union seminary quarterly review

Union Seminary Quarterly Review

Jesus as Magician Walter Wink

Cartographer of Religious Experience: Niebuhr's Experiential Religion Mark C. Taylor

A Marxist View of Kierkegaard: George Lukacs on the Intellectual Origins of Fascism George Hunsinger

Richard Rubenstein and Radical Christianity George N. Boyd

Book Reviews Samuel Wheeler George M. Landes J. A. Martin,Jr.

Volume XXX Number 1 Fall, 1974

FROM THE EDITOR , , •

Every student who has made the peregrination through the land of Academia is most certainly aware of the welter of ideas and theories which are constantly being formulated, categorized, debated, and criticized. In the theological sector this is particularly true. We live in an age of post-Neo-Orthodoxy. The radical theology of the l960's has tarnished-if not shattered-the grand visions of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Our theological compass has been set spinning in the context of the secular city and the death of God. In this environment the USQR can best serve its readers by helping to provide clear and lucid statements of the contemporary theological scene.

In the current issue of the USQR, our contributors examine four such themes in contemporary theology. WALTER WINK begins with an evaluation of Morton Smith's provocative investigation of the so-called "Secret Gospel of Mark." After qualifying the textual evidence which Smith provides in support of his argument, Wink emphasizes the more fundamental significance of Smith's investigation, viz., a reinterpretation of early Christian history which, by replacing the traditional understanding of Jesus as Messiah with that of Jesus as Magician, ironically opens up the possibility of a contemporary synthesis of depth psychology and the teachings of Jesus, of nature and the Spirit.

MARK C. TAYLOR then furnishes an explication of Richard R. Niebuhr's Experiential Religion. In this investigation of the relationship between religion and faith, Niebuhr runs counter to the mainstream of twentieth century, Protestant theology. Niebuhr's terminus a quo is a notion of humans as foci through which pass all the powers of the cosmos-chemical and electrical, as well as psychic and spiritual. From this primary data Niebuhr constructs a new approach to doubt and faith through the matrix of human experience which leads to a reappropriation of the meaning of the Gospel message. "Taylor lends a sympathetic reading to Niebuhr's thought, yet calling attention to the almost exclusively passive nature of radial man,. and an underdeveloped transcendence in Niebuhr's notion of the Kingdom of God."

George Lukacs, on the other hand, was not at all interested in reappropriating the meaning of the Gospel. As GEORGE HUNSINGER makes clear, Lukacs saw in Christianity (through Kierkegaard) the dehistoricization and desocialization of history, which in tum sowed the seeds of Fascism. Although a sound Marxist critique, Lukacs avoids Kierkegaard's naive idealism, only to fall victim to a wooden materialism that discounts the side of Kierkegaard which both Barth and Bonhoeffer appropriated in their struggles against Fascism.

Finally, GEORGE N. BOYD reevaluates Richard Rubenstein's radical theology in terms of the symbols of Trinity and Incarnation. Boyd concludes that Rubenstein's theology is perhaps more nearly Christian than Jewish, although neither Christian nor Jewish theology denies the eschatological vision of hope, nor do they lend ultimacy to death, as does Rubenstein's "mystical neopaganism."

Book reviews conclude the issue.

MARK A. ZIER

Editor RUTH EDONE

Book Reviews

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Human Lihemtion in a Feminist Perspective-A Theology by LETTY M. RUSSELL. Writing from her years of involvement with organizations working for human liberation, Dr Russell discusses liberation theology as an attempt to reflect upon both the experience of oppression and the action necessary for the creation of a more humane society. "A most profound contribution to a theology of human liberation." -JURGEN AND ELISABETH MOLTMANN. Paper$3.95

A Black Political Theology by J. DEOTIS ROBERTS, SR. Pointing out the need for "social salvation" as well as personal salvation, Dean Roberts urges that black churches, which are the only potent, traditionally black institutions, must support black banks and black political leaders, and teach that the love of Christ is to be applied "horizontally" as well as "vertically." Paper $3.95

God and the Grotesque by CARL SKRADE. If theology is concerned with the whole predicament of human existence, it must understand and incorporate the sense of the grotesque as it is expressed in current art, literature, theatre and cinema. This critique of the rationalistic basis of Western culture is also a brief for a religion which takes seriously the non-rational, human elements of experience. Cloth $7.50, paper $3.50

Reality and Ecstasy A Religion for the 21st Century by HARVEY SEIFERT. In this proposal for a reality-based religion for "unreligious" modern man, Dr. Seifert points out that the greatest ecstasies known to humanity are released only when given a religious dimension, and offers an empirical approach to religion that will, he says, open the way to amazing breakthroughs into new truth. Paper $3.25

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USQR UNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

ARTICLES

Jesus as Magician

VOLUME XXX NUMBER I FALL, 1974

Cartographer of Religious Experience: Niebuhr's Experiential Religion

A Marxist View of Kierkegaard: George Lukacs on the Intellectual Origins of Fascism

Richard Rubenstein and Radical Christianity

BOOK REVIEWS

Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic by Frank Moore Cross

Religions of the Ancient Near East by Helmer Ringgren

Intelligible and Responsible Talk about God by Robert A. Evans

Walter Wink·

Mark C. Taylor

George Hunsinger

George N. Boyd

Samuel Wheeler

George M. Landes

J. A. Martin, Jr.

3

15

29

41

51

58

58

2 UNION SE~INARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

FOB THE COMPLETE TBEOLOGIST. ~-..

A THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT by George Eldon Ladd

The first full-scale American text on New Testament theology since 1906. Written primarily as a textbook for college and seminary, it begins with a thumbnail sketch of the history of New Testament studies and then examines the message of each of the books of the New Testament in its historical setting.

". . . destined to become the standard text on the subject."

-W. Ward Gasque, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

648 pages, Cloth $12.50

CONCISE DICTIONARY OF RELIGIOUS QUOTATIONS William Nell, Editor

More than 2,600 entries on a wide variety of topics include passages from the Bible, lines from hymns, and a wealth of quotable material from the world's greatest writers and thinkers. Topically organized, and indexed by source and scripture passage.


THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT: Confusion or Blessing Michael P. Hamilton, Editor

An Episcopal rector defends it, a psychotherapist is suspicious; both are persuasive. This collection of essays brings together ten representative views of the charismatic movement. Featured is an actual phonograph recording of persons speaking in tongues.

208 pages, Cloth $6.95 Paper $3.95

THE EVANGELICAL FAITH: Volume I Prolegomena: The Relation of Theology to Modern Thought-Forms by Helmut Thielicke Translated and Edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley

In this first of three projected volumes, Thielicke surveys the present state of theological discussion, and makes an extensive analysis of so-called Christian atheism and Christian secularism, laying the groundwork for a complete dogmatic system for evangelical believers.


308 I~ WM. 8. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO. - I\" 2SS JEFFERSON AVE SE • GRAND RAPIDS MICH 49!>02

J'ol. XXX No. I Fall, 1974

Jesus As Magician*

Walter Wink

In 1958, Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered, in the library of the Monastery of Mar Saba in the Judean desert, a 72-line fragment of what he has since proved to be an authentic letter of Clement of Alexandria, written between 175 and 200 A.D. What is remarkable about the find is that Clement quotes a section from "the secret Gospel of Mark"-apparently a longer form of our canonical Gospel. Mark, according to Clement, wrote first in Rome while Peter was alive ''an account of the Lord's doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed." Later he came to Alexandria and ''composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain saying of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils." This longer gospel "is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries."

Now, however, a turncoat presbyter has slipped a copy to Carpocrates, archheretic, who has _both reinterpreted its extant parts and interpolated into it "utterly shameless lies."

Clement then procedes to quote a section of the secret Gospel. It follows Mk. 10:34.

And they came into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that

• This article reviews Morton Smith's Clement of Alexandrza and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), and his The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). The former work will be cited hereafter as CA; citations not explicitly identified are from CA. The latter, a popular form of the first work, will be cited hereafter as TSG.

WALTER WINK is Associate Professor of New Testament at Union.

4 UNION SEMINARY QUARTEllLY REVIEW

he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of Gaj. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.

Into this the Carpocratians had interpolated the suggestive words, "naked man with naked man," as well as some other things which Clement unfortunately omits.

Also, at Mk. 10:46, ''after the words, 'and he comes into Jericho,' the secret Gospel adds only, 'and the sister of the youth whom Jesus loved and his mother and Salome were there, and Jesus did not receive them.' But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications.''

Literary Analysis of the Secret Gospel

Where did this longer text (henceforth LT) of Mark come from? Smith concludes, on the basis of painstaking analysis, that John's story of Lazarus and the LT are. independent versions and translations of a common Aramaic account, which was itself only part of a far more extensive narrative framework which Mark and John held in common, yet without knowledge of each other. The issue Smith poses is whether or not canonical Mark is an abbreviation of that longer source, which already contained the LT, or whether the LT was later added to canonical Mark in a style constantly reminiscent of the Markan material which the interpolator already knew.

By means of elaborate charts (pp. 125fI. and Appendix E) Smith tries to show that the L T's vocabulary and phraseology are "Markan" and that it cannot therefore be simply an interpolation based on John. After preparing a whole series of charts of my own, I have come to the conclusion that his analysis is essentially correct insofar as it indicates an independent tradition rather than Johannine borrowing. For example, I have compared the vocabulary of the LT with that of the Lazarus story in John and find only 57% of its terms used there (roughly forty-seven out of eighty-two). When we examine R. T. Fortna's reconstruction of the source John used (The Gospel of Signs (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 74-87), we find 40% of the LT's words used (roughtly thirty-three out of eighty-two). Since Fortna's source is far briefer than its expansion in John, this represents a far higher density of terms and yet a surprisingly low percentage, which would tend to support Smith's view that both the LT and John employed a common tradition (hence the similar content) which was translated independently and developed by each in quite different ways.

At the same time, however, the LT is far more "Johannine" than Smith admits. For if we compare the words used by the LT with their appearance in Mark and John (chart, p. 125), we find that twenty-four of the words are clearly preferred terms in John (agapao: thirty-six in John, five in Mark, etc.), and only seventeen are preferred by Mark (archo: twenty-seven in Mark, one in John, etc.). This fairly neutralizes the fact that twelve of the L T's words do not appear in John, as opposed to three not in Mark and Luke, and four not in Matthew. Again, on p. 129 Smith lists the twenty-nine terms which he concludes are "characteristically Markan," but establishes this only on the basis of a comparison with Matthew and Luke, excluding John from consideration altogether! When John is included

JESUS AS MAGICIAN 5

we find that of the twenty-nine terms, only nine are characteristically Markan, five are used more often by John, and the rest are almost evenly distributed between them. The text is almost as "Johannine" in vocabulary as it is "Markan." The linguistic evidence is too ambiguous to conclude from it that the author of the LT was the same as the author of canonical Mark.

Markan affinities. Weighed against this is the clear evidence that the LT employs a Markan phraseology (chart, CA, p. 130). One could weigh this against the ambiguous results of word study and conclude that the author of the LT and the author of canonical Mark are one and the same (TSG, p. 61). On the other hand, the Markan phraseology might be explained as due to the fact that Mark was the Gospel of the interpolator's church, and that in editing his source he naturally drew on Markan phraseology, since he did not know John as well or at all (CA, p. 194). Most ofrthe vocabulary not common to John appears to me to have been taken from Chapter IO and elsewhere in Mark's Gospel, as the following analysis indicates:

1) "she prostrated herself before Jesus"-essentially the same phrase is used in the Lazarus story, Jn. 11 :32. 2) " 'Son of David, have mercy on me' "-the exact phrase is used in the immediate context, Mk. 10:47,48. Her cry is a little odd, since it is her brother who needs help. John knows nothing of it. The redactor of the LT probably replaced the expression in his source (which John may still read) with the phrase from Mk 10:47£. in order to integrate it into the context. This also appears to be the source for the following phrase: 3) "but the disciples rebuked her"-Mk. 10:48. The absence of any rebuke in John, and the virtual identity of this phrase with that in the Bartimaeus scene which closely follows in Mark, is virtual proof of the secondary nature of both 2) and 3). 4) "And Jesus, being angered"-as in the Lazarus story, Jn. 11:33, where, however, John has substituted two technical thaumaturgic terms. Compare also Mk. 1:41; 3:5. 5) "went off with her into the garden where the tomb was"-the editor, having established resonances with the Markan context, follows his source more consistently, as the sharp increase in ''Johannine" (i.e., "source") terms indicates: ''garden" (in Jn. four times, in Mk. not at all), "tomb" (in Jn. sixteen times. in Mk. six times), etc. 6) "and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb"-the cry prior to Jesus' healing act can scarcely be that of the man himself; he is dead. Is it, as Smith conjectures, the demon of death, terrified at its imminent defeat by Jesus? I find somewhat more appealing Cyril Richardson's suggestion, that the cry is that of the initiate undergoing his mors voluntaria, prior to baptismal regeneration. 1 Emphasis therefore falls not on Jesus' charismatic power, as in John and probably the common source, but rather on the experience of the initiate. If so, a late, Alexandrian provenance is probably indicated for at least this phrase. 7) "And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb"

I have greatly benefited from a series of long and stimulating conversations about Smith's books wrth my colleague Cyril Richardson, whose own review is forthcoming in Journal for Theological Studies.

6 UNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

-here, contrary to Smith's view, John is earlier than the LT, for he depicts others performing the task, not simply because Jesus is above menial labor, but because it didn't occur to him to do what the editor of the LT did: to

picture Jesus' Herculean prowess in his ability to lift a stone which, in his source and in John, required the efforts of several men. Compare the heroic motif in the story of Jacob erecting single-handedly the monolith at Bethel (Gen. 28:18), and Mk. 16:4-the stone at the tomb was "enormous" (megas sphbdra). In the Gospel of Peter (8:32), the stone has grown to such immense proportions that it requires the elders and the scribes, with the centurion and the soldiers, to roll the "great stone" away. 8) "and straightway, going in where the youth was"-this has echoes of the women entering the empty tomb and encountering a youth (neaniskos), Mk. 16:5. 9) "he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand" -a commonplace of healing stories, especially in Mk. 5:41; compare also 1:41; 2:11; 3:5; Mt. 8:3; 14:31. The final phrase is, in any case, redundant. Here the LT might be more primitive than John, as Smith argues, though the Synoptics report healings both by word and by touch, and neither technique appears consistently more primitive. The source, in the form jointly used by the LT and John, probably stopped at this point, for John gives no hint that he knows the account of the nocturnal initiation. Even in the latter, Gospel echoes abound: 10) "the youth ... was rich"-only Matthew uses neaniskos (youth) in the story of the "rich young ruler" (Mt. 19:20,22). Luke also uses it of the widow's son who was raised from the dead (7:14); compare also Mk. 16:5. Does the LT reflect knowledge of the other Gospels after all? I think not. On the contrary, "youth" is interjected into the text in lines 3 and 4 in anticipation of its use in the rite of nocturnal initiation (lines 6 and 7). Neanzskos apparently enters the latter under the influence of Mk. 14:51 (the neanzskos who flees naked). This is a strong indication that the tradition behind the LT in Mark has been redacted to make the second century practice of nocturnal initiation its primary focus. 11) "looking upon him, loved him"-also from the story of the rich man, Mk. 10:21, but reversed. This is the best evidence th;u the editor revised the nocturnal initiation to fit the baptismal lection of Mk. 10, for everything hinges on this phrase, which he could only have gotten from the context. 12) "wearing a linen cloth over his naked body" -the allusion would appear to be to the church's practice of baptism following instruction. Cyril Richardson first noticed the utility of Mk. 10: 13-45 along with LT for the Paschal vigil of Clement's church. Indeed, Smith credits Richardson with the decisive discovery of unravelling the LT's use (TSG, pp. 62ff.). I am extremely skeptical that it extends back to Jesus' time. The correspondence between this verse and Mk. 14:51 is one of the strong points favoring Smith's thesis, however; he believes Jesus was surprised at Gethsemene in the act of initiating this young convert, who fled naked, leaving his linen baptismal garment behind. This is one item which prompts Smith to wonder if Mark was originally a longer text and that ours is an abbreviation (just the reverse, however, of what Clement says). Alternatively, 14:51 could be a hint which the· original author dropped to indicate that further (esoteric) instruction was needed in order to understand the Gospel. Compare Mk. 4:11,34.

, JESUS AS MAGICIAN 7

13) "and he remained with him that night, ,for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God" -this sounds faintly reminiscent of Nicodemus in Jn. 3; the concluding phraseology, however, is that of Mk. 4:11. In its present form it is downright suggestive; it is no wonder that the Carpocratians were able to make so much out of it. 14) "arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan"-this reflects neither Jn. 11:54 nor 10:40, but rather Mk. 10:1.

Inferences drawn from Markan imitation. Appendix E confirms our suspicion that the "Markanisms" of the LT are in fact the result of the influence of Mark on the author's phraseology, rather than an indication of his identity with the Gospel's author. (Much the same effect can be observed in the way modern Pentecostals prophesy in Isaianic, King James English.) For of all the 1\-!arkan parallels to the phrases of the LT, certain sections crop up repeatedly: Mk. 1:21-28 (ten times); 1:40-45 (fourteen plus one times); 5:21-43 (fifteen times); and Mk. 10 as a whole (forty-two plus two times). No other Markan story has so many Markan reminiscences; this can only be explained as conscious imitation (Cyril Richardson).

Apparently, then, the interpolator of the LT revered Mark as a sacred, perhaps even magically potent, text. Wishing to incorporate this bit of tradition into ca.: nonical Mark, he sacralized it by ''Markanization," that is, by dressing it out in Markan phraseology and reminiscences and splicing it into a section already being used as a baptismal lection in his church. Such freedom to "tamper" with the sacred text is a clear indication that the LT was itself already a part of the esoteric initiatory ritual.

The shorter quotation of Clement (see text, above), which followed Mk. 10:46a, presents special problems. Clearly Mark has either made another of his unfelicitous geographical conflations, like 7:31 (perhaps rejecting an account set in Jericho, .like Luke's story of Zacchaeus), or he simply could not come up with a better way to introduce the Bartimaeus story, which was set on the way out of Jericho, to which Jesus had first to come in order to leave. As for the shift from "he" to "they," that does look suspicious; yet at the same time it is common Markan practice: ''Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat" (Mk. 3:19f.). The same is true of 5:1 f. ("they," "he"); 8:13£. ("he," "they"); 9:33 ("they," "he"). Mark's interest is in Jesus; he only mentions the disciples as they are needed by the context, as in the Bartimaeus story. Still, it is an odd beginning, one which might perhaps attract an interpolator, or even more likely indicate an omission (pp. 188-193). Smith's own conclusion is best: "The second quotation from the longer text has been so bowdlerized by Clement or his predecessors that few conclusions can be drawn from it" (p. 193).

Relationships between the Secret Gospel and ]ohannine traditions. Smith does not himself ascribe heavy weight to the stylistic analysis (p. 194). Far more important is the fact that the resuscitation story in its different forms appears in the Secret Gospel of Mark and in John at roughly the same place, in a gospel framework which is remarkably similar. Smith argues (pp. 158ff.) that k. 6:30-16:8 and Jn. 6:1-20:10 are structurally parallel (with certain transpositions), a finding which should pump fresh life into C. H. Dodd's often discredited hypothesis of an early framework of the gospel tradition. Smith uses this to clinch his argument that the LT was a part of the original Aramaic proto-gospel used by both Mark and John.


But is the LT really a part of that framework? I do not find at all convincing the alleged parallelism between Jesus' prediction of his passion in Mk. 10:32 and his prophecy of Lazarus' death and resurrection in Jn. 11:4,11,13-15,23. For none of the latter is to be found in either the LT or Fortna's reconstruction of the Signs Gospel; it must be the work of Johannine editors, and this cannot be made to serve as evidence for a pre-Johannine gospel framework. And Jesus' discussion of the risks of going into Judea (Jn. 11 :7-10) is neither parallel to Mk. 10:32 nor is it found in either the LT or the Signs Gospel. Without these pegs, however, Smith's case for a common framework loses its. specificity; the raising story could, like everything else in Mk. 10 (except perhaps 10: 1), be free-floating tradition. It could have been inserted anywhere in Mark, therefore. Its fortuitous location near the beginning of the Jerusalem ministry is dictated by its location at Bethany; but its specific insertion after Mk. 10:34 was determined by the interpolator's deliberate design to assimilate it to the story of the rich man in order to produce the very baptismal lection which Smith so brilliantly adduces.

Further trouble for Smith's pre-gospel framework is created by Fortna's reconstruction of the Signs Gospel, which suggests quite a different order of thing&. Even if Fortna's hypothetical reconstruction could be dismissed, the fact remains that prior to the story of the resuscitated man there is really only one cycle of parallel material, all of it in Jn. 6 (feeding, walking on water, crossing to the other side-which in any case are all parallel with Mark). To this John appends his form of Peter's confession (6:66-69). We have then a gospel framework no more specific than feeding, walking on the sea, crossing, confession (all taking place in Galilee), departure for Jerusalem, a brief interlude beyond Jordan, [resuscitation at Bethany], and entry to Jerusalem. Where else in such an outline could our story be placed? While the story in the LT could have belonged to an early gospel framework, therefore, such a framework is too broad to settle the question of whether the resuscitation story at Bethany was a part of it.

In conclusion, the LT seems to be a later redaction of an early pericope used also by the Signs Gospel and by John, interpolated into Mk. IO by an editor whose church used only (or primarily) Mark, and who reshaped its style and content in order to develop in Mk. 10 a baptismal lectionary for the Paschal vigil in Alexandria.

The Chronology of the Secret Gospel

What evidence is there for dating the LT? If, as Smith seems to conclude (p. 194), it was part of an Aramaic source antedating Mark and was not used by the author of Mark, but was later interpolated, a date around 50 would be reasonable. Smith tries to strengthen his case for an early date by arguing (pp. 102, 106, etc.) that Matthew knew and used a form of Mark containing the LT. His evidence is extremely flimsy. He thinks that the appeal ("Have mercy on me, 0 Lord, son of David," 15:22) in Matthew's introduction to the story of the Syrophoenician woman-not found in Mark-is evidence that Matthew took it from the LT. I find that wholly unconvincing. Both Matthew and the LT took it from Mark's cry of Bartimaeus, 10:47£. Smith pairs this text, due to its intrinsic weakness, with Mt. 20:20, the request of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, which Smith supposes is a substitute for the L T's Salome. But the old commentators were right; Matthew ascribes ambitiousness to the doting mother in order to redeem the image of the sons of thunder. The possibility, then, that Matthew knew a longer form of Mark, excised the resuscitation story (as did canonical Mark), and preserved one word

JESUS AS MAGICIAN 9

only from the LT, a word which already happened to be one of his favorites (proskuneo-thirteen times in Matthew), using it as a linch-pin into the story of the sons of 7.ebedee-all of that involves a stack of compounded improbabilities too thick to bite.

I conclude, therefore, that the evidence of a knowledge of Matthew is inconclusive. The LT could have been interpolated into canonical Mark any time after Mark was first written. What is the terminus ad quern? Pierson Parker, in a sparkling debate with Smith at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, argued that Smith dated Carpocrates too early. Parker's judgment is hard to prove but possesses intrinsic merit. If we simply extended the range to include the whole reign of Hadrian (117-135 A.O.), then the secret Gospel could have formed anywhere between 75 and 135 A.O. (dating canonical Mark 65-70), and the common pericope behind the LT anywhere between 30 and 85 (John being the first evidence of its existence). Canonical Mark might have known the story and omitted it as redundant (though he loves doublets!), since he already had a story of resuscitation (5:20ff.). But the LT miracle is so much more impressive, and so marvelously amenable to the needs of the church, that it is really unlikely that he would have neglected it. One can scarcely argue that it was suppressed because it was esoteric, secret tradition, for Mark includes the most ''magical" words of the Eucharist; that is a far more serious '''breach" of secrecy than anything in the LT, unless it be the "nocturnal initiation." 2 But John gives no clue of knowing that part; it seems to reflect the later practice of the Alexandrian church. The elements suggestive of homosexual alliance (which Clement surely had to spiritualize in order to stomach) sound at least proto-Carpocratian, and may provide a basis for the following guess: the LT, in the form Clement reports it, was added to Mark between 100 and 135 A.O.

Rewriting Early Christian History

If we do not find cogent Smith's argument for a first century date for the secret Gospel, then it can scarcely be used as the basis for a "revolutionary" revision of the view of Christian origins (p. ix). (Think of it: Morton Smith, a revolutionary! What would Mark Rudd say to that?) However, most of what Smith says in Chapter Four, innocuously entitled "The Background," is completely independent of the LT, and stands on its own merits as a stunning scholarly achievement, the real heart of the book-a total revision of early Christianity all the way back to Jesus.

Jesus the Magician. Jesus, it turns out, was a magician, and we never noticed it. Instead of the "messianic secret," Smith advances the ''magician's secret." In the Roman Empire the practice of magic was a criminal offense, not because of fraud, but because the magician's supernatural powers created a subversive danger to the established authorities. Consequently, magic was widely practiced but rarely admitted. Given this state of affairs, says Smith, it goes without saying that the evangelists suppress the fact that Jesus was a magician.

I find this remarkable. Not because every few years a new book tells us that Jesus was something the evangelists repressed (Jesus as Mushroom, Jesus as 7.ealot, Jesus as Hippie, etc.) for it is entirely possible that the real dimensions of Jesus have .been clouded by the disciples. Rather, I find it remarkable in its logic.

2 C.odex Bei.ae omits the sacramental words of the Eucharist in Lk. 22:19b-20, possibly to protect them from the eyes of outsiders.

lO UNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

If it was in fact so dangerous to be a magician (which the open existence of Simon Magus and the "fame" of Jews as magicians (p. 220) makes me doubt; it is illegal to honk your horn in New York City also, but is such a law enforced?), why then do the Gospels so heavily stress Jesus' "magic," i.e., exorcisms and healings? If these acts were so scandalous, why do the evangelists report them-yes, and'evenrepeat the "magic words" (Talitha cumi), the magic potions (spittle in dirt), the sentences of command ("come out," '.'rise up"), etc.? So far as the Gospels reflect, Jesus was not executed under the charge of practicing magic. And I can see no reason why the church would have covered up such a charge, since they had such ample means to refute it, given their premises (he is not a magician, he is the very Son of God). Since Mk. 3:2lff. shows that he was at some point charged with black magic, and the Gospel writers state this openly without later connecting it with the charges for his death, it becomes all the more dubious that they were engaged in a conspiracy to suppress this fact. The most likely explanation is that Jesus was in fact not executed as a magician, but on a far more serious charge from Rome's point of view: that of being a revolutionary, that is to say, messianic, pretendert The Jews for their part distinguished between good and bad magic, and appear to have been less concerned with his healings than with the breaches of the Law which they so often entailed (Sabbath, etc.).

The great value of Smith's discussion of Jesus' ''magic" is that he does place Jesus' healings and exorcisms within a broader context of first-century "magical" practices hitherto largely ignored. 3 Jesus did do things which other people called magic. From the point of view of the history of religions one simply cannot deny that. Neither is it helpful to regard as empty the distinction between miracle and magic, or between white and black magic, for those distinctions were the basis for momentous personal decisions and served to delimit whole communities. As ''Peter" puts it in the Pseudo-Cleme~tines, the difference between Christian miracles and those of Simon Magus lies in their consequences: Simon does them in order to bring people under his power; Jesus did them to set people free. Simon does them to enhance his own ego; Jesus did them to glorify God. So there are magicians and magicians, and nothing constructive is served by obscuring the difference.

Lovers of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would perhaps not have bridled at Smith's dearly pejorative descriptiion of Jesus as a magician had he chosen the less weighted term "wizard;" Jesus as Gandalf has at least something to commend it. Smith's vacillation between a rigorous objectivity and a virulent attack on Christianity permeates everything. Smith knows he could have used a far more neutral term, ''shaman," but rejects it, apparently for that very reason. He knows that he can hide behind the phenomenological description of "magicians" in the first century while all the time playing havoc with Christian sensibilities in the twentieth, thanks to the quite different connotations of the word. We mean fake, fraud, prestidigitator, medicine man, trickster. They meant something closer to Tolkien;s Gandalf. The real prestidigitator is Smith, who by the sleight-of-hand of the author's prerogative to define, defines ''magician" in its first century sense and then commences to flash it at the reader like a flip-card, on the back of which is the residual and ineffaceable twentieth century meaning. You see the first century meaning, but you sense subliminally that Smith's real interest is in discrediting Christianity through a debunking of Jesus. And you are right.

3 Though see John M. Hull, "!fellenistic Magic and the Synoptic Tradition" ~n Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series, No. 28 (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1974).

JESUS AS MAGICIA~ 11

Here are a few of the "flip" sides: ''Jesus' messianic delusion began with the baptism" (p. 246); "What Jesus had done beyond the Baptist's immersion was something dependent on his peculiar powers of suggestion" and the suggestibility of his disciples (pp. 253f.); the phenomenon of the spirit brought on "temporary attacks of schizophrenia". (p. 253) which produced "hallucinations" (TSG, p. 91) and "illusions like those he himself experienced" (TSG, p. lll). Just a few ''slips" to let us know what a twentieth century person should really think about all these matters otherwise so objectively described. 4

--· - ---The heart of Smith's project. Make no mistake, Smith's is a theological and not

just an historical program. He is engaged in a systematic effort to undermine the very ground on which Christian faith rests. His tools are the familiar ones: historical revision and psychological reduction. It is this project, and not his textual discovery, which gives his book the character of a challenge and confrontation.

At the heart of Smith's project is his Jesus, whose essential contribution to the history of religions was his development of a means for inducing mystical ascent to the heavens through the rite of baptism.

Smith seeks to establish his case by these five points:

l) As a means of uniting with Jesus, baptism is essentially like a communion. 2) Baptism is effected by the spirit, and the spirit is distinctive of Jesus' ministry, as opposed to that of the Baptist. 3) Baptism is a magical ceremony, and Jesus practiced magic. 4) Pauline baptism was conceived as ~ means of ascent to the heavens, and in Christianity this notion of ascent seems to go back to Jesus. 5) The rite liberated its recipients from the Mosaic law.

Weaknesses in Smith's argument. Of these theses, only the second is valid as stated. Regarding the first, I am puzzled that Smith ignores the Lukan special tradition of the Last Supper, which was originally not a ''communion" in Jesus' body and blood, but a passover seder. Since the evidence that the ''communion" form of eucharist is a later development is so strong, one can only infer that Smith ignores it because it is destructive to his thesis. Indeed, point 3) hangs on this oversight as well; Jesus in fact did not institute a "magical" ceremony for union with himself. The church was the first to do so, just as it also first applied to him the title of Christ and repristinated the very political hopes (through his ''second coming") which he so resolutely resisted during his own lifetime,

As for point 4), there is considerable ev.idence that Paul indeed was involved with merkabah mysticism (II Cor. 12:1-10), but he curiously does not explicitly link that experience with his baptism. If it is in any way related to the Damascus Road experience, recounted three times over in Acts, it preceded his baptismal rite. Smith, who like many of us regards Acts as historical only when it supports his case, believes that Luke has already lost contact with the esoteric tradition, and no longer preserves the essential connection between baptism and Holy Spirit. Hence, Smith rules out of court all the testimony of Acts, in which baptism and Holy Spirit are so variously connected. But how does he deal, then, with Paul's being glad he baptized almost no one (I Cor. l:14ff.), if indeed the whole gospel was focused on this experience born of baptism? Why, in the ascension to

4 As a matter of fact, the theory that spirit-baptism and speaking in tongues is schizophrenic has been refuted by every clinical study since it was first advanced by George Cutten in 1927. See,forexample, J.P. Kildahl, The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

12 IJNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

the heavenlies which the disciples experience at the Transfiguration, is their experience connected with Tabernacles (''booths") rather than with baptism?

Smith's entire thesis that Jesus himself baptized is suspended from the single frayed thread of his new translation of Jn. 4:2, "Yet Jesus baptized only his disciples!" (p. 209). Such a translation requires "disciples" to be accusative; but it is in fact nominative, implying the verb: "Yet Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples did (baptize)." The thread snaps. What then becomes of the thesis?

Nevertheless, Smith holds as historical dogma that Jesus personally initiated disciples into a rite of possession and ascension to the heavenly realms through baptism. After his death this individual practice was continued for awhile, but was soon overshadowed by "phenomena of group possession in the meetings of the churches" (p. 254). Now one was united to the life of the Church, not to the person of Jesus, and the entrance into the kingdom of the heavens (i.e. mystical ascem) was replaced by entrance into the Church.

It is anachronistic and inaccurate to argue that ascent to the heavens (as in merkabah visions) and the descent of the Spirit (as in baptism) are one and the same. It is anachronistic, because even if the rabbis later described entry into the heavens as a descent,5 it was only centuries later, after the shift from mystical apocalypti~ism to apocalyptic mysticism occasioned by the crushing of Israel's national hopes in 70 and 135 A.D. It is inaccurate, because Jesus' own baptism in the Gospel of Mark is not described as "a vivid, hypnotic experience of ascent" (p. 240 n. 17), but rather as the descent of the Spirit and a revelation of God's good favor. There is no vision of the divine throne-chariot (merkabah), even though we know such visions were encouraged, not only in the time of Paul, but at the end 9f the first century (Rev. 4; Ascension of Isaiah), and not just in gnostic circles. There is no good reason for John and Acts to have created independently quite different accounts of the gift of the Spirit, coming not through a rite practiced by Jesus during his own lifetime, but only after his resurrection from the dead, unless that is indeed the way the church had experienced and remembered it. Otherwise, why shouldn't they have projected it back on him?-they projected everything else! Even the Carpocratians are remembered as teaching that Jesus ascended to the he~vens after his death, and not during his lifetime; Smith calls this ~ "misunderstanding" (p. 275 )!

The least defensible link of all in Smith's chain of inferences is his emendation of his source from "he taught" (edidaske) to ''he gave (edoken) him the mystery of the kingdom of God" (p. 183). If, as Smith argues, the kingdom is only conferred through a magical rite involving baptism and physical contact (he enjoys suggesting that it was perhaps homosexual), then of course his text. needs to be changed to read "he gave." But it is simply inadmissable to make emendations in order to salvage pet hypotheses. Moreover, Mark himself treats "the mystery of the kingdom of God" in the context of parable, and _clearly (in spite of Smith's contortions) regards the "mystery" as the church's interpretations (allegories) of the parables. Since Smith tends to think that the writer of Mk. and the LT are one and the same, the fact that Mark himself regards the mystery as teaching invalidates both the proposed emendation and the argument that in Mark baptism is the mystery.

It is unlikely, then, that Jesus himself "gave" the spirit through a nocturnal

5 G. G. &holem, ]l'wuh Gno.ftmsm, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960), p. 20.

JESUS AS MAGICIAN 13

rite of magical union with him. More likely, the death of Jesus constellated an ar~hetypal shift, of which the spirit phenomena were one consequence (messianism being another), and that Smith's text demonstrates later Alexandrian practice.

And finally, in regard to Smith's fifth point ("the rite liberated its recipients from the Mosaic law"), there is considerable evidence for the "libertinism" of Jesus, but it seems to be associated not with a rite of baptism which he practiced, but with his teaching about and violation of the Law. Nowhere does Jesus indicate that freedom to interpret the Law depends on baptism, or spirit-possession, or an ascent to the heavens. On the contrary, it apparently depends on the word or will of God, known through prayer and the perception in the moment of the eschatological value ("the kingdom") straining toward realization.

' Orthodoxy and Heresy: Then and Now

And now, dear reader, having argued so strenuously against my neighbor at Columbia, let me thank him for a brilliant, lucid, astonishingly learned volume, one which may not have its match for many years to come. His synthesis of the evidence on the magical background and on the libertine element in Christianity is of great value. His comments on the kingdom of God, the role of the Baptist, the parties in the early church, Pauline theology, the rise of gnosticism, and his detective work on the Carpocratians, are all rich treasuries of information and insight.

In a quite new and provocative way, Smith has raised again the issue of orthodoxy and heresy in early (and modern!) Christianity. Quite aside from the natural, prurient stimulation which the Carpocratians and their forebears provide, their sexual practices form a striking backdrop to the many attempts by Christians to develop new sexual lifestyles today: sexual communism in communes, "living together," open marriages, unhampered pre-marital alliances, etc. Why, someone should probably ask, do the Carpocratians seem to have utterly disappeared within the same century that gave them birth? Smith says persecution, but other Christians suffered that and survived. Could it have been that these strikingly "modernist" Christians, who disbelieved the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection and last judgment, and who taught complete freedom from the law; who believed that in order to overcome a passion one must undergo it, that complete experience of this life, with all its sins, is necessary for liberation from it; who enjoyed orgiastic eucharists and economic and sexual (though male chauvinistic6) communism, and were already celebrating, through rebirth, the resurrected existence of the kingdom-could it be that they simply exploded from within, like so many such attempts today, due to the obnoxiou·s reassertion of old Adam and Eve, with their jealousy, possessiveness, greed and selfishness? Do contemporary experiments really hope to do better, or differently?

If they do, it will not be because human nature as such has changed, but because a better way has been found for dealing with the dark instinctual side of life thaweither antinomianism or repression: a third way, neither "orthodox" nor "gnostic," but involving elements of both, in a marriage of depth psychology and the teachings of Jesus. Such a way to life, however, is a narrow gate and a hard

6 They, like the Hell's Angels, required all women members to follow literally the command of Jesus, "give to him whoaskethof thee" (p. 273).


path, and may not readily c.ommend itself to either the Playboy generation or fortres~ Chi istendom.

A second major challenge in Smith's colossal achievement is his picture of Jesus. He does not, like so many other revisionist historians, regard Paul as a pervertor of Jesus· message and the "originator" of the Christian religion. On the contrary, he concludes that Paul simply carried forward Jesus' secret rite of magical mystery baptism. It was only later that the Church veered away from Jesus' practice. In short, Smith takes as historical the Christ of Pauline theology-and debunks it. But, if in fact Jesus did not institute a rite of union with himself, or consider himself the Christ, or call the bread and wine his body and blood, then quite a different picture of him is possible. Under the impact of Smith's goading, it will be interesting to see if a vital alternative picture will be mounted with anything approximating the power of Morton Smith's Magician.

For without question the magical element has been missing from Christianity. Nicholas Berdyaev prophesied as long ago as 1914 that magic, which Christianity nece~sarily had to shackle in order to de-demonize nature, must now reassert itself:

The spirits of nature will return to us again and nature will become alive anew ... When the great god Pan returns and nature again becomes alive for the Christian world, then magic will inevi-tably be reborn ... Magic will no longer be black, but shining ... The bright magic of the coming worldepoch, for which nature will become a li\·ing thing, will be creative communion of man with nature, man's power over nature through his loving union with it ... Then it will be seen that man may have magical and not merely mechanical authority over nature. That is to say that he will be able to govern nature inwardly b)' its spirit, and not merely to direct the external mechanism of nature. The dreams of the magicians, the alchemists and the astrologers will be realized ... And the church will recognize bright magic as man's creative task in nature. 7

Is Smith's work perhaps oddly providential? Think of the irony: that its real consequence might be, not the debunking of Christianity, but the recovery of magic-of healing, of miracle-in a new synthe~is of spirit and nature!

7 The 1\frn11111g of the Crenlit<e Act. tr. h~ Donald A. Low11e (New York: Harper and Brothers,· 1954). pp. 315-19, In 1h1; connection one should also read his \\ammgs agams.t modem fa;nnallon w11h thcncrnlt (pp 296fl.).

J'o/. XXX No. 1 Fall, 1974

Cartographer of Religious Experience:

Niebuhr's Experiential Religion

Mark C. Taylor

Commenting on Schleiermacher's importance for modem theology, Karl Barth wrote:

We may ask the question whether it was a good thing that Schleiermacher adapted himself to the trend of the time in this way and took up his position at the spot where he was invited to do so by the prevalence of the Copernican world-picture, by its execution during the Enlightenment, by Kant, by Goethe, by Romanticism, and by Hegel. There was in fact no need for the Copernican conception of the universe to acquire the significance of a command that theology should in the future be anthropocentric. 1

Barth understood Schleiermacher to have fatefully set the course of modem theology in a direction that inevitably led to Feuerbach's identification of theology and anthropology. After 1931, Barth consistently argued that if the theological enterprise begins with an investigation of human religious awareness (as Schleiermacher's did) or with the structure of human existence (as Bultmann's did), it could never advance from anthropological to properly theological problems. The only way to break out of the anthropological circle is to focus theological inquiry on the revelation of God in Christ as it is present in God's Word. It is completely incorrect to base our understanding of God on human religiousness because human existence (and human religion) can be understood properly only in light of divige revelation. The chief task of the theologian, therefore, is the explication of the Word of God. From the perspective of God's revelation, it is apparent that religion and faith are deceptive forms of human sinfulness that can tell us nothing about God.

This understanding of the task of theology and of the nature of religion and faith dearly is not conducive to a theological exploration of the implications of religion and of faith for our knowledge of God. The theologian's attention is directed away from the human subject and toward the divine object as pres_,ent in revelation. Theology hands over the study of religion and of faith to the psychologist, the sociologist, and the historian. This view of the relationship between theology and faith has dominated much twentieth-century Protestant theology.

I Karl Barth, Protestant Thought from Rousseau to R1tschl, Brian Cozens, tr., (New York: Simon and Schuste1, 1969), p. 340.

MARK C. TAYLOR is Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College

16 UNION SEMINARY QUARTER.LY REVIEW

Therefore, while psychological, sociological, and historical analyses of religion and faith have become increasingly sophisticated, there have been virtually no recent theological investigations of religion and of faith. Richard R. Niebuhr's Experiential Religion 2 is an effort to rectify this situation.

Both methodologically and substantively, Niebuhr sets himself in direct opposition to Barth, and aligns himself with thinkers such as Schleiermacher, 3 Jonathan Edwards, and William James. Contrary to Barth's contention that human faith is an improper object of theological investigation, Niebuhr makes faith the primary focus of his attention. "The subject of this book is faith-its experiential forms and contents-and the manifestations of God" (p. xi). Niebuhr does not intend his study to be simply a phenomenology of faith. He attempts to explore

- the implications of his interpretation of faith for traditional theological problems such as revelation, sin, grace, and Christology. His argument falls into two major parts. In the first two chapters, Niebuhr attempts to define faith, and in the last three chapters, he examines the way in which faith takes form. 4 Accordingly, it will be our task first to analyze both aspects of Niebuhr's argument, and second to evaluate its cogency.

Doubt and Faith for "Radial Man" in a Secular World

Niebuhr recognizes the secularity of the present age, and sets as his first task a consideration of the genesis of modern man's doubt. He creates "radial man," the current counterpart of Bunyan's Mr. Little Faith, to describe humanity in our age. What characterizes man as radial is his being a focus of diverse rays of social, natural, intellectual, and moral energies. Niebuhr argues that modern technology has created an "electronic global nervous system" (McLuhan) that extends oµr bodies and our minds to encompass the entire earth. Radial man is affected by what transpires everywhere in the world. "Since we have so enlarged our capacity for simultaneity of experience, no longer needing time to overcome space, we live together on a new scale of inclusiveness and intensity" (p. 4). "Constant contact news" creates in radial man an unparalleled sense of "fellow-feeling." 5 Unwittingly we all become "vicars," sympathetically participating in the sufferings and the activities of the entire age. Niebuhr believes this situation to be the concrete actualization of the Romantic notion that the "individual is the race" (p. 3).

This interpretation of the radical alteration in human nature that technology has effected is the basis of Niebuhr's understanding of our secularity, and. consequently of our doubt. He draws on the etymology of "secular" (saeculum meaning generation or age) to argue:

That man is genuinely secular whose spiritual and mental milieu is the entire age in which we find him. . . His mind comes to belong to the times rather than to a place or community. His ordinary ways of thinking, his

2 Richard R. Niebuhr, Expe,-ient1al Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). !I It is important to recall that Niebuhr's previous book was about Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher

on Christ and Religion (New York: Scribner's, 1964). An understanding of Niebuhr's interpretation of Schleiermacher:: clarifies the argument of Expe,-iential Religion. Many of the central themes of the latter work are foreshadowed in Niebuhr's analysis of Schleiermacher.

4 Niebuhr·does not make an explicit distinction between these two parts of his argument. However, if one is to understand the movement of his thought, it seems necessary to recognize the different thrust of the two sections of the essay.

5 Although not indicated by Niebuhr, this is Schleiermacher's term.

CARTOGRAPHER OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 17

association of ideas, turns of speech, and aspirations symbolize more the experience of the whole generation with which he is incorporated in this earth than the customs of a site or settlement or house. (p. 7)

Secularity is not, therefore, the opposite of religiousness, but is membership in an age, or the identification of an individual with his generation. This secularity is the foundation of radial man's doubt.

In order to plumb the depth of Niebuhr's analysis of doubt, we must be aware of the subtle nuances of many of his central terms. The preceding remarks suggest that Niebuhr is extraordinarily sensitive to etymology. This is especially evident in his exploration of doubt. The first chapter is, appropriately enough, called "Geneses." This term could well serve as the title of the entire work, because Niebuhr is studying the origin or generation of faith in our present world. In the first chapter, however, he considers the genesis of doubt; it is in response to doubt that faith is generated.

The genesis and nature of doubt. Niebuhr contends that doubt develops from the identification of the individual with his generation. "Generation" derives from the verb "to generate," which, in turn, is formed from the Latin genus, meaning stock or race. A generation is that part of the human race which is born about the same time. Identification with the members of one's generation constitutes the membership in one's age (saeculum) that is secularity; such membership generates doubt in the individual by making him inwardly many. 6

According to Niebuhr, doubt should not be understood as the unwillingness to accept certain propositions. Rather doubt is the presence in one's mind of different and conflicting beliefs, none of which is able to gain ascendancy. Doubt is our "inner-manyness," our "double-mindedness," or our multi-mindedness. Niebuhr maintains that "we cannot attribute all doubting to the limitedness of our understanding or to the deficiency of our being, when it is the presence of other men in ourselves, through our imagination and sympathy, that gives birth to so much of our doubting" (p. 13).

This doubt arises from two closely related aspects of the individual's identification with the race. First, radial man's extended sensibilities open him to ever wider vistas of experience and of belief. Insofar as he cultivates a sympathetic identification with his fellows, their previously alien beliefs and experiences begin to assume a certain intelligibility and viability for him .

. . . by virtue of his [radial man's] inherence in the electrified earth he stands in the place of many others, whom he neither knows nor has chosen, sharing in their passions and their needs. The price of this multiple extension of his sympathy and sensibility is that he must and cannot help but take what others give him in their testimony as having a truth for him. (p. 9)

This leads directly to the second aspect of the relation between the individual and the race. As the result of such shared experience, radial man's beliefs no longer retain the inviolability they once had. From the point of view of other persons, his own beliefs are doubtful.

6 The final term that is related to this group of words is "generosity," which is also derived from genus. Niebuhr argues that our secularity demands that we become generous. That is to say, we must welcome our identification with the race, and widen ourselves so that we are able to acknowledge and to include the existence and the value of others. For radial man, generosity is a prime virtue, and must be consciously cultivated.


In such a field of countless and diverse human beings as this, the multiplicity and variety of beliefs, dispositions, and attitudes embodied in endlessly differing personalities thrust the individual back on himself, so that he is struck with the immensity of the galaxy of human creeds surrounding him and the insignificance of his own hopes and doctrine. (pp. 11-12)

For Niebuhr, therefore, doubt is the multi-mindedness of radial man that results from his secularity, or from his identification with the members of his generation.

Radial man's awareness of his inner-manyness is heightened when he recognizes that his identification with the members of his gener~tion leads to an alienation from his own past, and from the communities that fiist nourished him. The comprehension of the depth of the self's multiplicity pose~ a task for the individual: the task of "inventing." Niebuhr uses the term "inventing" in a very peculiar sense. Again his argument rests on etymology. To invent (Latin: in venire) is to come into or to reenter my own self. In coming to self-consciousness, radial man recogni,zes that he is not a unified self, but is an array of conflicting selves. 7 One assumes various roles at a given time, and seems to be a series of different selves over a period of time. Having become aware of his many selves, th€ only way for an individual to establish his inner unity is by imaginatively reentering his seemingly conflicting selves in an effort to discern their coherence. In short, through inventing (i.e., going into) oneself, one seeks a self among his many selves. While radial man's previou~ task had been to identify with the members of his generation in an effort to achieve fellowship with them, he now attempts to identify sympathetically with his many selves in an effort to establish fellowship with himself, or to become a unified person.

He looks on, as ego and alter-ego spar and probe, admiring the one and defending the other. He experiences the encounter and conflict of his heritages, not as dull pain reminding him of his blindness and profligacy in the 'old man' but as the nerve signal of life. This man does not so much care for sanctification as he longs for the justification of all his parts, as vicar and victim of a universe bursting into greater and greater variety. (p. 24)

The individual who is aware of his multiplicity and sensitive to his increasingly complex world needs a principle of self-government by which he can both unify himself and can regulate his suffering of and responding to the world. Faith addresses this need.

Faithful persons in a world! age characterized by power. Niebuhr argues, however, that we can never examine faith in and of itself, but can only analyze faithful persons. Furthermore, because persons are always enworlded, faithful human existence cannot be considered apart from the world in which faith takes form. Therefore, when describing faith, "The object is man as a faithful being in his world, standing in an ambience with a visible and determinate character" (p. 26). We can begin to comprehend faithfulness as we understand the world of the faithful self".

In agreement with such thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, and Tillich, Niebuhr understands "world" to be an "anthropic" concept. 8 Self and world form an in-

7 Throughout this section, Niebuhr implicitly draws on George Herbert Mead's analysis of the "generalized other" in the emergence of self-consciousness.

8 Niebuhr points out that "According to the etymology, the root meaning of world is age of man or

CARTOGRAPHER. OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 19

separable binary. Although each individual's world has idiosyncrasies not shared by other persons, there is a common world or an "encompassing age" that is shared by all members of a generation. A consideration of the "visible and determinate character'' of this common world forms the propaedeutic to Niebuhr's description of faith.

The most significant feature of the shared world/age is ''that what is salient in it is power" (p. 28). This insight is· implicit in the representation of modem man as ''radial man." We have seen that Niebuhr's use of the term "radial man" underscores his conviction that the individual's existence is a center upon which rays of many kinds of energy converge. "For the individual of this world/age lives in a vortex of rays and waves of light, of sound, of electricity-in short-of particles of energy" (p. 28). The world of radial man is an "agent-world" in which one is constantly affected by power over which he has no control.

Niebuhr characterizes the power that dominates radial man's world/age in two important ways. In the first place, this power is not indeterminate, but has two clearly specifiable qualities: coercion and persuasion. The agent-world is both "abrasive," "opposing our intentions, deflecting us from our courses, thwarting our plans, and transforming our purposes," and is ''agreeable," "pliant to our designs and forms. But it is never an indifferent world" (p. 28). Insofar as power affects an individual coercively, his being is diminished, and insofar as power affects an individual persuasively, his being is enhanced. In the second place, the enveloping power of the world/age that affects the self coercively and persuasively is always mediated. One never encounters power as such, but is affected by power that is socially and politically transmitted. An individual is attracted by and repulsed from powerful personalities and institutions that dominate the world/age. "Power ordinarily wears the face of personality-the personality of a charismatic individual or of an institution" (p. 30). The shared world/age of radial man is, therefore, dominated by power that is mediated to the individual through social and political forms, and that affects the individual coercively and persuasively.

To understand Niebuhr's interpretation of faithful existence in this powerful world, it is necessary to grasp his distinction between religion and faith. Niebuhr's definition of religion grows directly out of his analysis of the world/age summarized above.

Human religion is the sense of being aimed at-by strengths coercive and persuasive, which affect men as intellectual, and as biological beings. (p. 34)9

When a member of the present world/age becomes self-conscious, he recognizes that as a result of the extension of his sensibilities through the "electronic nervous system of telecommunications," he is the patient of an increasing multiplicity of powers. Some of these powers are attractive, some repulsive, but all of them profoundly affect his self. We have seen that the constant bombardment by the experiences and beliefs of others creates in radial man an inner-manyness. In this situation, a dominant interest of the self becomes

man-age, and the ancient prayers that end with the familiar phrase, world without end, illustrate this root meaning" (p. 26). In order to stress the initmate connection between self and world, Niebuhr usually employs the term "world/age" rather than simply the word "world."

9 Niebuhr notes that "affect" and "affection" derive from the Latin: aff1cere and adf1cere

which mean to do, to aim at. As we will see, Niebuhr emphasizes the affectional character of religion and faith. Thus we can see a connection between his definition of religions as "the sense of being aimed at'' and his view of religion and of faith as a,1 affection.


... the business of regulating the multiple powers and agencies in the citadel of the self as the self encounters, adapts to, compromises with, and allies itself with the powers and energies that environ it, making up the human world. (p. 35)

Radial man, suffering diverse powers and recognizing his inward multifariousne~s, seeks a principle by which he can orient himself in his power-laden world and through which he can govern the citadel of his self. Niebuhr maintains that faith supplies the principle of orientation and the law of self-government. We must now turn our attention to this claim.

The faithful person as a suffering being. Niebuhr begins his analysis of faith by pointing out that faith is most commonly associated with either man's rational or volitional capacities. While he does not want to deny that faithfulness has both rational and volitional dimensions, Niebuhr does not think that either of these virtues is the essential aspect of faith. It is clear that for Niebuhr, the most primordial trait of enworlded man is that he is a suffering being, a being affected by powers not at his disposal. Descriptions of faith in terms of the ability to reason and to will

... slight the fact that faith, however it finally develops, is first of all an awakening of the human mind to the character of the power impinging on it. They ignore the nature of faithful man as a suffering being. For if faith issues as an intellectual vision of truth, it begins as an awakening of the mind to its own suffering of the sentiment of reason under the weight of the logical character of the power-world. If faith makes itself public as an act of decision or obedience, it begins as an awakening of the mind to its own suffering of an interest in the highest good under the persuasion of the goodness (the generosity and beauty) of the power-world. (p. 42)

Because man first suffers the reason that he employs and the good that he wills, affection is more rudimentary than either rationality or volition. For Niebuhr, faithfulness, correctly understood, is an affection.

Niebuhr notes that German scholars have analyzed human affection under the category of Stimmung. Associated English words that amplify the meaning of affection are ,"attunement," "tonality," and "resonance."

The attunement of the self is the basic and all-including frame of mind that gives to the world of personal existence its determinate quality, color, and tone. (p. 45)

Niebuhr argues that faith is the fundamental predisposition or tonality that lies at the very root of the self, informing all of the self's suffering, knowing, and willing.

Affective faith is an awakening, a suffering of a whole frame of mind that endows the individual with a resonance lying at the foundation of his existence. It qualifies all of his interaction with other men, with himself, and with his near and ultimate environment. (p. 47)

It is important to recognize that such faith, as the etymology of "affection" suggests, cannot be willed, but is at a depth within the self that is inaccesible to volition. Volition grows out of affection.

We have asserted that faith emerges with "man's striving for orientation in the


agent-world transcending him" (p. 40). Having considered Niebuhr's interpretation of faith as affectional, we are in a better position to understand the precise manner in which faith offers a frame for orientation in the power world and a law for governing and unifying one's manifold self.

We also need to compare it [faith] to a man's whole way of behaving, of going out of himself and returning. It includes his whole method of taking hold-intellectually, morally, and aesthetically-of the known and of 'paying deference to the unknown.' Ttie language of classical theology offers us a word: a man's faith is his persona, the character, the role, or the principle to which he submits himself and makes the principle of his self-government. (p. 38)

A person's faith is his basic way of "taking hold" of his world. It is the dominant' way in which he both appropriates the- power he suffers and "goes out from himself," becoming a dispenser of power. As distinguished from religion, which we saw to be radial man's sense of being aimed at, faith is the individual's sense of being aimed. 10 It is one's awareness of being aligned with and an agent of the pervasive power of the world/age. Faith is the deepest layer of the personality (one's persona), informing and conditioning all other dimensions of the self's suffering and activity.

Niebuhr concludes the first major part of his essay with this understanding of faith. He devotes the remainder of the study to an exploration of the way in which such faith takes form.

Believing and Experience .

The first phenomenon that Niebuhr considers in developing his interpretation of the emergence of faith is the activity of believing. 11 He acknowledges that faith and believing are often identified, but insists that such an identification is incorrect. This misunderstanding is usually the result of regarding faith as belief in, or assent to, certain propositions. The foregoing comments on Niebuhr's view of faith as affectional suffice to indicate his rejection of such a position. Niebuhr does not even think that an understanding of believing as a form of assent to propositions does justice to believing itself. This view of the matter fails to distinguish adequately between believing and beliefs. Niebuhr holds that "believing, even though it accompanies thinking and choosing, is not entirely the product of an act of judgment or an act of choice" (p. 55). Noting that "believing" derives from the German lieben, which means to love or to cherish, he defines believing as "'holding dear' or valuing-but without having or possessing that toward which it is directed" (pp. 56-57). This definition attests Niebuhr's conviction that believing establishes both a relation with and a distance from what is believed.

To believe in a self-conscious fashion is to be aware that believing is the

10 It should be stressed' that Niebuhr does not want to establish a qualitative distinction between religion and faith. The difference is one of degree. A further consideration of a text cited above makes this evident. "We might agree that religion is the naive form and faith the more self-conscious, self-critical form of man's striving for orientation in the agent-world transcending him" (p. 40).

I I The argument of the last three chapters of the book is less clear than that of the first two chapters. Considerable interpolation is required to follow the course of Niebuhr's thought.

22 UNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW .

opposite of the desire to own, to infringe, or to restrict the freedom and sublimity of that which is believed. (p. 57)

In short, believing is "holding dear without possessing." Two primary instances of believing are important for Niebuhr. The first is the

relationship between persons. A healthy relationship between two persons is "an intimacy involving a respect for the exteriority and separateness of believer and the believed" (p. 57). This is a clear illustration of "valuing with self-restraint." The second example is the relationship of the mind to its governing ideas. All persons are born into a world in which primary ideas, symbols, and myths exercise persuasive and coercive power. Believing is the way in which an individual is related to these ruling powers of his world/age. Certain ideas, symbols, and myths are valued, but because they transcend the individual, they can never be possessed.

Believing as the energy of community-participation. These examples make evident two significant consequences of Niebuhr's view of believing. First, beliefs (understood as assent to particular propositions) always emerge from the more fundamental energy of believing "that thinking itself cannot produce but only employ and that reflection can admire but not of itself preserve" (p. 60). Deference to powerful personalities and to governing ideas, symbols, and myths guides the mind in making specific judgments and in undertaking definite actions. Second, believing is preeminently a social phenomenon. One is related to his environing world by believing. The social dimension of believing can result either in the individual's enlargement, or in his isolation. On the one hand, believing is "the quantum that gives momentum to corporate undertakings and to those labors in which the individual converts his innate need of his fellows into active partnership with them" (p. 59). Whether a community is two persons or is a larger social group, believing is the energy of community-participation. In joining a community, one "finds his place as an agent and citizen in a society of co-workers whose labors are founded on the tacit compact to believe and to be beliefworthy" (p. 60). As a community member, an individual becomes a creator and a conserver of value within a group, and respects his fellows as similar centers of value creation and conservation. Niebuhr borrows insights from Josiah Royce to demonstrate that an individual's personality is enlarged by his participation in a community. Identification with a community becomes constitutive of personal identity. For this reason, integration within a social group and self-integration are two dimensions of the same process.

· On the other hand, however, such belieful participation in a community of fellow-believers and workers entails isolation. In a world with multiple centers of belief, participation in one community involves exclusion from another community. Conflict (i.e., disintegration) is often the result. Faith against faith, party against party, nation against nation. This isolation and disintegration entail the diminution of the self.

It is dear that for Niebuhr, believing is not associated with the assent of the mind to propositions, but is a means of relating to what is other than the self by valuing or holding dear without possessing. Believing is, therefore, the means by which persons pay deference to governing ideas, symbols, and myths, and the energy by means of which selves relate to one another and participate in social communities. But Niebuhr insists that believing always arises from experience.


For believing is not commanded by beliefs. Beliefs come from believing; and believing is generated in experience. Believing finds satisfaction only in such statements as both express and enhance the whole scope and intensity of the experience from which it arises and to which it must contribute. (p. 69)

Beliefs inexpressive of the matrix of experience from ~hich believing emerges are empty. For the theologian interested in est~blishing whether Christian beliefs are anything other than vacuous formulae in the current world/age, a fundamental task is to discern the dominant character of the experience of radial man. Only after this has been accomplished, might it be possible to see if Christian beliefs are consonant with, and expressive of; contemporary experience. Therefore, the focus of attention must shift to the experience out of which both believing and beliefs are generated.

The main lines of Niebuhr's analysis of the nature of this generative experience are implicit in our previous examination of radial man and of his world/age. We have noted that radial man is enveloped in a world whose salient feature is power. He is thie focus upon which energies from the infinite expanses of time and space perpetually converge; radial man is a patient, a sufferer. "Suffering of this order as something universal is the matrix that generates the passion of believing" (p. 79). We have also seen, however, that Niebuhr does not think that the power affecting radial man is indeterminate. It always has the quality of either coercion or persuasion. Niebuhr attempts to define belief-generating experience by examining the exact way in which radial man suffers coercive anp persuasive power. The subjective states corresponding to power's qualities of coercion and persuasion are fear and gladness.

Fear and gladness. Fear is "the sense of powerlessness, which seems in fact to be not so much a felt absence of power as a sense of the presence of power that one is unable to annex to oneself or to master" (p. 90). The fearful individual seems to have control over neither himself nor his world. The world of power appears to be "estranged from and inimical to, the self" (p. 92). Consequently the individual feels alienated from both his world and himself. A sense of powerlessness and purposelessness pervades his entire being.

In contradistinction to fear, gladness is the "consciousness of liberation into the stream of life, a sense of collectedness, a feeling of the union of one's own power with power and energy itself, and finally a sense of effectiveness and recognition as an agent in a human commonwealth that transcends the present" (p. 103). While fear is a feeling of powerlessness and purposelessness, gladness is the sense of powerfulness and purposefulness. Rather than being alienated from his world and himself, the glad person is both aligned with his world and at one with himself. "In opposition to dread and fearing, rejoicing [i.e., gladness] intensifies the awareness of sharing in the life and strength of others, and it underscores the sense of serving a cause in life and of having a contribution to make" (p. 103). Rather than the fearful experience of isolation and diminution, gladness is the joyful experience of community and enhancement. 12

Although Niebuhr develops his understanding of fear and of gladness by con-

12 Niebuhr does not stress that his understanding of fear and gladness depends upon insights drawn from William James. James' sixth and seventh lectures, "The Sick Soul," in The Varieties of Religious Experience are especially important for Niebuhr's analysis.


trasting them with one another, he does not think that these two moods are mutually exclusive. He agrees with Schleiermacher's contention that "Joy does not displace sorrow, rather both overspread one's entire being." Man is homo duplex.13 The experiences of fear and gladness characterize the general nature of human existence in the midst of a field of coercive and persuasive powers. An individual constantly feels himself diminished and enhanced as he is battered by and driven with the ruling powers of his world/age. For Niebuhr, all of human life "can be appropriately portrayed as an oscillation between these two encompassing affections," for all of a man's experiences are "deeply conditioned by these two tonalities of his being-in-the-world" (p. 104).

The twin moments of fear and gladness, of powerlessness and powerfulness, of isolation and participation, form the matrix in which believing emerges and to which beliefs are addressed. 14 For a belief to be believable, it must be attuned to, and illuminating of, the fearful-joyful world/age. In the last chapter of the book, Niebuhr argues that Christian faith is consonant with experience in this world/age, and can serve radial man both as a principle of self-government and as a means of orientation in his powerful world.

Jesus and Radial Man

Niebuhr's understanding of the way in which Christian faith takes form in today's world depends upon a very sophisticated analysis of how images and sym-

. bols affect human perception. The question underlying the exploration of the viability of Christian faith for radial man is: how does a symbol or an image affect the mind so that it comes to govern all perception and conduct? More specifically, how does the image of Jesus recorded in the New Testament and preserved in the Christian tradition invade and permeate radial man's mind?

Niebuhr maintains that an image or a symbol always emerges from, and seeks to express, certain features of experience. For a symbol to be communicative, the person symbolizing or imagining and the perceiver of the symbol or image must participate in similar experience. This shared experience is a common third that mediates between the symbolizer and the perceiver, thereby making the symbol effective (or powerful). The image, having imprinted itself upon the imagination, becomes a means of clarifying the experience that the symbol expresse&.

The example of painting illustrates and clarifies Niebuhr's insight. Why do we find some works of art significant and others insignificant? From Niebuhr's point of view, a painting is effective to the extent that it expresses an experience common to the painter and the viewer. The painting embodies the artist's interpretation of his experience and affords the viewer the opportunity of clarifying his own experience. The painting resonates with shared experience and creates between the artist and the viewer a community of like-mindedness.

Participation in a "common third." This interpretation of the operation of symbols enables us to understand how Christian faith can emerge in the present world/age. If Jesus is to become an effective image or symbol for radial man's orientation and self-government, Jesus and modern man must share common

13 Niebuhr argues that this duplex character of human existence is the basis of the classical Christian doctrine that man is simul iustus et peccator. See pp. I 05-6.

14 It should be pointed out that belief is an instance of this double character of selfhood. This -is apparent from our consideratiou of the way in which belief entails both the participation of an individual in a larger social whole, and the isolation of a person from other communities.


experience. Niebuhr holds that there is a mutual participation in a "common third" that can enliven and empower the image of Christ in the mind of radial . man. This common experience is the kindred suffering of fear and gladness in a world of coercive and persuasive power.

Under the rule of the common third, this coming together of the reader and the reading initiates in the resonance of common affections arising from similar experiences and revealing common realities and meanings in fields of action that otherwise are isolated by historical distance and social sp~ce. Under the same rule, the action of coming together issues in a colliding and a coalescing of the world of the reader with the world of the narrative, the world of the auditor with· the world of the tellers, the world of the onlooker with the world of the actor, so that the accounts of Jesus and his followers become intelligible because they become credible a~ moments of a presently experienced world. (p. 123)

Such a reading of the Gospel is a "reflexive reading" or "a translation of the reader into the narrative" in which one sees "himself as one whom these very events befall" (p. 126).

This argument does not imply that radial man first has a clear understanding of the nature of his world and the character of his existence in that world, which he then finds confirmed in Jesus' perception. To the contrary, radial man's mind is confused, his ideas inchoate. Though he shares a common experience with Jesus, his imagination has not come to terms with that experience. It is precisely by engaging the mind of Jesus that radial man's experience becomes intelligible.

In a fashion reminiscent of Bushnell, Niebuhr contends that Jesus affects the sensitive mind in a manner analogous to the impress wrought upon the perceiver by a work of art. The shared experience of suffering diminution and enhancement creates a resonance between the lives of Jesus and of radial man. By a sympathetic participation in Jesus' perception of his world/age, the beholder's perception suffers alteration. The images that emerge from Jesus' experience clarify the experience of radial man. Stated in more general terms, one comes to a fuller self-awareness by appropriating the awareness of another. The self "Newly discovers its own being with the being of another [i.e., with Jesus]" (p. 54). The process in which Jesus becomes the author of the beholder's new-mindedness is metanoia. But what is the character of the new mind Jesus enjoins?

World! age understood as the scene of God-Ruling. The Gospels present Jesus as a "God-shaped man," or as the "theater of God-Ruling." For Jesus, the agentworld that he suffers is not an array of random and contradictory powers, but is the arena of God's rule. His own compression and expansion are the action of God on and through him. Jesus understands himself as a vessel of God's power. This faith

... expresses c~fidence in an order not in the history of the self but in the works of God, an order not within the time of the individual's birth and death but an infinite order, to which the birth, life, and death of the individual belong. (p. 72)

In a confused and confusing world, Jesus "suffers diminution and enlargement equally, as the good-pleasure of God-Ruling" (p. 129). By this perception of his suffering, Jesus gains both an orientation within the power-world, and a rule with which to govern his conduct.


His self-government is his conviction-in-motion that his own life is a theater of that action and that the pattern of that action 'desires,' 'needs,' 'requires,' 'commands' him to become the place of its li\l_elier and richer manifestation. His conviction is that his being is the new locus of God-Ruling. Faith, perception, action, and existence are thus all one thing in him: the rule of the self within t_he ruling action that appears everywhere. (pp. 133-34)

To radial man, "struggling for a whole persona, in which actions, words, and attitudes will show some coherence and agreement with the 'grain' of things" (p. 125), Jesus offers a share of his own perception and conduct. The metanoia that results from appropriating the mind of Christ enables people

... to arise from sleep and to see in their own diminutions and unlooked-for enlargements the finger of God pressing them, directing them, correcting them, and enforcing their lives in the pattern typified and made concrete in Christ. (p. 123)

For those who are of one mind with Christ, the world/age assumes coherence as the scene of God-Ruling. One is able to understand his suffering and his conduct as God's action on and through his self. Although one suffers, the individual's being seems enlarged, for he comprehends himself as a vessel of an .infinitely greater power.

This brings Niebuhr's analysis full circle. In the first two chapters, Niebuhr offers a description of the affectional character of faith; in the second part of the book, he considers the way in which faith takes form in the present world/age. He begins by defining believing as "valuing or holding dear without possessing." But believing, Niebuhr maintains, always emerges from experience. Enworlded by conflicting powers and suffering inner-manyness,,radial man seeks a means by which he can orient himself in his world/age and can govern the citadel of his self. The figure of Jesus presented in the Gospel narratives addresses_ man's need for orientation and self-government. The experience of suffering coercive and persuasive power is a common third that enlivens Jesus' perception in the mind of radial man. Jesus understood his suffering of diminution and enlargement as God's acticm. This perception pervades his whole existence. It is his faith.

Jesus' faithful existence opens the possibility of faith to others. But how can this be effected? Niebuhr answers: by believing in Jesus. Through believing, we hold dear or value, but do not possess Jesus. We sympathetically identify with Jesus, thereby appropriating his perception and altering our own imagination.

The new-mindedness to which Jesus called men, the metanoia about which the evangelists so often speak is ... a process and-occasionally-a progress in which the undergoing of sorrow and gladness in the power world is resolved and refounded as the experience of the ruling God. (p. 124)

This new-mindedness of the believer in Jesus results in faith. The individual's percep~ion_of the world/age as the Kingdom (i.e., the Rule) of God and of himself as the theater of that rule, or as the "finger" of divine intentionality qualifies the fundamental tone of his entire persona. Such faith provides the orientation in the power world and the principle of self-government that radial man seeks.

A Critique of Niebuhr's View

The depth of Niebuhr's apalysis of religious experience should by now be evi-


dent. It is necessary, however, to raise two points of criticism in concluding our analysis of his work. The first is stylistic, lhe second substantive.

Niebuhr's argument is very tightly packed. His prose exhibits a degree of artistry rarely found in theological writing. This is at once the beauty and the difficulty of the book. Often whole arguments underlie the choice of a single word. Niebuhr does not always make the implications of his categories clear enough. This creates the danger that the reader can overlook some of his most profound insights. Furthermore, the precise course of his argument is particularly difficult to follow in the second part of the essay. The rigor with which Niebuhr unfolds his analysis in the first two chapters is less evident in the last three chapters.

'J'he passivity of Niebuhr's suffering person. The major substantive criticism concerns the relationship of Niebuhr's notion of faith to the individual's ethical conduct in his world/age. It is very clear that Niebuhr does not want to identify faith with the activity of the will. Faith is an affection that "lies at such a depth in personal existence that it is inaccessible to volition" (p. 46). An individual suffers faith; "God befalls man." Surely Niebuhr does not want to dissociate the passion of faith from the exercise of the individual's will. Indeed, he argues that the affection of faith ''endows the will with its specific tone and energy" (p. 46). Moreover, Niebuhr indicates in the introduction to the essay that man is both patient and active. He recognizes that "it is misleading to stress too much the apparent passivity of this person" (p. xii). But as he develops his analysis of faith, it is precisely the self's passivity that is emphasized. In £act, suffering seems to subsume man's activity. A person finds himself driven or aimed even in his actions. At this point, Niebuhr seems to have lost any sense of the autonomy and freedom of the self. Rather than l~ading to free, moral activity, faith is the means by which we appro-. priate the suffering that overspreads our entire lives. In the words of Kierkegaard, "We are all sufferers, but what we strive for is to be glad in the midst of suffering . • • • " 15 The sovereignty of Niebuhr's God approaches that of Calvin's God.

Immanence of the Kingdom, but no transcendence. We can see the import of this criticism by approaching the problem from a slightly different perspective. It would appear that by identifying the Kingdom of God so exclusively with the present rule of God, Niebuhr is unable to account for the sense of teleology and of eschatology that the concept of the Kingdom of God has traditionally carried. This is an important point with respect to the problem of the relation between faith and ethics. Niebuhr stresses the immanence of the Kingdom, but does not analyze adequately the way in which the Kingdom transcends the present world/age. The concept of the Kingdom of God refers not only to the present rule of God, but also to the end toward which that rule is directed. Insofar as the Kingdom is transcendent, it affords a norm by which to criticize the powers of the present world/age. The recognition of this norm, or a vision of the eschatological Kingdom, can inform one's activity by encouraging him to work for a more complete realization of the Kingdom. If the awareness of the transcendence of the ~ngdom is lost, the impetus fo~ activity fades. The individual's primary interest becomes the appropriation of his suffering or actuality, rather than the effort to realize new possibilities. One gets the uneasy feeling that Niebuhr would have to agree with Pope:

15 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Walter Lowrie and David Swenson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 392.


All Nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And spirit of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear: Whatever is, is RIGHT. 16

These comments are not intended to diminish the value of Niebuhr's analysis. Much of the material for responding to this line of criticism is implicit in Niebuhr's essay. But because the active side of human existence is not considered in more detail, the argument in its present form suffers from a certain one-sidedness.

In conclusion, it must be said that by refusing to agree with the Barthian contention that human faithfulness is an inappropriate focus of theological investigation, Niebuhr opens areas of inquiry that have remained closed to theologians for many decades. His exploration of religious experience not only establishes avenues for communication between the theologian and the psychologist, the sociologist, the phenomenologist, and the historian, but also suggests the important implications of faith for constructive theological work. This book is one of the most significant pieces to come out of the post-Neo-Orthodox period. It deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

16 "An Essay on Man," lines 289-294.

Yul. XXX Nu. I Fall, 197'1

A Marxist View of Kierkegaard: George Lukacs

on the Intellectual Origins of Fascism

George Hunsinger

One of the fruits of the Marxist-Christian dialogue of the mid-1960's has been a new willingness on both sides to end what Harvey Cox has called "the Communist-Christian vendetta." Marxists have discovered that theology is more than mere class-bound ideology, even if theology may be in constant danger of degenerating in that direction. Theologians for their part have attained a new awareness that Marxism consists of more than mere religious pretentions, even if certain forms of Marxism have seemed ever-ready to usurp a religious role.

Despite these beginnings, the phase of direct Marxist-Christian conversations came to an abrupt end in 1968 as great disillusionment set in: Soviet tanks had crushed the human face of socialism in Czechoslovakia, and American bombers were disintegrating the human landscape of Vietnam. But today a new, indirect phase in the broken-off dialogue may still be possible-a phase of consolidation and re-examination in the light of new insights gained by both sides.

George Lukacs, to my knowledge, was not a major participant in the dialogue of the mid-sixtie~.1 Yet, as one of the leadiog Marxist intellectuals of this century-his prominence among Marxist philosophers would probably parallel that of Karl Barth among Christian thinkers 2-Lukacs deserves sympatheti,c and critical consideration on the part of ecumenically-minded theologians. Until recently, Lukacs' writings, which span the fields of philosophy, intellectual history, and literary criticism, have been widely neglected in English-speaking countries. Now

There is only one inst_ance that I know of in which Lukacs took part in what might be thought of as a Marxist-Christian dialogue. In 1967 he participated in a radio braodcast which included the Marxist.philosopher Ernst Bloch and the theologians Johannes B. Metz and Jurgen Moltmann. During the interview Lukacs spoke only once and did not address himself directly to Marxist-Christian issues. For a transcript of the discussion, see: "Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukacs im Gesprach mit hving Fetscher, Johannes B. Metz undJiirgen Moltmann," NeuesForum, XIV (1967), 837-43.

2 Lukacs' collection of articles History and Class Consciousness (1923) occupies a position in Marxist thought that is roughly analogous to that held by the second edition of Barth's The Epistle to the Romans ( 1922) in recent Christian thought. Lukacs' book has been described as "probably the ~ost important and influential marxist (sic.) theoretical effort of the last years" (Paul Piccone, "Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness Half a Century Later," Te.los, II, 4 (Fall, 1969), 95).

GEORGE HUNSINGER is a doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. During 1971-72, Mr. Hunsinger studied at the University of Tubingen on a grant from the D.A .A .D.


his wntmgs are beginning to appear in translation, and a growing secondary literature is sprouting up. 3

One good place to begin a theological consideration of Lukacs would seem to be his discussion of ~ren Kierkegaard, which occurs in a book on the intellectual origins of fascism entitled, Die Zerstorung der Vernunft (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1953. [All citations are the author's translations from this edition-Ed. note]). If in this discussion Lukacs exhibits what might be called a pre-dialogue spirit, his argument is for that reason no less interesting and provocative.

Lukacs' argument, which he elaborates in considerable detail, may be simply stated: In his onslaught against Hegel's dialectic, Sj6ren Kierkegaard dis&olves man's involvement in history; and in his abhorrence of material reality, Kierkegaard extricates man from the social nexus of his being. In this way Kierkegaard plays a decisive role in the historical development of that "irrationalism" which culminated in the ideology of the Third Reich.

Let us look at each of the components of Lukacs' argument in turn.

Kierkegaard's Dissolution of History

The major philosophical battle of Kierkegaard's career was waged against Hegel's dialectic. This attack drew heavily upon a line of criticism which had been developed by the idealist philosopher, Adolf Trendelenburg. Lukacs credits Trendelenburg with having located a decisive epistemological weakness in Hegel's system: If pure being is at rest, and if pure nothing is also at rest, then how does the unity of two static concepts result in a dynamic concept of becoming? Becoming could not possibly develop out of being and non-being unless that concept were already presupposed (Zerstorung, p. 203).

Marx also saw this problem, but considered it from an historical, rather than a logical, perspective. He argued that the movement of thought follows from the movement of history, and that the movement of history determines the movement of thought. Lukacs holds this to be the only real solution to the problem posed by Trendelenburg (p. 204).

On the soil of idealism, however, such a solution is impossible. For idealism the only alternative is "either a general rejection of dialectics or the construction of a subjective pseudo-dialectic" (Ibid.). Kierkegaard pursues the latter distinction to its furthest possible shore. He couples a logical critique of Hegel with the development of a subjective "pseudo-dialectic."

Kierkegaard's argument. Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel's logic is conducted in an ironic fashion, and Lukacs, who clearly prefers Hegel, complains that Kier-

3 Lukacs is better known in the English-speaking world as a literary critic than as a philosopher, but he has done substantial work in both areas and has tried to relate both aesthetics and philosophy to the political realm. Although many of his works in literary criticism are now in translation, only History and Class Consciousness, tr. by Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1971) is available in English among his philosophical writings (which include a lengthy work on the young Hegel, as well as the book here under discussion). The best brief introduction to Lukacs is probably Georg Lukacs, by Ehrhard Bahr and Ruth Goldschmidt Kunzer (New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co., Inc., 1972). An excellent in-depth study, though marred by dubious psychologizing, has been written about the early Lukacs by Victor Zitta, Georg Lukacs' Marxism: Alienation, Dialectics, Revolutzon. A Study m Utopia and Ideology (New York: Humanities Press, inc., 1964). An excellent source on Lukacs as a philosopher has been the graduate-student journal Telos based at S.U.N.Y. in Buffalo. Other secondary works, both uneven in their quality, include: G.H.R. Parkinson, ed., George Lukacs; The Man and His Ideas (New York: Random House, 1970), and George Lichtheim, Lukacs (New York: Viking Press, 1970).

A MARXIsr VIEW OF KIERKEGAARD 31

kegaard does not consider it worth the trouble to develop a detailed polemic here. (However, it is likely that he did not develop a detailed polemic, because in Hegel he did not find a detailed argument.) Kierkegaard's critique consists of denying that a new quality can arise in logic through a series of quantitative changes. "Hence it is superstition," he writes, "if one supposes in logic that through a progressive quantitative determination a new quality will arise. : .. The new quality comes ... with the leap, with the suddenness of the mysterious" (quoted by Lukacs, pp. 204f.).

When Kierkegaard insists that a new quality can arise not through logical process, but only through non-logical irruption, not through an immanent devel<>pment, but only through a transcendent leap, he displays what Lukacs calls the "irrational" character of his thought. "When the leap of transition from quantity to quality is separated from process," says Lukacs, "its irrational character necessarily arises" (p. 206). For Lukacs any philosophy that seeks to transcend the limits of history is irrational.

But Kierkegaard seeks not only to transcend history, but also to withdraw from it. It is precisely the historical and social aspect of Hegel's thought that Kierkegaard finds inauthentic. He thus dehistoricizes and desocializes Hegel's dialectic at every significant point. He detaches Hegel's dialectic from the world and reconstitutes it in the realm of individual subjectivity.

The result is an irrational dialectic that rests upon an abstract and distorted image of man. "Kierkegaard leads all arguments radically to their end which dehistoricize and desocialize Hegel's dialectic .... History and society must be annihilated in order to create space for the existence of the artificially isolated individual, which here alone is relevant" (p. 209).

Kierkegaard attacked the historicity of Hegel's dialectic, because-whatever Hegel himself may have thought-Kierkegaard considered it atheistic. He sees quite clearly that despite all the talk about world-spirit, God, etc., Hegel's philosophy of history can only be, as Lukacs says, "a polite form of atheism" (p. 210). For in a world-history conceived as a unified process governed by its own laws, there is no longer room for God.

By rejecting its objective historicity, Kierkegaard also abandons the subjective aspect to Hegel's dialectic. This aspect Lukacs considers one of Hegel's most important and progressive ideas-namely, that humans become humans through their own efforts and that they make their history themselves. Kierkegaard counters this idea with a dialectic that is essentially a-historical.

Historical agnosticism: the divine drama. Of course, history continues to exist, but not as something which humans are consciously to shape. History in its proper sense exists only for God, for he alone is in a position to gain a view over its entire span. To illustrate this idea Kierkegaard constructs an image. The individual's relation to God is like a small private theater in which God is the spectator and the individual is the actor, although occasionally here the individual may also become a spectator. By contrast, world-history is a royal arena in which God alone is the spectator, for he alone can be so. The existing individual has no access to this royal arena. Hence one must content oneself with being an actor on one's own private stage, leaving it to the divine spectator and composer to incorporate the individual's own small part into the overall royal drama.

Unlike Schopenhauer, therefore, Kierkegaard does not declare that the course of history is meaningless. Rather, he attempts to salvage religion and God


through a consistent historical agnosticism. In one sense he hearkens back to the theodicy projects of the 17th and 18th centuries, in which contradictions were overcome by an appeal to the totality of history as known by God. But in another sense Kierkegaard's historical agnosticism is distinctly modern. It is conditioned by the rise of modern science, which, particularly in the 19th century, forced religion to retreat from interpreting the concrete phenomena of history. As ever greater portions of the world devolved to scientific research, religion became entrenched ever more strongly in the realm of human inwardness (p. 212).

This is the context, then, in which Lukacs places Kierkegaard's idea of a dialectic that is subjective and qualitative. "The historical agnosticism of Kierkegaard," he writes, "is an attempt, like that earlier in Schleiermacher, to abandon to science all the posts which could no longer be defended in explaining the world, in order to find a terrain in pure inwardness where it seemed that religion could be philosophically salvaged and reconstituted" (Ibid.) . . At this point in his exposition, Lukacs presents the fullest definition of what he

means by "irrationalism." First of all, it is a philosophy which abandons the rationality of the external world, of history, for the solitude of pure inwardness. Second, it is a profound pessimism which questions the meaning of that solitude, and despair becomes the basic category of all relationships. Kierkegaard shares both of these aspects of irrationalism-despair and radical inwardness-with Schopenhauer.

He departs from Schopenhauer, however, when he attempts to transcend the concept of history as an irrational abyss by appealing to the appearance of Christ-an appeal to something which Lukacs can only regard as "mythicized pseudo-history" (p. 213). Apart from the appearance of Christ, Kierkegaard has virtually no concept of external history, and even the modicum of history which Christ seems to require is swallowed up by the paradox that "the eternal truth has appeared in time" (quoted by Lukacs, ibid.). The appearance of Christ seems to be "a unique, qualitative irruption within an otherwide stagnant 'history' " (Ibid.).

The only essential relationship for Kierkegaard becomes the one between human inwardness and Christ. The intervening centuries change nothing; a relationship to Christ is not historical, but "immediate." Lukacs neatly sums up the paradox: "Thus with regard to the one thing which for Kierkegaard appears as essential to history, namely, with regard to the salvation of the soul of the individual person through the appearance of Christ, there is again no such thing as history" (Ibid.).

The historical conditions affecting Kierkegaard. Lukacs takes another critical look at the milieu in which this paradox is formulated:

It is the decade of the work of D.F. Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and Feuerbach; thus-especially concerning the first two-the period of the scientific historical dismantling of the evangelical traditions. Kierkegaard sees clearly that on the ground of a somewhat scientific consideration of history, the factual historicity. of Christ as presented by the gospels can no longer be defended .... He sees clearly that on the ground of scientific discussion, the historical reality of the form of Christ as outlined by the gospels has been completely dissolved. He therefore directs his polemic exclusively against the competence of historical method in such questions, which concern the "true" reality, "existence." (p. 214)

A MARX.Isr VIEW OF KIERKEGAARD

Kierkegaard avoids polemicizing against the theories of Strauss and Bauer. Instead he develops a method which intends to discredit the attempt by historical criticism to attain Christological truth.· Historical criticism can attain only an approximate knowledge about historical facts, but what is needed is inward certainty about the "absolute fact" of Christ. This certainty comes not through historical approximation, but through receiving "the condition" from God (Ibid.).

Kierkegaard transforms the moment of approximation into a principle of pure relativism. Historical science selects and limits its material in a way that is ultimately arbitrary; a truly objective knowledge can never be obtained. To Lukacs this is "a nihilistic concept regarding the knowledge of objective reality" (p. 216).

From Kierkegaard's position two important consequences follow. First, objective and subjective knowled_ge are completely separated. The "how" of inward comportment is severed from the "what" of objective contemplation. An absolute knowledge arises which pretends- to contain no moment of relativity or approximation (p. 217).

Second, the estrangement between subjective and objective knowledge leads to a total separation of theory and practice. History is cut off from ethics by an absolute abyss. Ethics has no orientation to historical reality or historical progress. Indeed, for Kierkegaard there is no such thing as historical progress. "The ethical," writes Lukacs, "takes place in a purely individual and a purely inwardly-directed medium. Every relation of concern for the-quantitatively dialectical-realm of history, necessarily has the effect of a diversion; it necessarily estranges the person from the ethical and annihilates the ethical within him" (p. 218).

World-historical immanence [writes Kierkegaard] is always confusing to the ethical ... If the individual sees something ethical, then it is the ethical within himself ... It would thus be a false conclusion to suppose that the more a person is ethically developed, the more he sees the ethical in worldhistory. No, precisely the opposite is the case: the more he is ethically developed, the less he will bother with the world-historical. (quoted by Lukacs, pp. 218f.)

In this way Kierkegaard achieves what Lukacs judges the most developed form of irrationalism that had yet appeared in the history of philosophy. Kierkegaard extricates the ethical person-precisely in the name of ethics-from all historical contexts. "This is the meaning of the crude antagonism between ethics and history, of the opposition between a purely subjective, purely individualistic understanding of praxis and a deceptive immanence, a deceptive objectivity of history" (p. 219). In this way, therefore, Kierkegaard's attack upon Hegel's dialectic leads to a completely dehistoricized view of human existence.

Kierkegaard's Desocialization of Human Existence

The next step in Lukacs' argument is to show what Kierkegaard means by "ethics." The exposition so far has already suggested that Kierkegaard's concept of ethics is not only a-historical, but also a-social. Yet, as Lukacs notes, "Kierkegaard did not immediately draw this consequence, and he never drew it with.full radicality. Indeed, his position here is even more contradictory than in the question of history" (Ibid.).

Kierkegaard's ethics are essentially the ethics of the private person. Yet, "for


Kierkegaard it is here impossible to close his eyes to the fact that the private person-even as private person-lives in society" (p. 221). The cardinal example of this restricted version of social ethics is marriage. The example of marriage shows, however, that Kierkegaard's ethics tends toward self-dissolution. Theimpulse toward this self-dissolution arises fron Kierkegaard's interpretation of the religious sphere. The demands of i:he religious sphere ultimately come into conflict with the demands of marriage. In the final analysis, Kierkegaard's ethics can provide no common medium in which a real relationship between persons is possible (p. 224).

The basic reason for this is that in Kierkegaard's conception everything external is dwarfed by the importance of the internal, everything relative is overwhelmed by the importance of the absolute, and everything penultimate is overpowered by the importance of the ultimate. Now marriage is something external, relative and penultimate. It pales into insignificance before the absolute telos of human existence, which for Kierkegaard is always the religious telos of eternal blessedness. The difficulty is that in the midst of the relativities of life, the individual must maintain an absolute relationship to the absolute telos; the irony is that this most passionate of concerns is veiled by the absolute incognito of everyday relativities (pp. 223-24).

The danger Kierkegaard sees in marriage is that it constantly threatens to usurp the place of the absolute telos. But under these circumstances, asks Lukacs, how 1s marriage even thinkable? If, for each of the partners, only the purely inward and purely subjective dimension is ethically relevant, then every external aspect of the one partner, such as opinions, deeds, etc., becomes a matter of complete indifference to the real life of the other (pp. 222f). For the externality of the other person, like all externality, is merely incidental to the individual's absolute preoccupation with his own eternal destiny.

The ethical versus the religious. Kierkegaard was never able to establish a lasting relation between the religious and the ethical spheres. The ethical sphere becomes, as he himself realized, merely a sphere of transition. He defines ethics as "the realization of the universal that is valid for everyone," yet this definition finally collapses into the sphere of the religious: "If this is the highest which can be said about man and his existence, then the ethical has the same meaning as man's eternal blessedness, which in all eternity and in every moment is the telos of man" (quoted by Lukacs pp. 223f.).

The aesthetic versus the religious. The ultimate denial of the ethical sphere raises the question of whether or not even the aesthetic sphere stands in sharp contrast to the religious for Kierkegaard. When the ethical sphere disappears, do even the aesthetic and religious spheres eventually coincide? By contending that they do, Lukacs commits a serious error of interpretation, but it is an interesting error and one worth pursuing in some detail.

Lukacs' error is to suppose that Kierkegaard conceives of the aesthetic realm in terms of feelings which only stand open to men of refinement and culture. He thus links Kierkegaard with the romanticism of people like Schleiermacher and accuses Kierkegaard's aesthetics of lapsing into an aristocratic posture. This 'posture would stand in contradiction to the non-aristocratic character of his ethics (in which one is to realize the universal), but would be in harmony with the aristocratic character of his concept of religion (in which only a few at most become subjective individuals). Lukacs thus proceeds to link aesthetic and re-

A MARXIST VIEW OF KIERKEGAARD 35

ligious feeling in Kierkegaard and to contend that the borders between these two spheres finally become indistinct (pp. 226ff.).

Lukacs has completely misinterpreted what Kierkegaard means by the aesthetic sphere. Kierkegaard uses the world "aesthetic" to characterize not a kind of feeling, but a kind of existence. Lukacs completely overlooks Kierkegaard's basic distinction between two kinds of aesthetic existence. The first kind is an existence of immediate and unreflective relation to the world. It is the unexamined life which Socrates considered not worth living. Far from being "aristocratic," this kind of existence is open to everyone-in fact, to Kierkegaard, it is the usual condition.

The second kind of aesthetic existence is one of poetic detachment. It is one which plays with various existential· possibilities (as presented, for example, through art), but without ever coming to the point of actual commitment. Far from being in harmony with romanticism at this point, Kierkegaard is, in part, actually parodying the inwardness of the "beautiful soul," which magnificently desires to embrace all possibilities rather than the concrete necessity of its own existence.

This second kind of aesthetic existence, which comes close to the one Lukacs characterizes as aristocratic, stands in sharp contrast to what Kierkegaard sees as religious existence. It is a contrast between the suffering of eros and the suffering of agape-between the desire to experience all the possibilities of this world, and the renunciation of this world in the recognition of guilt and the hope for eternal blessedness. It is a contrast between the quest of Faust (or Don Juan, etc.) and the redemption of Christ.

Yet perhaps Lukacs is right after all in suggesting that an important point of contact exists between Kierkegaard's aesthetic and religious spheres. If the essence of the aesthetic sphere is naive detachment, then Kierkegaard's religious sphere maintains a basically aesthetic bearing toward the world. The religious sphere attaches a man to God, but only at the expense of detaching him from society. Kierkegaard's basically "religious" .social-consciousness is immediate and unreflective, or, in his own .terms, "aesthetic."

Kierkegaard's essential conservatism. It is true, however, as Lukacs puts it, that Kierkegaard assigns a social function to religion; religion is to function in society as a conservative force. "Kierkegaard sees," writes Lukacs, "the emerging crisis of his time-he is a romantic anti-capitalist-and the experiences of 1848 have the, effect on him (just as in the case of Carlyle, who originally was far more socially oriented) of causing all reactionary blossoms to bloom" (p. 230).

In 1849 Kierkegaard writes the following entry in his diary: "Should Providence send still more prophets and judges, then it must only happen in order to help the government." Some years later he says quite decisively: "My entire work is a defense of the existing order" (quoted by Lukacs, ibid.). "Finally," writes Lukacs, "in the year 1854, when he thinks that the revolution 'could break out atany moment,' he sees disaster in the fact 'that Christianity has been abolished as the countervailing force.' Kierkegaardian Christianity-in. that it imprisons the individual as individual within his incognito, in that it makes the entire social world around him worthless and concentrates all his energies on the salvation of his own soul-is to be this 'force'" (Ibid.).

Hence the social function of the lonely subject, of man incognito, is -the undergirding of the existing order. In this order Kierkegaard, who like Schopenhauer

!16 UNION SEMINARY QUARTERLY REVIEW

lived on an inheritance, 4 occupies the privileged position of being a member of the "parasitic bourgeois intelligentsia" (pp. 239f.). To Lukacs it is thus understandable that Kierkegaard's philosophy should culminate in a flight away from society. By desocializing existence in a period of emerging social crisis, Kierkegaard is at the same time offering a privileged defense of the statu's quo-a defense that would later be taken up again in the history of irrationalism.

The Development of lrrationalism

"Irrationalism" (as we have already seen) consists of two aspects-radical inwardness and despair. Radical inwardness in Kierkegaard has already been presented as the result of his project to dehistoricize and desocialize existence. Despair in Kierkegaard remains to be presented, as does the way in which these ideas move toward the development of fascist ideology.

Despair is not new to the history of irrationalism, for it had already appeared in the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Yet even here Kierkegaard makes a contribution. He gives as his own, writes Lukacs," ... the nuance of individual despair, of despair as exaltation, as the badge of true individuality (in contrast to the abstract, universal, generic pessimism of Schopenhauer) ... " (p. 231). Kierkegaard raises despair to a new level of intensification. All conflicts of social life pale into insignificance before it, and nothingness becomes its only adequate object (Ibid.).

But is it really legitimate to speak of nothingness as the only adequate object of Kierkegaardian subjectivity? Wouldn't this be to confuse Kierkegaard with those who come after him, with his "later imperialistic followers" (as Lukacs calls them)? Doesn't Kierkegaard portray himself as a faithful Christian and an orthodox Protestant who was trying to reestablish the lost purity of Christianity (Ibid.)?

Lukacs answers that from the standpoint of its despair, Kierkegaard's Christianity actually becomes a form of religious atheism. This judgment is apparently based on three considerations. First, in the last period of his life, when he openly and publicly battled to re-establish the purity of Christianity, Kierkegaard announced that in modern times Christianity had totally ceased to exist. None of his contemporaries was a Christian, least of all he himself-let alone entire states and countries. Lukacs notes that even assurances about the Christianity of the past would fail to survive this kind of criticism.

Parenthetically, Lukacs levels a very trenchant criticism of Kierkegaard at this point: "From Kierkegaard's standpoint it must here of course be asked: How does he know that none of his contemporaries is a Christian? According to the absolute incognito which he himself laid down, precisely everyone could be a Christian. Within his own theory of knowledge, Kierkegaard possesses no criterion for deciding this question" (p. 236n.).

The second reason why the Christianity of Kierkegaard leads to religious atheism is that he abandons all claims to doctrine. If Christianity were doctrinal, it would be degraded into its opposite-into objectivity, into a system, into something relative. The desperate consequence of this position, which Kierkegaard draws straightforwardly in a way that his "imperialistic followers" do not, is that objective knowledge is neither necessary nor possible (pp. 231£.).

4 L11kacs makes much of the petty fact that Kierkegaard spoke disparagingly of Schopenhauer for living on an inheritance while Kierkegaard was doing so himself.

A MARXIST VIEW Of KIERKEGAARD 57

Finally, if subjectivity alone is truth, then God becomes a mere postulate, and Kierkegaard begins to look like an unconscious and inconsistent adherent to Feuerbach. The God of his diary takes on "the physiognomy of the despairing, eccentric bourgeois intellectual" (p. 235). The religious object dissolves into the religious subject, as a consequence of Kierkegaard's epistemology, and every trace of God vanishes.

The only guideline for religious knowledge and, indeed, for religious disciple• ship is that which the religious subject finds in its own subjectivity, "and for Kierkegaard that is despair and nihilism." The only way out is through a subjective decision executed in total uncertainty. Kierkegaard affirms the spontaneous nothingness of his own subjectivity. "Following his innermost feelings, Kierkegaard affirms this thin air of complete loneliness, this atmosphere of nothingness, as precisely the subject's highest development" (Ibid.).

For these reasons-the absence of Christianity, the dissolution of doctrine and the disappearance of God-Kierkegaard's thought results in religious atheism, even if he never made an open confession of it and even if this is "an unconscious, unwanted product of his conception" (p. 284).

Summation: From lrrationalism to Fascism

Kierkegaard's irrationalism may thus be summed up as follows: Ontologically, it is a denial that the objective is the real and that the real (history) is rational. Epistemologically, it is a subjective, irrational and despairing decisionism in which subjective knowledge is truth and true knowledge is subjective. Ethically, it is the ruthless separation of ethics from history and a personal striving for eternal blessedness. Socially, it is an inward retreat from society and a privileged defense of the status quo. What is new here in the history of irrationalism is the individualistic accent and the value placed on despair, and the complete antagonism between history and ethics.

After Kierkegaard, of course, the history of irrationalism continued to develop. Lukacs argues that Nietzsche graced it with a chilling mixture of refinement and brutality, and that the 'philosophy of life' added biological categories which eventually became racial, etc. Kierkegaard's ideas acquired a momentum of their own which removed them from their original theological context, but which intensified their reactionary social function. ·

In the pre-fascist period the Kierkegaardian notion of radical inwardness reemerged· through the existentialist philosophies of Heidegger and Jaspers. "Relatively similar social situations," writes Lukacs, "necessarily bring forth relatively similar tendencies of thought and feeling" (p. 390), .ind the crisis of the bourgeois intellectual in the years surrounding 1848 was similar to that of his counterpart in the 1920's in Germany. After the collapse of the Wilhelmian regime, the social milieu for bourgeois subjectivism became intolerable. "The collapse of that world, which subjectivism had continually criticized, but which had become the indispensible basis of its existence, threatened everything. The center had broken loose, and there was no more stability. In this wasteland stood the lonely I in anxiety and apprehension" (Ibid.).

Kierkegaard's followers now depicted the meaninglessness of every activity in the world, and revived the separation of history and ethics. Heidegger degraded real history as "inauthentic" and accepted as."authentic" only those moods, such as care and despair, which distracted men from social action and social decision


(p. 412). Jaspers, who parodied these thoughts, displayed hatred toward the masses and anxiety regarding democracy and socialism (p. 415).

Heidegger and Jaspers carried the aristocratic relativism of Kierkegaard to its ultimate extreme; the inner content of their philosophy is "an ice age, ... a world become empty, a meaningless chaos, a milieu of nothingness, despair over oneself and over a loneliness without redemption" (p. 416).

In the ·evening before the crisis and during the crisis [ writes Lukacs] that was a decisive move. For through it the general feeling of despair abroad in wide circles of the German middle-class, and particularly among the intellectuals, was deepened, possible tendencies toward outrage were thwarted, and the aggressive forces of reaction thereby received a significant negative boost. If fascism could lead wide circles of German intellectuals to a more than wellwishing neutrality, then for that it owes not a little to the philosophy of HeideggerandJaspers.(Jbid.)

The decisionism of Kierkegaardian despair also reappeared. Its influence on the development of fascist ideology was even more direct than that of the decadence engendered by radical inwardness. In the existentially purified atmosphere of despair, one could exercise the "free choice" of "decision." "Inw~dly fixated on a desperate disorientation and lostness, men were enveloped in a reactionary activism which led finally to Hitlerian observances" (p. 412). "In such a 'free choice' Heidegger once opted for Hitler" (p. 239).

But this kind of desperate decisionism did not remain on the fringes, but appeared at the very center, of fascist ideology. In Alfred Baumler, for example, who may be regarded as "a representative of the official National Sociali~t philosophy" (p. 425), one finds the notion of "heroic realism" in which, "precisely in the sense of a modern.disciple of Kierkegaard," the meaning of life is found in "decision" (p. 427). For Baumler "decision" is in principle irrational and ungroundable. It is never made in security, but always in certainty-that is, through faith in the "Fiihrer" (Ibid.).

That, in conclusion, is how Lukacs places Kierkegaard's ideas in the history of irrationalism. For Lukacs the conscious intention is less important than the objective trajectory of Kierkegaard's thought. That class-bound and historically conditioned trajectory, as Lukacs sees it, is one that began in social reaction and ended in social holocaust.

Concluding Unscientific Postscripts

Lukacs wrote Die Zerstorung der Vernunft because of his concern for the responsibility of intellectuals. 5 He believes that "every thinker ... is responsible before history for the objective content of his philosophizing" (p. 6), and he presents his book as "a warning ... to all honest intellectuals" (p. 29). Lukacs calls intellectuals to become aware of the social consequences of their teachings and to struggle against the irrational and reactionary social forces of their times.

Without wishing to detract from that call, it must surely be said against Lukacs that one of the responsibilities of an intellectual is to avoid caricaturing an opponent. Tracing the "objective tendencies" of someone's thought can all too easily become an excuse for exaggeration and distortion. This can be especially true for

5 a. Lukacs' 1948 essay "On the Responsibilityoflntellectuals," Telos, II, l (Spring, 1969), 125-51.

A MARXIST VIEW OF KIERKEGAARD 39

those who are used to thinking in straight lines and for whom history is something that is governed by iron necessities.

Luka.ts' presentation of Kierkegaard-despite being right on all three major points, in my opinion-is utterly wooden, one-sided, and lacking in nuance. This is not the place to sift through and correct Lukacs' interpretation or to try, where possible, to re-instate the positive aspects of Kierkegaard's thought. Two aspects, however, may at least be mentioned.

Kierkegaard's thought is not only more abundant and ambiguous than Lukacs allows, but it also contains elements which proved useful to some of those who actually struggled against Hitler. One of those elements was Kierkegaard's concept of Christian discipleship, an idea which Lukacs mentions merely in order to dismiss it (p. '235). But Dietri~h Bonhoeffer did not dismiss it, and (despite Kierkegaard's closer definitions of discipleship) this concept exercised a lasting influence on Bonhoeffer's career (cf. the references to Kierkegaard in Ernst Feil's Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Miinchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971.). For example, Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship is largely a working through of Kierkegaard's ideas-even if Bonhoeffer eventually had to struggle to overcome Luther's two-kingdoms doctrine and Kierkegaard's radicalized subject-object· version of it. · Another of Kierkegaard's ideas which some people employed in the resistance to Hitler was that of maintaining an absolute relation to the absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends. Especially important in this context (again despite Kierkegaard's closer definitions) was the corollary that one avoid absolutizing the relative and relativizing the absolute. This idea exercised a decisive influence during the Kirchenkampf on Karl Barth whom, by the way, Lukacs mentions favorably (p. 640), and through Barth on Martin Niemoller, whom Lukacs twice praises (pp. 640, 663).

The prescription against absolutizing the relative might even have been recommended to Lukacs himself. Indeed, it is a bitter and grotesque irony that the man who has told us so much about the responsibility of intellectuals should himself have become a loyal follower of Stalin and that, in order to remain in the Party, he should have gone so far as to renounce his life's most creative work. Therefore, one must try to learn from Lukacs, as from Kierkegaard, despite the author's politics and the "objective tendencies" of his thought.

" Many, though not all, of Lukacs' objections to Kierkegaard could also be levelled on purely theological grounds. One of these would be the objection to the radical nature of Kierkegaardian inwardness and to the consuming preoccupation with one's own eternal blessedness. This preoccupation is not confined to Kierkegaard's non-Christian pseudonyms, as Herbert M. Garelick surmised in his book The Anti-Christianity of Kierkegaard (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), but can be traced through such explicitly "Christian" writings as Works of Love and Training in Christianity.

This kind of preoccupation was criticized long ago by John Calvin:

It is certainly not very sound theology, [wrote Calvin in his reply to Sadoleto,] to confine a man's thoughts so much to himself ... It certainly is the part of a Christian man to ascend higher than merely to seek and secure the salvation of his own soul. I am persuaded, therefore, that there is no man imbued with true piety, who will not consider as insipid ... a zeal which keeps a man


entirely devoted to himself ... (John Calvin, "Reply to Sadoleto," in John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto, A Reformation Debate, John C.' Olin, ed., [Harper Torchbooks: New York, 1966], p. 58)

Against this kind of thing Calvin posed a celebration of the glory and grace of God-a celebration that is almost as absent in Kierkegaard as it is in Lukacs. Indeed, Kierkegaard often seems to have gone back behind Luther to appropriate some of the worst aspects of medit!val theology. Kierkegaard emerges as a kind of monk without a monastery, or better, as a kind of incognito monk whose monastery is the world and whose salvation depends solely on the merits of his inwardness. The alternative posed by Kierkegaard is ultimately as inadequate as the one posed by Lukacs. Naive idealism and wooden materialism are equally flat-footed postures. Jiirgen Moltmann has stated these inadequacies well:

The changing of self, he writes, and of human personality without changing conditions is an idealistic illusion which theologians too should abandon .... The changing of conditions without changing man, on the other hand, is a materialistic illusion which the Marxists should also gradually leave behind. (Theology of Play[NewYork: HarperandRow, 1972],p.53)

The reason for this, as Moltmann points out, is that 'inward and outward liberation belong together. One cannot be derived from the other," nor can one finally be achieved apart from the other, for "the changing of self and conditions are· bound together in revolutionary, i.e., liberating, practice" (Ibid.).

Yul. XXX Nu. I J-"111/, 1974

Richard Rubenstein and Radical Christianity

George N. Boyd

While an outsider may not presume flatly to say what is potentially Jewish, the "mystical neopaganism" which Richard Rubenstein has espoused from the time of his first major theological essay seems illegitimate as a Jewish version of radical theology, but may, ir:onicall y, possess far more promise for a Christian radical viewpoint. That is to say "normative Judaism" with its "ethical monotheism" has as its appropriate secularized counterpart not mystical neopaganism, but atheistic humanism. Erich Fromm might serve as a characteristic example of-the Jewish intellectuals for whom prophetic passion for justice, the messianic hope of a realizable human harmony, and the practical incorporation of faith into the concrete details of daily Ii ving find secularized expressions which nevertheless remain parallel to traditional emphases of Judaism. But although Rubenstein intended his earlier work as a reconstructiveeffort to save what could be saved of Judaism in the age of the death-of-God, the effort to do so by combining "Jewish" and "pagan" seemed self-contradictory. The one thing a hove all Judaism does not allow is idolatry, the confusion of the transcendent and the immanent, the identification of anything finite with the divine. In reducing the world to immanence a Jew merely becomes a Jewish unbeliever, but in Rubenstein's "pagan" identification of the natural order as divine matrix, it would seem that he becomes a blasphemer.

Yet at the same time it is perhaps misplaced to label Rubenstein as a cryptoChristian death-of-God theologian. As he relates in the introductory chapter of My Brother Paul, Rubenstein has struggled and suffered for his Jewish identity, particularly in his boyhood in a secularized Jewish family, in the agony of coming to terms with Auschwitz, and in his long compulsive struggle with a strict keeping of the law and the personal price he paid for it. Even his youthful intention to become a Unitarian minister was brought to a halt by the suggestion that he change his Jewish name, which he saw as a demand for betrayal of his personal identity. But even if Rubenstein's private comments that he is now surer of his paganism than of his Judaism partially support the contention about the impossibility of "Jewish paganism," they give no warrant for re-labeling him any kind of Christian.

Nevertheless, most of the main insights of Rubenstein's thought make considerable sense as radical interpretations of Christian symbols and themes. Furthermore, they fit more naturally there than in ~ Jewish context. This should not, perhaps, be surprising. A greater ease in reconciling Biblical and pag-an insights

GEORGE N. BOYD is Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity University.


might be expected of the Christian tradition as a consequence of Christianity's original assimilation of various elements of Hellenistic religion and philosophy, and "Jewish paganism" is a phrase first century Jew~ might have found attractive in order to describe Christianity.

The Mystical, Neopagan God

Rubenstein's "mystical neopagan" doctrine of God provides the context for his treatment of the all-important notion of "Messiah." Curiously enough, Rubenstein's God-"Holy Nothingness"-finds a most appropriate symbolic expression in Trinitarian imagery, although Rubenstein has properly pointed up his Jewish antecedent in the sixteenth century Palestinian mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria. According to Luria, the revealed God and the world both came into existence through a division in the primordial Godhead, a self-diminution in God which limited him over against the world thereby created from his own being. Ultimately the cosmos will be restored to unity with its ground, and God will again be the Holy Nothingness (no-thing-ness, the plenum of being, without distinction of discrete existence). Thus cosmic history is divine self-alienation and restoral. All existence including human existence is exile; salvation is return to the peace of "nothingness. " 1

It is reasonable to argue, however, that Lurianic Kabbalism represents less a natural potential for Jewish theology than it does the perennial possibility of mystical vision, rooted in an intuitive perception of the dynamics of the human psyche, to transcend any orthodoxy, however hostile. Likewise similar doctrines in "Christian" philosophy from Boehme to Schelling and Hegel to Thomas Altizer may also be heterodox, but their roots in the Christian doctrine of God are indisputable. In any case Luria's concept of God is akin to the Trinitarian God who is understood in dialectical terms which are capable of doing justice both to unity and process, transcendence and immanence. The Father as primordial ground "begets" the Son, the eternal Logos, the principle of rational order, of distinction and discrimination, of actualization and discrete existence, and thus through this internal division of Logos from Ground all that was made (the world) was made (John 1:3).

Victorinus, the converted neo-Platonist who greatly influenced Augustine on the doctrine of the Trinity, provides probably the nearest "orthodox" parallef to later mystical metaphysics in his doctrine of the intrinsically triadic dialectic within the Godhead. As summarized by J.N.D. Kelly, Victorinus views the Father as

the divine essence considered as absolute and unconditioned; He is entirely without attributes or determination, invisible and unknowable; strictly He is 'prior to being.' The Son is the 'form' by which the Godhead determines or limits Itself, thereby coming into relation with the finite and constituting the image by which He knows Himself. 2

According to Victorinus, the divine life is a perpetual procession and regression, with the Spirit as the link between Father and Son, completing the perfect circle of the divine being.

Descriptions of Kabbalism occur repeatedly in Rubenstein's writings. See, for example, Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 184, 198, 219, and 248; or Richard Rubenstein, Morality and Eros ( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), pp. 19!1-194.

2 J.N.D. Kelly, &.rly Christian Doctrines, Second Edition (New York: Harper Be Row, 1960), p. 270.

RICHARD RUBENSTEIN AND RADICAL CHRISTIANITY· 43

The Holy Spirit, "proceeding" from the Father and the Son according to the Augustinian doctrine which dominated the West, continued generally to be seen as the relation or bond uniting Father and Son. It requires little extension to see this relational union eschatologically fulfilled in a simple unity which reverses "begetting" and "procession" and reestablishes the primordial undifferentiated being. Nor is this possibility unrealized in Christian literature. As Rubenstein has recently pointed out, even Paul seems to anticipate something like this in his surprising vision of Christ finally submitting totally to the Father "so that God may be all in all" (I Cor. 15:28).3 Rubenstein sees Paul as transcending his own faith and reflecting the yearning of the unconscious for a restoration of the peace of the womb which reverses the split of subject and object, consciousness and world. This yearning is projected consciously on a cosmic level as the reunion of world and its originating matrix. At any rate both the Pauline symbolism and the traditional interpretation of the Holy Spirit demonstrate that the dialectic of a mystical Trinitarianism could culminate in a primordial return as well as in an apocalyptic fulfillment. 4

The feminine aspect of the Trinity. As Rubenstein has also noted, the symbolism of reunion is ultimately maternaf, 5 nor is it inappropriate to the Trinity. Despite its masculine terminology, Trinitarian imagery is organic rather thari political: it includes passivity or receptivity as well as will. If symbolically and psychologically Father and Spirit may be considered to include the "feminine," this would repair what Rubenstein sees as the gravest psychological deficiency in the orthodox Jewish concept of God. Such inclusion of the feminine principle within the divine might also help to explain two facts which Rubenstein has noted with surprise, namely, that tales reflecting fear of the "cannibal mother" are not common to Christian folklore nor has the veneration of Mary taken on this fearsome symbolism of incorporation. 6

It is only when Trinitarian imagery is combined with Incarnational imagery, however, that the absolute separation of God and nature, of Judaism and paganism, is overcome. Incarnation means that the Logos, whose begetting establishes distinction and structure within the Godhead, is not simply the agent of creation but is actualized within creation. The cosmos in general and human life in particular are affirmed as having part in the life of God. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's twin functions of being the bond of relation between Father and Son and between God and the world are actually one and the same because of this kenosis or selfemptying of the divine to constitute the world. Jews and Muslims have never really been convinced that Trinitarian and Incarnational theology were not pagan. Perhaps they have been corrrect. Christians have often insisted that the Incarnation was superior to pagan th,eophanies in being an identification rather than an appearance of the divine in the flesh. They, too, are correct, except that they ought to speak in terms of fulfilling rather than transcending paganism.

3 Richard Rubenstein, My Brother Paul (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 168ff. 4 Thomas Altizer has, of course, argued that such an apocalyptic fulfillment, which is a final nega

tion and reversal of transcendence into immanence, is necessitated by the message of the Kingdom of God, and distinguishes Christianity from the, world religions, which teach a primordial return. See, for example, Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Descent mto Hell (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1970),p.59££.

5 My Brat her Paul, p. 17 l. 6 /bzd.,p.67.


The Messiah and Realized Eschatology

All the preceding mystical symbolism of separation from and return to the primordial Ground may be, as Rubenstein believes, an appropriate objectification of Freudian views of the development, fate and yearnings of the human psyche separated from and desiring to return to the peace of its maternal matrix. It also may bear a striking analogy to the cosmological theory which combines the "Big Bang" with "curved space" so as to assume the return of the universe to its single primordial mass (presumably idealist and apocalyptic versions of this cosmic dialectic would prefer to leave off "curved space"), but it must strike any observer who takes it as literal "theo-logos" as an immensely speculative brand of metaphysics. There is, however, an associated theme of Rubenstein's thought, namely, the correlation of the Angel of Death and the Messiah, 7 which can be expressed in images both Christian and secular.

In a Jewish context declaration of the Messianic status of death is simple negation. The only redemption from the vicissitudes· of existence is the grave; the hope of such redemption within history or in the gift of an afterlife is to be denied, and without such hope the meaning of "messiah" for rabbinic orthodoxy is sadly given up as illusion. Indeed since death is as much a state as an event, and the Messiah refers to agency rather than state, one could contemplate the blasphemous identification of Hitler as Messiah, in which case it would be ironically fitting that Messiah came to the most pious portion of world Jewry. 8

Messiah and thanatos. Such an identification is only blasphemous, however, as long as Messiah preserves a positive emotional connotation and is awaited with hope. Rubenstein repeatedly clarifies that this Messiah who offers the only way out of the imperfection of human existence and the only way of reuniting the organism with its environment is decidedly not to be desired. Nevertheless Rubenstein is too Freudian to be consistent in his denial that death is sought. Freud, as Rubenstein notes, "posited a universal yearning of atl life to return to the inorganic security which preceded the ecstasy of existence." 9 Even in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and its apparent elevation of eros to polarity with thanatos, thanatos remained more fundamental, 10 and Rubenstein reflects the original Freudian view of psychic energy modeled on libido and its drive toward release of tension when he comments, "since pleasure is ultimately a reduction of painful tension, mankind's final goal remains Nirvana." 11 Admittedly, this yearning belongs to the unconscious (primary process thinking), but the religious liturgy of mystical systems can hardly celebrate "the goal of all existence [as] return to the divine ground" 12 without all too undialectically approving the yearning in consciousness.

On the other hand, hpwever, could there be any more perfect symbolic expression of the insights Rubenstein expresses than the symbolism of the Cross-the Messiah crucified? To accept the Messiah as already come and as himself crucified

7 Morality and Eros, p. 195.After Auschwitz, pp. 220. 260. 8 Rubenstein cites Isaac Singer's novel The Family Moskat, in which one character says the Mes

siah, "will come speedily" as Hitler's armies approach the gates of Warsaw, meaning by this that death is the Messiah. Here death is personalized with a swastika armband.

9 Richard Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), p. 90. IO Rubenstein may imply agreement with this interpretation of thanatos as more fundamental

for Freud. See Morality and Eros, p. 65. 11 The Religious Imagination, p. I 79. 12 Morality and Eros, p. 195.

RICHAllD RUBENffEIN AND RADICAL CHRISTIANITY 45

is consciously to deny the yearning of primary process thinking for a way around pain and death. 15 The imagery of crucifixion and resurrection could provide a way to integrate the conflict of thanatos and eros. Death is accepted but life is affirmed in the face of death. Resurrection may have the last word, but its triumph is qualitative, not temporal. He who has "died to death," who has been baptized into it (Romans 5), no longer lives with anxiety and false hope; he is thus a new creation, free to relish each moment here and now in its precious unrepeatable finitude. '

Realized ~schatology. The real significance of "realized eschatology" certainly cannot be that redemption as deliverance from death, pain, sin, and conflict has been accomplished, for the Christians were not that much less observant of the reality of the world than were the Jews, whose tragic wisdom, said Rubenstein, was to recognize that the old order continued, i.e. the Messianic age could not possibly have come. Rather the real significance of "realized eschatology" is that the reality of death has already been experienced, through "identification" with the Messiah, and life affirmed nevertheless. Because one has no longer to repress his fear of death, he is not alienated from the God who is the ground of death as well as life. From this perspective the Rabbis' tragic wisdom that the Messiah had not come since nothing had changed may not be so much the triumph of the reality principle over wish-fulfilling fantasy as it is an insistence on maintaining the dominance of the unconscious yearning for immortality by keeping the Messiah in the future. It is the dialectic of crucified Messiah and resurrection which most appropriately symbolizes the wisdom Rubenstein would teach us: "~he inevitability of pain and evil along with real moments of joy and fulfillment, as long as life continues. " 14

Of course the Christians as much as the Rabbis rejected the implications of this kind of realized eschatology. They maintained the Messianic hope in its original form and pushed it again into the future as a second coming. Rubenstein sees this too as a triumph of the reality principle, but it is only so relative to the alternative of taking realized eschatology as a literal fulfillment of the unconscious yearning for omnipotence and immortality. The greater wisdom, which for Rubenstein was the fruit of psychoanalysis, is the acceptance of death, which makes possible the acceptance of life and its joy despite its limitations.

The same insight might be communally and ritually available in Christian symbols if radically demythologized. Rubenstein's pagan use of such symbols could have the precedent of the mid-twentieth century's most distinguished selfproclaimed pagan, Albert Camus, who maintained that it is possible to be both Christian and Absurd, if only one gives up.the hope of immortality. 15 One may wonder how many still active churchpeople find their consciences in just that position, and who for the most part have no new interpretation of their symbols to replace the one they have given up.

It is perhaps not quite fair even to tradition to insist, as Rubenstein does, that the beginning and end of the Christian message is the literal resurrection, 16 and

Ill This is not necessarily to deny that in Paul's case the vision of the crucified and risen Christ was a victory of the yearning for immortality on the level of primary _process-thought (My Brother Paul, pp. 48-50). Nevertheless the symbols are suggestive in other ways as well.

14 After Auschwitz, p. 220. 15 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus(New York: Random House-Vintage, 1955), p. 8!1. 16 Rubenstein approvil\gly quotes Karl Barth to this effect. My Brother Paul, p. !14.


thus repudiate the potentially "Christian" character of the interpretation above. The dominant Christian symbol is the cross, not the resurrection, and for a majority of the Christian world it is a cross frequently in the form of a crucifix. Moreover, love, which is present and worldly, is the spiritual gift greater even than hope (or faith!), according to Paul. It may even be, as a colleague of mine has argued, that the resurrection was not the original datum of faith for the first disciples. According to William 0. Walker, the imagery of resurrection might stem not even from a vision or hallucination of the historical Jesus, but could instead be a later objectification of an experience whose original content was only the discovery of the continuation of the ecstatic gifts they had known in dependence on Jesus.17 Attributing these gifts to his leadership, the continuation of their communal and ecstatic experience was the evidence of Jesus' continuing presence. If so, the original content of the experience was essentially to vindicate life and make possible the worship of the God who was author of life and death despite the ultimate negation of messianic hope.

Rubenstein and the Law

Since the initial formulation of this thesis, there has arisen some support for the contention that Rubenstein's thought exhibits more affinities with the Christian rather than the Jewish faith. At the October 1971 "Caucus of Radical Theologians" Rubenstein stated publicly and passionately that we should forget what he said in After Auschwitz about preserving the Torah-we must get rid of it! My Brother Paul reveals the reasoning which produced this most fundamental renunciation. Rubenstein interprets the law, as he does its secularized counterpart, the "performance" principle of middle-class society, as a disguised bribe addressed to the unconscious yearning for immortality-do well and you will be rewarded, ultimately by escape from death. 18 In addition, Rubenstein amplified his earlier skepticism about the effectiveness of sublimation (the way of the law) in dealing with guilt, 19 and agreed with the Pauline-Lutheran critique of the law as being unable to deliver man from anxiety to peace. Despite the Rabbinic assurance that the gates of forgiveness are always open to the repentant sinner, a problem remains within the human will which makes pure repentance impossible.20 In the sinner some part of him which desired the sin still remains to delight in it (especially in reliving it for purposes of repenting, he might add); moreover, the reminder of man's subordination to the law perennially incites the desire to rebel and assert independence, guaranteeing an element of resentment in the strictest obedience. Paul found acceptance by God and the immortality he sought apart from the law in the doctrine of justification. Rubenstein wrote that once the psychological sources of his own adherence to the law were revealed to him, both the Rabbis' and Paul's solutions became equally impossible, and he could only resolve his dilemma by the acceptance of death and by self-acceptance.21 Acceptance of death has been dealt with above, but note should be made that in Christian theology Tillich's "accept that you are accepted" already asserts

17 William 0. Walker, Jr., "Christian Origins and Resurrection Faith," The Journal of Religion, LIi, 1 (January, 1972), 51, 53.

18 My Brother Paul, p. 7. 19 The Religious Imagination, p. 164. 20 My Brother Paul, pp. ll-14. 21 Ibid., p. 21.

RICHARD RUBENSTEIN AND RADICAL CHRISTIANITY 47

the psychological affinity between "self-acceptance" and "justification by faith apart from the law."

Besides choosing a demythologized justification rather than the Torah, Rubenstein revealed his preference for the religio-psychological meaning of Christian themes at a number of other critical points: the psychological triumph of the Cross in that no one is so degraded as to be excluded; 22 the superiority of baptism to circumcision as symbolic rebirth to non-infanticidal parents; 25 his knowing no ritual of comparable emotional power with the Lord's Supper and its multiple psychic functions; 24 and the general breakthrough of Pauline Christianity to the archaic wisdom of the unconscious repressed in Judaism. 25 In My Brother Paul there seems to be little of significance separating Rubenstein from Pauline symbols except, first, Rubenstein's insistence on confining the meaning of resurrection to the literal .fulfillment of the yearning for immortality and, second, his somewhat surprising insistence that symbols of incarnation would prevent him from saying that Jesus was a fully normal Jew of first century Palestine. ·

Suffering, Death, and Eschatology in Rubenstein

Suffering and death. There are, however, two barriers blocking any final synthesis of Christian-or Jewish-symbols with Rubenstein's theology. First, the dialectic of crucifixion and resurrection should allow some sense in which death may be redemptive beyond the simple negation of struggle and probably beyond the psychologically liberating effect of accepting death. Indeed the Christian interpretation that suffering love could be redemptive on the social (and thus, properly Messianic) level is rooted in Isaiah's vision of the suffering servant. Yet Rubenstein has vituperatively denounced this passage (Isaiah 53) as a "megalomanic and grandiose misreading of a pathetic and defeated community's historic predicament," shared even today by some Jews "who delude themselves with the notion that somehow Jewish suffering and powerlessness have redemptive significance for mankind." 26 This reaction is probably part of Rubenstein's determination that there be no possibility of giving me;ming to Auschwitz. However, the denial of any potentially redemptive significance to suffering contradicts the facts of human experience. It is a cruel irony, which does nothing to relieve the victims' anguish or to justify either the criminal or his act, that martyrs and gratuitously sacrificed innocents may sometimes affect the wider public. There are those whose voluntary suffering has testified to an ideal of a human sqciety which knows more than expediency and a balance of terror. Even with unwilled suffering imposed capriciously by people or by the natural order, it remains true that others may be the beneficiary of such suffering. This might be brutally illustrated by Rubenstein's account of his own psychological liberation from the performance principle and its promise of immortality which began with the death of his son Nathaniel and concluded with his meditation on the Holocaust.

That someone else's good may come from evil may only increase the sense of injustice, but in countless ways people are the beneficiaries of others' misfortunes and of ancestral crimes. This is not to predict the extreme unlikelihood that more

22 Ibid., p. 28. 23 Ibid., p. 68. 24 Ibid., p. 93. 25 Ibid., p. 105. 26 The Religious Imagination, p. 175.


good than evil will finally come from the Holocaust, nor would we consent to attempt devising so horrible a calculus capable of such measurements. Yet it is part of the irony of life that neither unwillingly suffering innocence nor willfully suffering love are wholly devoid of redemptive potential.

Eschatology. The first barrier is closely related to the second, which is Rubenstein's repudiation of any "eschatological hope." Although he affirms hope for some joy here and now, the predominant tone of his descriptions emphasizes the vicissitudes of existence. But more importantly, he denies that there may be any "radical novelty" in the human condition. Rubenstein has a truly pagan resignation to a static as well as tragic world which "goes on today as it did yesterday and as it will tomorrow." 27 With the disclosure of the death camps Rubenstein gave up the belief that people were getting better, or that they ever would, since "the evil rooted in human nature would never entirely disappear," 28 even though it by no means logically follows from the latter phrase that all "getting better" is excluded

Perhaps anatomy plus toilet training is destiny, i.e., repression is inevitable as" the price of civilization, but it is a little presumptuous to absolutize the developmental tensions manifest in a history which is less than I% of the potential human story. Can all the work of educational and psychological research and experimentation, which is still in its infancy, be ruled irrelevant in principle? To each person we cannot assure leadership, success in love, and the absence of neurosis or disease, but would not taking the element of anxiety over survival out of human competition, eliminating starvation and malnutrition, providing security, social participation, medical care, decent shelter, equality of educational opportunity and a peaceful world-order be a "radical novelty" to the way humans have experienced life? Yet, seemingly, most of the above have been attained in some societies even if at a high cost of external as well as internal repression. The missing element of peace, which is the primary metaphor of the Messianic age, must necessarily be achieved if we are to survive at all.

In short, a genuine worldly hope, which we see as legitimized although not guaranteed by human experience and capacity, is the essential ingredient of both the Christian and Jewish Messianic symbolism which Rubenstein rejects. A radically realized eschatology need not project this hope into a transcendence of finitude, psychic conflict, and death, but it does affirm a redemptive process at work within those ultimate limits. Within such affirmation Rubenstein could still reject the apocalypticism and human apotheosis in Thomas Altizer's interpretation of Christian symbolism. Likewise he might argue that the enthusiastic baptism of technological and (later) of revolutionary movements by Harvey Cox uncritically exegetes hope in the face of an ambiguous reality, but it is possible that Rubenstein's predominantly negative language is equally disproportionate to the evidence. In Rubenstein's insistence on maintaining the most negative strand of Freud we see again the personal effect of Auschwitz.

Rubenstein's Dilemma

If there is validity in this analysis of Rubenstein's close unity with Christian symbols, is it possible that he labels his thought pagan .partly because his per-

27 After Auschwitz, p. 264. 28 Ibid., p. 216.

RICHARD RUBENSTEIN AND RADICAL CHRISTIANITY 49

sonal history makes it impossible to take seriously the possibility of identifying himself as a Christian, even of the death-of-God variety? To label oneself Christian recalls, after all, a special history of Jewish apostates as well as a sense of betrayal of personal identity. Yet if Rubenstein still believes his early arguments that man is homo religiosis and that religion means the public sharing of the meaning of the human situation and the decisive emotional transitions in human development through myth and ritual, 29 then religion must retain community. There is, however, no active religious community celebrating explicitly his mystical paganism. And what is Rubenstein to do if Christian symbols and sacraments express his insights better than Jewish ones?

, There are, of course, other options for Rubenstein outside of finding some Episcopalian (or other liturgical) congregation radical enough to accept him. Buddhism, for example, may be a live option in an American University community and an appropriate one if the quest for a Freudian Nirvana remains dominant in his thought. A more serious option, however, might be that theologians of Rubenstein's orientation give serious attention to working out the forms of the practical communal embodiment of their vision. Rubenstein once chall~nged the Christian death-of-God theologians to this,3° but in their antipathy to "religion" and institutionalization the challenge was never accepted. Now that Rubenstein's breach with Judaism is so severe, the same responsibility may rest in him. The availability of communal structures and symbolic-litu~gical forms capable of expressing a sacramental sense of life, a sense of human limits within the domain of nature, and the psychological-emotional realities of life's process, might evoke a rather surprising response.

If such forms were to be developed, the community itself might be neither Christian nor Jewish in the strict sense, but we suspect that Christian symbolism could appropriately play so strong a role as to make the result look as much like a form of radical Christianity as paganism or Judaism. At considerable risk of being charged with naivete, could such a movement even provide an ironic confirmation to Paul's hope that the "turning to the Gentiles" (the incorporation of a pagan view of man's place in nature) is thejnstrument by which the reconciliation of the Church and Israel might be accomplisped?

29 Ibid., p. 68, 196, 221-22, 251-52. !10 Ibid., p. 2!15.


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abingdon

Vol. XXX No. 1 Fall, 1974

Book Reviews

CANAANITE MYTH AND HEBREW EPIC by Frank Moore Cross; Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1973, xviii+ 376 pp., $14.00.

Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, has brought together in this book the fruits of over twenty-five years of teaching and research into the origin and development of Israel's religion. The title of the book is apt: it is about the mutual interplay of Northwest .Semitic religious motifs ("myth") with the historical traditions of Israel and its ancestors ("epic"). For Cross "myth and epic are in continual tension in the course of ancient Israel's religious history, but epic dominates myth while myth enhances epic. In the biblical text the mythic themes are derived from Canaanite and Amorite culture; the epic themes stem from the story of Israel-chiefly the Exodus-Conquest traditions and the relics of the proto-lsraelite, patriarchal past."

The individual chapters give the impression of being a collection of loosely related articles ordered chronologically by topic, albeit only three of the chapters have appeared elsewhere in similar form. 1 The chapters are often very detailed, there is some repetition, and certain specific moments of history are singled out for disproportionate concentration. Cross himself admits to a certain lopsided emphasis on problems related to the earliest stages of Israel's history. Several of the chapters update and combine the varied work that Cross and his students have been doing in recent years.2 Although the work cannot be classified as a general survey due to its special concentrations of emphasis, unification is attempted by .

Chapter 8, "The Pne,tly Hou,es of Early Israel,'" i; an expansion of lectures given at B1andei; (November, 1968) and Yale (Apnl, 1969). Chapter 10, "The Themes of the Book of Kmgs and the Structure of the Deuteronomistic History," i; based on a lecture published under the title "The Structure of the Deuteronomic (szc) History," in Perspectives m Jewish Learning, Annual of the College of Jewish Studies, 3 (1968). Chapter 12, "The Early History of the Apocalyptic Community at Qumran," u, a revised edition of a paper written for a symposium 011 "The Dead Sea Scrolls after 20 Years," which appeared in the McCormick Quarterly, XXI (1968) and in New Directions in B1bl1-ca/ Archeologv,ed. D.N. Freedman and J.C. Greenfield(NewYork: Doubleday, 1969).

2 Twenty-one arucles or dissertations by fourteen recent Harvard Ph.D.s are cited in the notes, a number of which treat ex professo themes of this book. R. J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain m Canaan and the Old Testament, Harvard Semitic Monograph; 4, (C".ambridge: Harvard U.P., 1972); Patnck D. Miller Jr., The Divine Warrior in Early Israel, (Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1973); Paul Hanson, Studies m the Origin of Jewish Apocalyptic, Harvard Dissertation,, 1969; S. Dean McBnde, The Deuteronomzc Name Theology, Harvard Dissertation, 1969; R.M. Polzin, LXII ,md Covenantal Instituuons in Early Israel," Harvard Theological Review, 62 (1969), 233-40; and not cited but related, Conrad E. L'Heureux, El and the Rephazm: New Light from l ,~ar,fl{ a T'. Harvard Dissertation, I 969.

There are references to twenty-nine different published works authored or co-authored by Cross m the fields of early epigraphy, the Qumran Scrolls, early Hebrew poetry, and the origins of Hebrew rehgwn. Mo,t important among them as preludes to the present study are: "The Priestly Tabernacle,"B1blical Archeologist, X (1947),reprinted in The B1bl1cal Archeolog1st Reader, I, ed. bv D. N. F1eedman and G. E. Wright (Garden City: Doubleday, 196l);"The Bles;ing of Moses,". with D. N. Freedman, Journal of Biblical Literature, LXVII ( 1948); "The Song of Miriam, "with D. N. Freedman, journal of Near Eastern Studies, XIV ( 1955), an excerpt from the jointly published chs,ertauon, Studies m Ancient Yahw1st1c Poetry, Baltimore (1950); "The Council of Yahweh m Second Isaiah," journal of New Eastern Studies, XII ( 1953); "The Phoenician Inscription on "


relating all the disparate topics to the problem of the relation between Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic.

There is a danger in summarizing the interplay of mythic and epic patterns in the history of Israel's religion, even as Cross himself maintains: "Israel's early religious evolution was neither simple nor unilinear" (p. 143). Thus it is quite a complicated scheme which he presents to combine the insights of both the Mythand-Ritual School and the Heilsgeschichtliche School without falling into either category. It appears that one may distinguish four major moments in the development of Israelite religion: the era of preparation and of proto-Israel, the era of the cultus of the league, the era of the royal cultus and ideology, and the era of the Exile and after.

(1) In the earliest period, one may imagine among the ancestors of later Israel the coexistence of the cult of two types of deity. First is the cult of the Divine Kinsman, a protective god who "entered into an intimate relationship with a social group, established its justice and directed its battles" (p. 89), very much like Alt's "god of the Fathers." Alongside of this was the cult of Canaanite El, divine patriarch, creator of heaven and earth, leader of cosmic armies. In the earliest accessible stratum of Israel's religion, both of these types of deity have already coalesced in the figure of Yahweh, whose name was probably an epithet of El (pp. 89, 90). Still another type of deity and mythic pattern must have existed at this time represented by the figure of Canaanite Baal, the storm god who defeats Sea (Yamm) and Death/Drought (Mot) in cosmic battles (see pp. 163, 177, 185), although there i11 no reason to assume any confluence of this deity with El/Yahweh in this period.

(2) In the era of the league, historical events have had an impact on old cultic institutions and the covenant festivals of Israel at such places as Gilgal and Shiloh (spring) and Shechem (fall) (p. l05n.) These no longer reenact the old cosmogonic myths (although they include this imagery) but celebrate the Exodus-Conquest and Sinai covenant events in ritual form. Already at this point there has been a merging of the mythic imagery of El, the warrior and lawgiver, with that of Baal, the storm god and victor over the sea, although in the earliest witnesses (e.g., Ex: 15) the Baal imagery remains in the background (pp. 132, 163). In the earliest epic sources, JE, the account of Exodus-Sinai-Conquest already demonstrates the coalescence of the mythic characteristics of El, of Baal, and of the god of the Father, all of whom share in some way the role of Divine Warrior.

(3) In the cultus of the monarchy, when the old cultic festivals seemingly fell into neglect (see 2 K.23:21£.), there is a recrudescence of mythology, especially of the mythic patterns of Baal stimulated by the construction of a dynastic temple on the Canaanite pattern (pp. 105ff.). Here the old theme of the "ritual conquest" flows together with the procession of the Ark of the Covenant to Zion (pp. 106, 109-11). Throughout this period the prophetic loyalty to the epic traditions of the tribal league is a counterpoise to the royal cultus and ideology. The pre-exilic interpretations of the epic themes which became embodied in the traditions we call JE, D, and Powe much to the prophetic conservatism (p. 144).

(4) With the end of the monarchy and the demise of classical prophecy there is a new revival of the mythic patterns which combine the old images of Canaanite

Plaque of the Seventh Century B.C. from Arslan Tash in Upper Syria," Bulletin of the American Schools for Oriental Research, CXCVII (1970); "The Divine Warrior in Israel's Early Cult," in Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations, Philip W. Lown Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Studies and Texts3,ed. A. Altman(Cambridge: HarvardU.P., 1966).

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myth, the royal ideology (now without cultic function) and the prophetic tradition, resulting in what Cross labels "proto-apocalyptic." Myths were combined with historical themes to form eschatology or, "a theology of 'old things' and 'new things' in the drama of salvation" (p.136; cf. pp. 109-11).

The attribute of God which- permits the confluence of several distinct types of mythic deity with the residue of Israel's ·historical experience is that of Divine Warrior. El, the leader of celestial armies, and Baal, the victor in cosmic battle over the Sea, coalesce with the deliverer of Israel's ancestors at the Sea of Reeds. The motif remains in the imagery of the eschatological victory of Yahweh. As Cross puts it, "The ideology of holy war makes possible the transition from the cultus of the league to the cultus of the kingdom, and ultimately to the ideology of the apocalyptic" (p. 105).

The value of the book is not exhausted by the presentation of this subtle and suggestive outline of Israel's religious history. Quite apart from this contribution there is the enormous value of having so much of the work of Cross and his students collected and presented in one book. Students of the Old Testament will find here fresh and extended treatments of a number of important passages: Ex. 3:14, "The Song at the Sea" (Ex. 15), the "Oracle of Nathan" (II Sam. 7), "The Last Words of David" (2 Sam. 23:1-7), Psalms 24, 29, 89, 132, and Isaiah 35. In addition there are abundant references to the early poetry of Israel and related passages: Jud. 5, Deut. 32, 33, Psalm 68, and Hab. 3.

Important texts from Ras Shamra-Ugarit are presented with translations and commentary: 3 from the Baal cycle, CTA 2, 4, and 6 (Gordon, UT 137, 129, 68, 51, 49), the Shahar and Shalim text, CTA 23:31-53 (Gordon, UT 52), and excerpts from the Keret!Kirta and Aqhat legends. In most cases Cross provides his own tentative vocalization of the texts (a rare practice) which makes these passages doubly interesting to students of Ugaritic and to those interested in the meter of Canaanite poetry. Besides Ugaritic there are numerous references to ancient Near Eastern epigraphy among which one finds the important incantation tablet from Arslan Tash and numerous references to the Amarna letters, Sanchuniathon, the Sefire Treaty inscriptions-all adequately indexed.

Besides the exposition of key texts, a considerable number of the major problems of ancient Near Eastern studies and Old Testament research find treatment here: the prophetic lawsuit (rzb) (pp. 186-190, cf. p. 41), the origins of the Yahwist and Priestly documents (pp. 22, 261-64, 321-25), apocalyptic and apocalyptic origins (pp. 342-46, cf. pp. 90, 135ff, 144), Semitic grammar and poetic form, the meter of Canaanite poetry (largely confined to footnotes and obiter dicta), the arguments for treating West Semitic Ellilum as a proper name (pp. 14f.), the origin and meaning of El Shadday, "the mountain one" (pp. 52-60), arguments for the Hebroniteoriginof thepriestlyhouseof Zadok (pp. 207-14) and for the Josianic first edition of the Deuteronomistic History (Chapter 10).

Cross argues forcefully against Noth, von Rad, and others for the original inclusion of the Sinai-covenant traditions in the Exodus-Conquest complex. The position he adopts is essentially that defended by Weiser and others 4 that the Sinai traditions in their present place in the epic traditions are indeed "secondary,"

3 Ugaritic Texts are cited according to A. Herdner, Corpus des tablettes en cunezformes alphabetiques (= CTA, Paris: P. Geuther, 1963) and also according to the numbering of C.H. Gordon, V garitic Textbook ( = VT, Rome: Pontifical Biblicallnstitute, 1965).

4 See, e.g., A. Weiser, The Old Tt!stament: its Form and Development, a translation of the 4th ed. of his Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1957 (New York: Association Press, 1961) pp. 83ff.

BOOK REVIEWS 55

since their earlier and rightful place was at the close of the cultic recitation of the magnalia Dei in a covenant renewal ceremony like that in Joshua 24 (p. 85). Cross ingeniously turns Noth's method of separating themes against Noth himself by showing first that the types of "divine law-giver" (El) and storm god (Baal) are distinct; and second, linking the Exodus events, particularly the victory at the Sea of Reeds, with Baal imagery and forms of manifestation. It is not ha'rd to show that the earliest epic accounts of the Sinai events (JE) already contain a combination of El imagery (lawgiver, covenant god) and Baal imagery (Victor at the Sea, manifest in the clouds); that is to say, the Sinai account in itself already links in its imagery Exodus and Sinai events (pp. 177-86).

In a work of such scope there are bound to be abundant opportunities for controversy with the author. There is a certain lack of sophistication in the use of the terms "myth" and "epic" with a tendency to label whatever is Canaanite "myth" and whatever is uniquely Israelite "epic." The defense of the Albrigh~ interpretation of the causitive meaning of the name Yahweh would be stronger if some other attestations of the verb "to be" hyhl hwh, in the ""yaqtilu (causitive) stem could be found with the meaning "to create," or "to lead (armies)." The rejection of the possibility of there being a divine name in the form proper name+ genitive is weakened somewhat by the epithet rsp ~b'i in UT 2004:15, which Cross's student P.D. Miller Jr. 0 translates as "Reseph of the Army!" 5 Cross raises some questions in his description of the Baal legends from Ugarit as "cosmogonic." Perhaps it may be argued as Cross does (p. 120) that our notions of what constitutes cosmogony are biased by the biblical notion that creation is the beginning of time (history), but there remains a distinction between the activity ascribed to Baal and that of Marduk after their respective victories over Yamm and Tiamat. In the Enuma Elish Marduk constructs a cosmos from the carcass of slain Tiamat (tablets IV, V), while no such activity is attested for Baal. Baal's victory over Yamm (CTA 2, UT 68) does not issue in Yamm's death, and the outcome is, evidently the building of Baal's palace with the interest centering on the crucial question of whether it shall have windows (CT A 4, UT 51) whence rain may fall. Baal has yet another battle to fight.with divine Mot, the god who represents drought. All of this suggests that the Baal cycle of legends is to be interpreted as the mythical description of the seasonal pattern as maintained by Gaster. 6 Although there is evidence of a West Semitic myth of the victory of God over chaos, represented by the Sea, 7 the Baal-Yamm myths from Ugarit do not reflect this so much as the ascendancy of rain over the god of sea and river.

This book is not easy to read, and it demands much from the non-expert in biblical studies. Nevertheless the effort expended is amply rewarded. The indices include an index of biblical citations, an index of (Hebrew) technical terms in

5 P.D. Miller, Jr., op. cit., p. 21. 6 ·n1. H. Gaster, Thespis(New York: HarperTorchbooks,ed., 1966),pp. I I0-34. 7 The most pertinent Ugaritic texts are CTA 5.1:1-5 (UT 67) where Baal fights Lathan the ancient

seven-headed dragon, and CTA 3.3:35-39 (UT' nt) where c Anat fights Yamm who is identified with the dragon (tnn), the seven-headed serpent. In the Bible see Pss. 74:13-17, 89:10, Job 7:12, 9:8, 26:10-13, Is. 27:1, 51:9. Note also the article by T. Jacobsen, "The Battle bt;tween Marduk and Tiamat," Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXXVIII ( 1968), 104-08, in which he presents evidence that there might be a West Semitic origin for the battle with dragon ocean. It seems possible to distinguish two distinct mythological patterns nevertheless: one a victory over watery chaos leading to the creation of an orderly cosmo~ with limits for the sea, and another indicating the ascendancy in the seasonal pattern of the waters from the·sky over the waters of rivers and sea.


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57


transliteration, an index of authors cited, and a general index. The footnotes of the book are an excellent bibliographical resource. There are a few errata. 8

Sam Wheeler

SAM WHEELER isa doctoral candidate at Union.

RELIGIONS OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST by Helmer Ringgren; Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1973, 198 pp., $7.50.

Those looking for a fairly brief but reliable, up-to-date, and highly readable descriptive guide to the Sumerian, Assyro-Babylonian, and Canaanite-Aramean religions as background to the study of the religion of Israel should be pleased to learn about this new volume in the Westminster Press' Old Testament Library series, which now adds its first translation from Swedish OT scholarship prepared by one of Sweden's most eminent biblical scholars. After a short historical introduction in which the sources for our knowledge of each religion are sketched, Ringgren proceeds to describe the principal deities, the myths composed about their exploits, the rituals connected with them, and their relationship to the king, to human morality, and to beliefs about life and death. The presentation is well-organized and clearly written in relatively non-technical language for the non-specialist. Especially commendable are the author's generally balanced and undogmatic judgments when dealing with matters of interpretation which are disputed The decision to include in the footnotes copious references to sources and scholarly studies on detailed features will be of great benefit for those readers who might want to pursue certain matters in greater depth. Though it is quite understandable why there is not included any major treatment of Israelite religion in this survey of ancient Near Eastern religions (Ringgren has already devoted a separate study to this subject in 1963, appearing in English in· 1966), it is less comprehensible (and an unfortunate lacuna) that almost all discussion of Egyptian and Hittite religion is omitted, except for a few passing comparisons. It would seem that the Egyptian religion in particular should have been given equal attention in any treatment, a part of whose purpose was to study the background to Old Testament religion.

George M. Landes

GEORGE M. LANDES is Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature at Union.

INTELLIGIBLE AND RESPONSIBLE TALK ABOUT GOD: A THEORY OF THE DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE AND ITS BEARING UPON THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLISM by Robert A. Evans; Leiden, E.]. Brill, 1973, xvii+ 231 pp., 64 guilders.

Robert A. Evans is convinced that meaningful practice of Christian faith requires viable understanding and use of theological language. Christian life may come alive only when Christian language comes alive, and Christian language can

8 Among those noticed are: p. 38, read Ps. 48:3, not 43:8; p. 97 note 24, read ysb, not skb; pp. 198 note 20,204 note 42,205 note 46, G.W. Coats book should be referred to as Rebellion m the Wilderness, not Rebellion in the Desert.

BOOK REVIEWS 59

come alive only when it is able effectively to express the lively experiential substance of faith.

It is therefore a profoundly practical as well as theoretical concern which leads Evans to undertake the ambitious task of developing a general theory of language in terms of which talk about God may be both responsible and intelligible. In pursuing the task he draws heavily on W.M. Urban and the later Heidegger for philosophical substance, and on Tillich for theological direction. But he seeks to take account also of some insights from recent Anglo-American philosophical analysis as well as insights from process philosophy and from varying forms of Continental theology. The result is a useful and suggestive sketch of a unifying theory which, like all good theories, suggests agenda for further work.

Briefly, ·Evans conceives of language as exhibiting two dimensions (not strata or spheres): symbolic and conceptual. In the symbolic dimension intuitive meaning function is predominant. Transformational symbols supply authentic awareness and cognitive insight and provide the necessary foundation for all intelligible discourse. There is a symbolic dimension in all forms of knowledge, whether it be scientific, historical, or theological. There is also a conceptual element in all forms of knowledge, in which interpretation yields indicative meaning, and insight gained from intuition is illustrated. To these dimensions of language correspond two dimensions of thought or reason-foundational and technical, and two types of knowledge-receiving and controlling. Foundational reason is receptive and experiential; technical reason is possessive and experimental. In receiving knowledge the accent falls on union and participation; in controlling knowledge, on distance and detachment. In all forms of knowledge meaning entails possibility of confirmation. Truth is adequacy of expression. Confirmation of symbolic knowledge is authentication; confiqnation of conceptual knowledge is verification. While theological language is eminently symbolic, its intelligibility depends on conceptual verification. A useful tool for conceptual verification in theology is analogy, understood as description.

Through this scheme Evans seeks to avoid both the mystification of symbolmongering and the Philistinism of more limited theories of verification. The goal is commendable, and the task is crucial for the future of theological work.

Some will have reservations about elements of the theory. Connective tissue between analogical and empirical verification must be supplied. Some may wonder how one knows about non-linguistic Being (always capitalized) and about the relation of Being to language, and some may be troubled by passages •in which Being appears to function as (individual?) agent, with which (Whom?) man cooperates in language which "un-conceals" Being. In the extension of the symbolic-conceptual polarity to scientific knowledge, some may be troubled by the proposed association of the "symbolic" in science with theories or models (a murky and much-used notion these days). In science these are the expression or result of conceptual patterns experimentally derived-a relation rather different from the asserted relation of the symbolic to the conceptual in theology. Also, while Evans notes the rich possibilities in the view of language uses as "forms of life" in the later Wittgenstein, one hopes that others who share his concerns may be led to examine more thoroughly the possibilities of this richer view of language in the context of some broader theories of experience formulated in the American philosophical tradition.

In any event, Evans' book should do what he wants it to do: stimulate exploration of the significance of theological language in the context of a broad but carefully articulated general theory of language. Theological language can make


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••. for the theologist. RELIGION AND MODERN LITERATURE: Essays in Theory and Criticism Georg B. Tennyson and Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Editors In thirty-two essays, written by som~. of the most prestigious authors and critics of our time, the editors have organized a reader on the relationship between literature and religious belief, isolating and exploring some of the major religious themes in twentieth-century literature.


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sense, and thus effectively articulate and enhance the life of faith, only if it is intelligible in terms of structures shared by other languages. Whether or not there are structures or dimensions common to all language remains to be seen. The task is, as Wittgenstein said, to be careful to note "family resemblances" as well as "family differences" in living language forms. Bob Evans has made an interesting and helpful contribution to that task.

].A. Martin, Jr.

J.A. MARTIN, JR. is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Union and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

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Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya Some Fundamental Problems in Indian

C. Kunhan Raja

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50.00 Studies in Hindu Political 'Ihought & its Metaphysics

(3rd Revised Ed.) V. P. Varma Studies in the Origin of Buddhism-G. C. Pandey Studies in the Political and Administrative System of

Ancient and Medieval India-D. C. Szrcar Studies in the Semantic Structure of Hindi-Vo/. I.

K. C. Bahl Vedantic Buddhism of Buddha- J. G. Jenning Vedic Mythology-A. A. Nfacdonell W. B. Yeats and Occultism-fl. R. Bachchan Yoga Philosophy in Relation to Other Systems of

Indian Thought-S. N. Das_f!,11pt,1 The Yogacara Idealism-A. K. Chatterjee

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100.00 65.00 35.00 45.00

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