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An Evangelical Feminist Confronts the Goddess

. . . In the beginning exists the Virgin

Her word in Her world bears the breath of life,

Her seed in the wind blows

It seeks and it carries

The blessing of precious women’s love. . . .

 

Glory to Her for the joy in living

and praise for Her power, Her tender care

Forever in beauty Her light shines upon me

The blessing of precious women s love.

Trust in Her wisdom and truth to guide you

Beginning inside you, your feelings flow

It’s Her justice in motion,

It’s your heart in devotion,

It’s knowing the blessing of women’s love. . . .

 

Loving, loving, women loving

Easy, warmly, so peacefully. . . .

 

This song, part of a record album titled Lavender Jane Loves Women, is called “Her Precious Love.” It is described on the jacket as “a religious tribute to the Mother-Goddess-Creator-Protector of life, love and joy. (The ‘H’ in ‘Her’ is always capitalized.)”

As much as I admire the loving, peace-affirming attitudes of the song, I am troubled by its separatism. In fact, because of songs like this, as well as Mary Daly’s book Gyn/Ecology and Carol Christ’s essay “Why Women Need the Goddess,” I had assumed that Goddess worship was always separatist, disregarding men. I knew by hearsay that some witch covens permitted male participation, but had thought that the male role would be so subordinate as to amount to a reverse sexism.

Black women and Jewish women cannot wholeheartedly participate in a feminism that rejects or ignores men, and neither can white women who are evangelical or biblical feminists. Whereas black women face a white racism that dictates their solidarity with black males, and Jewish women refuse to grant Hitler posthumous victories by turning against men and motherhood, evangelical feminists are too impressed by biblical images of the one family of humankind and the one body of Christ to be willing to structure a separatist solution to sexist inequities. Because of passages like Genesis 1:26-27, we evangelical feminists would feel that we were trampling on God’s image (and therefore ourselves) if we excluded men from our concerns, our worship and our language. Hence I had given little serious consideration to those who were reviving the ancient religion of the Goddess, except to lament that the Judeo-Christian tradition had been so patriarchal that it had forced many justice-oriented women into neo-paganism.

But recently I have discovered something that made Goddess worship a much more serious contender for thoughtful consideration. The fact is that only the relatively small lesbian-separatist contingent of Goddess worshipers speak and act in ways that exclude or scapegoat men. Mary Daly and Alix Dobkin (composer of “Her Precious Love”) are part of the lesbian-separatist movement -- a powerful and important movement because it provides a completely different alternative. By its very isolation, its radical purity of contrast, that alternative can show up the shortcomings of masculist culture, including the sexism of the Jewish and Christian establishments. Nevertheless, I was wrong to assume that all worshipers of the Goddess were separatist and hostile to those of us who are trying (along with feminist males) to bring about reform in Jewish and Christian structures and within the forms of worship.



Charlene Spretnak, one of the finest scholars of postpatriarchal spirituality (holistic worship forms distinctly separate from Judeo-Christianity) expresses feminist anger at the assumption that Goddess worshipers view all men as by nature evil. Spretnak states:

“Be like me -- or else!” sentiments on either side are sad and clearly divisive. A feminist’s decision to live within or without patriarchal religion must be honored as a deeply felt expression of her self-determination. We honor multiplicity within unity -- which many of us feel is most accurately symbolized by the procreative Goddess from Whose womb comes the multiplicity who are of the One [The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement (Anchor, 1982), xxviii].

Such pluralistic ability to respect others despite deeply felt difference from them is, of course, the essential ingredient of all interreligious dialogue.

It was my own fault that I was not sooner aware of that sort of wisdom. Several years ago someone had given me a copy of Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (Harper & Row, 1979), but because of my erroneous assumptions, I had never opened the book. Upon later examination I needed to read no further than the first few pages to discover the sexual inclusiveness of witchcraft. And Starhawk, while recognizing that exclusion of the male has great value for some women as an antidote to sexist contempt for women, explains that separatism has never been the mainstream view of witchcraft, which worships “the Triple Goddess of birth, love, and death, and . . . her Consort, the Hunter, who is Lord of the Dance of life” (p. 2).

Starhawk’s explanation of male-female polarity is typical of a central and healing dialectic in contemporary worship of the Great Goddess:

The Male and Female forces represent difference, yet they are not different, in essence: They are the same face flowing in opposite, but not opposed, directions. . . . Neither is “active” or “passive,” dark or light, dry or moist -- instead, each partakes of all those qualities. The Female is seen as the life-giving force, the power of manifestation, of energy flowing into the world to become form. The Male is seen as the death force in a positive, not a negative, sense: the force of limitation that is the necessary balance to unbridled creation. . . . They are part of a cycle, each dependent on the other. . . . Unchecked, the life force is cancer; unbridled, the death force is war and genocide. Together, they hold each other in the harmony that sustains life [p. 27].

While I do not like to think in terms of sexual polarity, preferring to think simply about human virtues, nevertheless to place witchcraft’s egalitarian male-female polarity into the context of a typical Sunday morning worship service is to recognize our terrific need for inclusive-language reforms. Since patriarchal imbalance has skewed us to the brink of nuclear disaster, prayers for deliverance from it sound extremely ironic when they are addressed to a Father whose love for a Son generates a male Holy Spirit.

And the fault is not really with the Bible, either, as all too many Christian feminists seem willing to claim. (We biblical feminists deny that St. Paul is a male chauvinist, for instance, and we think that such talk is dangerous to the survival of authentic Christianity.) If our holy book is in its basic intentions incurably sexist, then Naomi Goldenberg is right that all efforts to reform the Judeo-Christian tradition are rear-guard actions that will simply develop a new faith under the old labels. Goldenberg minces no words:

The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahveh. . . . The psychology of the Jewish and Christian religions depends on the masculine image that these religions have of their God. Feminists change the major psychological impact of Judaism and Christianity when they recognize women as religious leaders and as images of divinity [Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 4-5].



I will grant that traditional church people sometimes sound as if the masculine image of God is basic to the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and therefore basic to the religions. And I will even grant that most of the references to God in both Testaments sound as if God were masculine and men were properly primary, women secondary. But I consider it sell-evident that any book will reflect the cultural matrix out of which it springs. In a patriarchal culture where even female creatures (like milk cows) would be specially honored by switching to the masculine suffix, attempts to honor God will require masculine references. For evangelical feminists, therefore, one of the surest signs of biblical inspiration is the fact that despite patriarchy, when the Bible is read contextually, a theme of male-female equality undeniably emerges. And despite patriarchy, God is sometimes presented in images that are female or neuter (nature-images) or not sex-specific but simply human, as well as in masculine images. Phyllis Trible, Kathryn Ann Piccard and other feminist scholars have done good work on the pluriform images of God in the Bible. Certainly if Christian people want to be as healing, holistic, inclusive and justice-oriented as many worshipers of the Great Goddess already are, they will have to reform the language of liturgy in response to the Bible’s variety of God images. Linguistic reform will hasten structural change in both church and society because it will contribute to the renewing of our minds.

Goddess worshipers are cognizant of the power of symbolic language and ritual. For instance, Sophie Drinker comments, “In all the myths, rituals, sculpture, painting, and literature of antiquity, there is an all-pervading woman-presence. . . A realized truth generates creative power. From these noble images of women, energy flowed back to the individual woman, releasing and strengthening her imagination and her artistic impulse” (“The Origins of Music: Women’s Goddess Worship,” in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, p. 30). Because Goddess worship not only generated creative energy in women but respect for women in men, the role and status of women in prepatriarchal societies was apparently rather high. (As Virgil commented, “We make our destinies by our choice of gods.”) Liturgical references to God exclusively as “he” are therefore unmasked for what, politically, they are: empowerment to the male and enervation to the female. This practice must stop.

Recent feminist scholarship has convinced me that worship of a God who sounds exclusively male is conducive to male primacy. Logic would therefore dictate that the only lasting way to right the social balance is to proclaim that God, who is Spirit, can and must be spoken of in ways that empower everyone. However, even though on the basis of Scripture I know that the Ultimate Reality is as much female as male, I reject the term Goddess. First, I view the word God as non-sex-specific. God is a job description for the all encompassing Being/Becoming who creates and empowers the universe. Second, whenever a feminine ending is tacked onto a job-descriptive word, the job itself tends to be trivialized (consider waiter/waitress, actor/actress). Therefore, despite my ready admission that all speech about God is metaphoric, I resist speaking about a Goddess, since the feminine ending in English is inevitably diminutive. Furthermore, to speak of the Goddess implies that she is literally female, hence that God is literally male -- the language of idolatry. On the other hand, we Christians can be convincing about our faith that God transcends human sexual limitations only if we are willing to refer to that God as “she” just as often as “he.” And in public, too. And in print. I have yet to see any major Christian magazine that consistently refers to God inclusively. What are we waiting for?

If by their example Goddess worshipers can teach us Jewish and Christian believers the importance of inclusiveness in our language and structures, they will have given us a very important gift. But they offer us many additional challenges and correctives. Space will permit only a brief listing.



For one thing, Goddess-oriented research will perhaps teach us a bit of humility. Too often we have spoken as if the call of Abraham were the genesis of religion; yet that occurrence is dated only about 18,000 B.C.E., while Goddess artifacts date from at least 25,000 B.C.E. To help us keep our critical balance, however, Letty Cotten Pogrebin is surely right to remind us that Goddess religions often utilized human sacrifice and that Judaism was a tremendous step forward (“Anti-Semitism in the Women’s Movement,” Ms. [June 1982], p. 9).

It might aid our development of humility to recognize our complicity in the murder of thousands of women as witches. Witch-burning was the major technique for stamping out the Old Religion in Europe. It cannot be said often enough: many of the women executed as witches were healers, midwives and purveyors of folk wisdom. They were no more demon-possessed than the people who currently meet together in Starhawk’s coven and others like it.

Comprehending the horrors perpetrated by our own religious tradition may (we can hope) stimulate us to oppose new horrors and inequities. For instance, although the United States government has stripped Native American ownership to a mere 2.3 per cent of American soil, it seems highly ironic but hardly coincidental that that 2.3 per cent is now discovered to contain some 30 per cent of American oil, 30 per cent of strippable coal, 65 per cent of available uranium, and many other precious resources. Native Americans, in their reverence for Sacred Mother Earth, are trying to protect this remaining land from rape by multinational corporations and the federal government’s war machine. Feminist Holly Near sings about the resistance to technological rape of the land: “I have dreamed on this mountain since first I was my mother’s daughter, / And you can’t just take my dreams away. Not with me watchin’ / No, you can’t just take my dreams away.”

From Goddess worshipers we might perhaps learn the importance of stressing the biblical theme of God’s immanence as opposed to an overemphasis on God’s transcendence. Surely it is no accident that in the Hebrew Scriptures, the symbols of God’s presence within human experience are feminine  -- the Shekinah glory, Wisdom who cries in the streets, the Spirit, and so forth. Patriarchal Judeo-Christian tradition has tended to overemphasize transcendence as part of its repressing of female images of God in Scripture and holding women in secondary roles.

In the light of that history, it is understandable that many contemporary feminists assume that “patriarchal sacred texts, in which ethical codes are frozen in time, place authority and responsibility outside the individual -- in law, custom, and traditional roles” (Baba Cooper. “The Voice of Women’s Spirituality in Futurism,” The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, p. 505; emphasis mine). This doesn’t sound at all like the Bible as I now understand it, but it does sound like the externalized ethic still taught in many evangelical churches (to name only my own tradition). “Let God write your checks,” I remember hearing not so long ago -- and I wondered what on earth that could mean to people who are not trained to think of God’s living presence within the depths of their true selves. By contrast, witches in the Susan B. Anthony Coven are taught that “women are the Goddess every time we make a choice”; and all Goddess worshipers learn that, uncomfortable as it may feel, they must provide their own authority.



Challenged by such thealogy (“Thealogy,” derived from “Thea,” Greek for Goddess, is the Goddess/feminist version of “theology”), perhaps we Christians will be stirred to articulate more intelligently the difference between self-worship and worship of God (I-who-am) within the authentic self, between superficial, ego-centered activity and activity emerging from our profound center of being. Had we always held a biblical balance between a “feminine” immanent God manifested in the depths of human experience and a “masculine” transcendent God who limits and holds us accountable, we could not have wandered so very far into sexism.

Other values central to Goddess worship include the importance of small intensive communities (covens do not normally exceed 13); the value of celebrative sex as (in Starhawk’s words) “the numinous means of deep connection with another human being, and with the Goddess”; ecological and human mutuality as opposed to one-way exploitation of nature; belief in the possibility of a noncoercive future and the need for positively envisioning and enacting it; and child-rearing techniques to compensate for sex differences. For instance, Spretnak writes,

With all the recent scientific findings that female and male brains are physiologically and functionally quite different, it becomes clear that cultivating the female mind with its impulse toward empathetic comprehension, communion, and harmony is essential to humankind’s surviving the myriad forms of patriarchal destruction, such as the “necessity” of a nuclear arms race [“Afterword: Feminist Politics and the Nature of Mind,” The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, p. 565].

Goddess worshipers are far from perfect, like all the rest of us, and they have some severe misconceptions about the Judeo-Christian tradition. Most do not seem aware that images of God as female are available in the Bible; some assume that Judeo-Christianity sees matter as evil; some assume that monotheism is of necessity totalitarian rather than pluralistic. But some of us evangelical feminists would argue that if one Creator is indeed responsible for all the tremendous variety of the creation, then radical monotheism of necessity must be pluralistic, receiving one God’s pluriform manifestations with gratitude and joy.

We all have a lot to learn, however, about the practical outworkings of nonjudgmental pluralism. Romans 12:10 (Jerusalem) gives us a good clue about living pluralistically: “Love each other as much as brothers [and sisters] should, and have a profound respect for each other.” A similar attitude is expressed in feminist music:

One thing I’ve learned is never to assume

That every woman I meet is gonna sing my tune.

I want respect, I want to give you the same.

This is a struggle for survival, not a party game. . . .

 

Don’t shut my sister out, trust her .choices,

Her woman’s wisdom and her will to grow;

Don’t shut my sister out, trust her vision,

Her intuition of her own way to go. . . [Cathy Winter

and Betsy Rose, Sweet Sorcery (Origami Records)].

 

Don’t shut my brother out, either.

Joyful Worship in the Midst of Danger

It was the first time I had ever been frisked on the way into a Sunday morning worship service. “Why?” I asked the guard, who told me that the pastor regularly receives telephone threats against his life. It was also the first time I had ever witnessed so much gratitude for grace, so much sheer delight in being Christian. As soon as the piano and organ started, the vast congregation began to clap reverently, rhythmically, joyfully.

The day was August 19, 1979. The place: a ballroom seating 3,000 people in a Los Angeles hotel. The occasion: the ninth general conference of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. The preacher whose life is always under threat is Troy Perry, founder of UFMCC and author of The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay.

The songs were the old gospel ones familiar to most Christians, especially to evangelicals: “He Lives,” “Blessed Assurance,” “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” -- all sung with tremendous exuberance. I noticed a large section of deaf people, who were able to sing in their hearts because the words were being signed to them by a corps of enthusiastic men and women. (There must be deaf people who’d like to attend many other congregations. Why is it that in all my travels, the only two times I’ve seen sign-language translation have been in gay Christian congregations? Do people have to be oppressed themselves before they make provision for other deprived persons?)

Throughout the entire service, any statement of solidarity with Hispanics or the elderly or the poor or any other oppressed group was greeted with strong applause. These people know in their own pulses, I realized, that an attack on the freedom and dignity of anyone is an attack on everyone!

The sermon was the good old-fashioned gospel kind, urging the acceptance of redemption, and faith in Gods unconditional love. The only difference was that in this church, gay people were free to attend openly, without one plea except that Christ had died for them. And they came -- several thousand strong -- to take communion and to affirm their oneness in Christ Jesus.

Together we sang the Lord’s Prayer -- and how fervently it was sung, with ten or 15 people translating into sign language, their hands and bodies full of the same yearning after God that I could hear in the voices all around me. No sooner had we finished lifting ourselves toward the Lord than Troy Perry quietly asked us to check under our chairs for any strange packages. The hotel had received a bomb threat. “But we will continue worship as usual,” he announced; and again the audience broke into happy applause.

It was enough to make any Christian think some long and sober thoughts. This was the most grateful celebration of Christ I had ever attended, yet it was threatened by hatred on every hand. During the sermon, Perry mentioned that in 1973 four MCC church buildings had been destroyed by arson -- in Los Angeles first, then in Nashville, San Francisco and finally in New Orleans. So cunningly was the New Orleans fire set that 30 people, including the pastor, lost their lives. A city official joked at the time that there would be no problem about what to do with the bodies: “We can just put them in fruit jars.”

On the very heels of recounting this calamitous history, Troy Perry cried out, “But we praise the Lord that through all this we have been drawn closer to Christ and to each other” -- and again, that celebrative applause! (“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. . . . persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed . . .” )

When the new elders were installed to make up a ruling body of four men and four women the entire congregation was invited to reach toward the altar to share in the blessing. I did so, and was surprised to feel the palms of my hands growing warm, even hot, with the spiritual energy in that place. (Why was I surprised? Don’t we Christians really believe in the presence of God in our midst? Could that be why so many of us are powerless?)

Years ago I was told that if I wanted to see what the Holy Spirit is doing among gay Christians, I ought to visit the Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles. For one reason or another (homophobia, perhaps?) I never bothered to do it. Now at last I have experienced what it is like to worship the Lord among a persecuted people, and I have seen the Spirit in action there. Ever since, I have known that I must make this statement to my Christian sisters and brothers everywhere:

God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they [Acts 15:8-11].

What grace will break forth among us all when we stop building walls of hostility between ourselves and other people who are loved by the Holy Spirit!

Who Owns Ascension Church?

For three days -- and one night -- spectators packed the hard wooden benches of the circuit courtrooms. What brought them was neither a grisly murder nor a lurid sex scandal -- although, to hear the defense tell it, there was more than a little of the latter involved. What was being litigated was a theological dispute in the local Episcopal church -- a dispute that had split the church and the town and found sympathetic echoes all over the country.

In May of this year, members of the 201-year-old Ascension Church voted 59 to 44 to break with the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Catholic Church, as the major national organization of breakaway Episcopalians currently calls itself. At issue were the familiar questions: ordination of women and the Book of Common Prayer.

After the vote, the majority, under the leadership of Ascension’s rector John A. Pedler, assumed charge of the property and repainted the church’s sign from “Episcopal” to “Anglican Catholic.” The minority moved their worship services to a nearby church. But, maintaining that the deed to the present church building, erected in 1847, specifies that the property is to be used for a congregation of the Episcopal Church, the minority filed suit to oust the Anglicans and recover the property. They were joined by the diocese of Southwestern Virginia.

I

Ascension is not the largest of the four churches in this town of 1,000 in the rolling green foothills of the Piedmont, but it is the most venerable. Its membership rolls are filled with first families of Virginia and include some of the town’s leading citizens. When it came time for the trial, all the judges of the Amherst County Circuit Court had to disqualify themselves because the commonwealth attorney, J. Barney Wyckoff, was not only a member of the church but one of the defendants. So was William E. Sandidge, court clerk. Both men are members of the vestry of the Anglican faction that now controls the church. In addition to his clerk’s duties, Sandidge busied himself during the trial making sure that reporters were supplied with press packets -- prepared, of course, by the defense team.

In the trial, the plaintiffs -- the loyalist minority at Ascension and the Episcopal diocese -- clung to the relatively simple argument that according to the 1847 deed, they are entitled to the property. The defense argument was more complex. The flamboyant defense attorney, S. Strother Smith, contended that the question of who should control the modest red-brick church and its approximately $43,000 in bank accounts could be decided only by an airing of church doctrine to determine which side had remained faithful to it and which had departed from it.

Repeatedly he argued that the introduction of women priests, the new prayer book and other changes in the Episcopal Church had taken it out of the mainstream of Episcopalianism; that in fact the schismatic group, by separating itself from all that “error,” is the faithful remnant. “We are saying that the Anglican Catholic Church is the same as the Episcopal Church was in 1847,” he asserted repeatedly.

Smith, who is also chancellor of the Mid-Atlantic diocese of the fledgling Anglican Catholic Church, argued with all the passion of a true believer and the ingenuity of a skilled trial attorney. He pursued lines of questioning up arcane theological paths which repeatedly brought objections from the plaintiffs and the query from the bench: “Where are you going with this?”

Smith spent the better part of one morning recounting in graphic detail the alleged sins of some Episcopal bishops: Bishop John Spong of Newark, whose writings reflect some of the current controversy over Christ’s divinity; Bishop Ned Cole of Syracuse, who, according to Smith, “divorced his wife of 25 years and married the divorced wife of one of his priests”; Bishop Paul Moore of New York, who ordained “an avowed lesbian, whose female lover sat in the front row of the church in the place reserved for family.”

He read from a scornful account in a popular magazine excoriating Bishop Moore and Bishop C. Kilmer Myers for permitting cathedrals in New York and San Francisco to be used for antiwar rallies and counterculture activities in the ‘60s. He had even subpoenaed a newspaper reporter from Richmond who had once interviewed Spong when he was a priest there.

II

But at the end of this discourse, Judge L. L. Koontz, who had had to be brought in from Salem when the Amherst judges disqualified themselves, asked, as he did so often throughout the trial, “What does all this have to do with the property of Ascension Church?” and ruled out of order all arguments and testimony pertaining to doctrine.

The judge, whose decision in the case will be rendered sometime this fall, made occasional references during the trial to his own Presbyterian affiliation, and appeared to be bending over backward to admit every argument that had bearing on the case or that would help him to grasp the particular ways of Episcopalians. But time and again he thwarted Smith’s efforts to litigate in civil courts the doctrinal questions already determined in ecclesiastical councils. “When you get into which church is the proper church, that is doctrine,” he told Smith at one point. “That is not my territory.”

“Your honor,” retorted the frustrated Smith, “you can’t decide this case without deciding doctrine!”

For the first time in the trial the judge, who usually spoke so softly that the spectators had trouble hearing him, raised his voice and said sharply: “Well, I’m going to, so get on with it.”

One of Smith’s witnesses, William Rutherfoord, a former Episcopalian who now pastors an Anglican church in Roanoke, contended that because of the changes in the Episcopal Church, that body has not only departed from its original doctrine but has ceased altogether being a church. Martin P. Burks, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, countered in amazement: “Over 2 million people floating around the United States without a church?” he queried.

“That’s right,” snapped Rutherfoord. “That’s the sin of it.”

III

Smith left nothing to chance in getting his case aired -- in court or out. On the third morning of the trial, Hester Scott Wailes, whose great-great-grandfather helped construct the disputed church building, struck up conversation with a newspaper reporter as they waited for proceedings to begin. “We think some of the newspaper stories haven’t given our side,” she began somewhat apologetically. “Mr. Smith suggested we talk to the reporters.”

She invited another of the spectators to join the conversation. “This is what we say,” said Mary Boxley, who pulled a three-by-five file card from her purse and began reading from her handwritten notes: “The Episcopal Church has departed from the historic faith. It does not uphold the doctrine, discipline and worship of the church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer . . .”

Mrs. Boxley also came prepared with a 40-page booklet, a history of the church, which included a six-page listing of memorials given the church in the past quarter-century. Here, more than in any testimony developed at the trial, was the mute evidence of the anguish caused by the rift in the church: “Green silk altar hangings given by Miss Winifred Walker in memory of her sister, Ruby Walker . . . Private communion service given by Mrs. Annie Rose Robertson Sprague in memory of her mother and her sisters . . . A dogwood planted on the front lawn in memory of Marie Gatling Payne . . .”

During a recess, Smith told reporters that the disputing parties hope to reach an out-of-court settlement on a division of the memorial gifts, based on the present allegiance of the parties that gave them.

But how do you divide a memorial dogwood?

The Claim to Uniqueness

The word “unique” has appeared with regularity in recent Christian theology, often as the most fundamental claim. For example, Jesus is said to be unique as the revelation of God or the way of salvation. It is therefore surprising that this complex and confusing word is seldom analyzed. The relation of the Christian church both to the contemporary world and to other religions might be clarified by looking at the meanings of unique.

The problem can be illustrated by citing a recent widely publicized book, The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick (Westminster, 1977). It has received negative reviews in this country, but the problem it explores does not go away. People are indeed bothered by the apparent provincialism and arrogance of the Christian church. The authors of the book seek to cure the problem by a dramatic elimination of the “myth” of incarnation. Since both myth and incarnation are used confusedly throughout the book, one could suspect that the cure will not work.

Before deciding to accept or reject anything, one has to know its meaning. Unfortunately, this statement is not an obvious truism; the simplest-looking terms are almost by definition the most complex in meaning. Earlier historical periods may not have engaged in linguistic analysis, but still they may have understood that important terms have complex and multidimensional meanings.

Uses of ‘Unique’

On the first page of The Myth of God Incarnate, Maurice Wiles acknowledges that the word incarnation has two meanings: a “looser” one referring to Christianity’s affirmation of the physical world, and a “stricter” one referring to God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. The book proposes to eliminate the stricter and keep the looser; in fact, it suggests that the stricter is an obstacle to the looser. Surely this initial description of the problem should give us pause. Are the designations “stricter” and “looser’ an appropriate way to relate these two meanings? If the meanings are incompatible, how did it happen that the same word is used for both? How can we save a “looser” meaning by getting rid of the “stricter” one?

One way to get at these questions is through examining the word “unique.” This word, which runs as a refrain throughout the book, is never analyzed. Words often do have conflicting meanings, and that circumstance should be brought out into the open. Usually the conflict cannot be eliminated, but sometimes it is possible to shift the balance of meaning within a word. In religious matters one may wish to preserve conflict or tension -- though not contradiction.

The book’s thesis is stated by Frances Young on page 32: “A literal incarnation doctrine, expressed in however sophisticated a form, cannot avoid some element of docetism, and involves the believer in claims for uniqueness which seem straightforwardly incredible to the majority of our contemporaries.” The same writer says on page 38: “Jesus is the supreme disclosure which opens my eyes to God in the present, and while remaining a man who lived in a particular historical situation, he will always be the unique focus of my perception of and response to God.” The phrase “unique focus” is used here as a sort of personal testimony, although it appears in addition with reference to St. Paul (p. 22).

Toward the end of the essay (p. 40) Young writes: “Is it possible to safeguard the uniqueness and finality of Christ if we abandon a clear dogmatic stance? It should be clear from remarks made earlier that I doubt whether there is any necessity to safeguard this in an ‘ontological’ sense -- indeed it may be detrimental to do so.” She is giving up, or rather is opposing, an “ontological” meaning of uniqueness, but she never says what the other kind of uniqueness is.

The deficiency in this analysis suddenly appears in the next sentence: “Truth about the world is found nowadays not in unique particular exceptions but in statistical averages.” I cannot believe Young really means to say that, but she offers no other alternative to “unique.” If religious study issues in the conclusion that truth is found in statistical averages, I think one ought to go back and check one’s assumptions. Are the choices limited to “unique particular exceptions” and “statistical averages,” or might there be a meaning of unique clearly distinguishable from particular exceptions? Young’s own use of the word, as in the “personal testimony” passage cited from page 38, suggests another possibility.

The word unique has two distinct meanings. They are not contradictory because there is a common note that holds the two together. From that point, however, they go in opposite directions. When people use the word unique, sometimes they have one meaning clearly in mind -- and this is true of both past and present. More often than not, however, the conflicting meanings have not been sorted out. In this case “unique” is no more unusual than the words dependence, power, love, femininity and hundreds of others.

Young, as previously noted, calls one meaning of unique “ontological.” Although she doesn’t name the other, the word ontological leaves little room for the competition. My guess is that the other meaning has to be subjective or private (“my unique focus”), though I doubt that she wishes to drive such a wedge between the “real world” and her private beliefs. I would suggest that both meanings have a share in the “ontological” realm; in fact, the one which Young casually dismisses without naming may have richer ontological status.

The two meanings of “unique” are united in the denotation “to differ from all others.” In one case what is unique differs from all others by a process of exclusion; in the other, by a process of inclusion. The two cases can be illustrated by the following sequences:

(1) a, b, c, d

(2) a, ab, abc, abcd

In the first case, d is unique in the set of elements a, b, c, d. It shares no common notes with a, b, c. In the second case, abcd is unique in the set a, ab, abc, abcd. It is the only element which includes all of the individual components, a, b, c, d. It is uniquely different by being the only one which is like all of them.

An important aspect to note is that in both meanings we are dealing with cases of limits. That is, the cases approach indefinitely close to a point but never reach it. When we say that something is unique, we point in the direction of “different from all the others.”

In the first case, d is unique with respect to whatever a, b, c stand for. But to the extent, for example, that a, b, c, d are all letters, then d is not “entirely unique.” If we change the sequence to a, b, c, 9 then 9 is no longer sharing the attribute of “letter,” but it is still a written sign. There can never be a “unique thing” because it will share at least the attribute of “thingness” with other things. Things can approach uniqueness by the process of exclusion, but they don’t ever get there. The comparative “more unique” is not quite right. Unique is a limit that is never reached; something can only be “more nearly unique.” Commonly when we call some things unique, we have assumed a set of reference.

The second example is more obviously a limit case: a, ab, abc, abcd immediately suggests that there can be an abcde. That would mean abcd is not “entirely unique.” If novelty and history are allowed at all, then there is nothing which is truly unique by inclusion. The last possibility in history could conceivably be unique, but it would require a receptive or inclusionary character that we do not associate with things of our experience. Note, however, that we do experience this direction or process in the very existence of “person.” Not accidentally, common speech uses the word unique as descriptive of human individuality.

Uniqueness of Person

This second meaning of unique is not a less precise or “looser” meaning than the first. It is this second meaning which distinguishes person from thing. Things maintain their reality by excluding other things; persons individuate by going in the opposite direction. There is, of course, an astounding paradox to the human being which the word unique records, and unsophisticated folk as well as philosophers know that the paradox is real -- that is, ontological.

The drive inherent to the human is to become everything without ceasing to be oneself. No human being achieves that aim while on this earth, but the process is so distinctly human that common speech allows the word unique in this second sense to refer to every person.

Common speech also recognizes that some people are “more unique” than others. The more a person embodies his or her people or the historical era, the more readily the word unique comes to mind. What was said of Cromwell -- that he was the most typical Englishman of his time because he was the oddest  -- makes the peculiar logic of uniqueness apparent. Erik Erikson’s description of Luther captures several elements in the lives of the “more unique”: “An individual is called upon (called by whom only the theologians claim to know, and by what only bad psychologists) to lift his individual patienthood to the level of a universal one and to try to solve for all what he could not solve for himself alone” (Young Man Luther [Norton, 1958] p. 67).

The story of Luther would obviously be unthinkable before the story of Jesus. Western history, and to some extent all history, was changed by Jesus of Nazareth. Our meaning of person -- and the full meaning of uniqueness -- emerged with Jesus and subsequent reflection on him. I am not speaking here of what church people usually mean by faith; I am referring to the history of philosophical concepts and language. The reason why “unique” is so appropriately used of Jesus is that it was through his existence that the meaning of uniqueness was invented or, better yet, discovered. This fact does not mean that Jesus actually was “entirely unique” in the second sense; no human being could be. But in making human beings aware that this meaning does exist, the uniqueness of Jesus can be a key to the inclusive uniqueness of universal history itself.

Christian Language

Many statements in Christian history can be misunderstood if one misses the paradox in the word unique. For example, when it has been said that “Jesus is the unique relevation of God,” the statement may be a way of excluding everyone else or it may be a paradoxical way of including everyone else. It is unfair to the first, fourth or 13th century Christians to assume that they were ignorant of such paradox. Perhaps the paradox cannot be conveyed in the same language used in the past, but if we are to do better, we will have to appreciate the accomplishment of the past.

In Christian history, reflection on Jesus of Nazareth led to a distinction between nature and person. Far from being an esoteric shuffling of categories, these concepts were the very center of a creationist metaphysic that sharply contrasted person and nature. Thus it was that “person” began its long ascent to the head of philosophical concepts. In not being reducible to nature, a person is not a what but a who. Every person has dignity, individuality -- and uniqueness.

Rather than being in opposition, uniqueness and universality arose together. Anyone who wishes to reach out to universal history by doing away with uniqueness should reconsider their common origin. People today who appreciate the uniqueness of each human being also sense the relation of this unique. ness to a larger picture of history. For example, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross writes:

To be a therapist to a dying patient makes us aware of the uniqueness of each individual in this vast sea of humanity. . . . Few of us live beyond our three score and ten years and yet in that brief time most of us create and live a unique biography and weave ourselves into the fabric of human history [On Death and Dying (Macmillan, 1969), p. 276].

The dilemma I have posed is this: (1) We cannot give up the second meaning of unique. (2) The second meaning of unique is irretrievably tied to the first. (3) Any time that the church affirms the uniqueness of Jesus, that affirmation is easily misunderstood as an intolerant and provincial statement. There is no way to “solve” this dilemma. The risk of misunderstanding has always been with us and always will be. However, there are steps that we can take to enhance the second meaning of unique and lessen the chance of misunderstanding.

The meaning of a word or statement is not determined solely by isolated intention. Words and statements exist in a context of meaning. The proper context for statements about Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish community and Jewish history of which he is part. The Myth of God Incarnate, like so many books in Christian theology, has almost nothing to say about Jesus’ Jewish people. A person is unique by being receptive to his or her family, environment and social history. If one lifts Jesus out of a Jewish setting, then there is no longer any way for “unique” to refer to a person. Instead, we have a unique “Christ,” which is not a personal name, or we have a unique “Christian revelation,” which refers to texts. As soon as one eliminates Jewishness from Jesus, the assertion of uniqueness becomes arrogant and exclusivistic because, despite protest to the contrary, one is now talking of things, not a person.

Uniqueness with reference to person has both Greek and Jewish roots. Religiously, it is a development within the idea of “chosenness” and should never be separated from that context. In our enlightened age of statistical averages, Jews are often advised to give up the idea of having been “chosen.” But despite the risk of misunderstanding, they have stubbornly held on to (or been held by) the term “chosen.” At first glance the phrase may appear to be a pretentious claim to superiority, but anyone even slightly familiar with Jewish history knows it to be a paradoxical and ironic description of the Jews’ suffering and the Jewish relation to universal history.

“Chosen people,” like “unique person,” is something of a redundancy. To be chosen is to be a people; to be unique is to be a person. Peoplehood arose from a sense of chosenness. Judaism at its richest and best has always known that the real chosen people are simply people. Jews are the “chosen people’s people”; they stand in for humanity for the sake of humanity. Uniqueness is a further development within this religious notion. The Christian church at its best has been the affirming of every unique person in the chosen people.

Such an approach would not immediately reconcile Judaism and Christianity. It would, however, eliminate much of the intolerance toward Judaism that still typifies Christian language. The Jewish community of Jesus’ time and the Jewish people of today must be affirmed if the church is to speak a language both true to its past and addressed to all people today. For their part, Jews might find most of what is said of Jesus by the church to be a legitimate strand of development within Judaism. Jew and Christian would remain divided on the interpretation of history, but eventually there might be more that would unite them than would separate them.

An Interplay of Relations

A second step we can take starts with the realization that so long as Christian theology talks about “God and man” the second meaning of unique is obscured by the first. The process of growing inclusion cannot be explored with the word “man,” a high-level abstraction with a tendency toward the ideological. The critique of language on feminist and ecological grounds is at the heart of the second meaning of unique. “Man” inevitably becomes a static and exclusive concept. If one’s only building blocks are man and God, then nothing will be built except a shaky two-story structure. In contrast, if one begins with words closer to what exists (men, women, children, animals, trees . . .), one can explore the relations out of which uniqueness develops.

When the tools of analysis are man and God, then “man” retains its uniqueness by excluding the meaning of God. Hence, as the idea of God expands in meaning, one of two outcomes will result: (1) it will intrude on man, or (2) God will be placed on the other side of the conjunction “and,” which is patently inadequate, religiously and philosophically. The supposition that someone is both God and man is judged in this context to be absurd and unintelligible.

If one begins with the interplay of men, women, children and nonhumans, however, then it can be seen that persons discover their uniqueness as they take in the world around them, They discover that their lives are a gift that is there for the receiving; in this givenness they are not their own possessions. The creation of their being is not experienced as an alien force or a contiguous object. The relation between personal autonomy and the being of the world as a whole becomes apparent to most people as they recognize it in the lives of certain other people. In this context a relation between human person and divine creativity, although complex, becomes a meaningful question to consider. A language that unites divine and human does need to be carefully worked out, but the question is certainly not absurd or unintelligible.

The Reconstruction of Meaning

Traditional Christian language is in need of considerable reconstruction. The project may be beyond what all of us who are church people can manage at this time in history. Nonetheless, I think we can respect the past and begin working in the right direction. The reaction to books like The Myth of God Incarnate is often contemptuous: Don’t these authors know that the medieval rules for the predication of attributes have solved all the problems they are dealing with? The statements of Chalcedon or the Bible may be true in their cow texts, but we still have a crisis of meaning for Christian statements in our own context.

In the reconstruction of meaning a crucial decision is what comes first. As I have tried to show, the question of uniqueness has to be explored before one can speak of divine word or incarnation. There is still a long way to go beyond what I have written here, but the starting point and the direction seem to me the most important emphases. Reticence might well be a special virtue for our day. I have not denied any Christian doctrines, but I might not care to repeat some of them, unsure of what, if anything, they mean in today’s context. It is rash to reject the central propositions of past tradition, but it is also rash to utter many of them today, except perhaps in the context of liturgical prayer. We respect the past by understanding its formulations, not simply by repeating them.

Language analysis takes place in a social context, What we need today is a church that would know what “unique” means because the word describes what it is doing. Every reduction of anti-Semitism, every gain for women, children and ecology, makes the second meaning of unique more available. Every time the church or any of its people align themselves with the downtrodden, then the claim to uniqueness becomes more credible.

Jesus is the name of the one through whom uniqueness was first clearly grasped. Christ is the name that the church gives to the finally unique which can come only with the end of history. People who lay claim to the word Christian should be those who are affirming uniqueness in every human life so that all of us human beings may eventually discover that we are all chosen people.

Meditation of a Middle-Aged, (Upper) Middle-Class, White, Liberal, Protestant Parent

Recently on late-night television news, some vivid footage showed a college campus protest against current legislative attempts to reinstate the draft. The New York Times contends that today’s students are apathetic about such issues, but apathy wasn’t what I saw.

The students were screaming “Hell, no, we won’t go” at Representative Pete McCloskey, effectively preventing themselves from hearing what he had to say. He had come to the campus at Berkeley, California, to defend his version of a national-service bill. It would require 17-year-old men and women to choose one of four options: active military duty for two years, with educational benefits; six months of active duty followed by extended reserve obligations; one year of civilian service in a Peace Corps-type domestic project; or placement in a draft lottery for a period of six years.

McCloskey had been an early opponent of the Vietnam war, and therefore something of a hero on liberal campuses in the ‘60s, but few in his Berkeley audience seemed aware of that history. In a televised interview after he left the platform in defeat, McCloskey said he had hoped these young Americans would support his proposal (by far the most lenient and reasonable of the draft bills introduced up to now) because it would make our military-defense system more equitable and representative; the present all-volunteer army is made up of more than 40 per cent minority youth. One might think that our white, upper-middle-class, nothing-but-the-best youngsters would respond positively to such concepts as “fairness” and “egalitarianism” --  but apparently the best lesson we parents taught them was how to say No.

As I watched, I was struck with dismay that these healthy and beautiful young people felt they owed nothing to anybody or anything. One of their placards read, reasonably enough, “Draft the Politicians -- Not Us.” But their faces showed resistance to authority, not love of peace; they were screaming No in the same way they fight deadlines for term papers or rules against pot-smoking -- to protect what they perceive as their autonomy. The speaker they cheered at that rally preached the gospel of privilege: no one can make you do anything you don’t want to do. It is your right to decide whether or not you will register; your choice is what counts; there is no such thing as obligation.

Even as part of me agreed with him, I blanched. We good liberal parents have brought up a generation whose members think of themselves as outside or beyond the social fabric. They have never had to worry about anyone other than themselves, and Voilà! they don’t.

I

Child-rearing is always a blend of the parents’ world view and that of the surrounding society. Along with what we didn’t give this egocentric cohort of emerging adults, there was the influence of the postwar world into which we bore them. It confirmed for these blessed children of affluent, intelligent parents that very little was expected of them -- no physical rites-of-passage, very few limitations on their self-expression, no hunger, no poverty. We produced children who had the luxury of saying what they would or would not do -- from choice of college to choice of blue jeans. They had very little experience of belonging to something bigger than themselves; they did not learn the meaning of “esprit de corps” or camaraderie. The Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts may have been the last creedal experience many of them had.

Some of us are quite proud of our children’s independence we have worked so hard for it. We announce that our 19-year-old son has “taken his life into his own hands” (though we may still subsidize him) or that our 20-year old daughter is now “living on her own.” In some cultures this attitude would be perceived as gross neglect or apathy. An Asian diplomat confronted some fellow parents of children enrolled in a private “progressive” nursery school (where children were encouraged to “fulfill their own potential”) with the accusation: “You Americans don’t care what happens to your children.” He spoke from a culture in which caring meant controlling, directing, making decisions for children of far older than nursery-school age. His listeners were horrified at such a medieval view of parenting. They also felt somewhat aggrieved, since caring, in our culture, has come to be equated with getting out of the child’s way. It seemed more important to us to be passionate about our children rather than toward them; the prescribed stance was one of genteel noninvolvement.

What we neglected to give our young was a counterbalance to the emphasis on personal freedom and self-determination which they got from both us and the culture. We didn’t talk much about giving anything back to the world that made them. Of course, it is hard to learn real responsibility when the most important job a child has is carrying out the garbage or cleaning his or her room. Suburbia may also have fostered the absorption of the monetary value-standard; the question most frequently asked by thousands of wide-eyed schoolchildren visiting the traveling King Tut exhibit was not anything about that fabulous era, or what those people believed as they prepared for afterlife, but rather, “How much does it cost?”

What could motivate a suburban adolescent to do volunteer work, when the understanding of the importance of work is based on how much one is paid for it? The best way to “sell” one’s teenager on being a hospital volunteer or helping in a summer camp for the retarded is self-interest: “It will look good on your college application; it will teach you something you can use later on” If the young manage to catch a glimpse of selflessness in the process, fine; but we didn’t direct them to value that part of the experience, nor did we expect that they would think of it in terms of “service” to others.

We “prepared” our children, as parents always do, for a world we wanted, We told ourselves that buying the best children’s records and books, providing ballet, guitar or painting lessons, purchasing bicycles and ice skates, paying for summer camp and birthday parties would somehow convey to our children how much we loved them. We hoped they would catch on to the idea of parental authority -- ours -- without its being too uncomfortably visible.

We didn’t want to “make an issue” of manners, even of minimal standards for human interaction. “Polite” became a useless word; an unsolicited gift from Great-Aunt Alice could be ignored. We had hated writing thank-you notes, so we let our children slide, effectively teaching them that their pleasure, their receiving, was all that mattered; they didn’t have to take into account the feelings of the giver or participate in the basic human ritual of reciprocity if they didn’t want to.

Current social history and psychology call narcissism the primary characteristic of this age (see Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Shirley Sugerman’s Sin and Madness: Studies in Narcissism). The “me generation” child can’t direct much interest or energy outside his or her individual boundaries. A psychiatrist describing a troubled 20-year-old recently said, in the vernacular:

“This kid is hooked. He’s addicted to doing what he wants to. Today’s kids are addicts to doing their own thing; they can’t seem to make that step to adulthood where they would find the ultimate legitimation of being able to do something for somebody else.”

I discovered this lack of community when I taught in a fine small suburban liberal-arts college; my otherwise delightful, intelligent students were almost illiterate in group experience. They had participated little in any organization which might have demanded loyalty or submission of one’s own agenda for the achievement of a whole greater than the sum of its parts. An amazing number of them had never been part of an orchestra or a band, a chorus or a theater group, a political campaign or even student government. A few had had some competitive team-sports background; even fewer had had a vital church youth-group experience. Mostly their earlier lives had consisted of school, a few family rituals (Christmas, Easter and birthdays), and television.

II

Of course, none of this parental disappointment is really new to America. It was clear from the first generation of white settlers that family authority -- in the traditional patriarchal European sense -- was in trouble. Bernard Bailyn and other historians of New England point out that as early as 1648 the Puritans had to pass stringent laws to help keep their children in line. Obviously children born here were at home in the wilderness in a way their parents could never be. That fact, plus the possibility of striking out for new territory when things got tight, and a religious attitude which emphasized the individual self in relationship with God, made it pretty hard for a father to maintain control over his children. Within several colonial generations, we were a youth-oriented culture; the child literally became “father,” or guide, to the “man” -- his elder. One interpretation of our War of Independence casts it in terms of an adolescent rebellion against Father/King and Mother England.

So the Puritans too found their children going their own way; even Cotton Mather bemoans “how little pleasure have I had in my children.” The Puritans had to swallow some of their dreams in order to keep in touch with their young. They too had to see their children come up with their own version of religion, as that first youth movement, the Great Awakening of the 1730s, swept the young into revivalism.

A century later, frontier parents -- those sturdy Protestant adventurers and land developers -- carried with them their secret for success: method, system, organization. New worlds were being conquered not just geographically but in science and technology as well. No wonder the stories in the Sunday school “libraries” of early midwestern villages were full of a sense of indomitable progress and hope.

A typical story is that of a family moving from established Massachusetts in 1819 to the wilds of northern Ohio. Mother is pictured as pious and dutiful, an angel on a domestic hearth that is still being hacked from the forest. Father, in his zeal to finish the cabin before winter, fells a log on the Sabbath and -- therefore -- breaks his leg. In that world God was present, direct and inexorable; his messages to parents were everywhere: from flour spilled on the floor (that child needs more discipline) to the tragic death of an infant (confirmation that God had better things in store for them, in another world).

Along with this awesome domestic Presence, always divinely intervening, there was exuberance; a sense of power suffused the life of even the poorest and most powerless Christian. One knew beyond doubting that life was significant, that hideous circumstance -- a broken leg miles from help -- could be transcended through faith in Jesus and fierce moral purpose. Those parents had a method, a discipline for preparing their young for the world; they thought they knew how to transmit a system of meanings which would arm their children for a wonderful Christian American Protestant future.

III

This century’s parents have lost that confidence in the future. We no longer trust our household gods -- cleanliness, order, Dr. Spock, nutrition, routine, comfort -- nor do we have any real belief in a divine immanence in our lives. Did we ever talk much with our children about loving our country, much less about loving God? Was offering thanks for the petunias in the window box or for a full refrigerator an automatic part of our household litany? Did we ever think the overflowing heart of the 23rd Psalm could be experienced in Pittsburgh as well as in rural Israel? We were afraid to speak of religious things or to make biblical references, lest we sound moralistic or preachy.

Today when an irate grandmother demands, “Why don’t you just make them do it?” she is reflecting a nostalgic view of child-rearing. In our lifetime, the expectation that a child will conform to a pre-existing norm has continued to erode in the direction of more individual latitude. We have learned to change external factors rather than to change the child.

A recently retired executive of an eastern corporation recalls that, as a youth, he was bounced out of three different preparatory schools; he simply couldn’t cut the mustard, as his autocratic old father had always said. No hint in that parental dictum that there might be anything wrong with the school. No such institution-questioning took place; it was simply taken for granted that the child would have to measure up. Such clarity was unthinkable for us.

With our lost sense of order and of a world in which God is involved in one’s daily life, we lack that vigor and optimism which used to be called “strength of conviction.” We are fearful of impinging too much on our children’s lives, and they respond with both anger and hunger. Their anger is the No they scream at interference in their individual paths -- military service, deadlines, legal or conventional restraints, not getting into medical school. This anger is expressed in tantrums -- vandalism of college buildings -- or in depression. Their hunger is often a Yes to the kind of idealism and structured community represented in Jonestown or by the Moonies. Or it is a Yes to a variety of psychologically intense experiences such as drug-euphoria, disco dancing or religious fundamentalism.

IV

Quite aside from the antidraft component of the student protest which I viewed on television, my parent-heart wanted to see some sense of belonging to the world, of caring or conviction. We don’t want our children to be good Nazis obeying without question; we want them to hate war more than we did, somehow to face up to the overwhelming forces in this period of history. But we’d like them to understand the electrifying challenge our generation heard in John Kennedy’s inaugural: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. Did we ever express to them how that charge catapulted our better natures right into the enthusiasm of the ‘60s? Well, no, maybe we didn’t talk much about it, what with the hippies and all that,

Of course the jury isn’t in yet on this “rising seed,” as the Puritans would have called them; we won’t be able to add it all up until we see what values they pass along to their young. But we elders may well have to face the millennium on our knees, because we surely didn’t teach our kids how to get down on theirs. “It is not possible to make good men and good women without an element of transcendence and grace,” wrote Malcolm Muggeridge -- British scholar, journalist and Christian. He was speaking to teachers about education, but his observation applies also to parenting -- to parents who know they have an ideal for the concept of the “good” and a relation with a gracious God. Many of us middle-aged genteel Christians know we settled for considerably less.

Superheroes, Antiheroes, and the Heroism Void in Children’s TV

 “Just When We Need a Hero Most, Here Comes CAPTAIN AMERICA.” So goes an advertisement for a recent two-hour “adventure spectacular” on CBS television. The ad displays recognition of what may be an increasing public demand or need for models of moral heroism. This demand is worthy of notice; the supply of television heroes, however, hardly fills it.

While the effects of television violence and of children’s commercials have, justifiably, dominated the attention of both consumer groups and communications researchers, the issue of heroism in children’s programs has been largely and unduly neglected. Studies of heroes and hero-worship in American life are not lacking; but childhood is the time when the influence of positive role models can be most decisive, and TV is the medium through which American children receive most exposure to stories of heroes.

The pertinent question is: What does “kidvid” offer in the way of imitable heroes who face the kinds of ordinary obstacles with which real life confronts us? Very little, to judge from my observations of late afternoon and Saturday morning television since the spring of 1977. There are superheroes aplenty, of both sexes now (female equivalents to Tarzan -- such as Jana of the Jungle -- and to Spiderman -- Web Woman -- have now appeared); several robots after the fashion of the pair in Star Wars; villains galore; and an assortment of what might be called antiheroes, as the mode of parody and mockery invades children’s programs. When ordinary human characters perform heroic deeds, they tend to be technoheroes: Scientists or astronauts who use supergadgetry -- laser guns, minicomputers or the like -- to repel equally technological threats.

One of the few studies of the effects of viewing on prosocial behavior concludes that ‘children most often identify with children,” though there is also “wishful identification with superior figures” (Cecilia V. Feilitzan and Olga Linne, “Identifying with Television Characters,” Journal of Communications, Vol. 25, p. go). Child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim warns that stories of both the superhuman heroes of myth and the real heroes of history tend to discourage a child, even cause him or her to feel inferior, because the child knows that their extraordinary deeds cannot be matched.

In The Uses of Enchantment (Knopf, 1977) Bettelheim recommends fairy tales as providing the kind of subtle, low-key moral education children need. The basic message of fairy tales is that “a struggle . . . against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence -- but . . . if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious” (p. 8). I have seen few children’s television programs which carry such a message.

Bettelheim seems to have in mind such tales as “Hansel and Gretel” -- one that he discusses at length -- in which, although there are supernatural elements, it is the children’s alertness, resourcefulness and self-control that enable them to win out over the malice of stepmother and witch. Other examples of moral heroism may be drawn from medieval romance, in which young knights like Gawain and Percival are presented as imperfect but persevering questers who develop virtues of truth-keeping, courtesy and humility to match their physical prowess and bravery.

American literature of initiatory ordeals offers some appealing adolescents in more realistic situations. In Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning” the boy Sarty Snopes makes a difficult and costly decision to oppose the unjust acts of his father. In Potok’s The Chosen it is the rigid orthodoxy and ascetic demands of an apparently harsh Hasidic father which create the test faced successfully by Danny (bolstered by the friendship of Reuven). One of American fiction’s most attractive characters is the 13-year-old Esme in J. D. Salinger’s “For Esme -- With Love and Squalor”; her unaffected charm and solicitude rescue the soldier-narrator from a World War II emotional and spiritual hell.

C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has now been presented as a special on commercial television -- but through the initiatives of a church group, not a network. Like “Hansel and Gretel,” this story has a set of siblings, three of whom respond to danger with courage, imagination and fidelity -- ordinary kids who rise to the challenges of an extraordinary situation. But there are few regular TV series -- either live-action or animated -- which present such models of imitable heroism.

What can be seen are several somewhat contradictory trends -- some positive and some negative -- as commercial kidvid responds to the “market” for heroes and to pressures for more pro-social programming. On the positive side: heroes increasingly display astute minds to match their muscles -- or even as substitutes for physical strength; also, fighters for justice frequently work in teams rather than as lone operatives. Not so welcome is the fact that antiheroism, often in the form of parody or self-parody, exists alongside heroism: moreover, most presentations of moral heroism are handicapped by an overtly didactic, hard-sell approach.

I

As long ago as 1953 in his study of Heroes, Highbrows and the Popular Mind (Bobbs-Merrill), Leo Gurko discerned “signs of a movement away from [brawn and] egotism,” at least in the movies, to a new type of hero who was aware that the problems of life perhaps could not all be solved by a breezy manner, a gun, or a punch in the nose” (pp. 192-193). When sociologist Orrin Klapp, in 1962, categorized the five most popular American social types, he included among “winners” giants of intellect as well as exemplars of brawny physique (Heroes, Villains, Fools: The Changing American Character [Prentice-Hall], chapter 1).

On children’s television today, physical skill and strength are still requisites for most heroes, and bad guys must still be subdued by force. But there are gratifying signs that intellect is valued and, occasionally, artistic pursuits -- a definite broadening of the concept of what makes a hero. Most commonly seen is the ability -- even among superheroes -- to use scientific instruments and technology. Before dashing off in his Batmobile or Batcopter for action, Batman often consults the Batcomputer or Brainwave Batanalyzer. As Bruce Wayne, he is both a scientist and a patron of the arts,

When she is not Isis, Andrea Thomas is a science teacher, and program plots often involve school projects. On Ark II, a show set in the 25th century, the protagonists are all scientists who aim to liberate earth’s people from the superstition, fear and tyranny to which they have regressed. Johnny Quest, an addition to the Godzilla Power Hour, is touted as “the boy wonder of mystery, science and intrigue,” but the real hero seems to be his father, Dr. Benton Quest, a mature scientist.

Scooby Doo and Clue Club, programs with teen-age detectives, honor analytic and deductive reasoning along with careful observation of clues. Little brawn is available or required from the Clue Clubbers, since the genial but unimaginative sheriff is always on hand to apprehend the criminals. Here too, there is considerable use of fancy technology by both criminals and detectives.

Another, more obvious trend is the swing away from lone protagonists, or even heroes with single sidekicks, to teams of heroes working together. In some cases several characters appear in separate episodes under a 90-minute umbrella, but often four or more undertake a mission together. For the Superfriends, for Jason and the Star Command, or for the crew of Ark II, cooperation is usually essential, and one hero must often be rescued by another.

One may also observe program-makers’ efforts to achieve ethnic and sexual balance. Wonder Woman is one of the Superfriends; Ark II features a white Anglo-Saxon male (in charge), an Oriental, female, a Chicano male and a talking chimpanzee. In Tarzan and the Super Seven’s Freedom Force, white males like Hercules and Merlin are joined by Isis, by a Super-Samurai and by Toshi, a Japanese boy.

What is one to make of a space jockey with a wide, self-satisfied grin, long blond hair and a name like Captain Good? Called “an example to all do-gooders,” he vows to observe three rules; “no cheating, good sportsmanship and brushing after every meal.” Such a character would seem to mock and undercut genuine dedication to fair play and good health habits. Further confusion and ambivalence must be introduced into the minds of viewers when “Captain Good” is revealed to be a disguise for Phantom Fink, the real villain of Yogi’s Space Race. Does it matter that eventually “Captain Good’ is revealed to be a disguise for the villainous Phantom Fink?

II

This program, like Galaxy Goof-ups and The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, represents the culmination of a trend toward parody and self-parody deriving, perhaps, from the campiness of the live-action Batman in the late 1960s. But Orrin Klapp had earlier observed that “mockery of heroes is not only a literary mode -- an amusement for satirists and tired intellectuals -- but has entered popular thought and is an important feature of American society” (p. 167).

One of today’s television types is the antihero, the character whose attributes and performance are opposite to those of admired ideals. For example, Deedee and Pepper are the two Clue Club teenagers who can be counted on to run from danger, to stumble noisily when silence is called for, to be thoroughly mystified by problems. Another comically bumbling detective is Inspector Clouseau of The Pink Panther Show. And the Pink Panther himself might well qualify as an antihero. He intends to he a trickster, is often successful, but occasionally becomes the victim of his own plots.

Mockery of heroes also takes place through parody, even self-parody. Yogi’s Space Race is a kind of take-off on Star Wars and other popular-culture phenomena. Bizarre adventures befall such competitors as a shark named Jabber-Jaws and a Laverne and Shirley-like pair of humans, Rita and Wendy. A mystery segment called “The Buford Files” features a bloodhound (Buford) with a southern accent and an electronic head which can function as a computer!

Waldo Kitty’s dreams of heroism à la Thurber result in assorted parodies. Robin Hood or Star Trek or The Lone Ranger may provide the situations, Typical dialogue: the Lone Kitty’s sidekick, Pronto, says to him, “That was great, defender of the innocent.” “Shucks,” says the Lone Kitty modestly, “we heroes stop at nothing to further the cause of justice.” Such phenomena as these may represent not simply a disparaging of heroism but also a further spread of the kind of self-consciousness to which Lionel Abel called attention in his book Metatheatre (Hill & Wang, 1963). From Hamlet on, says Abel. the metaplay has been “the necessary form for dramatizing characters who, having full self-consciousness, cannot but participate in their own dramatization” And “in the metaplay, the hero, however unfortunate, can never be decisively defeated, perhaps he can never even be heroic” (pp. 78, 79).

In children’s television, self-consciousness about heroism can be reflected in the show as a whole, as well as in individual characters. This seems to be the case with Clue Club, in which the clumsy, braggart bloodhounds, Woofer and Wimper, and sometimes Deedee and Pepper, provide the comic and antiheroic counterpoint to the successful efforts of Larry and Dottie, They show us that the creators of the show are aware of the widespread skepticism regarding the heroic, At the same time, the expected formulas of mystery and adventure can be executed for the sake of those (younger?) viewers receptive to unadulterated heroism.

Pure ridicule of heroes can be seen as well -- for example, whenever the Pink Panther dons a Superman cape. But when the inspector on that show stops in mid-pursuit to say, “Hey, cartoonist, I order you to put this criminal behind bars,” that seems to me closer to the self-consciousness of metatheater.

III

Explicit didacticism, the tendency to spell out a story’s moral lesson, seems at first thought to represent a countertrend to the prevalence of antiheroism. Yet perhaps it too reflects an inability to take heroism seriously, to make it believable. This phenomenon has been most obvious on Tarzan and the Shazam-Isis Hour.

In the typical Tarzan episode a young man or woman, weak or insensitive or greedy, is taught a lesson at the same time he or she is being saved from some terrible fate. Annie Talbot, a pilot, independent spirit and writer investigating the descendants of medieval crusaders, is kidnapped when she ignores Tarzan’s advice to leave the scene. After he rescues her, she acknowledges that she needed help -- and she destroys her notes, realizing that her book on this ancient people, a sure best seller, would bring in the outside world and destroy them. Tarzan congratulates her: “Annie Talbot, you have truly grown in wisdom.” Other such episode-ending lines: “Tarzan, I know now how many things are more important than wealth.” “Courage comes in different shapes.”

The thinking as well as the behavior of misguided youths is set straight by both Isis and Captain Marvel. Punishment or exposure leads to remorse, followed by a statement like “Don’t be afraid of being called a name if you know what you’re doing is right.”

Bettelheim’s comments on fables would apply to the overt didacticism of shows such, as these.

Often sanctimonious, sometimes amusing, the fable always explicitly states a moral truth; there is no hidden meaning, nothing is left to the imagination.

The fairy tale, in contrast, leaves all decision up to us, including whether we wish to make any at all. It is up to us whether we wish to make any application to our life from a fairy tale, or simply enjoy the fantastic events it tells about [p. 8].

The moralistic emphasis in the TV shows I have mentioned appears to be a response to criticism from groups like Action for Children’s Television concerning the amoral or antisocial implications of adventure programs. Thus, the explicit moral lessons may be directed more at adult viewers -- particularly parents -- than at children. Here, the network executives can say: see what wholesome values these programs teach. But if Bettelheim Is right, such preachments only turn the child off or at best are ignored. What a child needs, rather, is “a moral education which subtly, and by implication only, conveys to him the advantages of moral behavior . . .” (p 10). Closer to the approach Bettelbeim recommends -- certainly more subtle -- is Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Its stories, presented In animation, dramatize everyday situations in an urban (ghetto) environment. Cosby periodically appears in person to interpret the action, but his wit lightens the point to be made. The show’s tone is expressed in his introduction: “Here’s Bill Cosby coming at you with music and fun, and, if you’re not careful, you may learn something.”

The character whose behavior most often makes him an admirable model is Fat Albert. Hardly the all-American boy in appearance, he is, nevertheless, a responsible, caring and courageous person. When he takes a moral stand, he does it as one of the gang, who eventually respect him for it.

A song summarizing what may be learned ends the show. Accompanied  -- almost drowned out -- by the kids’ rock band, the words point out the practical value of the recommended behavior, rather than exhorting. Examples: “Smoking will wipe you out. That’s why it’s something I can do without.” Or (on bullies): “You’re never happy if you’re always mean. You’ll be the loneliest fellow you’ve ever seen.”

IV

There are indications that network executives and creators of children’s programs are at least grappling with the demand that they communicate prosocial values. On the one hand, they resist accepting any such function: “Leave the teaching to the teachers in the class-room,” NBC’s children’s programming vice-president George Heinemann told colleagues (“NBC exec debunks view of kids’ tv as teacher,” Advertising Age, June 9, 1975, p. 3). On the other hand, they have developed new ways of partially meeting these demands, such as after-school specials and brief, informational program inserts, But believable heroism in everyday situations remains a scarce commodity.

The proliferation of superheroes now invading prime-time programming (Wonder Woman, Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, perhaps soon Captain America) is more to be feared than welcomed. In The American Monomyth (Doubleday Anchor, 1977) Robert Jewett and John S. Lawrence have already warned us that the prevalence throughout our popular media of larger-than-life heroes fosters passivity, submission to authority and a yearning for easy solutions.

When didacticism is added, children may find the values associated with the superheroes to be no more credible than the powers, particularly when the values urged on children are only given lip service in the real adult world. Sometimes the commercial context of a program openly subverts the intended moral. Once Tarzan’s statement, “I would teach your greedy king a lesson,” was followed by an advertisement showing another greedy king devouring peanut butter chocolates. Such juxtapositions make perceptive young viewers ripe for parody and mockery -- and children’s TV now offers plenty of that for the “sophisticated child.”

With Captain Good and Captain America types simultaneously included as part of kidvid fare, network executives surely realize that the latter character, too -- five times as strong and five times as smart as other men -- will not be seen as a believable, imitable model. On his red, white and blue motorcycle Captain America is simply one more “example to all do-gooders” for our amusement.

Healthier alternatives to existing programs do not necessarily lie in the direction of fairy tales, but program-makers should make use of the insights Bettelheim draws from such stories. As the psychologist notes, “The child identifies with the good hero not because of his goodness but because the hero’s condition makes a deep positive appeal to him.” Let the heroes, then, not be more moral or didactic but more interesting and lifelike, engaged in struggles whose outcome could be in real doubt.

Program-makers with the ability and concern of a Bill Cosby can find their own directions. Others might first do some homework in the Brothers Grimm or medieval romance or American fiction -- especially Mark Twain. In Huckleberry Finn they would find an appealing hero who was not even aware that he was a good guy.

Brother, Are You Saved? or How to Handle the Religious Census Taker

I should have known, when two young men appeared at the door with black book in hand, what they had in mind. But these two were different. Their clothes were a bit too sharp for Pentecostals, not somber enough for Mormon missionaries, and they had no Salvation Army caps or buttons. When I learned that they were graduate students at the university and that they were enrolled in the southeast Asia program, of which I am a member by virtue of the Indian philosophy seminar I teach, I felt that I ought to restrain my impulse to close the door.

Did I have a Bible in the house? I assured them that I thought I could locate one. Did they want one in Hebrew, Greek, German, French or Spanish? Or did they prefer an English translation? Anyway, I did not want to buy a Bible. But they were not selling Bibles. They were conducting a religious census. Would I be willing to answer a few questions? I agreed, though I did not relax my policy of never admitting any religious propagandist to my home. The religious census pitch is relatively new among those concerned about the eternal status of immortal souls. I have not yet perfected a set of answers for all the religious census taker’s questions, but my standard response to the query "Brother, are you saved?" is "Brother, are you educated?"’

Did I believe that the Bible is the Word of God? I assured the young men that I’d not deny that any book may in some sense be the Word of God; indeed, anything can be a symbol of God. Did I believe the Bible to be inerrant? I admitted that I could not recall having found a misspelled word, a punctuation error, or an omitted line in any edition of the Bible. Obviously, publishers of Bibles hire good proofreaders. That did not seem to be what my visitors had in mind. Did I believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God revealed for our salvation? I replied that before I could answer that question, I’d have to know whether they had in mind Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus or Bezae. I must say to their credit that they perceived dimly that I was referring to texts from which translations are made. But they felt that I was evading their questions.

The conversation deteriorated from that point on. Finally, one of the two assured me that he loved me despite my uncooperative attitude. I replied that I objected to being propositioned, and I shut the door.

I

Later, as I reflected upon the incident, I pondered whether it might be possible to have a more satisfactory confrontation with these good people who feel called to push doorbells. How can one deal firmly yet humanely with them?

One might begin by asking them, "What is pi?" After they had asserted that the circumference of a circle is 3.14159 times the diameter, one could point out that according to the Bible, pi is an even three. Hiram made a tank for Solomon’s temple with that amazing ratio: "And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other: it was round all about . . . and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about" (I Kings 7:23). Also, one could note that according to Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7, rabbits are ruminants -- the hare cheweth the cud! In the 19th century, when conflicts between literalists and nonliteralists were popular, someone wrote these lines of doggerel:

The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood

To prove ‘tis true the hare doth chew the cud.

O bishops, doctors and divines, beware --

Weak is the faith that hangs upon a hare.

The early Christians did not think of the Bible as an infallible, inerrant reference book. Writes Paul Lehmann: "Actually, at the beginning Christians do not seem to have regarded the Scriptures as a photoelectric instrument for discerning the mind and will of God" (Ethics in a Christian Context [Harper & Row, 1963], p. 27). Moreover, there was no uniform Bible until the Christian churches, by usage and by vote of councils, determined which writings were and which were not to be included in the Holy Scriptures.

During the first two centuries of the Christian era, each church decided for itself what was biblical. By the end of the second century most of the Christian churches had agreed that there were four Gospels -- except for the Alogi Christians, who steadfastly rejected the Gospel of John. By that time, the Acts of the Apostles and the 13 Pauline Epistles were widely accepted. But there was much disagreement on the other writings. Some of the churches and church leaders accepted as scriptural the writings associated with Barnabas, Clement and Hermas.

It was not until the end of the fifth century that all the books of the New Testament were accepted. Five of them got in under false credentials: Hebrews, II Peter, II John, III John, and James were admitted because they were believed to be writings of the Apostles. Grumblings about the New Testament canon continued for more than 1,000 years. Martin Luther expressed his dissatisfaction by relegating Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation to the appendix of his translation. He called the book of James an "epistle of straw."

II

Similar difficulties accompanied the establishment of the Old Testament canon. The Jews accepted any writing that purported to be from the hands of Moses or Solomon; later scholarship established that several books accepted on that basis could not have come from either. The books known as Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ezekiel and Esther had especially doubtful credentials. As late as the second century of the Christian era some Jews were still not reconciled to the canon. Rabbi Akiba (c.135 AD.) declared that the Song of Songs "defiled the hands." The Christian community for the most part accepted the Jews’ holy book.

The books known as the Apocrypha appealed to the Greek-speaking Jews and the early Christians. Augustine held them to be fully canonical, but Jerome rejected them. At the Council of Trent in 1546 the Roman Catholic Church decreed that the Apocrypha is sacred and canonical. Protestants maintain that these writings have no authority in matters of doctrine, though any honest critic will acknowledge that some of these works possess far more religious worth than some of the accepted books of the Bible.

According to the editors of A New Standard Bible Dictionary, "The Bible did not fall from heaven as a ready-made book. It was written by men; men also have copied it" (M. W. Jacobus and A. C. Zenos [Funk & Wagnalls, 1936], p. 617). They might have added that human beings also decided which of the books were scriptural, and human beings have translated it into more than a thousand languages. Did Paul know that he was writing Scripture when he wrote his letters to the various churches? In one passage he explicitly denies that he has any inside information and insists that he is only expressing an opinion: "Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful" (I Cor. 7:25).

III

Besides determining which books were to be accepted as scriptural, the early churches also had to decide which of the variations of the same work was authentic and which were spurious. The Christian church came into existence before the Christian Bible. The churches’ first "Bible" was the Old Testament. During the first two centuries congregations claiming to possess a copy of a letter from an Apostle, or a fragment of a Gospel, or a writing of Paul contested the similar claims of other congregations. Sometimes one congregation allowed another to make a copy of its sacred writing. In those pre-Xerox days the manuscript was copied by hand, and inevitably errors were made.

During the Middle Ages the scholars of the church debated text differences with perfect freedom. Various biblical Correctoria were made and used. The demand for a single correct text of the New Testament came not from theologians but from printers. With the invention of the printing press, a method was finally available for making hundreds of identical copies. One of the first printers of Bibles was the Dutch family known as the Elzivers. Their first New Testament text was printed in 1624. The next, brought out in 1633, was so carefully prepared that it was described as the Textus Receptus, and the term is still used. The Received Text, the divinely protected copy of the New Testament -- i.e., free from all errors and therefore infallible -- was made by selecting the wording which had best support from about 25 manuscripts. These manuscripts were representative of a much larger body of material which has since grown so extensively that today it includes about 70 papyri (portions written on papyrus), about 230 uncials (manuscripts with rounded letters), about 2,500 minuscules (manuscripts with small letters), and about 1,700 lectionaries (portions of Scripture arranged for worship). The oldest of these comes from the first half of the second century.

The notion of a Textus Receptus was shattered as early as 1707, when John Mill listed over 30,000 variants in some 80 of the manuscripts or portions of manuscript of the New Testament available at that time. Today attempts to arrive at the text of the New Testament center on three sorts of materials: ancient Greek manuscripts, ancient versions in languages other than Greek (e.g., Latin, Syriac and Coptic), and early quotations said to come from the New Testament.

Among Greek manuscripts, the most important are Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Bezae. Vaticanus, dating from the fourth century, has been in the Vatican Library since about 1841. There are 1,491 words and clauses missing from Vaticanus, and all material after Hebrews 9:14 is missing. Sinaiticus, discovered in separate sheets in the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai between 1844 and 1859, is now in the British Museum, having been purchased from Russia in 1933. Sinaiticus was very carelessly copied, probably in the fourth century; gaps of from ten to 40 words appear in many places. Alexandrinus, also in the British Museum, dates from the fifth century, and is missing 40 pages -- including Matthew 1:1-25:6, John 6:50-8:52, and II Corinthians 4:13-12:6. Bezae, from the fifth or sixth century, is in the University Library at Cambridge, England. It contains the Gospels and the Acts in both Greek and Latin, but that portion of the Acts from 29:22 on is missing, and there are many omissions from the Gospels.

IV

There always remains the possibility that a still more ancient New Testament manuscript will be discovered. After all, the Dead Sea scrolls were not found until 1947. Meanwhile, scholars continue to study the manuscripts, and their findings influence the translations. For example, the portion of the Fourth Gospel (John 7:53-8:1 1) that records the incident of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery has been affected by textual studies. In the King James Version (1611) the passage appears with no indication that it is less authentic than the rest of the New Testament. In the American Revision of the Standard Edition (1901) it is set apart with brackets, and a marginal note explains: "Most of the ancient authorities omit John 7:53-8:11. Those which contain it vary much from each other."

In the Revised Standard Version (1946) this passage is set apart in small italic type, and the marginal note reads: "Other ancient authorities add 7:53-8:11 either here or at the end of this gospel or after Luke 21:38, with variations of the text." The New English Bible (1961) omits the story altogether. It appears as an appendix to the Fourth Gospel, with this footnote: "This passage, which in the most widely received editions of the New Testament is printed in the text of John, 7:53-8:11, has no fixed place in our. ancient witnesses. Some of them do not contain it at all. Some place it after Luke 21:38, others after John 7:36, or 7:52, or 21:24."

Sometimes translators are faced with a passage in which all the texts are so badly corrupted that they can make no sense of it. The options: to translate it exactly, knowing that it makes no sense, or to mistranslate it so that it does make sense. In I Samuel 13:1, for example, the Hebrew text says literally, "Saul was a year old when he began to reign; and he reigned two years over Israel." This, of course, is ridiculous, for the rest of the material on Saul does not support the notion that Saul reigned only as an infant and only for two years.

The translators of the version known as King James (1611) made only a slight mistranslation: "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel . . ." They added a marginal note to explain the first clause: "the son of one year in his reigning." Those who made the American Revision of the Standard Edition (1901) hazarded a guess unwarranted by the Hebrew: "Saul was [forty] years old when he began to reign; and when he had reigned two years over Israel . . ." They admit to their guesswork in a footnote: "The number is lacking in the Hebrew text, and is supplied conjecturally."

The translators of the Revised Standard Version (1952) refused to guess: "Saul was . . . years old when he began to reign; and he reigned . . . and two years over Israel." This, of course, is mistranslation by omission. They offer two footnotes -- with reference to the first blank, "The number is lacking in Hebrew," and referring to the second, "Two is not the entire number. Something has dropped out." The translators of the New English Bible (1970) guessed boldly: "Saul was fifty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel for twenty-two years. Footnotes are offered for both numbers: "fifty years: probable reading; Hebrew a year" and "Probable reading; Hebrew two."

Sometimes translators deliberately mistranslate to preserve attitudes they prize more than an accurate translation of the Bible. F. C. Grant reports that in a South African translation made by Dutch Christians, Song of Songs 1:5 -- which appears in the King James version as "I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem" -- was changed to "I am comely, and burnt brown by the sun" because few white persons in the land of apartheid would accept the notion that a black person could be comely (see Ancient Judaism and the New Testament [Macmillan, 1961], p. 134).

A humorous mistranslation is found in Isaiah 6:1 of the King James Version, the American Standard, and the New English Bible. In this passage relating the prophet’s vision of God in the temple, the King James and the American Standard report that Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, "and his train filled the temple." But a more accurate translation of the Hebrew is "his buttocks filled the temple." One member of the committee that prepared the New English Bible wanted to translate the word correctly, but the majority, feeling that "buttocks" or even "hind parts" would not be well received, settled for the mistranslation "the skirt of his robe filled the temple."

V

The chapter divisions that we now take for granted in the Bible were the work of Stephen Langton in the 13th century; the verse divisions originated with the printer Robert Stephanus in 1551. Because of these editorial conventions, people eventually came to regard the Bible as a collection of proverbs, with each verse constituting an independent statement of religious truth. The Bible came to be quoted without regard for context.

Some of the results have been tragic. "He that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16: 16) and "Compel them to come in" (Luke 14:23) were cited in support of the Inquisition. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exod. 22: 18) justified the hanging of old women in Salem, Massachusetts. "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God" (I Cor. 10:20) has been used by missionaries to argue that the gods of non-Christians are devils. Two verses -- "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly things, it shall not hurt them" (Mark 16:18) and "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you" (Luke 10:19) -- are used by the snake-cult Christians in Appalachia as support for snake-handling and the drinking of poison as tests of Christian faith.

In 1974 a young graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary was denied admission to the Presbyterian ministry because of his conviction that women should not be ordained as elders in the Presbyterian Church. He reasoned that, even though the church allows such ordinations, God does not. The young man cited I Corinthians 14:34-35 "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."

Such piecemeal use of Scripture rests on the assumption that the Bible is uniformly authoritative. Dean Burgon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, England, expressed this view in a sermon in 1861:

No, sirs, the Bible is the very utterance of the Eternal: as much God’s own word as if high heaven were open and we heard God speaking to us with human voice. Every book is inspired alike, and is inspired entirely. Inspiration is not a difference of degree but of kind. The Bible is filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit of God; the books of it and the words of it and the very letters of it [A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, by Andrew D. White, Vol. II, p. 369].

Would my minilecture on the origin and development of the Bible convince the religious census takers who come to my door? Probably not. My last resort may be to make a sign:

The people in this house are Buddhists.

They speak only a Tibetan dialect.

They have very bad tempers.

Oxymorons as Theological Symbols



An oxymoron is a locution that produces an effect by means of what in ordinary language is a self-contradiction. I first became aware of oxymorons many years ago when my high school Latin teacher informed our class that our motto would be festina lente (make haste slowly). At the tender age of 16 the maxim struck me forcefully, for I had already observed how often I accomplished little when I acted quickly. Forty years later my mind flashed back to that day. I had asked the great Zen Buddhist D. T. Suzuki what he did when he faced a logical contradiction. His answer: “I just plunge right through.”

The absurdity of oxymorons should not be minimized. Oxymorons violate the principle of thought and being which Aristotle called “the most certain of all principles.” He succinctly stated this truth, known as ‘‘the law of noncontradiction.’’ as follows: “The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.” A cannot be both Wand non-B. Aristotle added that the validity of this law can be demonstrated by asking those who think that they reject it to say something. If they make statements following the form “A is B,” one can point out that they have denied “A is non-B.’’

But the defender of oxymorons can point out that human beings sometimes have experiences which cannot be properly described through a logic of exclusion. One of the most obvious of these is the experience of love. The love relationship can be so close to its opposite, hatred, that it can become part of a “love-hate relationship.” The defender of oxymorons might also remind the traditional Western logician that the use of words to describe a referent which has an ontological status independent of the language system is but one of languages functions. Words may denote, but they may also analogize, create and even reject a referent. That is why a seer in the Brihadaranyaka Upanisad advised people not to meditate upon the meaning of words, why the Tao Teh Ching begins with the observation that the reality which can be expressed linguistically is not the Reality, and why Zen masters warn us not to trust anyone who talks about the Buddha.

Oxymorons emerge in many unexpected places. A well-known analgesic balm has an oxymoronic trade name -- Icy Hot. Botanists sometimes refer to trees of the populus, nyssa and plantanus families as “soft-hardwoods” and to the celastrus vine as “bittersweet.” Specialists in the study of American Indian arrowheads refer to a certain arrowhead as having a “fluted-unfluted’’ point. Psychologists use the term ‘passive-aggressive behavior’’ to denote acts in which one person tries to manipulate another by refusing to cooperate unless the other acts as the manipulator wishes. Zen masters speak of effortless-effort,’’ and coaches advise long-distance runners to make an effort to run effortlessly.

Oxymorons are perhaps more widely used in the Orient than in the Occident. All lovers of Chinese food are aware of sweet-sour meats. The Taoist way of life, known as wu wei. means literally ‘‘the way of active-inactivity.” Chih-t’ao, a 17th-century artist, described the preferred method of Chinese art as ‘‘the method of no-method.’’ Buddhists are told to desire the state of desirelessness, and Zen Buddhists speak of the satori experience as taking place in “a timeless moment.” In the Vimatakirti Sutra, a Mahayana Buddhist text, the Bodhisattva Manjushri, when asked about the nature of reality, replies with ‘‘a thunderous silence.”

In India oxymorons proliferate. According to the Upanisadic view of the Brahman, Nirguna Brahman is not being or nonbeing, but being-nonbeing (sat-asat). The reality of nonbeing is often described as the reality of “the son of a barren woman.’’ In his commentaries on the Upanisads, Shankara referred to “the knowability of the Unknowable’’ and to “the whole real-unreal course of ordinary life.” According to Mysore Hiriyanna, the Atman is “known only to those who do not know it.” Nimbarka’s form of Vedantism is known as Dvaita-Advaita (Dualism-Nondualism) and Ramanuja referred to his Vedantism as Bhedabheda (Difference-Nondifference). R. C. Zaehner titled his 1967-68 Gifford Lectures on Indian religions Concordant Discord. Mahatma Gandhi described himself as a ‘‘cruelly kind husband. “In early Indian philosophy, cosmic energy was symbolized by Vac, the primordial sound, which is described as ‘‘the inaudible sound.” Vac, in time, was visually hypostatized as bindu (dot) -- that is, as position without dimension. This thing-nonthing has been represented in a painting by the modern Indian artist S. H. Raza. Raza painted bindu as a dark circle dissected vertically and horizontally by two hardly visible white lines. Theoretically the four sections of the dark circle are said to appear as white, yellow, red and blue. In 1982 the Indian Postal Service reproduced this painting on a two-rupee stamp.

In the Madhyamika school of Buddhist thought a key term is sunyata. This term, which is commonly translated as ‘‘emptiness,’’ is used to express a condition in which there is no ontological substance in the process of becoming, and no reality independent of a language system. Sun yata is an “emptiness’’ which is neither eternalism (absolute oneness) nor nihilism (absolute nothingness). It is religiously more, but metaphysically less, than being or becoming. Oxymorons are so integral to the Madhyamika that one of its chief scriptures -- the Prajnaparamita  -- asserts that because intuitive wisdom (prajna) is unobtainable, human beings should strive to attain it with all their powers. In his study of the Madhyamika, Frederick I. Streng distinguished the “mystical” and the “intuitive” structure of religious apprehension. The latter provides meaning through combining concepts which the former would regard as logically inconsistent -- for example, that Absolute Reality be known as both “being’’ and “nonbeing,’’ as “here” and “not here,” and as “God” and “man” (Emptiness [Abingdon, 1967], p. 81). What Streng calls the “intuitive structure’’ of religious apprehension is not the conjunctive, but the oxymoronic, relationship. Hence, Absolute Reality should really be known as “being-nonbeing,” ‘‘here” “not here’’ and ‘‘God-man.’’

According to Benjamin Walker, sunyata represents ‘‘an experience of final Non-beingness flashing forth through the state of natural beingness which is our temporal human existence. It is not mere negation, but a Negation of negation that is an Existence. Being beyond existence and being” (Hindu World. Vol. II [George Allen & Unwin, 1968], p. 453). But Walker confuses rather than clarifies when he adds, “It is best defined by negatives.” What Walker should have stated is that the universe as sunyata is best expressed by the negation of oxymorons -- as “not being-nonbeing,” or “not existence-nonexistence,” or “not becoming-nonbecoming.”

Modern physicists use oxymorons to express the nature of reality: ‘‘space-time,’’ “matter-energy” and “wavicles”. In The Tao of Physics Fritjof Capra prepares the way for “matter-antimatter,” “evolution-devolution,” ‘‘particles-antiparticles,’’ “quarks-antiquarks” and “part-whole.”



Christianity is the most oxymoronic of all religions in that it is centered on the deus-homo, the one described in the Definition of Chalcedon as “truly God and truly man.” The church councils explained that this does not mean that the Christ was either half God and half man, or 100 per cent God and 100 per cent man. The formulation represented an effort to find a position between the Monophysites, who stressed Christ’s divinity, and the Nestorians, who stressed his humanity. The creedal statement strikingly affirms that divinity and humanity are nondestructive polarities. Karl Barth made this discovery in his own theological pilgrimage. Whereas the early Barth insisted that God is “Wholly Other,’’ the later Barth admitted that he had turned the rudder an angle of exactly 180 degrees” (The Humanity of God [Collins, 1961], p. 41). In his lecture ‘The Christian Message and the New Humanism” (given in Geneva at the Recontres Internationales on September 1, 1949), he confessed, “God and man are one in Jesus Christ and Jesus is perfect God and perfect man. It is from this point of view that we regard men” (Against the Stream [Camelot, 1954], p. 186). In The Humanity of God, Barth stated -- with a curious reference to his former characterization of God as the “wholly other” -- that his eyes had been opened “to the fact that God might actually be wholly other than the God confined to the musty shell of the Christian religious self-consciousness.’’ He added,

It is precisely God’s deity which, rightly understood, includes his humanity. . . It is when we look at Jesus Christ that we know decisively that God’s deity does not exclude but includes his humanity. . . . God requires no exclusion of humanity, no non-humanity, in order to be truly God. . . . God in his deity is human.

Some very significant oxymorons are hidden in the Bible. For example, although Revelation I :8a -- “Ego eimi to Alpha kai Omega” -- is translated “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Revised Standard Version), it might be translated “I am the Alpha-Omega” or ‘‘I am the Beginning-End.” The alternative translation is defensible because of the use of the word ‘kai” in Koine. Writers and speakers of Koine appear to have used ‘kai” as a transition or hesitation word, much as some modem Americans use “and-a,” “really” or “you know.” Therefore, Revelation 1:8b may be translated “the Lord God, the Was-Is-Will-Be,” rather than “the Lord God, who is, who was, and who is to come.” This translation defines God as that transcendence within which time may be differentiated, rather than as that being whose nature includes -- and presumably is exhausted by --  time past, time present and time future. In the “Was-Is-Will-Be,” temporal differentiations are irrelevant. God cannot be measured by past, present and future, for in the One who is Past-Present-Future there is no “past,” no “present” and no “future.”

A similar oxymoron is hidden in the Bhagavad Gita. The Sanskrit text of 10:32, “Sarganam adiratas ca madhyam cai ‘Va ‘ham,” is usually translated “Of creatures I am the beginning, the end, and also the middle.” But an oxymoronic translation would be better: “Of creatures I am the Beginning-Middle-End.” The justification for this translation lies in the fact that the previous chapter contains an oxymoronic statement: “All beings rest in Me . . . and yet beings do not rest in Me” (9:4,5). Moreover, 9:17 should be “I am Father-Mother,’’ rather than “I am father and mother,” and 9:16 should be “I am Fire-Water,’’ the integration of destructive dualities, rather than “I am the fire of offering, and I am the poured oblation.”

The Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945 reveal the richness of the oxymoronic use of terms to designate the Deity. Many of these texts refer to God as the dyad, the divine as masculofeminine -- “The Great Male-Female Power.” (See Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels [Random House, 1981], p. 61). A remarkable poem in the texts, titled “Thunder, Perfect Mind,” is this soliloquy of a feminine divine power:

I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am foolish and I am wise.

 

A more accurate translation would be, “I am the first-last, the scorned-honored one, the holy whore and the virgin mother. I am the way of ignorant knowledge, and I am the way of foolish wisdom.”

St. Augustine occasionally used oxymorons, referring to God as “that simple multiplicity, or multiform simplicity.” Holy Scripture, he said, in order to make its message understood, purges the human mind by the use of “words drawn from any class of things really existing.’’ Thus it “suits itself to babes.” It frames “allurements for children from the things which are found in the creature.” Augustine mentions two ways in which this is done. One is by taking words from corporeal things and using them for that which is incorporeal, as when the psalmist pleads “hide me under the shadow of Thy wings” (Ps. 17:8), although God has no shadowing wings. Another is by using words suitable to human psychology, but unsuitable when applied to deity: “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God” (Exod. 20:5). Augustine points out that Scripture does not use words “to frame either figures or speech or enigmatic sayings from things which do not exist at all,” although these would be appropriate were the Bible written for philosophers rather than for “babes,” since philosophers would understand that, since existence is not a proper attribute of God, words signifying nonexistence might be apropos. Augustine observes that “Scripture rarely employs those things which are spoken properly of God and are not found in any creature” -- for example, “I am that I am” (Exod. 3:14).

Irenacus, in his effort to integrate Christian insights and Greek wisdom, backed into an oxymoron: the God who cannot suffer (Deus impassibilis) is the God who suffers (Deus passibilis). In the next century Gregory Thaumaturgus picked up the theme of “the Suffering of Him who cannot suffer.” and the same oxymoronic expression continues to appear in the 20th-century works of H. Crouzel, L. Abramowski and B. R. Brasnett (see especially Brasnett’s 1928 work, The Suffering of the Impassible God. Jurgen Moltmann creates a quasi-oxymoron when he writes, “If God is love he is at once the lover, the beloved and the love itself” (The Trinity and the Kingdom [Harper& Row, 1981], p. 57). God is Beloved-Lover-Love. Could the Trinity symbol, Father-Son-Holy Spirit, itself be the ultimate oxymoron? Moltmann, in claiming that the Holy Spirit is the feminine principle of the Godhead, adumbrates an even more striking oxymoron: God is Father-Mother-Son.

The Christian Scholastics, concluding that God cannot be defined positively, tried the way of negation (Via negativa), seeing God as that which negates attributes. God is infinite, timeless, unchangeable, sinless and deathless. The way of negation defines God by exclusion. When the theologian denies that God is spatial, temporal, changeable, sinful and mortal, he or she also denies that God is human. God becomes the Wholly Other; God and man exclude each other. But the way of the oxymoron defines God by inclusion. God includes space, for God is finite-infinite; God includes time, for God is the Past-Present-Future: God includes change, for God is change-nonchange: God includes sin, for God is sin-redemption: God includes death, for God is mortality-immortality: and God includes the human, for God is deus-homo. This is the view of God expressed by Deutero-Isaiah:

I am the Lord, there is no other;

I make the light, I create darkness,

author alike of prosperity and trouble.

I. the Lord, do all these things.

[Isa. 45:6b-7].

 

Was it not this conception of an inclusive God that stimulated Paul’s song of praise? “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God” (Rom. 8:38). We cannot be separated from God, for God includes all. Sin, suffering and death itself are not beyond the reality which we symbolize by the word “God.”

If someone would object that a being symbolized by an oxymoron cannot exist, I would reply as follows: You correctly grasp one of the values in the use of oxymorons as theological symbols. Does God exist? Keep in mind that the word ‘‘existence” comes from the Latin ex-sistere (to stand out from). Existence is the mode of being which consists in interaction with other things in a class.

Does God interact with other gods? If God stands out from any thing, then God is not inclusive. An existent God must be a limited God -- limited by all that is non-God. The traditional philosophical “proofs’’ for God -- the cosmological, the teleological and the ontological -- err in that they argue for the existence, for the limited reality, of an excluding God, rather than for the unlimited reality of an including God.

The oxymoron as a symbol for God has another value: it reminds us that the word ‘‘God’’ is equivocal. The two fundamental uses of ‘‘God’’ are often confused. Eckhart distinguished Gott (God) and Gottheit (Godhead). Shankara distinguished Saguna Brahman (the Brahman with attributes) and Nirguna Brahman (the Brahman without attributes). Tillich distinguished “God’’ and “the God Beyond God” or “the Ground of Being.’’ These are distinctions between a symbol and the thing symbolized. We might use the word “God” as the symbol, and “the Divine” as the referent. Other possibilities for the referent might be Plato’s “the Good,” Plotinus’s ‘‘the One’’ and Aurobindo’s “Satchitananda.” “God” as symbol is relevant and important for worship. “The Divine” as the thing symbolized is relevant and important when one wishes to refer as rationally as possible to the integration of Ultimate Reality and Ultimate Value. Confusions between “God” as symbol and “the Divine’’ as referent can be ludicrous. Thus the phrase “May God bless you” is appropriate, while “May the Ground of Being bless you” is an absurd mixing of two universes of discourse.

A poem by the American poet Gene Derwood (l909-l954), titled “With God Conversing,’’ contains these two lines: “The gloomy silhouettes of wings we forged/With reason reasonless, are now enlarged.” Our understanding of the Divine is enhanced by our joining the Buddhists in recognizing that words are “fingers that point to the moon.” Oxymorons help us, in the words of St. Augustine, to “see ineffably that which is ineffable,” and in the words of Deutero-Isaiah, to find what we do not seek (Isa. 65:1). The understanding which an affirmation of the Divine is supposed to convey is distorted by the affirmation itself, but understanding may dawn like an eklampsis (illumination) -- as Plato says in the Seventh Letter -- when the affirmation is coupled with its negation.

Grief and the Art of Consolation: A Personal Testimony

The morning of September 19, 1978, promised a golden autumn day. The sun shone in my eyes at the breakfast table, and I asked my wife, Lorena, to pull the curtains on her side of the table. Over breakfast we chatted about the evening before -- we had been to a party, and I had not seen her so radiant for months. I noted a few lumps in the cooked cereal -- a phenomenon most unusual in the 40 years she had been cooking for me, but a matter too inconsequential to be mentioned on this warm, sunny morning. After breakfast she drove me to the university for my eight o’clock class. As I got out of the car I gave her a pat, saying: “I’ll be home for lunch. I want to take a short nap before my afternoon class.”

“See you at noon,” she replied, and drove off.

A Blast of Hot Blue Air

By 11 o’clock the day was so warm that I shed my coat as I walked the mile from my office to our home. I noticed that the garage door was down. Perhaps Lorena had closed it to keep the house a bit cooler. When I found the front door locked, I pushed the doorbell. I was prepared to greet her with “Lady. I’m the Fuller brush salesman,” or “I’m selling Bibles to work my way through college.” But she did not come to open the door for me. I walked around the house and entered through the back door.

“I’m home, dear,” I shouted as I opened the door off the patio. The silence puzzled me. In the kitchen I found no preparations for lunch, although the breakfast dishes had been washed. The bed was made, and the rooms were in perfect order. I noted that the door to our attached garage was closed. When I opened it, a blast of hot blue air hit me. The odor of exhaust fumes was overpowering. Then I saw Lorena slumped behind the steering wheel of the car. I rushed to open the garage door and shouted to a neighbor to call an ambulance and the police. Then I discovered that the ignition was on, though the motor had stopped. I began to shake her body, but saw at once that there was no life. I realized that the motor had run until all oxygen had been exhausted. My wife had committed suicide.

Lorena had suffered from recurrent periods, of mental depression during the past 12 years, had undergone shock therapy, and had spent six weeks in a mental health center in an effort to learn which antidepression medication could help her. In two previous bouts with depression, medicine had turned the tide. She had been physically better during the summer. Almost every day she had swum a mile and jogged more than a mile. We had played many rounds of golf. I had hoped that the autumn of social activities would stimulate her to the enjoyment of living. Of course, I knew that she had been having difficulties doing the common tasks like cooking, shopping, sewing and writing letters. Even talking with friends required too much effort. Only a few months earlier she had assured the psychiatrist that she would not try to take her own life, because, as she said, “It is not right.” Although I had heard her say to herself many times, “I wish I were dead,” she told me when I challenged her that she would never try to end her life.

Shock and Relief

Within a few minutes, neighbors had gathered to see what had happened. An ambulance arrived, and the attendants began working over her body. Policemen and firemen arrived. The garbage collectors who were working our street were on the scene. One of the men held me, supposing that I might do violence to myself. I broke away and began pounding the house with my fists, screaming, “Why did you do it?” I had the strange feeling of being three persons. One was the person in shock. The second person felt a strange sense of relief: no more psychiatrists, pills, shock therapy and hospitals. A third person witnessed the other two: “Look at that fool weeping and yelling, and look at that other fool already experiencing relief from 12 years of sympathetic suffering.”

I was glad that the paramedics did not put a sheet over her face as they put the body in the ambulance for the trip to the hospital. That seemed to suggest that they had some hope of reviving her. I wanted to follow at once, but the coroner had arrived.

“Maybe I ought not to discuss this with you now, he said.

“No, do it now. Ask your questions. Get it done.”

Then a neighbor drove me to the hospital. “You couldn’t do a thing, could you?” I queried the nurse.

She dodged: “You’ll have to talk to a doctor.”

The doctor came. “We tried to save her, but we couldn’t.”

“I know,” I said. “I want to see her.”

“But that is most unusual,” I was told. I responded with enough emotion to destroy all resistance.

 

After a few minutes I was allowed to be in the room alone with her. I kissed her forehead, removed her wedding and engagement rings, and took one last look. The neighbor drove me home, insisting that I must eat to keep up my strength, but roast beef and corn on the cob were more than I could handle. I settled for a dish of applesauce. The meal was interrupted by the funeral director, who was taken aback when I told him that I wanted cremation, I did not want the ashes returned, and I did not want a funeral service. I telephoned our two children, and returned to our home.

Friends poured in all afternoon. There were never less than a dozen people with me during the rest of the day. As each arrived, there was a brief expression of sorrow, and then conversation turned to the weather, politics and university gossip. I wanted to talk about Lorena, but everyone else seemed to find this an embarrassing topic. Almost every half-hour someone arose to make another pitcher of iced tea. By early evening my son had arrived, and I had an excuse to remove myself from the assembly of well-wishers. One couple insisted on going with me to the bus station to greet my son -- fearing, I suppose, that I might attempt to join my wife in death.

‘Going Out the Back Door’

As a teacher of philosophy I had often referred to death. “All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal.” How often I had used that standard example of a syllogism! Sometimes I had substituted “I” for “Socrates” to give the dull syllogism an existential impact. I had called attention to the Stoics’ “When death is, you aren’t; and when you are, death isn’t. So what is there to fear?” I had also pointed out the wisdom of the Stoics in referring to suicide as “going out the back door.” And I had even argued that the ability to take one’s own life is one of the noble distinctions between humans and the lower animals. When I read that Heidegger thought learning how to die the Achilles heel of a philosophy of life, I had added that learning how to live seemed to me more important. Now I experienced the suicide of one with whom I had pledged 40 years ago to live “till death us do part.”

I had supposed that I could handle death. After all, I had witnessed the death of both my parents, and as a clergyman I had conducted many funerals. But the death of a spouse by suicide proved to be something else. In a study by Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe of the University of Washington medical school, surveying the opinions of 394 individuals on the amount of readjustment required to meet life events, the death of a spouse had been given the highest rating. Below the 100 rating for death of spouse were such items as divorce (73), marital separation (65), jail term (63), death of a close family member (63), and marriage (50). An evidence of the accuracy of the high rating for the death of a spouse was their discovery that the number of deaths of widows and widowers during the first year following the death of their spouse is ten times greater than the deaths of others in their age groups.

Other studies have revealed, as might be expected, that the death of a spouse by suicide requires even more readjustment than a natural death. This is the opinion expressed, for example, by Joanne E. Bernstein in her book Loss and How to Cope with It: “Being the survivor of any death is difficult. Suicide doubles the difficulty and multiplies the complications. . . . Suicide is brutal. The problems of surviving suicide are unique, complex, and very difficult” (Seabury, 1977, pp. 94, 95).

In our youth-oriented society, death is ignored until it intrudes into our lives. We do not know how to cope with it, whether as the expectation of our own death or the death of a loved one. But this is not a new, nor a Christian, nor a Western predicament. Job did not know how to deal with the loss of his family. Equally we are unable to bring consolation to the bereaved. Job’s comforters were inadequate.

Peter Matthiessen in his delightful account of a trek in Nepal says that Tibetans have learned how to deal with sorrow and consolation. He reports that when the cook for the expedition received a letter telling him that his wife had left him to live with another man, the deserted husband went to a village and read his letter aloud. The villagers, all strangers, wept with him. Matthiessen comments: “A Westerner would have slunk off and kicked stones; you have to admire the Sherpas for being so open about everything.” The Tibetans, writes Matthiessen, are “so open, so without defense, therefore so free, true Bodhisattvas, accepting like the variable air the large and small events of every day” (The Snow Leopard [Viking, 1978], p. 147).

Not all Westerners slink off and kick stones. When one of my grandchildren learned of the suicide of her grandmother, she went to her room to cry. But another grandchild went to tell the neighbors. When he returned, he said, “I went to tell four neighbors. We all had a good cry, and I feel better now.”

A Necessary Purgation

Grief can become a way back to health. I have found that one must work through grief. This process involves reliving the events, the feelings and the actions of the original shock. For me, it has meant the talking out of the events. I have felt compelled to talk about Lorena’s suicide openly, frankly, and often. I’m sure I have bored many in sharing my woe in offices and homes, while jogging with friends on streets and roads, and while sharing a meal in a restaurant. I am normally introspective, but throughout the healing process I poured out my grief to friends and strangers. It was a necessary purgation.

One friend who had suffered a similar loss told me she could never refer to her husband’s death as suicide. That has not been my experience. I have avoided all euphemisms. Never have I said that my wife “passed away.” Rather she “took her own life” or “committed suicide” or “ran the car motor in a closed garage.” I am sure that often my hearers have not comprehended what was happening to me as I related the events that had brought so much anguish into my life. How right was C. G. Jung when he said that “one understands nothing psychologically unless one has experienced it oneself” (Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 200).

But I have not constrained myself because another did not understand. I wanted the other person to listen. Grief can be resolved, but not if it is ignored, forgotten or hidden. It must be brought into the open. It must be relived and shared both verbally and emotionally. For me the expression of grief has been necessary in my struggle to return to joy in living. Lionel Tiger has expressed this principle excellently: “Rather than being a matter of indulgence, or frailty, or neurosis, or intransigence, grief becomes a predictable and healthy response to losses of sociobiological consequence, rooted in the body, expressed through it, and relevant to its eventual health” (“Optimism: The Biological Roots of Hope,” Psychology Today, January 1979, p. 29).

Talking, Touching, Weeping

The experience of losing my wife by suicide has given me insights not only on how to grieve but also on how to give consolation. First, it is important to listen. There is consolation in finding someone to talk to. The listener does not have to offer advice or cite similar experiences he or she may have suffered. The one who grieves needs to talk; he or she is frustrated if the listener seeks to avoid discussing the cause of the grief. Some comforters seem to want to talk about everything except death. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has said: “When we lose someone . . . we are enraged, angry, in despair; we should be allowed to express these feelings” (On Death and Dying [Macmillan, 1969], p. 156). She adds also -- and I agree -- that this is no time to speak of the love of God. That can come later.

Then there is the importance of touching. Suffering the death of a loved one is a lonely experience. How often have I met a friend who shook my hand when I wanted an arm thrown about my shoulders. If one cannot speak the right words to the one who is hurting, one can at least touch him.

Again, weeping has its role in the healing process. It is helpful to weep with another. Even if the other does not weep, it is healing to be able to weep unashamedly in the presence of another. We must cease assuming that weeping is a feminine activity. Men also need to weep.

Although it is true that time heals wounds, one of the cruelest things to say to the one in the shock of grief is that in time the grief will end. Such a remark was made to me within an hour of my discovery of my wife’s body in the garage. It cut to the quick, and I still hurt when I recall the remark. Equally cruel at a time when someone is suffering the death of a loved one is the advice: “You must do some selective forgetting.” I doubt that forgetting can be rationally controlled. Other emotions will in time displace the immediacy of shock and grief, but the counselor ought not to say so.

One experience for which I was not prepared was the barrage of letters I received from monument companies. One company wrote twice about their special sale of gravestones with once-in-a-lifetime bargains. This seemed to me a cruel type of salesmanship. Even worse was the newspaper obituary sealed in plastic, sent to me with the information that this wonderful memento cost only one dollar. The plastic container was decorated with a border of lilies; the 23rd Psalm was printed on the back. I ordered none.

Perhaps the consolation I most resented in the early weeks of my mourning was the well-intended promise: “Call me any time you need help.” Naturally I never called. Such counselors ought to know that the time to give help is now, not later. Grief is a helplessness that does not cry for help. One cries -- and hopes that help will come unbidden. Those who say, “I’ll have you over to dinner sometime,” and then offer no invitation, increase rather than diminish grief. How much I appreciated a friend who said to me: “You are to be my guest every Thursday evening at 6:30. I have already set aside a napkin ring for you.”

Active Love

Consolation is indeed an art. It is the art of active love. Thanks to the consolation of those who listened, who touched, who invited me into their homes, and who wept with me, I have found my way back to life. Although our patterns of grief and consolation have not been worked out as they should be in our Western culture, I have received comfort from the Christian community, and I am indeed grateful to those who have sincerely tried to assist me in the very difficult task of dealing with the loss of a loved one through suicide.

Wistful moments come when I recall what was, what is, and what might have been. As light displaces darkness, I recognize my debt to those who have been my comforters, and I pray that I have learned out of this experience both how to grieve and how to console.

What a Friend They Have in Jesus

The television star I am thinking of wears expensive-looking, light-colored suits with dark ties, and faces a studio audience from behind a modern wooden desk flanked by plastic plants. A mural of skyscrapers is painted on the wall behind him. He has a boyish, handsome face, thick hair with an unemployed curl in front, and a great smile that you know survives off-camera. He begins the 90-minute show by chatting with his partner, and then proceeds to interview guests, flattering them with his trusting manner. Singers entertain. A sprightly orchestra opens and closes each segment, and the audience applauds at the right times. The star jokes easily, laughs a little at himself, and avoids controversy (if he states an opinion, he is careful not to sound too opinionated). When the show is over, everyone huddles and shakes hands. This man is one of the most charming and effective hosts of a television talk show today. His network carries him to 600 cities and 22 countries. Who is he?

Slick Evangelism

Shouldn’t such a bright star be easy to locate? No, he is not Johnny Carson, and this is not the “Tonight” show. He is Pat Robertson, host of the “700 Club,” the slickest evangelism I have ever seen. One almost expects the show to begin with the exclamation “He-e-e-e-ere’s Jesus!”

There was a time when one could spot TV evangelism immediately because it took the form of a televised sermon. The preacher was often robed, and he usually preached at high volume and with maximum sanctimony. Not even the “new” Oral Roberts has been able to escape this tradition entirely, nor has Robert Schuller, nor Rex Humbard. Even though Bishop Fulton Sheen didn’t use a pulpit, we knew what his costume signified. But with the sound turned down on the “700 Club,” it would take a while for a new viewer to discover that this talk show is broadcasting the gospel. The evangelist does not shout, and his brand of righteousness is easy to take. The telephone number flashed at the bottom of the TV screen and the camera’s occasional glance at three tiers of telephone operators might make you think you were watching a telethon, with the callers transmitting promises of gifts rather than the confessions of faith they are in fact making.

On the “700 Club” you will hear discussions with dedicated athletes -- athletes committed not just to winning the game, but also to winning souls for the Lord. Or you will hear testimony from a converted politician or a former gang leader. There might be a field report from a brave, exuberant missionary, or an expert’s measured critique of the sex and violence on television (ending not with a plea for censorship, but with an expression of dismay -- these people learned something from the Scopes trial). Then it’s time for a “hymn” -- or whatever one calls religious music that is not a dirge, not a joyous folk song, but a pop ditty whose beat and back-up would fit it to the format of any middle-of-the-road radio station, were it not for the lyrics (try “I Am the Righteousness of God in Christ” to the tune of “Up, Up and Away”). Brief but intense prayers are offered. Sometimes they are lifted on behalf of believers at home, and at other times nonbelievers are prayed for (can it be that many nonbelievers are watching?).

This is modern, middle-class fundamentalism. Because the “700 Club” folk are moderns, they take psychology and “mental health” seriously; because they are fundamentalists, they believe that the Lord of Hosts will drive out devils; they therefore pray unabashedly for both mental and physical healing.

They take modern “communications theory” seriously; like the rest of us, they grew up with television. They know about ratings and “audience analysis”; they bounce their shows off satellites, and they are building CBN (Christian Broadcast Network) University, where believers will be taught the fundamentals of electronic journalism as well as a little theology. They believe in the techniques of scientific advertising, even while they bemoan the character of the commercials shown on major networks. Once some-one on the program said this about advertising: “As Christians we ought to recognize its potential. After all, we have that same opportunity to spread the gospel.” (Perhaps the 700 Clubbers will soon be referring to the “60-second spot Jesus did at the wedding at Cana,” or the “demographics of the Beatitudes.”)

Such faith in advertising is even more amazing when one considers economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s dictum that the basic purpose of advertising is to get people to buy something they don’t need. Do Pat Robertson and company think that people do not need the Word, or that its attractions are not intrinsic, and therefore must be sold? About “marketing principles” they say: “Praise God, they work. There’s nothing wrong with them. It’s only who controls them” (the words are reminiscent of those we used to utter in defense of nuclear energy). Their adherence to these principles shows up in the name of the show itself: referring to a group of “chosen” people, it suggests the exclusive Stork Club or the cheerful “Breakfast Club.” The producers would never identify their program with a label so unsalable as “The Christian Talk Show,” though to do so would be a triumph for “truth in advertising.”

Like all good television shows, the “700 Club” has its competition -- Jim Bakker hosts the very similar “PTL Club,” whose name means both “Praise the Lord” and “People That Love.” And I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that competing evangelist Billy Graham has ever been Pat Robertson’s guest -- perhaps for the same reason that Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin never work together.

A First-Name Basis

The club teaches, explicitly and implicitly, one main idea -- the same thought one finds expressed throughout modern fundamentalism. It is revealed in two key phrases. These people do not say to one another, in a typical conversation, that they have been “converted,” or “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” or even “born again.” They never say that they “believe in God,” since they suspect that that phrase is ordinarily misused by people who don’t really believe in God. Instead, they say that they have “met the Lord,” or that they “know the Lord,” They have a “personal relationship with Jesus” (“Christ” is sometimes left off, not out of disrespect, but perhaps as an indication that they believe one should be on a first-name basis with the Son of Man). In other words, they participate, fundamentally, in a friendship of equals -- in an “emotional” relationship with the Almighty. There is no suggestion of the humble submission of the flock to the Shepherd. (Note, too, how the emphasis on feelings allows the evangelist to de-emphasize doctrinal differences among the denominations; when referring to such distinctions, Pat does it with a chuckle.)

This language shows the clear connection between modern fundamentalism and popular culture. I do not know the precise history of those two key phrases, but I would guess that their origins are fairly recent -- say, in the 1920s or 1930s, when media began to “personalize” and “democratize” so much of American private and public life. In popular culture now, for example, we personalize the relationship between the president and the people; we try to create an emotional relationship of equals. Hence, the president will “share” with us an idea, or speak to us “personally” on radio and television, and we, in turn, intrude upon his privacy in the desire to “know” him and his kin. The question in our minds is not so much “Does he govern well?” as it is “Can I trust him? Do I like him?” Likewise, we personalize the relationship between film stars and their fans. We no longer admire heroes so much as we copy “personalities” (can you imagine such a  “personal” magazine as People circulating in the 18th or 19th century?).

At the same time, marriages and families have become essentially emotional and egalitarian relationships rather than institutional and hierarchical ones, Thus, when marriage and family fail to satisfy, when they do not make all members feel “happy” and “fulfilled,” then these arrangements begin to dissolve, or at least to be regarded as needing repair.

In the armed forces today the mission is “personnel management.” In the bureaucracies of government and business, too, there is great concern for “morale” and “openness” and the “needs” of employees. After all, the workers must first “get along” with one another. Countless college students aspire to be “personnel directors” or “counselors” in large organizations rather than to become entrepreneurs running their own shops (unless they plan to set up their own psychological “practices”). In nursery, primary and secondary schools teachers are more delighted with a pupil’s good “social skills” (“getting along”) than with the high marks of a solitary child. I remember that on my own report cards in the 1950s these skills were listed under the heading of “citizenship” -- a usage of that term that would have completely baffled George Washington.

Artificial Friendliness

Of course, in modern times impersonalism, not personalism, is the rule. Mass societies specialize in, even survive on, superficial or artificial friendliness. But because we sense that true friendship is still necessary today, we constantly talk about it and encourage it. A remarkable statement I once heard on the “700 Club” unwittingly combined the ideal of personalism with the fact of impersonalism: urging viewers to call in and talk things over, Ben, Pat’s black colleague, cheerfully promised that the caller could speak with a “nameless, faceless person who cares” I should think such calls are bound to be frustrating, just as the rest of life is often frustrating: you presume that the president “likes” you, but then he tries to raise your taxes. You think the boss appreciates you, but then he fires you. You believe that you get along well with your professor, but then she flunks you.

The loneliness of modern life may also account for another conspicuous characteristic of “700 Club” fundamentalism: there is the repeated assurance of God’s “love” for us, and the command that we should “love” one another. Yes, this has been the good news of the Christian message for centuries now, but I suspect it has a different meaning today: because of his love, we can “talk” to God casually, rather than feel obliged to worship him formally. But if such spiritual “friendships” with God are mainly emotional, if they can rise as feelings rise, then they must fall as feelings fall, and thus friends might become strangers again.

The Club seeks to combat loneliness in yet another way: these believers would create artificial communities by means of bumper-sticker slogans. They “say” to one another, “Honk if you love Jesus,” or “I’ve found it!” It is not quite the same thing as scratching a sketch of a fish on the ground or lighting candles in the catacombs.

But if fundamentalism’s glossy personalism is a panacea, it is not an awfully bad one. These people are quite sane and decent. They cherish life and devote themselves to fine ideals and acts. Their enthusiasm and joy are authentic. Such a faith has civilized formerly vulgar men and women, and they have ceased to be social problems. (To be more precise, the Clubbers are only slightly interested in “social problems,” for they believe that the most basic problems are, again, “personal.”) These evangelists are not dangerous, and they have nothing in common with Jonestown, whose citizens chose to be neither in nor of the world. The “700 Club” and its members are very much in and of the world. But they should be warned that if religion becomes a hit and God becomes a pal, then the world will cancel the one when it becomes boring and snub the other when he becomes demanding.