one conforms to the external dictates of a realm of Form, the natural law, the law of God, or whatever. Indeed, such an ethical perspective does not need man at all. He even seems to be in the way of the perfect harmony that the universe seeks. Here there is little place for creative moral choosing. In moral situations, one can only say "yea" or "nay" to the given "good" or "right." Moreover, to accept such a view is not only to give up any conception of man as an "individual," but to sacrifice any profound and dynamic or creative concept of human community. In this conception, in effect, ethics gives way to ontology, freedom to order, and man to the universe as a whole.

It would seem, then, that we are left with no basis for making our moral judgments and decisions that is in any way genuinely moral. After all, if man is nothing more than an externally determined "actor on a stage," the very most he can do is have the option of remembering or forgetting his "lines" (or perhaps refusing to say them). Surely this is not an acceptable definition of the moral life. In short, none of the traditional models for answering the original question is sufficient by itself.

The Moral Agent

Well, what then? How are we to understand the foundations of morality? We cannot fully explore the answer to this question here, but perhaps it will be possible to offer at least an outline of a perspective that, though it requires much elaboration, can point us in a more fruitful direction.

First, moral decision-making is normative decision-making. A moral agent may not abdicate his or her responsibility for giving a normative explanation that can serve as a justification for his or her moral choices. In this context, "norms" are not to be thought of in the narrow sense as "rules" only; they should be viewed in a broader sense as any rationally chosen factors determinative of moral action. Without defining what type of material content such norms should have, I want to say only that the formal requirement for moral decisions is that they be rationally and self-consciously, not naturally and "blindly," determined. Otherwise, actions are neither "moral" nor "immoral," but "natural."

Second, however, moral agents are not atomically isolated individuals with no roots in their surroundings; they are integrally and "organically" related to the world around them. The moral life is life-in-relationships. Thus the moral agent is inextricably bound up in what we have called the external determinations of his or her natural and historical surroundings. This is the human condition, and moral agents cannot escape it. In fact, it is precisely in relation to these surroundings that they find the resources for shaping moral value in ways that are genuinely human. Moral judging and decision-making can only occur, in other words, by means of the given "raw material" of already established moral orders. Thus, for the most part, normative justifications will take place with reference to these already available moral orders.

Third, a moral agent cannot abdicate his or her responsibility for taking hold of and playing a contributing part in the shaping and reshaping of these moral orders by simply conforming his or her value-decisions ("mechanically," as it were) to any of these external orders. We must often defer to the existing rules and expectations, but it is simply not enough to say "It’s the law (society’s or God’s)!" or "It’s the will of God!" or "I just ‘feel’ this way!" However we define the moral universe in which we live -- individualistically, conventionally or idealistically -- we must, I believe, deny that it is either complete or static. Of course, some might agree that it is not complete without wanting to say that it is not static. That is, some might agree that we have not yet achieved moral "perfection," either in terms of our understanding of it or in terms of practical achievement (surely not the latter!). Still, those who argue this way might want to say that the fact of moral "perfection" must be postulated as true. In other words, they might want to argue that the moral values, rules and laws are "complete" and that the moral task is to discover and act in conformity with them. In this view, moral reasoning must move deductively "from the top down," as it were. Even on an individualistic-relativistic and not an idealistic-legalistic stance, the tendency is to view the ends of moral striving in terms of self-fulfillment, a "perfectionistic" image.

Man as Moral Creator

In contrast, I would argue for the imagery of a moral universe in the making. I would argue further in favor of the Judeo-Christian affirmation of man as created "in the image of God," and that part of what this means is: Man, like God, was not intended to be simply another natural being but to be an active participant in and creator of the moral orders of the universe. That is, man was intended by God to be a moral and communal-historical being. Man’s responsibility in this regard must be exercised in and with varying degrees of deference to the external moral (and natural) orders he inherits in virtue of his past and present relationships with God, other individuals, groups, nature, history, culture, and a variety of moral communities. At the same time, if he allows these orders to rule him completely, then he is living "heteronomously" and therefore amorally. In fact, this is a sinful response to his created nature, for it is in direct contravention of the will of God for his creation. The will of God in this sense does not consist of specific rules and goals for human beings to conform to and seek, but of an intention that men and women exercise their creative moral powers to construct a human universe of moral order confluent with yet transcendent of the natural universe of physical order.

In this context, man as species and man as person acts as creator of a moral universe. As species, man produces the configurations of history, culture, society, technology, politics, economics, the arts and religion which serve as his "life-world" and represent his "dominion over the earth." Nature cannot be altogether controlled, but it can be subdued for human ends. As person, man acts individually and in relatively close communities to shape and reshape his "life-world" according to the immediate demands and goals of the present moment. In this respect, he interacts with what is given -- naturally, historically, and in the immediacy of his own subjectivity -- to "make what was not" for the sake of fulfilling presently conceived moral ends. Indeed, we might say that God created man with the intention that man should "make what God did not make" and, what is more, that man "make what God did not think to make" as a consequence of God’s gracious self-limitation of his own power in the act of creating man. In this process, then, man exercises a rationally informed will in molding his circumstances to an order that he finds acceptable. This constitutes his moral autonomy, and at the same time defines his moral responsibility.

To be sure, this process is not unambiguous. Quite apart from the obvious limitations and ambiguities of his natural finiteness, man uses his creative moral power not only for constructive ends but for destructive ones as well. We cannot here pursue a discussion of sin and evil, but we can affirm the insight of Reinhold Niebuhr that this creative capability of human nature (of man as "spirit," as Niebuhr puts it) is the source of both man’s greatness and his misery. While I want to deny here that the moral universe is static and is to be "legalistically" interpreted in a "perfectionistic" manner, I think we ought to recognize that there are continuities that emerge within the matrix of the human-moral process. (Niebuhr talks about "harmony," and, though this is a useful concept, it is tied to a perfectionistic notion of agape that is not altogether consistent with what I want to say about moral creativity.) These continuities can be related to in healthy and unhealthy ways, depending on the admixture of good and bad motivations that function in the lives of moral agents. And even with the "best" of motives, the unintended consequences of moral creativity are often discontinuous with what is most advantageous for human betterment. This notion requires much more elaboration, but the main point is that the "image of God" is not an uncorrupted one in human nature as it actually exists, and this fact prevents us from taking too sanguine a view of our divinely given, unique powers. On the contrary, it makes us all the more conscious of our responsibilities. (Think here of Luther’s "spiritual" use of the law.)

Still, in light of God’s willingness to have faith in his creature by intending these moral powers for man and limiting his own powers for the sake of giving man "space" in which to be more than a "robot" or a "puppet" in a "stage play," and most especially in light of God’s willingness to enter into the worst of man’s human-historical condition via the incarnation for the sake of redeeming the "lifeworld" that man, by his powers, has corrupted through sin, the moral agent can ultimately affirm his or her moral nature in confidence that this "image of God" will not only not be lost but will continue to be affirmed and redeemed to the glory of God.

The perspective I have only begun to outline here is surely a "risky" one; a "moral universe in the making" is not as secure as one that is already given. And it is confining in its responsibility as well; it would be much less trouble to "do one’s own thing" as one "felt." However, those who crave for simplicity will not find an ally in me. I find little promise in "back-to-nature" movements or "one way" religion (either neo-pietistic fundamentalism or Oriental mysticism) or psychoanalytic fads or any number of other popular trends. To meet the moral challenges of the complexities and conflicts of our age will require that we resist the temptations of simple answers and resolve instead to be responsive to and responsible. for a moral universe that is characterized by both continuity and open-ended-ness. Perhaps as we do this we shall be able to create some more adequate frames of reference for understanding the moral life in the midst of the kind of world we have inherited, and perhaps we can face our moral responsibilities to preserve and innovatively reconstruct our moral universe with some equanimity. As I assess the confusion of our present condition, this is precisely the task with which we must challenge our students, our religious communions, our society, and ourselves.

Is Acceptance a Denial of Death? Another Look at Kubler-Ross

The recent publication of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s second book on death and dying provides an opportunity to examine the views of the American scholar most widely read and quoted on that subject. Since the publication six years ago of On Death and Dying (Macmillan, 1969), chaplains, pastors and Christian laypeople have joined other readers in hailing Dr. Kübler-Ross not only as an obviously sensitive and compassionate psychiatrist but also as a wise thinker on the subject of death. The format of her new book, Questions and Answers on Death and Dying (Macmillan, 1974), underlines the wide attention her work has received. It is a compilation of typical answers to questions asked of her "in approximately seven hundred workshops, lectures and seminars since her first book appeared. Her professional colleagues have also acknowledged her preeminence in the field. The preface to a recent collection of articles by psychologists and psychiatrists notes that "the Kübler-Ross book was the beginning of a frank and vivid discussion about the implications of death in our modern society" (The Interpretation of Death, edited by Henrik M. Ruitenbeek [Jason Aronson, 1973]).

I

But Kübler-Ross’s new volume reveals that some professionals are now challenging the concept that has established the core of her reputation -- her scheme of five stages of coping with death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The fundamental objection: that the stages she outlines are not merely descriptive but prescriptive. She explicitly denies the charge: "Our goal should not be to help people through the five stages and reach the stage of acceptance. . . . Our goal should be to elicit the patient’s needs, to find out where he is, and then to see in what form and manner we can help him best." But her disclaimers have to be considered within the context of her total work. Even in her latest book, where she is sensitive to the issue, some statements strongly suggest that in regard to her five-part scheme, Dr. Kübler-Ross does not simply report; she recommends.

She herself says that her stages do not describe an invariable sequence of emotions exhibited by terminally ill patients when they receive notice of their impending death. "Most of my patients have exhibited two or three stages simultaneously and these do not always occur in the same order." Furthermore, the fact that, "many do not flow from stage one to five in a chronological order" is "totally irrelevant to their well-being." Obviously, Dr. Kübler-Ross does not assume that individuals inevitably complete one phase before passing to another. But if sequence is not crucial, then perhaps denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance might more accurately be termed types of response to apparently certain death. But Dr. Kübler-Ross cannot accept such a suggestion because she is committed to calling one response -- acceptance -- the final one.

II

Kübler-Ross is not distressed if a terminally ill patient moves back and forth from one emotional response to another -- unless he (or she) reaches a point of acceptance and then departs from it again. A patient’s moving from acceptance to another reaction is called a "regression." It is, in her view, evidence either that the therapist is failing or that the patient resists overcoming his long-standing problems. "When a patient has reached a genuine, true stage of acceptance and he begins to regress, this is often because we do not allow the patient to let go. . . . It is in this last stage especially that a regression is usually a sign of our inappropriate handling of the patient. This is not true in other stages."

If a patient does not ever reach the stage of acceptance, it is because he "has no intention of really accepting his finiteness," or because he "has been angry all his life," or "has been a depressed personality and is filled with self-pity." And, she adds, "It is very unlikely that he will be cheerful and that he will accept his own dying with a smile on his face and a sense of equanimity." Such a person will die in a state of denial, anger or depression, or will reach resignation -- a counterfeit stage of acceptance:

People in the stage of resignation are very often indignant, full of bitterness and anguish, and very often express the statements "what’s the use," "I’m tired of fighting." It’s a feeling of futility, of uselessness and lack of peace which is quite easily distinguishable from a genuine stage of acceptance.

It would appear that denial, anger, bargaining and depression are called "stages" because in Kübler-Ross’s view, acceptance ought to be the last response to death. Her use of a terminology implying sequence has been dictated by normative considerations.

Not only does the author describe in terms of failure the state of those who cannot achieve, or remain in, a condition of acceptance: "The ideal would be if both the dying patient and the patient’s family could reach the stage of acceptance before death occurs." Unlike those who remain angry and depressed, "patients who are in the stage of acceptance show a very outstanding feeling of equanimity and peace. There is something very dignified about these patients."

Kübler-Ross goes into some detail describing the patient in the ideal stage of acceptance. He "will be tired and in most cases, quite weak. He will also have a need to doze off to sleep often and in brief intervals . . . a gradually increasing need to extend the hours of sleep." The patient’s "circle of interest diminishes. He wishes to be left alone. . . . Visitors are often not desired, and if they come the patient is no longer in a talkative mood . . . moments of silence may be the most meaningful communication." Being neither depressed nor bitter about his fate, he "will contemplate his end with a certain degree of quiet expectation."

Throughout both of her books Kübler-Ross charges medical personnel, and even relatives, with communicating to the dying patient their own fear of and hostility toward death.

I think most of our patients would reach the stage of acceptance if it were not for the members of the helping professions, especially the physicians, who cannot accept the death of a patient . . . the second and quantitatively more frequent problem is the immediate family which "hangs on" and cannot "let go."

In her second book the author answers a question she has presumably been asked many times:

Q. Would you please tell us how you feel about your own death; what does your own death mean to you?

A. Peace!

One wonders if she hasn’t fallen prey to a subjectivity similar to that which she detects in the performance of other health professionals. Perhaps her own attitude toward death has influenced her perception of her patients’ final emotional condition as death approaches. Is it not possible that her own feeling that death signifies "peace" has entered into her judgment of acceptance as the ideal?

III

There are those counselors, chaplains and pastors -- many, in fact -- who rely on Kübler-Ross’s work not only for analysis but for guidance in how to aid dying patients to move toward the stage of acceptance. They might well consider whether they wish to identify with her attitude toward death and the meaning it has for her. They might also examine the presuppositions that underlie a peaceful acceptance of death.

Chaplains might conclude from some passages in Questions and Answers that Dr. Kübler-Ross’s views have in recent years become even more compatible with their own outlook, for she reports that she has become religious. "Working with dying patients over many years has made me much more religious than I have ever been." She is able to declare that "I now do believe in a life after death, beyond a shadow of a doubt," and she suggests that "truly religious people with a deep abiding relationship with God have found it much easier to face death with equanimity." But no more in Questions and Answers than in her first book does Kübler-Ross commend acceptance of death primarily because it is a prelude to another form of life.

In both volumes her attitude toward acceptance stems from her assumption that dying is a natural process. Death, like birth, is a part of life. In Death and Dying, she notes that acceptance, devoid of turbulent emotions, can be

perhaps best compared with what Bettelheim describes about early infancy: "Indeed it was an age when nothing was asked of us and all that we wanted was given. Psychoanalysis views earliest infancy as a time of passivity, an age of primary narcissism when we experience the self as being all."

And so, maybe at the end of our days, when we have worked and given, enjoyed ourselves and suffered, we are going back to the stage that we started out with and the circle of life is closed.

In that book she sees the death of a person as not only a stage in nature’s biological rhythms but as a small part of an immense, physical universe. "Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of the million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever." In her latest book, Kübler-Ross still regards death as natural, and because death is a part of nature, it is only rational to accept it. "Acceptance of death is the most realistic thing that a person can work through since all of us have to die sooner or later." As in Death and Dying, she suggests that patients should accept "the reality of their own finiteness."

IV

With or without belief in life after death, Kübler-Ross’s views on the acceptance of death place her well within what Reinhold Niebuhr called "classical naturalism" (The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II [Scribner’s, 1949], p. 8). Within that tradition her comments coincide at many points with the philosophy of the Stoics. Her description of the stage of acceptance as "almost void of feelings" except for peace and tranquillity echoes the Stoic concept of apathy. That too was a condition in which the emotions were, to conform to nature and reason, even in the face of death. "I cannot escape death: am I not to escape the fear of it? Am I to die in tears and trembling? For trouble of mind springs from this, from wishing for a thing which does not come to pass" (The Discourses of Epictetus, translated by P. E. Matheson [Heritage, i968], p. 58). Epictetus explained that death is not something to be frightened of, but to be accepted as part of the rhythms of nature.

What is death? A body. Turn it around and see what it is: You see it does not bite. The stuff of the body was found to be parted from the airy element, either now or hereafter, as it existed apart from it before . . . Why so? That the revolution of the universe may be accomplished, for it has need of things present, things future, and things past and done with [ibid., p. 72].

Marcus Aurelius recommended "waiting for death with a cheerful mind." Like Epictetus, he assumed that people should not fear or oppose that which is natural. "Why should a man have, any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature" (The Harvard Classics, Vol. II, edited by Charles W. Eliot [Collier, 1969], p. 204). To fear death was regarded as "inconsistent with honouring reason" (ibid., p.300).

Christian clergy and laity, so taken with Dr. Kübler-Ross’s similar position, might find it relevant to remember that Niebuhr pointed out the contrast between the classical naturalistic belief that death is part of a good nature, and the view of "orthodox Christianity" that death is the result of sin. Though he himself had some problems with the latter interpretation, Niebuhr insisted that Athanasius, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Aquinas and Martin Luther all believed that death is a consequence of sin -- a conviction they correctly regarded as conforming to Paul’s teachings. Athanasius was typical, Niebuhr thought, in affirming that if Adam had not sinned, God’s grace would have "repelled his natural corruption" and he would have "remained incorruptible" (Niebuhr, p. 175).

True, the first pair was finite, but "by grace of the participation of the Word they would have avoided what was according to nature, if they had remained perfect" (ibid.).

Of course, some contemporary Christian theologians would concede that Christianity historically considered the continual presence of death a result of the fall from an original perfection, but they could not themselves attribute death so unequivocally to sin. "Death itself has an ambiguous character," according to John Macquarrie. It is a mark of human finitude. But Macquarrie, like many theologians writing today, would be far clearer than Kübler-Ross that death, whatever else it is, is a part of the human condition of sinfulness. "While we have rightly criticized the view that links death exclusively to sin and fails to see that death is also implicit in finitude, nevertheless there is a profound truth in the thought of death as the consequence of sin" (Principles of Christian Theology [Scribner’s, 1966], pp. 243-244).

V

One theologian and New Testament, scholar who can forthrightly identify with the position of "orthodox Christianity" is Oscar Cullmann. In one of the strongest recent attacks on the assumptions underlying Kübler-Ross’s position, Cullmann argues that Christian doctrine "presupposed the Jewish connection between death and sin. Death is not something natural, willed by God, as in the thought of the Greek philosophers; it is rather something unnatural, abnormal, opposed to God. . . . Death is a curse, and the whole creation has become involved in the curse" ("Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead," in Immortality and Resurrection, edited by Krister Stendahl [Macmillan, 1965], p. 20).

As have so many theologians before him, Cullmann found in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and the Romans the locus classicus for the Christian connection of death with sin and evil. God created humanity, not death. The new creature rebelling against the Creator brought death into human experience, since "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:16). Death, the avenger, was set loose by the human being’s own hand. With Adam’s disobedience, "sin came into the world through one man and death through sin" (Rom. 5:12). Of course, with the resurrection of Christ, death was defeated, the enemy conquered, and there is cause for exulting. "Death is swallowed up -- in victory! O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (I Cor. 15:54 if.). In Cullmann’s interpretation of Paul, the decisive battle has been won in the resurrection. D day was the crucial triumph, but V day, the Parousia, lies ahead. Now there is the mopping-up operation. Paul, while confident, remains implacably hostile to death. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (I Cor.15:26). Coinciding with Paul’s negative attitude is the Revelator’s promise for a certain and glorious future when "death will be cast into a pool of fire" and "death will be no more" (Rev. 20:14).

Cullmann sharpens the contrast between the Stoic acceptance of and the Christian antagonism toward death by citing the deaths of Socrates and Christ. In answer to the tradition epitomized by Epictetus’ statement "If I am not Socrates yet I ought to live as one seeking to be Socrates" (The Meaning of Stoicism, by Ludwig Edelstein [Harvard University Press, 1966], p. 12), Cullmann offers the alternative example of Christ -- a Christ "greatly distressed and troubled" (Mark 14:33) at the prospect of death.

According to Plato in the Phaedo, Socrates urges his followers to be of good cheer, "drains his cup with no difficulty or distaste whatsoever," and passes into another dimension after offhandedly reminding his companion Crito that "we owe a cock to Asklepios, pray do not forget to pay the debt" (The Phaedo, translated by R. Hackforth [Cambridge University Press, 1955], pp. 189, 190). Socrates displays total calm, an acceptance of death that the Stoics considered the essence of dignity.

Christ, on the other hand, confronted with the prospect of dying, "offered up prayers and supplication, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death" (Heb. 5:7). In the garden, he pleads, "Father, all things are possible to thee, remove this cup from me" (Mark 14:36). Cullmann finds a New Testament Christ who has no time for trivialities at the moment of death, a Christ who struggles to the end against a terrifying enemy, crying out from the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34).

Christians who believe with Cullmann that "the whole thinking of the New Testament is governed by belief in the Resurrection" will no doubt join him in denouncing all attempts, ancient or contemporary, to make of death a natural phenomenon (Cullmann, p. 19). For them, the resurrection is robbed of its crucial significance if it is not a triumph over an awesomely powerful evil. Other Christians, even if they are hesitant to affirm a physical resurrection, will surely balk, if they take the New Testament seriously, at following Kübler-Ross’s chatty recommendation that "it might be helpful if more people would talk about death and dying as an intrinsic part of life, just as they do not hesitate to mention when someone is expecting a new baby." It is one thing to acknowledge death as a mark of finitude. It is another to discuss death calmly, if not cheerfully, as a biological counterpart to birth.

VI

Dr. Kübler-Ross is not convincing when she tries to make death more acceptable as a part of some natural cycle. Indeed, the Christian may become persuaded that the author’s stages of dying describe a circle of their own: from denial through anger, bargaining and despair, back to another form of denial called acceptance. In fact, it may well be that acceptance of death returns the dying to a juvenile inability to face the facts; that the infantlike dependence and passivity of Kübler-Ross’s stage of acceptance is the greatest sort of denial of death’s reality.

Kübler-Ross herself reports that her patients consistently recoiled from death.

In listening to our terminally ill patients, we were always impressed that even the most accepting, the most realistic patients left the possibility open for some cure, for the discovery of a new drug or the "last minute success in a research project." . . . No matter the stage of illness or coping mechanism used, all our patients maintained some form of hope until the last moments.

The clash of the New Testament Christian perspective of death with that of Kübler-Ross has some concrete implications for care of the dying. While the Christian pastor or chaplain must applaud Elisabeth Kübler-Ross for virtually leading an entire nation back to the beds of the dying with a concern that allows terminally ill patients to maintain their dignity, he (or she) will not assume that calm acceptance is the ideal toward which the dying should be moved. Rather, the Christian, more than Kübler-Ross and those colleagues who agree with her, will be the true realist. He will expect to find the dying person rejecting the prospect of death, angry at its destructive finality, depressed at the loss of friends and family. He will not feel compelled to urge a dying patient with these emotions to move on to a condition of peace and tranquillity, because the responses he finds will impress him as understandable and appropriate responses to impending annihilation. He will not expect to persuade the dying person to accept the unacceptable.

Of course, if the dying can find assurance from a belief in life after death, can put confidence in the Conqueror of death, the Christian will be grateful. But he will not attempt to make Stoic heroes out of them. The chaplain will accept the challenge Dr. Kübler-Ross has forcefully given him to stop and listen to the dying, but he will further face the prospect of ministering to patients who are not able to speak peacefully and calmly about death. With many dying patients, especially those who cannot affirm a life after death, he will expect to share what he considers to be their justifiable anger and pain. Unlike Dr. Kübler-Ross, the Christian pastor and chaplain, whatever other meanings for human finitude he finds in dying, will accept death for what it is -- the implacable foe, "the last enemy to be destroyed."

The Pros and Cons of Robert Schuller

My first impression of Robert Schuller was negative. That was before I had met him. A pastor friend of mine had attended Schuller’s Institute for Successful Church Leadership in Garden Grove, California, and while he was generally positive about his experience there, he reported two emphases that bothered me: (1) Schuller avoids preaching on anything that is controversial, and (2) Schuller says, "Don’t let laypeople get too involved in decision-making in the congregation."

My next experience with Schuller, although I didn’t get his name at the time, came when I flipped the television dial one Sunday morning and saw a man dressed in an academic robe reading a histrionic first-person soliloquy on the American flag.

When people began talking about Robert Schuller and the "Hour of Power," I little by little put two and one together. This was the same Schuller my pastor friend had heard. And he was the same guy who gave the schmaltzy reading about the flag. So he now had a Sunday morning TV program that was sweeping the country. I avoided it and him.

And then one afternoon one of the men at the American Lutheran Church office said to me, "Hey, do you suppose you could shake your schedule free to go to Garden Grove to attend the First American Convocation on Church Growth, led by Robert Schuller?" I was told that the week before, at a meeting of representatives of mainline denominations, someone had said, "We can’t stand Schuller’s theology; but he’s growing and we’re losing. We’d better take a look at him and find out why." I was asked to "go and take a look."

A ‘Success Story’

Robert Schuller is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America. He is a graduate of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan. Twenty years ago he was sent by his church body to start a mission in Orange County, California. He held his first services in a drive-in theater, with the roof of a snack bar as his pulpit, and with a portable organ that he and his wife hauled on their trailer.

That was the beginning of Garden Grove Community Church, which today has a membership of over 7,000 people. It is known as the first walk-in, drive-in church in the country. Located on a beautifully landscaped 22-acre plot, its contemporary building, seating 1,700 people, is filled twice every Sunday. One all-glass wall of the church faces out on a parking lot, where worshipers in nearly 1,000 cars can see the preacher virtually as well as the 1,700 people inside. The combined attendance at the two Sunday morning services exceeds the membership of the church.

A 14-story tower, topped with a 90-foot cross, houses the offices of the dozen ministers and other staff members and the church’s education facilities. The congregation’s hour-long Sunday morning television service, "Hour of Power," is seen in 45 cities throughout the country by an audience of from 2.5 million to 10 million. The church’s 1975 budget is over $1.2 million. An architect’s plans for a million expansion program call for a new church to seat 4,100 people.

This is a success story, and Robert Schuller is in the business of sharing the "secret of his success" with others. Five years ago he started the Robert H. Schuller Institute for Successful Church Leadership. These four-day institutes are held three times a year; each is limited to an enrollment of 200. Pastors pay $165 plus meals and lodging (wives may accompany them for an additional $40 plus meals and lodging). In observance of the fifth anniversary of these institutes, the First American Convocation on Church Growth was held last winter; it was attended by more than 400 pastors, spouses and lay workers.

While Garden Grove Community Church, the Church Leadership Institutes and the Church Growth Convocation are all separate and distinct entities, they are all closely related, and the personality and theology of Robert Schuller pervade them all.

Schuller’s Basic Emphases

From my observations, Schuller’s approach has five basic emphases:

1. Possibility thinking. This technique is as much a trademark of Schuller’s method as positive thinking is for Norman Vincent Peale. As Schuller explains it, when God gives you a task, he also gives you the wherewithal to carry out that task. In the first place, God will probably give you a bigger task than you would ever have dreamed possible yourself, because God generally sees greater possibilities in you than you do yourself.

In possibility thinking the first two questions to be asked are not "How much does it cost?" and "Can we afford it?" New programs proposed at Garden Grove Church must meet three tests: (1) Would this be a good thing for God? (2) Would it be helpful to people who are hurting? (One of Schuller’s key phrases is, "Find a hurt and heal it.") (3) Is anybody else doing the job? If someone is, forget it! Help them, cooperate with them, but don’t compete with them. If no one else is doing the job, or if someone is doing it badly and is not willing to cooperate, then move in. Schuller operates on the assumption that if the answer to the first two questions is Yes, then the money will be found to do the task. A favorite saying of his is that "the shoe doesn’t tell the foot how big it should grow."

2. Leadership by the pastor is the key. This concept is perhaps best expressed in excerpts from Schuller’s book Your Church Has Real Possibilities.

If I were a capitalist financing an enterprise, I would insist that the unchallenged leadership be placed in the hands of full-time thinkers and planners. As a pastor heading up a church, I insist on the same.

Leadership definitely does not belong in the hands of part-time thinkers. So the place of leadership logically and naturally rests in the lap of the minister and the salaried staff leaders in the church!

Leadership responsibility in the church belongs in the hands of those who place the church first in their lives, Schuller insists, and "no matter how dedicated the members of a local congregation are, the church does not take first place in their lives." Further, "The most dedicated elder, deacon or trustee -- with rare exception -- considers the church to be the third priority in his life," says Schuller. Business comes first, family second, and church possibly third, but "the local pastor places the church foremost in his life!"

Schuller insists on appointing the church’s committee chairmen himself. But he also insists that he is not a dictator, for the board must approve his appointments. He reports to the church board and the board reserves the right to overrule his recommendations. (A reading of his book indicates, however, that he has labeled those who oppose him as "negative thinkers" and has gotten them off the board.)

3. Impress the unchurched. Schuller makes no bones about the fact that his church has some rather schmaltzy furnishings -- like a number of water fountains that begin spraying when he presses a button in the pulpit -- and that their purpose is to impress the unchurched. "It’s obvious that we are not trying to impress Christians," he says. "They would tend to be most critical of the expenditure of money we have made. They would tell us that we should give this money to missions. . . . We’re trying to impress non-Christians and non-churched people. We are trying to make a big, beautiful impression upon the affluent nonreligious American who is riding by on this busy freeway."

This approach carries with it some corollaries. Don’t expect to find deep theology in the sermons. Instead, look for things that will attract the unchurched. For example, Schuller often invites big-name people to share the platform with him on Sunday. When he asked a newly elected president of the American Medical Association to speak to the congregation, a letter of invitation was sent to each of the 200 medical doctors living in Orange County. After Schuller discovered that there are 3,000 life insurance salesmen in the area, he asked W. Clement Stone to speak and invited all the life insurance salesmen.

4. Don’t be controversial; always be positive. This rule naturally follows from an attempt to reach the unchurched. The pastor who preaches on controversial subjects may be tempted to take a public stand that would be at variance with the thinking of half the congregation and thus turn them away. In fairness to Schuller, however, it must be said that he believes that the educational program of the church is the proper forum for controversial subjects. In the setting of the Sunday morning worship hour it is unfair, he feels, to take advantage of a captive audience of persons who have no opportunity to raise questions or talk back. In the give and take of a classroom, controversial issues are discussed.

5. Have a good staff and educational program. There are those who will accuse Schuller of egotism, and he readily admits that he has a strong ego. (By the way, how many church leaders can you list who do not have a strong ego?) But Schuller recognizes that he must have a strong staff, and for them to be attracted to a strong program, they too must have ego satisfaction. He follows through on the principle that his Sunday morning job is to reach the unchurched and to attract them to church. Once they are attracted to the church, they cannot become members without enrolling in a comprehensive educational program. In addition to the Sunday morning educational program, there are also weekday and evening programs. One night during the week 1,100 members come regularly for class.

The congregation sponsors a Center for Advance Lay Leadership, with an exhaustive catalogue listing all the courses offered as well as those required for participation in an area of service. Completion of 98 hours of instruction is required for a church member to be commissioned for an area of service, and 42 of those 98 hours are in the Bethel Bible Series.

The congregation also has a strong program centered on helping others. Much is made of the metaphor of the body as a pattern for organizing the local church. The blood circulatory system of the church is evangelism. But a large building filled with great crowds of people -- even people converted to the Christian faith -- is still not a great church. Converted people must become educated Christians. Education provides the skeleton. A nervous system is essential to care for the daily needs and hurts of these members of the body -- and that system consists of brothers and sisters practicing love and compassion with each other first, and then extending that practice around the world.

Evaluative Questions

One cannot evaluate a movement like Schuller’s without also asking, "What kind of vacuum has developed in the mainline denominations that their members must go outside to find something they feel is lacking in their own church?"

Sophisticated theologians may scoff at the shallowness of the theology proclaimed by Schuller on Sundays when he tries to reach the unchurched, but the fact is that his message is more exciting to many unchurched people than is that of the theologians. Pastors who attend one of Schuller’s institutes are equally excited. One of them told me this story (and I heard similar accounts from at least a dozen other pastors with whom I talked at the Church Growth Convocation):

"A couple of years ago I was at the end of the rope. I was discouraged in my ministry. I had lost all enthusiasm for the work. I was ready to resign. As a last resort I went to one of Schuller’s institutes. Two months after I got home, my congregation said to me, ‘What has happened to you? You are a new man. If they ever have another institute like that and if you could come back with half the enthusiasm you have shown after this one, we’ll pay not only your expenses, but your wife’s too.’"

While my first negative impression of Schuller was somewhat modified after a week’s exposure to his institute and the testimonies of other pastors who spoke in glowing terms of how their own ministries had taken on new life after they followed some of Schuller’s principles, I still have some deep theological problems with these principles.

At stake is the criterion for measuring church growth. All the speakers at the Church Growth Convocation were pastors of large congregations who told their stories of how to bring more people into the Kingdom. Figures on growth in membership, church attendance, and budget are not to be minimized. But how can one measure what happens to people once they have joined the church?

When I asked one of the staff members at Garden Grove how the church fulfilled its prophetic function, he quickly replied: "We are a nonprophetic church." Thinking that he may have understood my meaning of "prophetic" as referring to some extreme emphasis on end-time prophecies, I explained that I meant "How does the church address the social issues of the day?" Again his answer was, "We are a nonprophetic church. Our people witness on the job by telling others about Christ and the church and by helping heal the hurts of society and by tithing."

But it is no more possible to be a nonprophetic church than to be a nonevangelistic church. When there are injustices in a community and the members of a church are in positions of power, it is their Christian witness also to use their positions in the secular world to work for justice. Sometimes this may mean the cross and rejection -- dealing with controversial issues, if you will -- but that also is a part of what the church is all about.

The approach of many conservative churches has been to cop out at this point with the rationale that it is the church’s responsibility to bring people to Christ and that once they have been converted they will take it upon themselves to work for justice in society. The point, is, this second step does not happen automatically. There must be some instruction on how one can work for justice, and that too is a part of the church’s function. The great commission in Matthew includes the injunction "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

Before I went to Garden Grove, I had been introduced to a member of Schuller’s staff. The person who introduced us said: "Here was one of the most successful insurance men in California, and then Schuller got hold of him and turned him around so that he gave his life to Christ instead, and now he is a full-time member of Schuller’s staff." It was that "instead" that got me, as though he couldn’t serve Christ in a secular occupation but had to do so in a church organization. I certainly don’t blame anyone for wanting to change jobs. The theological point, however, is that God is also at work through the secular institutions in our society. Insurance companies swing a great deal of weight in the investment business and are instruments that can act either for or against economic justice. Christians who work in the secular world may after a time decide that they would rather work for a church organization, and they should not be faulted for that. It’s bad theology, however, to suggest that one has to be employed by the church to serve the Lord instead.

I’m sure that Schuller and all the other spokesmen at the Church Growth Convocation would agree that a person must express his Christian conviction in his daily occupation. They do a good job of bringing people to Christ and teaching them the implications of the second article of the Christian faith. But there seems to be an almost total lack of understanding of the implications of the first article -- that it is in the societal structures of the world where a Christian puts his faith to work and where its depth can be measured. For example, Garden Grove Church carries on an excellent program of teaching reading to underprivileged children in the community. That is legitimate "church activity," a part of the "nervous system" of the congregation, ministering to the daily needs and hurts of people. Is the church equally forthright in becoming involved in the political structure in order to bring about a school system of equal opportunity to all races? Or is this the point at which the "nonprophetic" stance and Schuller’s insistence on avoiding controversy would take over?

I also have questions about a definition of the church that assumes that the local pastor places it "foremost in his life" while for "the most dedicated elder, deacon, or trustee -- with rare exception" -- it has, at best, third priority.

To resort to less ecclesiastical metaphors, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or don’t argue with a satisfied customer. The members of Garden Grove Church and the pastors who have attended Schuller’s institutes are indeed satisfied customers. But as a reporter-commentator I think it’s fair to raise the question as to whether they’re getting the right kind of pudding.

And if the answer should be No, then we are left with two equally difficult questions: Why do so many people like it? And who on the church scene is providing something more nourishing?

Christians and Social Ministry: Witnesses to a New Age

In the Christian’s approach to society, as in every aspect of the Christian life, the place to begin is with the ghastly death and miraculous resurrection of Jesus. That is to say, the scope of Christian life in this world, whether approached from a personal or a corporate perspective, centers on a faithful encounter with the fullness of the gospel. The heart of Jesus’ teaching is the Kingdom, the overthrowing of the values of the age, the aeon, and the establishment of the new aeon -- the reign of God. From the viewpoint of the New Testament church, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead became the sign of the coming of that Kingdom. Both the teaching of Jesus and the young church’s teaching about him established the framework for our understanding of time, of history, and of human destiny in the purposes of God.

Appropriating the New Age

In I Thessalonians Paul outlines the belief that the resurrected Jesus would, at the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God which herald the end of all things, descend in a cloud and there meet the saints, both those still living and those who will have been raised from the dead. It is a vivid picture of the end of time.

In a few short years, the New Testament church would have to adapt this teaching. The recognition that a literal end would not quickly come did not shatter belief in the significance of the resurrection. On the contrary, it sharpened the tension between belief in the age which was to come -- the eschatological end of all things -- and the new age which has already been inaugurated for believers in the resurrection. Christians came to see themselves as witnesses to a new age which is breaking through the old age that is dying. The church is not only the community of those who live in the hope of a new age, but the community enabled by the resurrection of Jesus to appropriate the new age in the midst of history. The power of death -- physical death, and the death of the spirit -- has been crushed. By the power of Christ, the first-born of the new aeon, believers can live in the new aeon, even though its consummation awaits the end of time.

It is important to understand this point as it bears on our attitude toward history. The resurrection is a key to the Christian understanding of history. For the believer, secure in his faith in a risen Lord, time and events between the coming of Christ and his Second Coming in glory are not meaningless flux. Rather they are the arena within which the signs of the new age are constantly breaking in. Just as Jesus’ life and teaching are the model or paradigm of the new age, and the resurrection its seal, every moment in history which partakes of the new age -- that is, of the overthrowing of death and the power of death -- is an eschatological event which ends the old world and inaugurates a new one. As Nicholas Berdyaev has written, "If you feed the hungry or free the oppressed, you are committing an eschatological deed, and you are ‘ending’ this world so full of hunger and oppression. Every truly creative act is a historical fulfillment, a coming of the End, a transcending and transforming of this spellbound, stricken world of ours."

The church lives under a discipline to be a body of witnesses testifying to the presence of the end of the world in the midst of the world, a sign that the powers of death have been overcome. The Church is not a body of moralists offering advice to a self-sufficient world.

There is danger, of course, in an ethic rooted in judgment from the end of time. History has been replete with millenarian groups that turn their backs on the social order in favor of personal piety and salvation outside the historical process. Who of us is not tempted to say, with Paul: "Which then am I to choose? I cannot tell. I am torn two ways: what I should like is to depart and be with Christ; that, is better by far; but for your sake there is greater need for me to stay on in the body" (Phil. 1:23-24). We would undoubtedly stop short of longing for the early death about which Paul speaks, but we share the same temptation, to retreat from the world into a churchly style of life which equates Jesus’ presence with the church and not the world and which unwittingly denies God sovereignty over the whole world of which he is creator and lord.

Our task as Christians in the world is to discern the signs of the Lord’s coming, to preach the resurrection from the dead as the radical impingement on history of the end of history, the emergence in this age of the new age. Every act which overcomes the oppression of death in human lives is a sign of the end, a testimony of the unfolding purpose of history in the mind of God. Our calling as Christians is to bear witness to this reality, both by seeking to discern the print of God’s life-giving action in the world, and by action in the world which proceeds out of our loving response to him.

Liberation from Powerlessness

Against that background, let me offer four observations on the character of Christian involvement in the life of the world, dimensions of the Christian ethic which are deeply rooted in our understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

First, the Christian ethic is eucharistic; it says "Thanks." Christian behavior is rooted in an appeal not to a sense of our oppression by the power of sin and guilt, but to the overcoming of them. To call my conscience to task, for example, on the grounds that I am a WASP, a male chauvinist, or a Yankee imperialist undoubtedly speaks to the accidents of my condition, and indeed to the oppressive structures of which I am either consciously or unconsciously a part; but such an appeal is bad news. It either drives me into a posture of defensiveness, or immobilizes, or evokes feelings of powerlessness which do not in fact square with my real situation.

Freedom to act for those who are the victims of unjust structures and those who are part of them is not to be found in denying the oppressive power of the structures, but through faith in the Lord who frees us from their claim on our lives. In a social context, this is the meaning of justification by faith. Just as the liturgy focuses and presents anew the passion and resurrection of Jesus and, through reincorporation in the baptismal community, makes effective for the believer the living presence of Jesus, so is declaration of the gospel to those who are caught in oppressive structures a signifying of their liberation from their powerlessness.

Second, the Christian ethic is also communal. Salvation history before the coming of the Messiah was through Israel, a community both religious and national. In the terms of the Old Covenant, Yahweh Sabaoth used the instrument of a holy people, Israel, to convey his purposes to the nations. Israel is to be seen not just as a collectivity of men and women called to individually righteous lives, but as a model of collective obedience to the will of God. As the new Israel, the church of the New Testament understood itself in the same framework, as sharing in a communal vocation, to be a sign, a paradigm of the new age.

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles in the New Testament make abundantly clear that contemporary church politics has no corner on venality, corruption, and partisan spirit; yet the power of Scripture is that it portrays a community for which the resurrection is not just a promise but a reality -- in which, that is to say, the Spirit dwells. One of the distortions of the contemporary charismatic movement in many instances is in the narrowness of its catalogue of the spiritual gifts (primarily healing, tongues, and the discernment of tongues) and not the panoply of gifts (teaching, administration, preaching, service -- in short, the range of ministries) and its presentation of these in individualistic terms, rather than as signs of the Spirit’s presence in a community.

It is not without accident, I think, that some of the most creative social thought emerging today in the church is coming out of the conservative-evangelical tradition. Those of us who dismiss the conservative tradition as being represented by Billy Graham or by the stance of Christianity Today ten or 5 years ago might, for example, take a look at Richard Mouw’s Political Evangelism, which is typical of a new breed of theological writing from a very conservative, though hardly fundamentalist, biblical perspective, or God in Public, by William Coats, Episcopal chaplain at the University of Wisconsin.

Both authors see the locus of Christian social involvement not in individual action in the structures of society, but as action, both corporate and individual, which emerges out of the community of faith. The church, Mouw affirms, is itself a "model political community," and at least an aspect of its witness to the larger community is the quality of its community life and the manner in which it confronts controversial issues. In the matter of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church, for example, the eventual outcome has become dramatically overshadowed by the manner in which the issue is being handled. The church and its leadership model a behavior which is fearful, fractious, faithless, and political in the worst sense. The church is a community -- a political community -- and the manner in which it conducts its own political life has direct bearing on its faithfulness in being a witness to the new age.

The Transforming Community

Third, the Christian ethic is revolutionary. I use the word not solely in its workaday sense of the transfer of power from one group to another in society, with the consequent restructuring of social order that accompanies the transfer, but also in the sense intended by those who talk today about the raising of consciousness: the creation of a new human type and the restructuring of relationships and self-awareness which marks the new reality.

Let me call to mind the central ethical statement in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, chapter 12, and in particular the first two verses of the chapter.

Therefore [because, that is, of what God has done in history and in particular in Christ Jesus], I implore you, by that very mercy, to offer yourselves to him, a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for his acceptance, the worship offered by mind and heart. Adapt yourselves no longer to the pattern of this present world, but let your minds ‘be made over, and your whole nature transformed.

The Greek text of these verses is instructive. Paul begins by asserting that "the old order," ho aion outos, will be done away. But affirmation is not followed by a parallel phrase about a new age, ho kainos aion. Instead a command, metamorphousthe, "be transformed," by the anakainosis, "the making again," tou noos, "of your mind." The newness is a process centered in a command -- a process made possible by the prior action of God. The grounds of the revolution are a revolutionary person in a transformed and transforming community.

Language of this sort may have seemed bizarre a few years ago; today it is as real as Patty Hearst and Lynette Fromme, the Unification Church and the Children of God, with all their demonic overtones. Three emergent theological movements -- black theology, feminist theology, and liberation theology from the Third World -- challenge traditional ways of doing theology on the grounds that Christian consciousness as it has been’ given shape in the modern world is burdened with Western, liberal, male and white perceptions of reality. There is no guarantee that these challenges to theology will ensure a more truly catholic theology or one that is less culturally encapsulated. The corrective is to be found in the New Testament experience; what emerged in the first century world was a profoundly revolutionary community, rooted in a new understanding of history and of human purpose. And the new person was the most truly revolutionary aspect of the movement. It is not in a demythologized, secularized Christianity that human transformation takes place, but in our submission to the discipline of Scripture, where we may hope, in the words of Walter Wink, "to encounter an alien speech which is finally the self-disclosure of God." Respondeo etsi mutabor: we are ready to listen even if we must change. The Christian ethic is eucharistic, communal and revolutionary.

A Bias Toward the Poor

And finally, the Christian ethic is one whose focus is on solidarity with the poor and the outcast. In the early, yeasty days of the New Testament church -- long before the flirtation with power which was consummated in a concordat with Constantine -- the Christian community was drawn from the lowest ranks of society.

My brothers [Paul writes], think what sort of people you are, whom God has called. Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard; few are powerful or highly born. Yet, to shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order [I Cor. 1:22-28].

If the lowly were chosen, both in the teaching and the practice of the new community, then the hope of the new age lay with the poor and oppressed, because their liberation is a sign that the powers of death which enslave sinners and outcasts have been overthrown. One of the unique facts about the Christian religion is its teaching that the work of God was completed, not simply in the life of a man, but in the life of a particular man, Jesus, who was clearly guilty as a blasphemer of the Jewish law. As William Coats has noted,

The political and legal fate of Jesus cannot be reduced to the matter of a martyr who suffered unjust punishment for a crime which in the eyes of God he did not commit. Jesus was neither Mahatma Gandhi nor Joe Hill. Whatever the standing of Jesus in the sight of God, he was guilty in the sight of men. It was logical, therefore, that Jesus’ fate on the cross would be viewed by his religious contemporaries as apt: "Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree" (Gal. 3:13). And the shame of crucifixion was a fitting end for a political rebel. The fate of Jesus matched his crime [op. cit., p. 122].

The New Testament church could not escape the suspicion that it was a subversive movement, and its appeal was clearly to the socially restive poor. Its teaching was biased in favor of the poor. One is hard-pressed to find a good word about the rich, either in Jesus’ sayings or elsewhere in the New Testament literature. As Berdyaev put it, "Only Christians who have lost their conscience are capable of defending the rich against the poor."

Yet this bias toward the poor should not be romanticized. The poor do not exist as a problem to be solved, or to provoke the guilt of the rich, or to provide a rationale for Great Society, welfare-state legislation. The presence of the poor, locked into deprivation and oppression by the principalities and powers of the age -- multinational corporations, technocracy, repressive governments, to begin the obvious list -- stands as a reminder of the forces of darkness. The Kingdom is thwarted, by the poverty of some and by the stubbornness of others. Whatever contributes to the exaltation of the poor and the overthrow of unjust systems is a sign of the end of the world.

For some Christians today -- William Stringfellow and Daniel Berrigan are articulate spokesmen for this position -- resistance to unjust structures, the principalities and powers, is a sufficient motivating principle for Christian action. If any of us ever had illusions that a reformist posture was sufficient, either from a theological perspective or as social policy, the intractability of governmental and economic systems, the growth of massive and seemingly uncontrollable systems of surveillance, military power, and mass culture increasingly narrow the scope of our options to those of resistance and withdrawal. Unless, that is, our essentially middle-class life style is challenged by the poverty and oppression which is the lot of most of humankind, and we confront the hard truth that the issue is not reform of the welfare system, no matter how much that is needed, but the end of a capitalist economic order which increasingly divides the world into those who have and those who have not.

Applying Resources to Priorities

Let me, on the strength of this perspective, offer four conclusions.

1. Our most elementary need is to recover the preaching and the inner dynamism of the New Testament church. Our basic problem is our faithlessness. One has only to look at the paltry resources applied to serious study and other training of the laity to realize how much we trivialize the calling to Christian service in the world.

One result is the curious and debilitating split in our thinking, and in the movements for renewal in the church, between prayer and action. It is not surprising that in the past two decades church social action movements fell apart (with perhaps the notable exception of those in the black church). Social action was not informed by a lively sense of Christian community, rigorous prayer, and disciplined Bible study; our secular critics and our conservative brothers and sisters were not far off the mark in describing Christian social analysis as warmed-over liberalism.

In his perceptive essay titled "Contemplation in a World of Action," the late Thomas Merton draws the essential link between the inner life and action in the world:

He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices.

I place absolutely first the need for rigorous adult formation, Bible study, attention to prayer and liturgy, and the development of Christian community as uncompromising as that of the New Testament church. Some will say that there are people and centers which are doing quality work in that enterprise; all one has to do, however, is look at church-budget priorities to assess how important we think adult formation is.

2. Closely related is our failure to engage the laity, who are the church in the midst of the structures of society, in theological dialogue and strategy development about the issues they confront on the job, in politics, and in community life. When asked recently why his own denomination, the United Methodist Church, was ineffectual in equipping the laity to be the church in the world, theologian Albert Outler noted:

It is not that we have retreated into pietism. I suggest that the fatal weakness in Methodist lay witness is that we have not produced our quota of committed and intellectually competent Christian laity -- or clergy -- who can grapple with the problems of economics and politics and international affairs. We have often supposed that words are deeds and that resolutions are legislative acts. We have the finest anthology of social-gospel rhetoric on record, but many of our people -- again both clergy and laity -- on many of our boards are simply inadequate economists. They feed us with stuff about world hunger and Third World questions which even an economic ignoramus like myself can see is amateur and outdated. . . . It is our intellectual weakness which has produced too few clergy and laity who can effectively analyze and deal with the demoralization in industry and government and society today.

3. We must look at budget priorities in our churches at every level, to ensure that we have the means -- the human and program resources -- to staff a serious effort at ministry. It is unrealistic to imagine that churches, at the judicatory or national level, can accomplish any significant social action without staff. Granted, we cannot return to the highly centralized national bureaucracies and staffs of the past. Neither can we be anything but the rankest of amateurs in our social ministries without competent leadership.

4. Solidarity with the poor must become the organizing principle around which disciplined social witness takes place. When in 1967 plans were laid by the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop for the initiative later named the General Convention Special Program, a group of community people from poverty neighborhoods and alienated communities were asked to suggest the priorities for such a program. They made a twofold response: make available money to poverty groups with no strings attached, and "set your own house in order." The fact that a largely middle-class church was able to commit several million dollars to this enterprise is, I submit, a sign -- imperfect, fleeting, and perhaps grudging -- of the church’s recognition of the disorder of the times and the calling of Christians to participate in the reordering of social systems. To the extent that the church never heard the second priority at all, and never confronted the racism and paternalism which characterize the life of white America, the program became an embarrassment, and a financial liability to a bankrupt church. The only difference in our social setting between 1967 and 1975 is that the plight of our cities and the alienation of the poor are worsening.

Today’s "in" issue is hunger. The issue is not charity; at most, dollars are a limited token of our concern. The question remains the reordering of our inner life. Are we prepared to undertake the rigorous examination of parish, family and personal life styles called for in a world of scarcity, and as a Christian community to make a serious effort to understand and confront the systems which perpetuate the problem of separation between the rich and the poor?

Tillich’s Social Thought: New Perspectives

It will no doubt surprise many to learn that the book Paul Tillich regarded as perhaps his most significant is one that is still practically unknown in this country, since it is only now being translated into English. Die sozialistische Entscheidung ("The Socialist Decision") was published in 1933, only a few months before Tillich was dismissed from his university professorship and emigrated to the United States.

We have Tillich’s judgment of the book on the authority of James Luther Adams, who wrote to me in November 1971, just after he had recruited me to do the translation: "Did I tell you? One time when I was praising this book, Tillich said that every line was discussed with the Kairos Circle, and he concluded by saying, ‘If I am proud of anything I have written, this is the one.’"

An Indebtedness to Marx

A volume of some 200 pages, The Socialist Decision (as it will be titled also in translation) is Tillich’s longest connected work dealing with social questions. It represents the culmination of his 15 years of identification with the "religious socialist" movement in Germany, dating back to the time just after World War I when he was called on the carpet by the synodical consistory in Berlin to account for his appearance as a lecturer at a meeting of the Independent Social Democratic Party -- a party which, from the synod’s standpoint, had added to the injury of being socialist the insult of having been antiwar as well.

In his celebrated "Answer to an Inquiry of the Protestant Consistory of Brandenburg" (1919), the 33-year-old pastor made it clear that he believed a new age in Western history was dawning, and that this age would be, in some sense, socialist. This development, he urged, should be welcomed rather than resisted by the churches, since there is a natural affinity between socialism and the Christian ethic.

"The spirit of Christian love," Tillich wrote,

accuses a social order which consciously and in principle is built upon economic and political egoism, and it demands a new order in which the feeling of community is the foundation of the social structure. It accuses the deliberate egoism of an economy . . . in which each is the enemy of the other, because his advantage is conditioned by the disadvantage or ruin of the other, and it demands an economy of solidarity of all, and of joy in work rather than in profit.

Tillich’s moral passion perhaps never again came through quite so clearly as in that early document (coauthored with his friend Carl Richard Wegener). Meanwhile, however, his analysis of the social situation and his constructive social thought became much more sophisticated during the years he participated in the discussions of the Kairos Circle with his friends and colleagues Eduard Heimann, Adolf Lowe and others. Throughout, they were explicitly oriented to Marxism, seeking to evaluate its significance as a tool of analysis and a guide to praxis. In fact, these discussions can be regarded as an early form of the Christian-Marxist dialogue, even though the dialogue, for the most part, was internalized within these thinkers rather than being represented by "Christians" on the one side and "Marxists" on the other. Those pursuing the same concerns today, as in the growing movement of "Christians for Socialism" in Latin America and elsewhere, will find in the early Tillich a valuable ally and mentor when they become more familiar with this aspect of his thought.

The Socialist Decision is also of interest, however, to those not especially oriented toward Marxism, since much of what Tillich has to say is pertinent to any effort to relate Christian theology and ethics to the social problems of our times. We know that Tillich himself later modulated his use of Marxist categories, although his 1948 essay in The Christian Century, "How Much Truth Is There in Karl Marx?" (September 8, 1948, p. 906), speaks eloquently of his continuing indebtedness to that thinker.

The book is scheduled for publication by Harper & Row in 1977, as part of the series that includes the volumes of Tillich’s essays titled What Is Religion? and Political Expectations Roy J. Enquist, now on leave from Texas Lutheran College to teach at a seminary in South Africa, assisted me with the translation, and the volume will carry an introduction by John M. Stumme of St. Olaf College, who made an intensive study of this book and its milieu as part of his doctoral studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and at the Free University of Berlin.

The Bourgeois Society

The book is typically "Tillichian" in the vastness of the historical panorama it encompasses and in the architectonic character of the argument. It reminds one in this respect of Tillich’s 1945 essay, "The World Situation" (reprinted, in 1965 by Fortress), which indeed can be seen as a lineal descendant of The Socialist Decision. The story of socialism is set against the backdrop of the rise of "bourgeois society" out of the medieval context, with its associated movements of rationalism, liberalism and of course capitalism, together with the countertrends to these developments.

Typical also is the way in which Tillich probes beneath the social and political level to ground his argument in ontology; i.e., in an analysis of the structure of being -- in this case, human being. This he does in the introductory section titled "The Two Roots of Political Thought" -- the one part of the volume that is already known in English, having appeared as a chapter in The Interpretation of History in 1936.

Tillich distinguishes between two aspects of human nature: being and consciousness (Sein and Bewusstsein). The play on words in the German could perhaps be caught by rendering these terms as "being" and "being aware." On the one hand, we are what we are; on the other hand, we are aware of what we are, and are challenged to become what we may become. On the one hand, we are tied to the "origin"; on the other hand, we face the "unconditional demand." The former is the question of the "Whence?" and the latter the question of the ‘"Whither?" of human life.

In the introduction, Tillich only hints at the political correlations of these aspects of human being; they are developed in extenso in three main sections: Part One, "Political Romanticism"; Part Two, "The Principle of Bourgeois Society and the Inner Conflict of Socialism"; and Part Three, Tillich’s constructive theory of socialism. Actually these are taken up out of historical order, and Tillich might well have treated bourgeois society or the "bourgeois principle" first.

The rendering of the term "bourgeois" is a matter of some difficulty, since the word is not used in common speech, nor is it normally a part even of scholarly discourse in English-speaking circles, except in Marxist literature. It of course refers to the class of traders, entrepreneurs and, in general, "solid citizens" (Bürger). In seeking for equivalents, I have often thought that the phrase "bourgeois morality" could simply be rendered "middle-class morality," that "bourgeois society" is close to what has been called by others "a business civilization," and that the "bourgeois mentality" has many features of what more recently has been identified as the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) outlook.

Tillich’s interpretation of the "bourgeois principle" -- i.e., of the basic assumption and the driving power of bourgeois society -- can perhaps be summarized as follows: "Everything is analyzable, everything is manipulable." It involves a far-reaching, dehumanization, or Verdinglichung (literally, "thingification") of human ‘life. "Goal-setting takes the place of concern for being, the creation of tools replaces the contemplation of intrinsic values." Everything is to be made subject to human reason; but in the process, human beings themselves become objects.

In bourgeois society, the "myth of origin" is broken, and all ties to the origin -- in the double sense of the past and the depth dimension -- are broken. These include cultural traditions, loyalties to family, nation, place or social group, the sense of the transcendent (the incalculable) -- all are brought out in the pitiless light of rationality. The life-feeling of bourgeois society is that of a self-sufficient finitude, but eventually a sense of emptiness ensues (cf. Tillich’s later phrase "a self-emptying autonomy"). The crisis reaches its climax when the belief in the automatic harmony which sustained bourgeois society in its laissez-faire approach to economics is shown to be futile by the malfunctioning of modern capitalism.

‘Political Romanticism’

It is in the face of these problems that the countermovement arises that Tillich calls "political romanticism." The term is apt, since this movement shares many features with the romanticism of literature and philosophy -- the stress on feeling rather than rationality, on individuality (e.g., the individual nation) rather than universality, on particularity (e.g., of blood and soil) rather than abstraction. To this is added a distrust of the electoral process and a preference for hierarchy or elitism over egalitarianism.

Tillich distinguishes two forms of political romanticism. The conservative form, which is the more innocent, consists in the effort of Prussian Junkers and others to defend such of their tradition and/or possessions as had not yet fallen prey to bourgeois domination. It is "the revolutionary form of political romanticism" that poses the insidious threat. This phrase, in fact, functions in Tillich’s book as a code name for Nazism.

The attitude toward Nazism expressed in The Socialist Decision, has a strange ambiguity -- partly attributable, no doubt, to the fact (little remembered today) that Nazism originally presented itself as a form of socialism. The full name of the party was "National Socialist German Workers’ Party." It had a populist character; it was supposed to represent true (nationalistic) socialism over against false (internationalistic; i.e., Marxist) socialism. Hitler himself once commented: "Our Socialism goes far deeper. . . . Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings." Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz, "the general good before the individual good," was a Nazi slogan.

Apparently Tillich was among those who held some hope, however faint, that a genuinely socialist element in the movement could be salvaged, and even made to predominate. Of course he utterly rejected Nazi anti-Semitism -- its authoritarianism, its brutality, its hypernationalism, its appeal to primitive mythology -- and he fully recognized Adolf Hitler for the demonic figure that he was. But there were other leaders, and Hitler had not yet at that time consolidated all power into his hands. (It was during the months immediately following the publication of The Socialist Decision that Hitler proceeded to do just that; and it was only a year later that Gregor Strasser, generally considered the leader of the more authentically socialist wing of the party, together with all those who offered any challenge to Hitler’s absolute leadership, was murdered in the Great Purge of June 30, 1934.)

Sympathy for the ‘Little People’

This interpretation of Tillich’s attitude toward National Socialism is partly derived from reading between the lines," and I hope that it is not unfair to him. What is clear is that his whole analysis was such as to create sympathy for the "little people" (workers as well as members of the lower-middle class) who were joining the Nazi movement. They were in flight from the depersonalization of bourgeois society, from unemployment, from status anxiety, from starvation of the symbolic and emotional dimension of existence. They longed to return to "mother and father," to the security of the womb and of an authoritarian demand.

Tillich presented socialism to them -- a renewed and deepened form of socialism, "religious" socialism -- as the fulfillment of their genuine aspirations. Bourgeois society provided the thesis, political romanticism the antithesis, and socialism the synthesis, sublating and "saving" what was legitimate in the two preceding movements. (Again, these are terms that I am imposing on the argument; but Tillich’s thought does move along these Hegelian lines.)

The possibility of such a synthesis was already adumbrated in Tillich’s anthropological analysis in the introduction. If human nature has the two aspects of "being" and "consciousness" (being and being aware), political romanticism corresponds more to the former element, socialism to the latter. As Tillich says in the introduction, "The consciousness oriented to the myth of origin is the root of all conservative and romantic thought in politics," while "the breaking of the myth of origin by the unconditional demand is the root of liberal, democratic, and socialist thought in politics." But these two elements do not have a merely side-by-side relationship. Being is fulfilled in consciousness, and that which is pointed to by the question "Whither?" is the consummation of that which was intended by the origin (the "Whence?"). "The demand that man experiences is unconditional, but it is not alien to him. . . . It affects him only because it places before him, in the form of a demand, his own essence." Or, as Tillich might have said, eschatology corresponds to protology. God is Alpha and Omega.

Socialism and Expectation

Tillich, then, was seeking for a socialism founded on something deeper than the diminished and overrationalized view of humanity current in bourgeois society. He saw the conflict in contemporary socialism and its immobility in the face of the crises that confronted it -- e.g., its inability to make decisive use of the means of power for its own protection and that of Weimar democracy as such -- as due to its overdependence on bourgeois presuppositions. In short, it needed a good strong dose of realism, but a "believing" realism, filled with courage to strike out for the new in history.

In striving for this deepening of socialism’s anthropological foundations, Tillich found an ally in the early Marx, whose "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844" had just been discovered and published by J. P. Mayer, and Siegfried Landshut, two contributors to the religious socialist journal coedited by Tillich, the Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus. Here was a new picture of Marx the humanist, Marx the prophet, as contrasted to the later Marx with his more strictly economic focus. Tillich resists the tendency to play the one off against the other, however; the "real Marx", he insists, is "Marx in the context of his development."

The basic concept of socialism, for Tillich -- or, to use his own terms, its central "symbol" -- is expectation. It is in expounding the meaning of this symbol that Tillich, in this book, so clearly anticipates the "theology of hope" that was to develop three decades later. "Expectation" signifies life lived under the demand and promise of a greater justice, a greater measure of fulfillment for all beings. It posits the possibility of the radically new in history -- though not the absolutely new, since what is coming develops out of what is, even if by way of contradiction. It looks to a particular group, the proletariat -- that group which most directly experiences the contradictions of the present in its own "body," as it were -- as the bearer of the future.

The symbol of expectation is closely linked to the concept of the kairos, which in turn is rooted in the prophetic notion of the directionality of history and the New Testament concept of the "fullness of time." There come moments in history (and these moments may be of considerable duration; the whole Weimar period was, in a sense, such a "moment") that are pregnant with possibilities. Not all things are possible -- to think so would be utopian, in the wrong sense -- but some things are, and the trick is to learn just what these are, to master the art of "discerning the signs of the times" (Reinhold Niebuhr). Socialism, Tillich emphasizes, is not merely a moralistic demand floating above the plane of history; it is that toward which history itself, at this moment, is pointing. "The demand cannot move life if life itself is not moving in the direction of that which is demanded."

We are obviously close here to the Hegelian and Marxian notion of the historical dialectic, as well as, theologically, to the concept of providence. Tillich’s detailed discussion in this connection of the powers and limitations of human action foreshadows his later discussion, in the Systematic Theology, of the "freedom and destiny" polarity. The two factors are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they presuppose and interpenetrate one another.

Tillich stresses most strongly the contributions of Jewish prophetism, and of Judaism as a whole, to this way of thinking. One feels that he is triply underlining this dimension in the face of the anti-Semitism of the time. It was the Hebrew prophets who first made the break with the myth of origin, and socialism itself can be defined as "prophetism on the soil of an autonomous, self-sufficient world." Its substance is religious, even though its form is secular.

Building a New Social Order

Having laid this foundation, Tillich then goes on to set out the implications of the socialist principle for six major aspects of the problem of building a new social order. Each of the pair of concepts mentioned represents an antinomy which had been developed in Tillich’s analysis of the inner conflict in socialism due to its dependence on bourgeois presuppositions, and which is now resolved through a better grasp of the socialist principle.

Origin and Goal in the Expectation of the Future. Socialism’s goal of a classless society does not mean a society without roots, without loyalties, traditions, faith. Nor does it imply that historical development will come to an end; socialism points beyond itself.

Being and Consciousness in the Picture of Humanity. Socialism replaces bourgeois society’s objectified, rationalistic view of humanity with a new appreciation of the human being in terms of a spiritual and vital "center," lying beneath the level of the conscious mind.

Power and Justice in the Structuring of Society. The use of power, including its use by a leadership group, is not rejected (the state is not expected to "wither away"), but power is based on consent and directed toward the establishment of justice. (The discussion here anticipates Tillich’s Love, Power, and Justice.)

Symbol and Concept in the Development of Culture. Socialism must give up its negative attitude toward religion and, rather, attempt to strengthen the prophetic over against the priestly element in the churches. It must seek a new language, combining sacred and secular symbolism. In education, it must frankly aim at "induction" into the socialist view of life.

Eros and Purpose in the Life of the Community. Socialism must rescue the idea of the nation from its perversion by political romanticism, learning to affirm the nation even more deeply, yet hold it under the demand of justice, both at home and abroad. Likewise socialism should continue to support the women’s movement, and guard against any return to male domination.

Nature and Planning in the Economic Order. The achievement of economic rationality is not to be left to the laws of the market, but is to be made a deliberate goal. Technology will serve actual needs, not the creation of artificial needs. The meaning of work will be restored through a new vision of its purpose and new structures of work relationships. As to the traditional socialist tenet concerning nationalization of the means of production, Tillich maintains that "positions of economic power held by private enterprise must be placed in the hands of society as a whole. . . . These positions of power include the landed estates, heavy industry, major manufacturing concerns, banking, and foreign trade." At the same time, "in those forms of production that do not have a dominant position in society, a free economy can be preserved, and thus the bureaucratization of the whole economy can be avoided."

‘Socialism with a Human Face’

It is evident that Tillich already had reached the starting point from which he could move, with Niebuhr, Bennett and others, to the advocacy of a "mixed economy" in the United States. Tillich already showed a full appreciation of the danger, as seen in the Soviet example, of turning socialism into a form of totalitarianism. True, he does not lay as much stress on the importance of maintaining a plurality of political parties, freedom of speech and of the press, etc., as democratic socialists would wish to do today; but he did not yet know as many instances as we do of the ease with which these things may be snuffed out.

In what sense is Tillich’s socialism "religious"? He himself gives an answer when he writes: "Socialism is religious if religion means living out of the roots of human being." Tillich’s position might be called -- to coin a term analogous to "depth psychology" -- a "depth socialism." But perhaps the best name for it, and one with which Tillich himself might have been quite happy, is the phrase used by Alexander Dubcek and the heroic Czech reformers of 1968: "Socialism with a human face."