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THE

PRINCETON

SEMINARY

BULLETIN

Peace to You Ulrich W. Mauser-

Opening Convocation, September 23, 1984

The Prayer Katharine Doob Safyenfeld

Opening Convocation, September 23, 1984

The Open Banquet Daniel L. Mighore

Opening Communion Service, September 24, 1984

The Irritant of Agnosticism Edward Hulmes

Students’ Lectureship on Missions

Can the West be Converted? Lesslie Newbigin

VOLUME VI, NUMBER 1

NEW SERIES 1985

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Thomas W. Gillespie
President

John M. Templeton, President

James F. Anderson
Clem E. Bininger
Robert W. Bohl
John H. Donelik
Peter E. B. Erdman
Rosemary H. Evans
Milton A. Galamison
Sarah B. Gambrell
Francisco O. Garcia-Treto
Helen H. Gemmill
Margaret L. Harmon
Alexandra G. Hawkins
C. Thomas Hilton
J. Roger Hull, Jr.

Bryant M. Kirkland
Johannes R. Krahmer

Eugene C. Blake
J. Douglas Brown
John G. Buchanan
Frederick E. Christian
Allan M. Frew
John T. Galloway
Weir C. Ketler

BOARD OF TRUSTEES
David

Robert M. Adams, Secretary
William E. Lawder, Treasurer

TRUSTEES EMERITI

James I. McCord
President Emeritus

i. Watermulder, Vice-President

Henry Luce III
Donald C. McFerren
Earl F. Palmer
George T. Piercy
William A. Pollard
Clifford G. Pollock
Norman D. Pott
William H. Scheide
Laird H. Simons, Jr.
Frederick B. Speakman
William P. Thompson
Karen L. Turner
Jeffrey R. Wampler
Samuel G. Warr
Charles Wright
Ralph M. Wyman

Harry G. Kuch
Raymond I. Lindquist
John S. Linen
J. Keith Louden
Dale W. McMillen, Jr.
James M. Tunnell, Jr.
Irving A. West

The Princeton Seminary Bulletin

VOL. VI NEW SERIES 1985 NUMBER 1

Ronald C. White, Jr., Editor Lynn S. Halverson, Assistant to the Editor

CONTENTS

Peace to You

Ulrich W. Mauser

Opening Convocation, September 2],

1984

The Prayer Katharine Doob SaJ^enfeld

Opening Convocation, September 23,

1984

The Open Banquet

Daniel L. Migliore

Opening Communion Service, September 24, 1984

The Irritant of Agnosticism

Edward Hulmes

Students’ Lectureship on Missions

Can the West be Converted?

Lesslie Newbigin

Sermons

Shall the Moral Majority Prevail?
Should Affluent Adults be Admitted

Conrad H. Mass a

to the Lord’s Supper?

Norman D. Pott

Book Reviews

Theodicy in the Old Testament, ed. by James L. Crenshaw Katharine Doob Sa\enfeld

Wisdom Literature and Psalms, by Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm.
“And So We Came to Rome”: The Political Perspective of St.

Luke, by Paul W. Walaskay

Jeffrey S. Si her

Foundations of Dogmatics, Vols. 1 & 2, by Otto Weber

Daniel L. Migliore

Process Theology as Political Theology, by John B. Cobb, Jr.

Lois Gehr Lwezey

Growing Amid the Thistles, by Stanford B. Lucyk

Donald Macleod

How to Preach More Powerful Sermons, by Homer K. Buerlein
Life Cycle Theory and Pastoral Care, by Donald Capps

Brad A. Bmau

The Living Human Document, by Charles V. Gerkin

Brian H. Childs

Cinderella and Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying, by Ann
and Barry Ulanov

Gene Fowler 54

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

The Bulletin is published three times annually by the Theological Seminary
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Each issue is mailed free of charge to all alumni/ae and on exchange
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Ronald C. White, Jr. Lynn S. Halverson

Editor Assistant to the Editor

All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor and accompanied
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The policy of the Bulletin is to publish lectures and sermons by Princeton
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Second Class postage pending at Princeton, New Jersey 08542.

Peace to You

by Ulrich W. Mauser

Ulrich W. Mauser is Errett M. Grabel
Professor of New Testament and Dean of
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. An
alumnus of the University of Tubingen and
the University of St. Andrews, he is a mem-
ber of the American Academy of Religion
and the Society of Biblical Literature. Dr.
Mauser is the author of three boobs and is
editor of Horizons in Biblical Theology.

Opening Convocation, September 23, 1984

Several years ago, the General As-
sembly of what was then the
United Presbyterian Church in the
USA, voted to embark on a ten year
emphasis on peacemaking. A com-
mittee was duly formed which has
ever since this vote vigorously di-
rected and coordinated the peace-
making efforts, and it was this com-
mittee which in the spring of 1983
approached your sister institution,
the Pittsburgh Theological Semi-
nary, with the request to consider
conducting a pilot project in theo-
logical education by implanting the
concern for peace into the body of
an already existing theological cur-
riculum in the hope that as many
members of Pittsburgh’s faculty as
possible would probe the issue of
peace each in their disciplines and
in the expectation that our efforts
would benefit the church, in both
theory and practice. After the invi-
tation had been extended to it by the
peacemaking committee, the Pitts-
burgh faculty, as all good faculties
do, hesitated, deliberated, cogitated,
and finally eventuated the accept-
ance: and so we had one pilot year
of peace studies and peacemaking
and I am glad we did it. I have not
received the honor of being with you
tonight in order to spread before you
the administrative intricacies, or the

curricular mechanics, or the actual
effects even of this pilot year. But I
will say that all of us Pittsburghers,
students and faculty, who allowed
ourselves to pay a price for the pilot
through many long hours of involve-
ment and study — -that we have
learned from it. And this is the one
simple thing that I would like to
offer to you tonight: to give you a
few glimpses of what I have learned
in my own theological discipline,
which is New Testament studies, in
the course of the past eighteen
months, a few glimpses of observa-
tions and growing convictions which
a year ago I would have been unable
to give. Here it is in a nutshell, as a
single thesis: Jesus’ beatitudes at the
beginning of the Sermon on the
Mount are the manifesto of the sov-
ereignty of God. Each single beati-
tude describes all of God’s sover-
eignty from a specific point of view.
Therefore, the sentence “Blessed are
the peacemakers, for they shall be
called children of God,” captures all
of God’s kingship seen from one spe-
cific vantage point. And that means:
All of Jesus’ work and word, his
whole will and accomplishment, the
total gospel without remainder, and
hence God’s reconciliation and sal-
vation of the world, can be called
peacemaking.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Here are some small New Tes-
tament vignettes to illustrate the point.

In the Gospel of Mark, in chapter
5, we have the story of a woman who
had been sick for twelve long years,
who had spent all her hope, patience,
and money on an assortment of
medical specialists, and who had fi-
nally crashed through a crowd to
touch the wonder-man from Galilee.
She is healed by the touch and she
knows it, and then at the conclusion
of the story she is sent away as the
healer says to her: “Daughter, your
faith has made you well; go in peace,
and be healed of your disease” (5:34).
“Go in peace” means here quite sim-
ply: “go with your health restored,”
exactly as the word shalom is used
quite often in the Old Testament in
the sense of health and well-being.
So, the healing of the woman is an
act of peacemaking.

And now I ask you: are not the
Gospels filled with longer narratives
and many small summarizing re-
marks about Jesus’ healing of the
sick? Do accounts of these cures not
occupy the greatest amount of in-
terest on the part of the evangelists
whenever they tell of their Lord’s
action? Does it not sound on occa-
sion as though with the arrival of
this incomparable healer on the scene,
all Galilee had turned suddenly into
a big hospital in which the sick of
all descriptions crowded around the
one who could liberate them from
all physical and mental ailment and
infirmity? This is the image which
had engraved itself into the memory
and into the faith of Jesus’ followers:
from his body flowed living streams
of healing and in the flowing of that

stream was restored the peace of God
for his creatures which is the free-
dom from debilitating weakness of
body and mind.

Of course we do not normally call
that peacemaking. But perhaps it
would be wise if our thought and.
language about peace remained a lot
more closely guided by whole vistas
of biblical perception in which the
absence of armed conflict and its
consequences are viewed as twins of
the absence of severe physical limi-
tations and its results. Care for the
preservation of friendly relations be-
tween nations may be credible only
if accompanied by the daily and con-
stant care for those who cannot enjoy
the full use of a sound mind and a
healthy body. And it may be said for
all those who today seek to love and
to labor in the name of Christ that
from the chaplain in a hospital
equipped with incredibly sophisti-
cated medical tools down to the
members of a family who gather
around the sickbed of one of their
own to raise their supplication, you
are all caught up in the stream of
healing which flows from the sov-
ereignty of God into a world twisted
in pain. Be glad of it and be proud
of it for through your patient labor
issues the blessing: “Peace be to you.”

I turn to a second aspect of
peacemaking. In the epistle of James
you will find this remark: “If a
brother or sister is ill-clad and in
lack of daily food, and one of you
says to them ‘go in peace, be warmed
and filled’ without giving them the
things needed for the body, what does
it profit?” (2:i5f.). Or, to put it a
little differently: if on a cold Penn-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

sylvania night some unemployed
people linger around your church,
creatures whose misery crept into
their very flesh and skin, making it
grey and dirty and ruffled in wrin-
kles, and you turn them away from
the warmth of your church because
some of your members consider it
unseemly for the house of God to be
soiled by ungainly petitioners, then
you have not only acted like a hyp-
ocrite but you have broken God’s
peace and declared war on some of
his loved ones. For, in this case, to
be in peace is nothing other than to
be warmed and filled.

From here I want to draw your
mind back to the story of Jesus Christ
in the Gospels. There is one narra-
tive which, if you count all four Gos-
pels as one, is told no less than seven
times, a story about Jesus’ action more
frequently repeated than any other:
it is the story of the feeding of a great
crowd of hungry people in the desert
where there was no food. Somehow,
there is no doubt about it, the evan-
gelists were absorbed in their inter-
est for empty stomachs in an empty
wilderness. And although all these
feeding stories are replete with all
kinds of subtle overtones, the basic
thing remains quite manifest: the
peace of God for his people is in
jeopardy if empty stomachs dictate
panic and shivering skin conjures up
the hollow-cheeked monster of ter-
ror.

I want to tell you of an incident
that happened when our family was
living in Louisville some ten years
ago. One day our youngest son was
returning from school showing signs
of being seriously upset. We asked
him what had happened and he told
us of two human skeletons which

were on display in the biology lab of
the school and of his biology teacher
who had informed the class that the
one skeleton had been purchased
some twenty-five years ago at a cost
of $825, while the other one had been
bought quite recently for a mere $140.
Our son’s question was: “why have
human skeletons become so cheap of
late?” I did not trust the accuracy of
my child’s recollection, and phoned
the teacher the next day to verify the
information. It was correct. A few
days later, we received from the
teacher a package containing two
catalogues, an old and a new one,
from a firm in Chicago which pre-
pares human skeletons for use in
schools. Attached to it was a hand-
written note from the teacher which
read: “This company has scouts some
of whom live in India. These scouts
buy the bodies of those hundreds of
Indians who die of starvation. The
families of the deceased are so poor
they cannot afford to bury them. The
bodies are sent to Chicago where the
flesh is removed, and the skeleton
exposed. The bones are then wired
together as a perfect reproduction of
the human skeleton.” That hap-
pened in 1974 in the teeth of a gal-
loping inflation and one could not
but wonder why finally at least hu-
man skeletons had plummeted in
price. Everything else was skyrock-
eting, but the cost of human bones
had dramatically decreased.

Without attaching blame to any-
one or anything, it must be said quite
objectively that this kind of thing is,
in biblical terms, an outrage against
the peace of God, a declaration and
waging of war against God’s crea-
tion. To be engaged in preparation
for the ministry means to discipline

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

mind and soul to get ready to join
the company of those who in the
footsteps of their Lord dare to feed
the hungry in the desert to announce
and enact again the great philan-
thropy of our God: “Peace be to you.”

Ill

The third vignette is once more a
passage involving a woman. She has,
obviously uninvited, made her way
into a dinner party given in honor
of Jesus by a member of the local
society for applied faith — called
Pharisees in the New Testament —
where she, who has apparently a
shady past, begins to cry and wash
Jesus’ feet with her tears. Some in-
teresting conversation ensues which
I will now omit. The narrative closes
with Jesus’ parting words to the
woman: “Your faith has saved you;
go in peace” (Luke 7:50).

Striking is the similarity of the
closing words in this incident and in
the one involving the woman suf-
fering from hemorrhage. Both
women are encouraged in identical
words: go in peace. And yet this time
the word peace must aim at some-
thing quite different. It is forgive-
ness of sins, the restoration of in-
nocence in the relation to God, which
is now termed peace. To gauge what
this peace entails, we would ob-
viously have to have some notion what
the divine forgiveness of sins is. Do
we? I submit to you that in the New
Testament’s light we have only a very
inadequate notion of the truth.

In one of his parables Jesus com-
pares the debt of no lesser a person
than the apostle Peter to a debt of
ten thousand talents which a servant
owes to his master. Now we know
through the Jewish historian, a man

alive at New Testament times, that
Herod the Great had a total tax rev-
enue of about nine hundred talents
from all his holdings and posses-
sions. Herod was famed because of
his legendary wealth, and yet his an-
nual income was not even a tenth of
the debt which the servant, i.e., a
man like Peter, had accumulated be-
fore God. Of course, this is a parable
whose details, and especially whose
figures, must not be pressed. But the
point is clear: measured by what a
child of God could and ought to be
we are sunk into such abysmal depths
that confinement for life to a dun-
geon is the only appropriate com-
parison, as the parable itself tells, un-
less that incomprehensible marvel of
God’s liberality and largesse occurs
which wipes out the entire indebt-
edness at once. And this peace is,
once again, the very heart of Jesus’
life and labor.

The parable introduces, beside the
wicked servant, another servant fig-
ure who owes the first servant one
hundred denarii. One hundred de-
narii are the equivalent of four
months wages paid to an unskilled
day laborer in Palestine. And that is
the comparison between the depth
of alienation from God and the al-
ienation from each other: the one
surpasses Herod’s wealth more than
ten times, the other can be made
good even by the poorest in a few
months. The more Christian people
become aware of this depth of for-
giveness, the more certain and the
more unambiguous it will become
also that they will not only be peace-
makers by advocating nuclear
freezes, disarmament plans, and the
like — although they may very well
do that as well — but in the first place

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY B ULLETIN

by being members of a community
in which the root cause of war and
violence is constantly being re-
moved; for all wars are engendered
and supported by convictions of su-
periority, of injured self-esteem, and
by the demonization of the enemy.
The peace which is the restoration
of innocence before God is the ef-
fective removal of the possibility to
degrade the other, individually or
collectively, into the status of infe-
riority, and it is thus the beginning
of a surgery without which political
efforts at maintaining international
peace may well forever remain fruit-
less. But to those who plumb the
depth of this forgiveness, or rather
who are measured by it and much
reduced in size, is given the power
to be ambassadors of the reign of
God beckoning all the world: “Peace
be to you.”

I have given you three little stones
of a multicolored mosaic which is
peace in the New Testament. Ten
more could easily be added like the
vision of peace in the global village
in Ephesians 2, the peace through
participation in the cross of Christ
in Romans 5, or the peace which
comes about through the total re-

versal of all that the Jewish libera-
tion movement of the zealots stood
for in all of the gospel of Matthew.
But my time has come to an end,
and I have barely touched on peace
as the opposite of war which is so
much, and rightly so, on our minds
these days. I have done so not be-
cause the New Testament has noth-
ing to say about peace between na-
tions and about the overcoming of
war, rather I did so because I wanted
to give you a truthful account of what,
in the course of our pilot year on
peace studies and peacemaking in
Pittsburgh, I have learned in my own
field. And that is this: the breadth
and richness of the New Testa-
ment’s proclamation of peace is so
necessary for the attainment of peace
in the narrower sense of the word
that I want to ask you as I asked our
ethicists, theologians, historians, ed-
ucators, and psychologists to become
seriously and practically conversant
with the peace issue as one view of
the whole gospel. Thus prepared can
we then venture out in honesty to
stand for the good news of God sum-
marized in the blessing: “Peace to
you.”

The Prayer

by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

A native of Ithaca, New Yor/^, Ka thar-
ine Doob Sakenfeld is a graduate of the
College of Wooster, Harvard Divinity
School, and Harvard University. In addi-
tion to her position as associate professor
of Old Testament, Dr. Sakenfeld serves as
director of the Ph.D. studies program at
Princeton. The author of two boo\s, she
has served as a representative to the Con-
sultation on Church Union and to the
Commission on Faith and Order.

Opening Convocation, September 23, 1984

Let us pray for God’s blessing and
guidance as we enter upon this
academic year:

Almighty God, Ruler of all time
and of eternity, grant us your grace
as we stand with so many mingled
hopes and fears facing this new year.
Our help is in your name alone;
strengthen us in body, mind, and
spirit, that we may do your will ever
more faithfully. Whatever the year
holds for each one of us, prepare us
by humility, reverence, courage, and
perseverance, so that in every cir-
cumstance we may discover the
abundant life of your kingdom.

Let us pray for this institution,
that it may fulfill its mission:

Bestower of every good gift, we
pray your rich blessing upon Prince-
ton Theological Seminary and upon
all whose labors help to make its life
creative and more faithful to your
calling. Teach us anew that we are
one body in which the eye has need
of the foot, even as the hand has need
of the ear. Knit us together — cus-
todians and students, secretaries,
kitchen staff, and administrators,
spouses and children, trustees and
friends, faculty and field supervisors.

Unite us all in vision and service,
that this seminary may bear strong
and clear witness to our one Lord
and head, even Jesus Christ, savior
of the world.

Let us pray for the unity and pu-
rity of the church:

Remind us, O God, that your
church is yours, not ours, that it is
called to your mission, not our pro-
grams, that it is broader and deeper
than the local congregation we hap-
pen to know personally. Give to its
many families a vision of the whole.
Test and refine every quest for un-
derstanding and every action for peace
and justice carried forward in your
name. Grant your power and peace
to all the faithful, that in all of life
they may honor you.

Let us pray for those in distress
of physical illness or spiritual tur-
moil:

Sustainer of all, we ask your mercy
for all who struggle against odds; for
all who find themselves in the night
of sorrow or the dense darkness of
pain; for those in extremity of weari-
ness, or loneliness, or hopelessness.
Grant them each one to hear your

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

true word of comfort and to expe-
rience the gentle care of your ever-
lasting arms.

Let us pray for the world, that all
creation may know true peace and
true justice.

Compassionate and passionate
Redeemer, hear our plea on behalf
of this shattered, war-torn, hungry,
tortured, and terrified world. Order

unruly powers, deal with injustice,
feed and satisfy the longing peoples
of every land, so that in peace and
freedom your children may enjoy the
earth which you have made. Infuse
us now with your passion and com-
passion, that we may from this day
forward be conduits of your peace.

Even so, come Lord Jesus, in whose
name we pray. Amen.

The Open Banquet

by Daniel L. Migliore

Darnel L. Migliore is Arthur M. Adams
Professor of Systematic Theology at
Princeton Theological Seminary. An or-
dained Presbyterian minister, Dr. Migliore
is an alumnus of Westminster College,
Princeton Seminary, and Princeton Uni-
versity. He is a member of the editorial
council of Theology Today and is the
author of two booths, including The Power
of God (Westminster, 1983).

Opening Communion Service, September 24, 1984

Text: He said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many;
and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who
had been invited, ‘Come, for all is now ready.’ But they all alike began
to make excuses. The first said to him, 7 have bought a field, and I must
go out and see it; / pray you, have me excused.’ And another said, 7 have
bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; I pray you, have
me excused.’ And another said, 7 have married a wife, and therefore I
cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then
the householder in anger said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets
and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and
lame.' And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done,
and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to
the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house
may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall
taste my banquet.’ ” (Luke 14:12-24)

The parables ot Jesus place every-
day events and activities in a new
and strange light. In the parables the
everyday affairs of life become lu-
minous of the presence, the grace,
and the judgment of God.

Working in the fields, playing in
the streets, searching for lost posses-
sions, experiencing separation and
reunion, evading or perhaps helping
people in need — this is the stuff of
Jesus’ parables. Baking, buying,
planting, praying, selling, sleeping,
hating, loving — they are all there.
And so are eating and drinking.

Like other routines of daily life,
eating and drinking hardly seem

crammed with religious significance.
But in fact eating and drinking ex-
pose our human condition and, at
the very least, remind us of our pre-
carious hold on life. We are needy
and vulnerable creatures, and the
daily necessity of eating and drink-
ing makes that disturbingly plain.

But eating and drinking are far
more than events by which our phys-
ical needs are provisionally satisfied.
They are distinctively human events;
they are events of friendship and es-
trangement, of grace and ingrati-
tude, of fear and joy. In our eating
and drinking together our history is
inscribed; we give expression to our

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY B ULLETIN

memories and our hopes of human
fulfillment. Eating and drinking are
not mere routines but profound rit-
uals which, for those with eyes to
see, light up the human predicament
and the divine promise. We recall
that, according to Scripture, sin first
appears in an act of self-assertive eat-
ing; the drama of redemption has a
shared meal at its center; and a fa-
vorite biblical image of the fulfill-
ment of life as intended by God is a
great banquet.

There is, in other words, a hidden
theological dimension in all our eat-
ing and drinking. In our meals to-
gether we signal what humanity we
are becoming and what God we
worship. Our manner of eating and
drinking together defines who we
are. The deepest meaning of a meal,
of eating and drinking together, is
this: we gladly acknowledge that life
is a gift; we sit down in peace with
others; we share the basics of life
with them and thus affirm our com-
mon dignity and destiny. When we
eat and drink together, we confess
that the law of the jungle, the law
of individual or group survival, will
not rule our existence. We confess
that we want to live in community;
we recognize our need for others and
their need for us. By this elementary
gesture of letting others eat and drink
in our presence, we accept them as
our companions. Eating and drink-
ing together, as intended by God, are
acts of human solidarity and friend-
ship.

As sinners, our meals are typically
sorry affairs. Instead of being occa-
sions of communication they are re-
duced to acts of consumption. They
are perfunctory rather than festive.
They are, above all, exclusive rather

than inclusive. We elect to eat and
drink only with our own kind, only
with people like us. Birds of a feather
not only flock but eat together. We
refuse to eat and drink with stran-
gers and foreigners, let alone with
obvious undesirables and outright
enemies. So we build a wall around
our tables. We deny food and friend-
ship and therefore life itself to others.
By excluding these unwanted people
from our tables we make our eating
and drinking an instrument of sep-
aration and even of death.

The gospel of Jesus Christ over-
turns our forgetful and fallen ways
of eating and drinking. In contrast
to our self-centered, fearful, and even
murderous ways of eating and
drinking, Jesus ate and drank with
the hungry and thirsty masses. He
had table-fellowship with sinners and
tax-collectors as well as with those
considered decent and upright. Ac-
cording to the gospel narrative, he
ran into opposition on account of his
refusal to abide by the laws govern-
ing the eating and drinking of good
religious people. Because the meals
of Jesus were open in God’s name
to the outcast and the despised, eat-
ing and drinking with Jesus was a
liberating event. It was an event of
friendship, an event of forgiveness,
an event of shared life, an event of
God’s coming kingdom.

In Jesus’ parable of the great ban-
quet his own singular and scandal-
ous habits of eating and drinking are
enshrined. So understood, this par-
able discloses the sinful distortion of
and redemptive promise for all of
our eating and drinking. The story
is disarmingly simple. A man plans
a festive meal and invites many to
attend. They are too busy, however,

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

and offer various excuses tor declin-
ing the invitation. So the house-
holder commands his servant to in-
vite the poor and maimed and blind
and lame. And when this is done
there is still room tor others, so the
householder instructs the servant to
go into the highways and hedges
outside the city and urge all that he
meets — strangers and outcast — to
come to the banquet.

Like every good story this parable
draws us gently into its plot. We find
ourselves wondering with which of
the characters we wish to join com-
pany. Consider first the host. Our
sophisticated hermeneutics of sus-
picion prompt us to ask about the
hidden motive of his plan. Was he
a show-off? Did he want to outdo
all his neighbors in throwing the
biggest party of the year? Or did he
act simply out of good will? In the
latter case, we might feel comfort-
able if we could see in his act a re-
flection of our own supposed liber-
ality, but there is a quality of sheer
generosity in this figure that is frankly
mysterious and unsettling. The mys-
tery deepens when refusals are re-
ceived, for the host immediately in-
vites the poor and strangers to his
table. We are told that he was angry,
and who could not understand that
reaction? But was his anger equiv-
alent to childish pique? Was the host
filled with resentment? Did he want
revenge? Did he simply want to save
face? Or was his anger just indig-
nation in the face of warped loyal-
ties? And was it the case that through
his own pain of rejection the heart
of the host was broken open to those
who had experienced the anguish of
rejection for as long as they could
remember? These are questions we

would like to ask, but they return to
us unanswered, leaving us with the
troubled feeling that we cannot so
easily identify ourselves with this host
as we originally thought.

And then there are the first-in-
vited who tender their excuses, fust
as we are prone too quickly to iden-
tify ourselves with the householder,
we are probably too quick in making
harsh judgments on those people who
say they are too busy to attend the
banquet. These are, after all, people
with high values, and their excuses
are far from frivolous — I have bought
a field, I have purchased five yoke
of oxen, I have married a wife. Surely
the values represented by those who
excused themselves — property, pos-
sessions, family — are high on our
own list of values to live by. One
might even win an election to high
public office by campaigning in sup-
port of such values. But in Jesus’ par-
able these values are suprisingly rep-
resented as potentially sinister, even
idolatrous, when they are allowed to
crowd out our response to the offer
of unexpected grace and enlarged
community. Look closely: those who
are invited but decline have no hun-
ger that they cannot themselves sat-
isfy. They are indeed most energet-
ically and successfully satisfying their
own needs. They have no use for an
unexpected gift; they are taking care
of themselves quite w'ell, thank you.
They do not need this disruptive in-
vitation to new friendship and new
joy. They are making it on their own
and are content w'ith the shape they
are giving to their lives, whatever the
misfortune of others might be. No,
we should not too quickly convince
ourselves that we have little in com-
mon with the first-invited.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

And finally, there are the last-in-
vited— the poor, the handicapped,
the strangers. They do not speak.
They are voiceless, as the poor have
been throughout recorded history.
They simply come. And their re-
sponse is silent testimony to their
gratitude. They have not been forced
to come, as Augustine so mistakenly
and tragically interpreted this pas-
sage. If compulsion in the sense of
physical force or state sanctions was
to be used, it could have been em-
ployed already on the first-invited.
The voiceless poor have freely re-
sponded to an urgent and sincere
offer of grace. Suspicious interpret-
ers may again impute all sorts of
dark motives to these poor folk: Why
not go along for a free ride? If the
man wants to be a sucker, why not
let him be one? From the standpoint
of the text, however, all this is quite
fruitless speculation. Prior to the
surprising invitation, these poor and
afflicted people lived in a climate of
resignation and doom. The obvious
reason why the poor came, out of all
the many invited, was because they
were hungry — hungry for food, yes,
but hungry also for friendship, ac-
ceptance, and joy.

In Jesus’ own ministry this para-
ble was no doubt told to vindicate
the good news that he proclaimed in
word and deed. God’s grace and for-
giveness is reaching out to all, this
parable announces, even to those long
considered hopeless and worthless.
The parable has come down to us
in two traditions, one in Matthew
and one in Luke. In its Lucan ver-
sion the parable contributes to a vi-
sion of the church as the new mes-
sianic community which opens its
doors to women, the poor, the out-

1 1

cast, and the Gentiles. In its Mat-
thean version the parable offers a
severe reminder to the community
that not only have the first-invited
already experienced God’s terrible
judgment but that even among the
second-invited only those who wear
the proper banquet garment (that is,
the disciplined Christian life) will be
permitted to remain in the banquet
hall.

And today — how is this parable
to be faithfully retold and read-
dressed to us, we who are so sure
that we do not make excuses for not
attending God’s open banquet, we
who can only be stunned by the ex-
travagant goodness of the mysteri-
ous benefactor, we who are puzzled
and perhaps somewhat resentful of
the poor who are invited to new life
and joy and who respond so eagerly
and spontaneously? Like the world
of the parable, ours too is a world
of stark contrasts. Hunger and fear
stalk many parts of the world today
while self-congratulation marches
triumphantly through our land.
While the two super powers of the
world vie for supremacy in nuclear
weapons, and while their leaders
prefer to avoid sitting down to talk
with each other let alone to eat and
drink together, the poor and hungry
of the world pay the highest price.
Many people await an invitation to
share food, friendship, and faith; they
languish inside and outside the gates
of our cities — in South Africa, in El
Salvador, in New Jersey. Who will
join these people as guests at a com-
mon table? Evidently not kings and
queens of self-admiration. Appar-
ently not those who are so smug in
their praise of success and property
and family that they have neither the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

time nor the will to respond to an
invitation to become members of a
new and inclusive community of eat-
ing and drinking, beyond the petty
boundaries of race and class and sex
and nation. Surely not those who in
the words of one of John Updike’s
characters are devoted to nothing
more in life than “eating and drink-
ing up the world, and out of sheer
spite at that." Probably not those who
sit in the high places of authority and
are so apprehensive about the forth-
coming letter of the American Cath-
olic Bishops on Catholic social teach-
ing and the United States economy
that they are encouraging prosper-
ous Catholics to “take a bishop to
lunch.”

So in a time of rampant chauvin-
ism and of religion used to assure
ourselves of our essential goodness
and of the inherent wickedness of
those we call enemies, who will re-
spond to the voice of the host of the
great banquet, “Come, for all is now
ready”? Should we be surprised that
now, as then, the poor, the lame, the
blind, the outcast, will come silently,
gladly, while so many others, also
invited, tender their excuses? Not
because the poor are better, more
worthy, more God-like, but simply
because they are so hungry, and they
have been invited by a generous host.

There is a call to repentance in
this parable, a shattering of our
everyday world of eating and drink-
ing, a great reversal of our genteel
table protocol. Christ the host of the
great banquet calls us to a reordering
and transformation of all our cher-
ished values, from the narrow family
circle to the whole household of God,
from occupation to vocation, from

the pursuit of possessions to the af-
firmation of people.

In this piercing parable of Jesus
we are told first and foremost of God’s
grace. It is the will of the house-
holder to share his food and drink
with friends. This is, then and now,
the staggering message of the gos-
pel— that God’s grace is free and ex-
travagant, that God wants to share
his life with us, that God wants us,
each of us, as guests and friends at
the open table.

The parable says more. It says that
God’s grace, God’s shared life and
friendship, is extended to all. The
invitation goes out not only to good,
decent people, but also to those sel-
dom seen at the tables of the rich
and righteous. At the table that God
prepares all are welcome, even and
especially the poor and weak of this
world.

And there is still more proclaimed
by this parable. Not only that God
is gracious. Not only that the amaz-
ing grace of God is offered to all
even though it is most readily and
heartily accepted by the nobodies of
the world. The parable also declares
that God is a festive God who wills
joy and fullness of life for his crea-
tures. From this perspective, sin is
not only a refusal of grace and a
repudiation of open friendship. It is
also a negation of genuine joy and
unbounded festivity.

At the beginning of this academic
year it is fitting that we gather at the
Lord’s table. We come from Latin
America and North America, from
Europe and Asia, from Africa and
Australia. We are black and brown
and yellow and white. We are male
and female. We are young and old.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

And yes, some are prosperous and
others far from prosperous. But at
this table we who are so different
are called to be one people, guests of
Jesus Christ who died and rose for
us, brothers and sisters of each other
and of the many others also invited
to this banquet. If the open banquet
is practiced here — really practiced —
perhaps our ministries of peace and
reconciliation elsewhere will be more
credible to us and to others.

A philosopher once said: We are
what we eat. This is true only in a
trivial sense. Much more profound
is the truth that we are what com-
pany we keep in our eating and
drinking. Jesus opens the table of
God to us all and frees us to eat and

drink together at the open banquet.
Here God’s costly word of Yes is said
to each of us. In the presence of Jesus
the very ordinary event of eating and
drinking becomes something quite
extraordinary: the beginning of an
open community, the beginning of
a friendship in suffering and hope
with those who are poor and de-
spised, the beginning of God’s new,
inclusive, festive humanity.

The invitation is still being ex-
tended to us today. In the back-
ground is an ominous warning, but
in the foreground is a life-giving
promise. It is, as ever, disturbingly,
compellingly, exquisitely simple:
“Come, for all is now ready.”

The I rritantot Agnosticism A native of England, Edward Hulmes

o is rrojessorial bellow in l neology at the

by Edward Hulmes University of Durham, England. He was

previously Director of the Farmington In-
stitute at Oxford, and has also spent five
years in West Africa researching the rela-
tionship between Christianity and African
Traditional Religion. Dr. Hulmes is the
author of several booths and numerous ar-
ticles. This lecture is the first from the Stu-
dents' Lectureship on Missions series, given
in September 1984.

The invitation has come to me to
give this year’s Students' Lec-
tureship on Missions. There are three
lectures under the general title of
The Recovery of Mission. The first
is “The Irritant ot Agnosticism the
second is “The Affirmation of Ex-
perience”; and the third is “The Ed-
ucation of Commitment.” It will be
part of my responsibility during the
period of July to December 1985,
when I am to be a member of the
Center of Theological Inquiry in
Princeton, to develop these lectures
in book form.

My theme is the recovery of mis-
sion. For me this means an activity
undertaken in obedience to the great
commission given at the end of St.
Matthew’s Gospel. It is an activity
which I take to be no less obligatory
for Christians today than for their
predecessors. Even so, it is not my
intention to dwell on the recovery of
mission as a task either joyfully or
ruefully acknowledged by individ-
ual Christians, only because they are
obliged to concede that it derives from
a dominical command. My thesis is
that the recovery of mission is a. prac-
tical necessity at the present time.
There are two aspects of this prac-
tical necessity. One is internal and
the other external. With regard to

its internal application the recovery
of mission helps to focus the indi-
vidual believer’s attention on the
extent, limits, and limitations of per-
sonal belief. It serves to bring to self-
conscious awareness the presuppo-
sitions, assumptions, prejudices, and
convictions that are all too fre-
quently left unexamined. With re-
gard to its external application the
recovery of mission directs attention
away from the self, to the needs of
the community. By this I mean that
it channels what might otherwise re-
main a preoccupation with one’s own
personal beliefs, doubts, and aspi-
rations, into a recognition of the needs
of others. Part of this need, in so-
cieties such as ours, is that those who
are not Christians are entitled to a
thoughtful presentation of Christian
insights from those for whom these
insights, this experience, are, pre-
sumably, of some significance. In an
age of religious pluralism, and at a
time of developing inter-faith en-
counter, the recovery of mission as-
sumes the nature of a practical ne-
cessity. For Christians who are
exercised by belief and unbelief, by
the possibility of certainty and the
reality of doubt, and by the challenge
to their existing convictions pre-
sented by other faiths and world

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

views, I contend that the recovery of
mission is a practical necessity. With
reference to the maturing of per-
sonal faith in Christ (not to say its
possible modification in the light of
scrutiny and experience, and even,
conceivably, its eventual abandon-
ment), and to the presentation of that
faith to others who do not share it,
the recovery of mission is also a prac-
tical necessity. And if I am pressed
at this stage for a definition of mis-
sion in this context I would offer the
words of i Peter 3:15. For the pur-
poses of my argument this verse pro-
vides both a program and a method
well suited to present needs.

The mission of the Christian
church to, and in, the world has a
long history. But what about its fu-
ture? For many Christians, includ-
ing some in positions of authority
and leadership in the church, mis-
sion is an anachronism. It belongs to
that phase of the church’s life (so it
is said) which stands in relation to
us as the Old Testament stood to our
first Christian forebears. Or if mis-
sion is still to be admissible it is only
in terms of ambiguity, uncertainty,
questioning, and what is described
as “searching for God.” And this is
required of Christians themselves.
All this is far removed from a con-
fident theology of salvation for all
believers, based upon the will of God
for his creatures, revealed in history,
and dependent to some extent at least
on the cooperation of human beings
to accept (or to reject) the revelation,
and then to act in their turn as mes-
sengers (or opponents) of the reve-
lation.

Our world, indeed our universe,
is the stage for bewildering new rev-
elations and accelerating technolog-

ical change. We are presented with
a confusing picture of religious plu-
ralism, of uncritical agnosticism, and
of a “post-Christian Christianity”
which is barely distinguishable from
atheism, except for the lingering re-
spect it pays to the importance in any
society of myth, in this case, the myth
of God and the myth of the redeem-
ing work of Christ. At the same time
our world is also the place where
Christians are still prepared to give
a reasoned defense to anyone who
calls them to account for the hope
that is in them. The surrender to
skepticism and to agnosticism is pre-
mature. A recovery of the sense of
mission among Christians, gener-
ally, may prevent any such prema-
ture surrender by helping us to un-
derstand what is really at stake. The
grounds for unbelief as well as for
belief, for agnosticism as well as for
religious faith, need to be tolerably
well understood. This is important
when fundamentalists of one kind
or another, philosophical and theo-
logical, bid to separate faith from
reason, and reason from faith, and
to emphasize “consciousness” and
“experience” at the expense of his-
tory, tradition, faith, and reason.

Recently, during the course of his
enthronement service sermon, a
bishop of the English church de-
scribed himself as “an ambiguous,
compromised, and questioning per-
son, entering upon an ambiguous of-
fice in an uncertain church in the
midst of a threatened and threat-
ening world.” The sermon of which
this was only a part (although an
important and express statement of
mood) contained several thoughtful
comments on other aspects of society
in Great Britain today, and at the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

1 6

end of the proceedings the bishop
received the accolade of applause from
his congregation. It is only fair to
add that for many others who heard
the sermon in the cathedral, or sub-
sequently heard of its contents, the
bishop's note of uncertainty and dif-
fidence appeared to be confined to
theological matters. It certainly
prompted some questions about the
advisability of commending a recov-
ery of Christian mission at a time
when orthodoxy itself is expressed
in terms of uncertainty, ambiguity,
and doubt. The invitation, addressed
even to Christians today, to take leave
of God, to distance themselves from
what I have heard described by an-
other Christian acquaintance as “the
fraudulent certainties” of orthodox
belief, and to enter the real world of
responsible autonomy, is not new.
But it is still surprising. In a climate
of uncertainty, it is a risk to describe
anything as “fraudulent,” with de-
cent humility.

To the Christian involved in an
encounter with someone whose be-
liefs are different, it is still necessary
to try to identify with patience that
which is characteristic and unique
about Christianity. Without the at-
tempt to do this any non-Christian
partners in dialogue are left without
an important element of knowledge
as well as of testimony. Muslims,
Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Human-
ists, and others may know at least
this much about Christianity, namely,
that it continues to make massive
affirmations about an alleged reve-
lation of God in history. Interest in
Christianity from outside should not
be taken too lightly. It is not only
Christians who may be interested in
the faiths of others. When searching

questions come from those outside
the Christian faith about Christian
beliefs and practices will there be
Christians prepared to answer? Is
there anything unique about Chris-
tianity, or is it just another road to
God ?

Shortly before his death Max
Warren wrote:

Reacting, and reacting rightly,
against the dogmatic triumphal-
ism of much past Christian ap-
proach to men of other faiths, it
is all too easy to swing to the other
extreme and talk happily of dif-
ferent roads to the summit, as if
Jesus were in no particular and
distinctive sense “the Way, the
Truth, and the Life.” Of course
where this point is reached, the
Great Commission is tacitly, if not
explicitly, held to be indefinitely
in suspense if not quite otiose. This
is a view forcefully propounded
by some Christians holding pro-
fessorial Chairs in Britain and
across the Atlantic. Are they right?
Is courtesy always to preclude
contradiction? Is choice now just
a matter of taste, no longer a re-
sponse to an absolute demand? Is
tbe Cross on Calvary really no
more than a confusing rounda-
bout sign pointing in every direc-
tion, or is it still the place where
all men are meant to kneel?1

The answer to all Dr. Warren’s
questions may be “Yes,” but it would
be unreasonable for anyone to an-
swer thus without considering the
evidence. Our affirmations need to

1 M.A.C. Warren, I Believe in the Great
Commission (Hodder and Stoughton, 1976),
pp. 150-151.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

be subjected to personal scrutiny. Our
presuppositions and convictions,
whether we be scholars or not, need
to be made explicit, to be informed
and re-informed. The process is life-
long. In an important sense it is this
process which is the subject of my
three lectures, and I have called it,
in both its inward (personal) and
outward (societal) aspects, The Re-
covery of Mission.

In the science of biology I under-
stand that “an irritant is anything
that stimulates an organ to its char-
acteristic vital function.”2 Thus, in
the life cycle of the oyster, the boring
parasite plays an important role in
the creation of the pearl. The trans-
formation of the former into the lat-
ter is not the work of a moment.
The irritant of agnosticism is more,
much more potentially, than an ir-
ritating, annoying feature of human
existence, though it can certainly be
that. It is, or can be, an irritant, with
all that this implies for the shaping
of human beliefs over a lifetime. And
note that the metaphor I have in mind
is essentially neutral, equally appli-
cable to the unbeliever’s dissatisfac-
tion with unbelief and to the believ-
er’s identification of his present
experience with that towards which
he strives. “Lord, I believe, help Thou
mine unbelief.”

The Oxford English Dictionary
tersely defines “agnosticism” as “the
doctrine, and tenets, of agnostics.”
The word “agnostic,” often used in
a much vaguer adjectival sense to
describe someone who does not know,
but in a rather different sense from
that of the adjective “ignorant,” re-
ceives a longer definition in the same

2 OED.

dictionary. Thus, “agnostic,” is “One
who holds that the existence of any-
thing beyond and behind material
phenomena is unknown and (so far
as can be judged) unknowable, and
especially that a First Cause and an
unseen world are subjects of which
we know nothing.” In this sense the
agnostic is one who, in his own es-
timation, is far from being ignorant.
It is worth recalling that for those
who began to use the word in the
second half of the nineteenth century
in England with this specialized
meaning, agnosticism amounted to
a conscious declaration of reasoned
commitment. At one level the Vic-
torian agnostics, of whom the best
known was Thomas Huxley, were
doing no more than reminding their
contemporaries of the ineluctable
limits of human knowledge. At the
same time they were scrupulous in
their attitude to atheism, preferring
neither to affirm nor to deny the
God of religion. God was set on one
side, for about the ultimate origins
and purpose of the universe, nothing
was known, or knowable, in their
considered view.

In less sensitive hands than Hux-
ley’s agnosticism soon assumed a more
dogmatic character. Commenting on
this, Gai Eaton, an English convert
to Islam, wrote in a recent book:

Agnosticism . . . raises a personal
incapacity to the dignity of a uni-
versal law. It amounts to the dog-
matic assertion that what “I” do
not know cannot be known, and
it limits the very concept of what
is knowable to the little area of
observation open to the unsanc-
tified and unilluminated human
mentality. The agnostic attitude

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

derives from a refusal to admit
that anyone can be, or ever could
have been, our superior in this,
the most important realm of all;
the true knowledge of what there
is to be known. Religion is now
seen exclusively in terms of faith
rather than of supernatural
knowledge. In egalitarian terms,
faith is acceptable; you may be-
lieve in fairies if you wish to. But
the claim to a direct and certain
knowledge of realities beyond the
mind’s normal compass excludes
those who do not possess it and
savors of presumption. The idea
that a saint among the saints may
have known God — not merely be-
lieved in him — suggests "unfair-
ness” and implies the superiority
of some men to others. It puts us
in our place.3

The rejection of the admissibility
of any evidence that might be taken
to suggest what Eaton calls “super-
natural knowledge” seems to be less
assured than it was formerly, al-
though its negative consequences
continue to influence the anti-theis-
tic doctrines and tenets of sophisti-
cated non-believers, as well as the
shrill denials of folk or popular ag-
nostics. Reviewing a recent book with
the title Is Christianity True? A. J.
Ayer concluded his piece with the
words:

. . . the beliefs to which a Chris-
tian is supposed to subscribe ap-
pear to me so outrageously im-
probable that I am continually
astonished that so many intelli-
gent people are able to accept them.

3 King of the Castle. Choice and Responsi-
bility in the Modern World (The Bodley Head,

1977), pp. 144-145-

Christian believers have contrived
to keep Professor Ayer in a state of
astonishment for a very long time,
apparently, but his astonishment is
barely concealed contempt. Bland and
even decorous arrogance of this type,
well-mannered as it affects to be, is
less disconcerting to the Christian
believer than its authors may suspect
or intend. It is merely irritating to
Christian (and other) believers be-
cause it insists that their knowledge
and experience are only of subjec-
tive, emotional significance. By means
of a careful use of words tbe critic
suggests, rather than states, that in-
telligence and religious belief do not
go together.

Of a different order from the ir-
ritating and superficial skepticism of
Ayer, and potentially more disrup-
tive for Christian belief, is the
“Christian agnosticism” to be found
in every branch of the church. It is
clear that all Christians must remain
Christian agnostics in some sense, as
long as life lasts, because of the lim-
itations of human existence. Our best
knowledge is a partial knowledge,
as St. Paul has it.4 Nevertheless, the
knowledge which Christians recog-
nize as partial is still knowledge. It
may be little enough, but it is real,
and it can be augmented. In this sense
the Christian agnostic has much in
common with other seekers after
truth. But there is another aspect to
Christian agnosticism which ap-
proaches unbelief. Can the Gospel be
reinterpreted in such a way as to
keep faith with the historic tradition,
and yet be capable of speaking to the
modern temper in a way that New-
man, lor instance, would recognize
as an authentic development ol doc-

4 1 Corinthians 13.

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trine? Or is the re-making of Chris-
tian doctrine, now being proposed
in some quarters, so demonstrably
discontinuous with the revelation and
the tradition that those who advo-
cate it are more correctly described
as post-Christian, or even non-
Christian?

It seems that large numbers of our
contemporaries who admit to no more
than the most tenuous links with in-
stitutional religion retain a residual
interest in the religions of the world.

I have no figures to support this, but
it appears to be a reasonable infer-
ence, given the amount of time and
money which television and radio
companies are willing to expend on
making programs about the reli-
gious beliefs and practices which in-
fluence the lives of millions. In Brit-
ain we have seen two such series,
each devoted to a careful exploration
of religious sentiment. The first was
called The Long Search , the second,
The Sea of Faith. Long as the search
proved to be, its findings were al-
ways studiously impartial and in-
conclusive, though the incidental de-
tail about how different communities
of believers throughout the world live
and worship was not without inter-
est or visual charm. The waters of
the sea into which we were invited
to plunge in the second series were
disappointingly shallow and untrou-
bled. Neither series did much to un-
settle the existing convictions of the
skeptics who produced them, so far
as a viewer could tell. On the other
hand both series appeared to have
the same effects on those who saw
enough of them to make a consid-
ered judgment. The viewers whose
religions were successively eyed
through the camera tended to be dis-
appointed that the result invariably

missed the essence of faith. They were
wrong, perhaps, to expect anything
else. A way of life is not to be cap-
tured by the fleeting images of a tel-
evision screen. The reaction to the
programs from those who had no
formal religious faith or affiliation
was also predictable. The variety of
religious experience presented to them
encouraged them to suspend judg-
ment about the relative merits of the
different systems of belief and prac-
tice. So far from being challenged by
any of them in personal terms, the
“prudent” observer, without even a
residual loyalty to one of them, was
lodged more securely in the inac-
cessible coziness of indifference and
agnosticism that passes for consid-
ered neutrality.

Earlier this year the missionary
bishop and apologist, Stephen Neill,
died, aged over eighty. Many years
ago, writing from his experience in
India, he concluded:

When a man, by constant con-
templation of the Passion and
Resurrection of our Lord, finds
himself so inflamed with love of
God and man that he cannot bear
the thought of any man living and
dying without the knowledge of
God, he may begin to bear the
Cross of Christ. If, as he bears it,
this longing for the glory of God
and for the salvation of all men
becomes so great that it fills all
his thoughts and desires, then he
has that one thing without which
no man can truly be a messenger
of Christ.5

And again, a few months before his
death this year:

5 Out of Bondage (Edinburgh House Press,
n.d.), pp. 135-136.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

So, when we invite our friends of
other faiths (and I would add “of
none”) to look at Jesus Christ, we
should do so with a full sense of
responsibility tor what it may mean
for them, if they should look on
him and really see him. That might
be tor them the ending of an old
world and the creation of a new;
for if any man be in Christ, there
is a new creation.6

After comments like these it is ap-
propriate to ask whether the appar-
ent inability of so many to believe,
or their indifference to belief, has
another cause. May it not be, at least
partially, the consequence of the dis-
inclination of those with good reason
to know otherwise, namely Chris-
tian believers, to present the evi-
dence for belief, in ways suited to
needs of questioners, and the invi-
tation to consider it? If there is some-
thing deep in men and women, some
capacity for belief, some seed of faith,
it would be a matter of concern if
Christians were not to seek ways to
provide for its nurture within our
reputedly pluralist societies. Here
would be an occasion for the recov-
ery of mission, bearing in mind the
point I made earlier about method,
with reference to part of i Peter 3:15,
“. . . yet do it with gentleness and
reverence.” For Christians who are
also the inheritors of an intellectual
tradition still dominated by a post-
enlightenment mood of philosophical
skepticism there is an opportunity to
present an alternative to agnosticism
in a responsible and non-interfering
manner.

There is a remarkable passage in

6 Crises of Belief (Hodder and Stoughton,
1984), p. 286.

his introduction to an otherwise long-
forgotten book7 in which C. S. Lewis
writes as follows:

If we had noticed that the young
men of the present day found it
harder and harder to get the right
answers to sums, we should con-
sider that this had been ade-
quately explained the moment we
discovered that schools had for
some years ceased to teach arith-
metic. After that discovery we
should turn a deaf ear to people
who offered explanations of a
vaguer and larger kind — people
who said that the influence of
Einstein had sapped the ancestral
belief in fixed numerical relations,
or that gangster films had under-
mined the desire to get right an-
swers, or that the evolution of
consciousness was now entering
its post-arithmetical phase.8

Lewis puts his finger on the im-
portance of what I would call the
need for the recovery of Christian
mission, as a practical necessity. And
this has special implications for ed-
ucation.9 In the same passage Lewis
goes on:

If the younger generation has never
been told what the Christians say
and have never heard arguments
in defense of it, then their agnos-
ticism or indifference is fully ex-
plained. There is no need to look
any further; no need to talk about
the general intellectual climate of

1 B. G. Sandhurst, How Heathen is Britain^
(Collins, 1946).

8 Ibid., Introduction, p. 10; subsequently
included in C. S. Lewis, Undeceptions (Lon-
don, 1971), p. 87.

9 The subject of my third lecture.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the age, the influence of mecha-
nistic civilization on the character
of urban life. And having discov-
ered that the cause of their ig-
norance is lack of instruction, we
have also discovered the remedy.
There is nothing in the nature of
the younger generation which in-
capacitates them for receiving
Christianity. If anyone is pre-
pared to tell them, they are ap-
parently ready to learn.10

Lewis’ last sentence takes us to the
heart of the difficulty. To be pre-
pared to “tell them,” in Lewis’ phrase,
means more than to be willing to tell
them. It involves preparation. A
lengthy period of disinclination to
“tell” blunts the capacity to do so
when the right time comes. Like other
skills it may be weakened or lost by
disuse. Like other faculties it may
fail for want of exercise. The con-
verse is true. Proficiency, even when
it remains modest, tends to improve
with practice. Thus, to describe one-
self as a practicing Christian need
involve no affront to humility, for it
expresses no finished state, no final
achievement, merely a faltering
process. It is (or should be) a signal
of intent rather than a notification
of attainment. Here again the guide
to the Christian’s approach is con-
tained in the words of i Peter 3:15.
The keynote is struck when, by rev-
erencing Christ as Lord, the Chris-
tian is prepared to make a reasoned
defense of the hope that is within,
with gentleness and reverence, to
anyone who asks.11

10 In Sandhurst, op. cit., p. 10.

" John Baillie’s note on this text is inter-
esting. He writes, “The word I render as
deference, and which I might almost have

The nineteenth century saw the
sharpening of a sustained attack on
Christian faith and practice, at least
as far as western Europe was con-
cerned. I add this rider because we
should not be too parochial in these
matters, assuming always that Eu-
ropeans, either believers or non-be-
lievers, set the pace for the rest of
the world. It is indisputable that the
initial responses to the challenge pre-
sented to Christian orthodoxy by
Darwinian theory lacked the sensi-
tivity enjoyed by the author of the
words from 1 Peter which have al-
ready been quoted. Today as the nu-
merical balance of Christians moves
from Europe and the United States
to Latin America, to Africa, and to
Asia, it is becoming clear that the
tension between a scientific and a
religious world view is less damag-
ing to religious faith than in the days
of Huxley and Darwin. And what
is a factor of significance in connec-
tion with the recovery of mission is
that European Modernism and Lib-
eral Theology are no more attractive
to newly independent and develop-
ing countries than nineteenth-cen-
tury colonialism. “Death of God”
theologies and expressions of Chris-
tian Buddhism may still retain a lim-
ited appeal in western Europe and
in the United States, but they do not
seem to have much to say to Chris-
tians in, for example, Eastern Eu-
rope, in the Soviet Union, or in China,
where atheistic alternatives are not
just theoretical abstractions. Nor, for

rendered as diffidence, is (pofiog [. . . defined
by Sourer] as fear, terror , often fear on the
reverential side, in reference to God, and
such as inspires cautious dealing towards men.
Cf. 1 Peter 1:17.” Invitation to Pilgrimage
(Penguin Books, i960), p. 11.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

that matter, in parts of the world
where Christians have lived along-
side Buddhists for generations.

1 have used the phrase “the irri-
tant of agnosticism" as a metaphor
to suggest a stimulus for long-term
creative growth. Provided only that
an individual is open to the possi-
bility of fresh insights and deeper
understanding, to new knowledge
and profounder commitments, the
metaphor may serve the needs of both
believers and non-believers in times
of uncertainty like the present. The
claims of religious belief on the
thoughtful unbeliever can also offer
opportunities to Christians for the
recovery of mission. The agnosti-
cism which leads to unbelief is not
always welcomed, by those who ex-
perience it, as a liberation from bonds.
For them it is not that the belief of
others who think differently from
them is the irritant. It is their own
agnosticism, their own inability to
believe, that is the irritant.

During the high period of hu-
manistic idealism in the second half
of the nineteenth century, in which
the statement that human beings were
alone in the universe was somewhat
defiantly accepted by an influential
minority, some less strident voices
could still be heard. Among them
was that of the poet and literary critic,
Matthew Arnold. His frequently
quoted poem “Dover Beach” is often
used today as an evocation of a mood
of melancholy nostalgia for a past
that can never return. The age of
faith has come to an end. Cathedrals,
parish churches, and the remnants
of religious faith lodged in con-
sciousness, are all fossil remains in
the life of a people. My reading of

Arnold is not so sentimental. His
faithlessness is not romantic. He ex-
presses no satisfaction that men and
women have finally been liberated
from the fetters of an outworn creed.

The Sea of Faith
Was once too, at the full, and
round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright
girdle furled.

But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long
withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the
vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the
world.

This twilight, and darkened,
world, in which the poet hears more
acutely because there is insufficient
light to see, is also the world where,
as he puts it:

We are here as on a darkling
plain

Swept with confused alarms of
struggle and Bight,

Where ignorant armies clash by
night.

But the imagery which Arnold uses
does not imply finality. The dark-
ness of the night will give way to
the dawn, and an ebbing tide flows
strongly again. What is sometimes
missing in the analysis of Arnold is
his implicit hope. In re-reading Ar-
nold, I sense that there may still be
grounds for hoping that faith will
return.

A second English poet for whom
agnosticism is clearly an irritant is
Thomas Hardy. From his poems I

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

choose one written in 1898. The title
is most significant:

The Impercipient: (at a cathedral
service )

That with this bright believing
band

I have no claims to be,

That faiths by which my
comrades stand
Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining
Land,

Is a strange destiny.

Why thus my soul should be
consigned
To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind
To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they’ve found I
cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not
that ease

Which they know; since it be
That He who breathes All’s
Well to these

Breathes no All’s Well to me,

My lack might move their
sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should
mark

An inland company
Standing upfingered, with,
“Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!”

And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon
dark

And wind-swept pine to me!”

Yet I would bear my
shortcomings
With meet tranquility,

But for the charge that blessed
things

I’d liefer not have be.

O, doth a bird deprived of
wings

Go earth-bound willfully!

Enough. As yet disquiet clings

About us. Rest shall we.

To me this poem contains some-
thing of an authentic revelation about
the human condition, and about the
irritant of agnosticism, from an un-
believer’s point of view. Note the
way in which the poet echoes Ar-
nold’s image of the distant sea, heard
but not seen. That one thing the poet
would see, that vision he would share,
is withheld from him. This is why
he is condemned to count himself
among the impercipient , those who
lack perception. And not to know,
not to see, is the real irritant, ren-
dered more disconcerting by the fact
that those in whose company he is
have an experience which they are,
apparently, unwilling to explain, to
elucidate, or to share.

There is an incident in Acts 8:26-
39 in which Philip approaches the
Ethiopian eunuch with the question,
“Do you understand what you are
reading?” The Ethiopian answers,
“How can I unless someone guides
me?” Philip responds, and in the re-
sponse the one man’s agnosticism is
met by the other’s sense of mission,
to the mutual edification of both.
Hardy’s anguish, we are left to as-
sume, was met by no comparable
response of Christian faith, hope, and
love. He sits in the cathedral, isolated
during a service in which he cannot
participate fully. We do not know
for what reason he was there. It may

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

have been the pressure of social con-
vention. He may have been seeking
for what he could not find. But none
ot this unwillingness to believe, this
self-delusion in the search, this nos-
talgia, this self-confessed impercip-
ience, removes from the Christian
the obligation to present the evi-
dence for belief “with gentleness and
reverence." And there is evidence to
present. Christianity, in Austin Far-
rer’s phrase, “appears to be credu-
lity," but this is partly because Chris-
tians fail to present the evidence, or
fail to dispute the boundaries of what
their critics are prepared to admit as
evidence. Without the recovery of
mission the case may go by default.

This is the crucial point, quite lit-
erally. I know that the word mission
is comparatively unpopular today,
even among Christians. I under-
stand the reasons for this. But I think
that it is wiser not to cast about for
more acceptable synonyms, in the
hope that by so doing Christians will
avoid giving unnecessary offense. As

with other important words with
deeply Christian significance, such
as the word love, the word mission
can be reinstated, recovered, in fact.
It permanently safeguards two es-
sential elements, first the content of
a message (the Good News of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ), and second,
the reality of a commission (the
sending and being sent) to bring that
message to others. No critic should
conclude that in saying this I want
to turn back the clock, or that I have
not paid sufficient attention to the
changes brought about in a pluralist
society by the mutual recognition of
different religious experiences. On
the contrary, it is precisely because
I suspect that the wider ecumenism
is suffering, for want of its distinc-
tive contribution, that I advocate the
recovery of Christian mission, both
as a continuing obligation on the part
of Christians faithful to the Great
Commission, and as a matter of
practical necessity.

Can the West be
Converted?

by Lesslie Newbigin

Let me begin by confessing that my
title is a borrowed one. A dozen
years ago, at the Bangkok Confer-
ence on “Salvation Today,” I hap-
pened to be sitting next to General
Simatoupong, that doughty Indo-
nesian Christian who, having driven
the Dutch out of his islands, turned
to theology as the most agreeable field
for the exercise of the arts of war.
We were in plenary debate, and
Simatoupong had just made an in-
tervention. As he returned to his seat
beside me, I heard him say under
his breath: “Of course, the Number
One question is, Can the West be
converted?”

In the following years I have be-
come more and more sure that he
was right. If one looks at the world
scene from a missionary point of view,
surely the most striking fact is that,
while in great areas of Asia and Af-
rica the Church is growing, often
growing rapidly, in the lands which
were once called Christendom it is
in decline; and, moreover, wherever
the culture of the West, under the
name of “modernization,” pene-

A distinguished theologian, writer, and
ecumenist, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin is
known for his work in misston in India,
where he was Bishop of Madras for the
Church of South India. He was present at
the founding of the World Council of
Churches and was the director of its di-
vision of world mission and evangelism.
He is the author of several books, including
The Open Secret, an introduction to the
theology of mission. The substance of this
article is based on the Waif eld Lecture
series delivered by Bishop Newbigin in
March 1984. The actual article is reprinted
by permission of the Friends of St. Colm’s,
the Education Center and College of the
Church of Scotland.

trates, it carries with it what Lipp-
man called “the acids of modernity,”
dissolving the most enduring of re-
ligious beliefs including the beliefs
of Christians. Surely there can be no
more crucial question for the world
mission of the Church than the one
I have posed. Can there be an effec-
tive missionary encounter with this
culture — this so powerful, persua-
sive, and confident culture which (at
least until very recently) simply re-
garded itself as “the coming world
civilization.” Can the West be con-
verted?

I am posing this question at a time
when, especially in evangelical cir-
cles, great attention is being paid to
the question of Gospel and culture,
to the question of the contextuali-
zation of the Gospel in different cul-
tures. Recent missionary literature is
full of the subject. “Contextualiza-
tion” is an ugly word but a useful
one. It is better than the word long
used by Protestants — “indigeniza-
tion” — which always tended to di-
rect attention to the past of a culture
rather than to its present and future.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

And it is better than the traditional
Catholic term “adaptation,” which
suggested that the missionary was
the bearer ol a pure, culture-free
Gospel which had then to be adapted
to the receptor culture, and thus con-
cealed the fact that every statement
of the Gospel from the New Tes-
tament onwards is already culturally
conditioned. “Contextualization”
directs attention to the actual con-
text, shaped by the past and open to
the future, in which the Gospel has
to be embodied now. But why is it
that we have a plethora of mission-
ary studies on the contextualization
of the Gospel in all the cultures of
the world from China to Peru, but
nothing comparable directed to the
culture which we call “the modern
world”?

I say “nothing comparable.” There
have of course been great theologi-
ans who have dealt with the question
of Gospel and culture from within
the parameters of this modern
world — men like Paul Tillich and
Richard Niebuhr. But these have not
had the perspective which the ex-
perience of cross-cultural missions
provides. Where can we find a cross-
cultural perspective for the com-
munication of the Gospel to modern
societies? Can the experience of cross-
cultural missions to the many pre-
modern cultures of our world in the
last two centuries illuminate the task
of mission to this modern world? I
am not forgetting the important ex-
perience of dialogue between Chris-
tians of the First and Third worlds,
and between Christians and people
of other world faiths. But this ex-
perience has a limited relevance be-
cause all of it is conducted in the
European languages and therefore

within the terms which our modern
western culture provides. No one
takes part in them who has not been
qualified to do so by a modern-style
education in the European language.
This kind of dialogue, with perhaps
some exceptions, is too dependent on
the language and thought-forms of
the West to provide a radical chal-
lenge in the pow-er of the Gospel to
the West.

One of the most persuasive writ-
ers seeking to articulate a Christian
affirmation in the terms of our cul-
ture is Peter Berger. As a sociologist,
he has developed a way of using the
sociology of knowledge not (as so
often) to undermine but to under-
gird the Christian claim. In his book
The Heretical Imperative he has ar-
gued that the distinctive fact about
modern western culture, as distinct
from all pre-modern cultures is that
there is no generally acknowledged
“plausibility structure,” acceptance
of which is taken for granted with-
out argument, and dissent from which
is heresy. A “plausibility structure,”
as Berger uses the term, is a social
structure of ideas and practices which
creates the conditions which deter-
mine whether or not a belief is plau-
sible. To hold beliefs which fall out-
side this plausibility structure is to
be a heretic in the original sense of
the word haeresis, that is to say, one
who makes his own decisions. In pre-
modern cultures there is a stable
plausibility structure and only the rare
individual questions it. It is just “how
things are and have always been.”
In modern societies, by contrast, we
are required to make our own de-
cisions, for there is no accepted plau-
sibility structure. Each one — as we
often say — has to have a faith of his

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

own. We all have to make our own
decisions. We all have to be, in the
original sense, heretics.

In this situation Berger describes
three possibilities for Christian af-
firmation which he calls (not very
happily) deductive, reductive, and
inductive. The first simply selects one
of the religious traditions and af-
firms it — preferably in such a loud
voice that other voices are reduced
to silence. Of this strategy he takes
Karl Barth to be the most notable
exponent. But, after a few respectful
genuflections towards the great Swiss
theologian, he rules him out of the
debate. Even thirteen thick volumes
of dogmatics are not enough if you
cannot show rational grounds for
choosing this starting point rather
than another. It will not do simply
to say “The Bible tells me so” if you
cannot show reasons for choosing the
Bible rather than the Q’ran, the Gita,
or Das Kapital.

The second, or reductive, strategy
is typified in the Bultmann program
of demythologization. Here the fact
that the “plausibility structures” of
traditional religion simply collapse
in the atmosphere of modern secular
society is fully recognized. In effect,
says Berger, Bultmann takes the be-
liefs of the modern secular town
dweller as the criterion of what can
be believed. When, in a famous
phrase, Bultmann says, “one cannot
use electric light and radio and call
upon modern medicine in case of
illness, and at the same time believe
in the world of spirits and miracles
of the New Testament,” he is in ef-
fect taking the modern world view
as ultimate, and this must in the end
mean the abandonment of even these
parts of the Christian tradition which

Bultmann seeks to safeguard. One
does not need Jesus in order to en-
dorse an existentialist view of life.

Berger therefore opts for the third
alternative which he calls the induc-
tive. This is to take the universal
human experience of what, in an-
other book, Berger calls “signals of
transcendence,” the religious expe-
rience which is the pre-supposition
of all theologies whether of Barth or
of Bultmann, of the Hindu, the Mos-
lem, or the Buddhist, as the basis for
religious affirmation. The paradig-
matic figure here, of course, is
Schleiermacher. The way he pointed
is, according to Berger, the only way
forward in the conditions of our
modern secular world. The move-
ment associated with the name of
Barth is, in Berger’s view, a tem-
porary excursion into a blind alley,
and we are now returning to the
main road. To the obvious question,
“How, amid the many different sig-
nals of transcendence, does one dis-
tinguish the true from the false?”
Berger answers with the words of
the Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali
that they must all be weighed in “the
scale of reason.” He insists that in
giving this answer he is not surren-
dering to a rationalism of the style
of the Enlightenment. He defends
what he calls “sober rational assess-
ment” as the only way of distin-
guishing between true and false re-
ligious experience, but he does not
attempt to describe the criteria for
assessment or the grounds upon
which these criteria rest. Perhaps the
adjective “sober” has more than or-
dinary importance here, for the orig-
inal context of Al-Ghazali’s image
of the “scale of reason” is a passage
in which he likens the actual reli-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

gious experience to a kind of ine-
briation and goes on, “The words of
lovers when in a state of drunken-
ness must be hidden away and not
broadcast,' hut later, “their drunk-
enness abates and the sovereignty of
their reason is restored: and reason
is God's scale on earth.” This accords
with Berger’s own statement that re-
ligious certainty is “located only
within the enclave of religious ex-
perience itself,” and cannot be had
except “precariously in recollection"
in the ordinary life of the world.

It seems clear that the “sober ra-
tionality” with which we are to as-
sess the value of different religious
experiences does not belong to the
enclave but to the public world out-
side. It is not a rationality which rests
upon the religious experience but one
which judges it. And it is not dif-
ficult to see that it is the rationality
which rests upon the assumptions of
our culture.

I believe that Berger is correct in
his diagnosis of our culture in terms
of the “heretical imperative.” In con-
trast to all preceding cultures, ours
has enormously extended the range
of matters on which each individual
has to make his own choices. A vast
amount of what previous ages and
cultures have regarded as given facts
which must be accepted are now
matters for personal decision. With
the aid of modern technology, if he
is wealthy enough, modern man
chooses where he will live, whom he
will meet, how he will behave and
what style of life he will adopt. He
can, if he has mastered the arts of
“modern living,” change at will his
job, his home, his company, his en-
tertainment, and his spouse. The
patterns of belief and behavior which

ruled because they were not ques-
tioned have largely dissolved. Each
person makes his own decisions about
what to believe and how to behave.
It is therefore entirely natural that
religion too is drawn into this way
of understanding the human situa-
tion. It is natural that religion too
becomes a matter of personal choice.
We are all now required to be— in
the original sense — heretics.

But what are the implications of
this? What are the implications of a
division of human experience into
two parts — the enclave where alone
religious certainty can be had, and
the public world where religious ex-
perience is to be “weighed in the
scale of reason”? We come here to
what is perhaps the most distinctive
and crucial feature of the modern
world view, namely the division of
human affairs into two realms — the
private and the public, a private realm
of values where pluralism reigns and
a public world of what our culture
calls “facts.” This dichotomy of the
public and the private is something
which is absent from traditional cul-
tures. We shall have to look at it
more closely. But let us accept it for
the moment. Let us accept Berger’s
statement that in respect of what goes
on in the enclave of religious expe-
rience we are all subject to the he-
retical imperative. But what about
the public world where we all meet
and where all things are weighed in
the scale of reason? It is this world
that we must examine if we are to
understand modern culture. In this
world pluralism does not operate. It
is the world of what are called “facts”
(we shall have to examine that word
in a moment; meanwhile let it stand
in its ordinary meaning). In respect

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

of what we call “facts” pluralism does
not operate. Here statements are
either true or false. If statements of
alleged facts are in mutual contra-
diction, we do not take it as an oc-
casion for celebrating our faithful-
ness to the principles of pluralism
and freedom of thought. We argue,
we experiment, we carry out tests
until we reach agreement about what
are the facts, and then we expect all
reasonable people to accept them. The
one who does not accept them is the
real heretic. Of course he will not be
burned at the stake, but his views
will not be published in the scientific
journals or in the university lecture
rooms. In respect of what are called
“facts,” a statement is either true or
false, right or wrong. But in respect
of what are called “values,” and su-
premely in respect of the religious
beliefs on which these values are be-
lieved to rest, one does not use this
kind of language. Value systems are
not right or wrong, true or false.
They are matters for personal choice.
Here the operative principle is plu-
ralism, respect for the freedom of
each person to choose the values that
he or she will live by.

Here, plainly, is the real plausi-
bility structure which controls our
culture and within which Berger
himself operates, and which he takes
for granted. His choice of the in-
ductive method for dealing with re-
ligious truth-claims belongs to this
plausibility structure. His “sober ra-
tionality,” in contrast to the inebri-
ation of religious experience, is the
rationality of this world view. The
inductive method which he espouses
has been basic to the whole devel-
opment of the modern scientific world
view from the time of Bacon and

Galileo. Looked at from the point of
view of the Gospel its value is both
real and limited. It is a valid way of
coming to the truth because the cre-
ated world is both rational and con-
tingent— rational as the creation of
God who is light and not darkness,
contingent because it is not an em-
anation of God but the creation of
God who has endowed it with a
measure of autonomy. Because this
is so, a Christian would argue, the
study of things and happenings in
the created world can give us true
understanding of them. That is the
foundation upon which science rests.
But the inductive method has a va-
lidity which is limited in that it can-
not decide the question by whom
and for what purpose the world was
created. The answer to that question
cannot be reached by any method of
induction until the history of the
universe has reached its terminus;
short of that point, the data for a
valid induction are not available.

Within the world view of modern
science it is perfectly possible and
proper to insist, as Berger does, that
the phenomena of religious experi-
ence should be studied along with
all the other facts that are available
for our inspection, and that conclu-
sions should be drawn by induction
from these studies. In this way it is
proper to challenge the kind of nar-
row positivism which has sought to
deny cultural acceptance to the phe-
nomena of religion. Berger is a true
follower of Schleiermacher in com-
mending religion to its cultured des-
pisers, in seeking to show that there
is a place for religious affirmation
within the “plausibility structure” of
the modern scientific world view. But
this whole procedure leaves that

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

world view unchallenged. The whole
method simply excludes the possi-
bility that it might actually be the
case that the one who is creator and
sustainer and sovereign of the uni-
verse has personally made himself
known at a certain point in the hu-
man story. Any such claim is simply
bracketed with other claims to be
included in a syllabus for the com-
parative study of religion. It has been
silenced by co-option into the mod-
ern scientific world view. The Gos-
pel is treated as an account of some-
thing which happened in one of those
many enclaves in which religious ex-
perience takes place. It has to be
brought out of the enclave into the
public world to be weighed in the
scale of reason along with all the
other varieties of religious experi-
ence, and on the basis of all the facts.

At this point we come to the crux
of the matter. What, in our culture,
is the meaning of the word “fact”?
In its earliest use in the English lan-
guage it is simply the Latin factum ,
the past participle of the verb to do,
something which has been done. But
plainly it has acquired a much richer
meaning. In ordinary use “fact'' is
contrasted with belief, opinion, value.
Value-free facts are the most highly
prized commodities in our culture.
It is upon them that we think we
can build with confidence. “Fact,”
says Alasdair Macintyre, “is in mod-
ern western culture a folk-concept
with an aristocratic ancestry. The
aristocrat in question is Lord Bacon
who advised his contemporaries to
abjure speculation and collect facts.
By “speculation” he referred pri-
marily to the Aristotelian belief that
things were to be understood in terms
of their purpose. But in advising his

contemporaries to collect facts, he was
not launching a program for mag-
pies collecting any odds and ends
that might be lying about. That is
not how modern science was born.
The new' activity was shaped, as every
rational activity must be shaped, by
another speculative framework —
namely the belief that things should
be understood in terms not of their
purpose but of their cause, of how
they work. Facts thus became value-
free, because value is a concept re-
lated to the purpose for which a thing
either is or is not well fitted. Here
is the origin of w'hat Macintyre called
the “folk-concept” of “facts” which
dominates the consciousness of mod-
ern man. There is, in this view, a
w'orld of facts which is the real world,
an austere world in which human
hopes, desires, and purposes have no
place. The facts are facts and they
are neither good nor bad; they are
just facts.

It follows that the scientist uses a
different kind of language from the
religious person. Religious state-
ments are normally prefaced by the
w'ord, “I believe,” or “we believe.”
In textbooks of science no such pref-
ace is used. The writer simply states
the facts. And it is this world of facts
which is our shared public world.
Our values, our views of w'hat is good
and bad, are a matter of personal
opinion, and everyone is free to have
his own opinions. But on the facts
wre must all agree. Here is the core
of our culture, the plausibility struc-
ture in relation to which we cannot
be heretics and remain part of so-
ciety, the area u'here pluralism does
not reign. Facts are facts.

But are they? If w'e go back to
Bacon and the beginnings of modern

THE PRINCETON SEM I N ARY B U L LET I N

science we can see that what hap-
pened was that different questions
were being asked about the things
with which people had always been
familiar. The Greeks had asked the
question, “Why,” and had tried to
explain (for example) motion in terms
of purpose. Modern science asks
“How,” and tries to explain things
in terms of cause and effect. Both
questions are — of course — proper,
but neither by itself is enough to bring
full understanding. You can set out
to understand the working of a ma-
chine in terms of the laws of physics
and chemistry, and you can give a
complete account of its working in
these terms. But it would be foolish
to say that you “understand” the ma-
chine if you have no idea of the pur-
pose for which this assembly of bits
of metal was put together in this
way. And it is certain that, if you
have no idea of its purpose, there is
no meaning in calling it good or bad.
It just is. If, on the other hand, you
know what it is for, you can and
must judge it either good or bad ac-
cording to whether or not it achieves
its purpose.

Alasdair Macintyre in his book
After Virtue has chronicled the at-
tempts which have been made in the
past 200 years to find a rational basis
for ethics within the modern scien-
tific world view. He demonstrates
two things; first, that the morality
for which a basis was sought was
one carried over from the pre-sci-
entific age; and second, that all at-
tempts to ground ethical precepts in
the “facts” as science understands
them have failed. As Kant and others
have insisted, from statements of fact,
“This is so,” you cannot move log-
ically to statements of value or ob-

ligation: “This is good,” or “This
ought to be done.” But this is only
so if “facts” have already been de-
fined in such a way as to exclude
purpose. To take one of Macintyre’s
examples: from the factual state-
ment, “This watch has not lost five
seconds in two years,” you may im-
mediately conclude, “This is a good
watch” — provided that “watch” is
already understood as an instrument
for keeping time. If “watch” means
only a collection of bits of metal which
can be used according to the per-
sonal preference of its owner for dec-
orating the sitting room or for
throwing at the cat, then no such
conclusion follows. If “watch” is
understood only in terms of the
physics and chemistry of its parts, no
such conclusion follows and every-
one is free to have his or her own
opinion as to whether it is a good
watch or not.

This simple illustration takes us,
I think, to the heart ol the matter.
“Facts,” as our culture understands
them, are interpretations of our ex-
perience in terms of the questions
“What” and “How” without asking
the question “Why.” And facts are
the material of our public, shared
culture, the culture into which we
expect every child to be inducted
through the system of public edu-
cation. That human nature is gov-
erned by the program encoded in the
DNA molecule is a fact which every
child is expected to understand and
accept. It will be part of the school
curriculum. That human beings ex-
ist to glorify God and enjoy him for-
ever is not a fact. It is an opinion
held by some people. It belongs to
the private sector, not the public.
Those who hold it are free to com-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

municate it to their children in home
and church; it has no place in the
curriculum of the public schools and
universities. And since the publicly
accepted definition of a human being
excludes any statement of the pur-
pose for which human beings exist,
it follows necessarily that (in the or-
dinary meaning of the word “fact”),
no factual statement can be made
about what kinds of behavior are
good or bad. T hese can only be pri-
vate opinions. Pluralism reigns.

Here, I submit, is the intellectual
core of that culture which, at least
from the mid-eighteenth century has
been the public culture of Europe,
and has — under the name of “mod-
ernization”— extended its power into
every part of the world. Two hundred
years ago it was hailed in Europe as,
quite simply, the dawning of light
in the darkness: the Enlightenment.
And it still bears that glow about it.
For millions of people all over the
world what we call the modern sci-
entific world view is accepted quite
simply as the true account of how
things in fact are, in contrast to the
dogmas, myths, and superstitions of
traditional religion.

And we must gratefully acknowl-
edge the immense achievements of
these past two centuries. Who can
deny to the men of the Enlighten-
ment and their successors the credit
for liberating the human spirit from
many ancient fetters, for penetrating
the secrets of nature and harnessing
nature’s power for human purposes?
Surely this has been the most bril-
liant period in human history thus
far, and we are — with all our weak-
nesses and perplexities — its heirs. It
would be easy at this point to throw
in some remarks about the signs of

disintegration which our culture is
showing — the loss of faith in science,
the skepticism about our ability to
solve our problems, the disappear-
ance of belief in progress, and the
widespread phenomena of anomie,
boredom, and the sense of meaning-
lessness. But let us, for our present
purposes, ignore all this. Let us rather
ask what is involved in a real en-
counter between the Gospel and this
culture of ours at its best and strong-
est. Let us attempt something quite
different from what Berger pro-
poses. Instead of weighing the Chris-
tian religious experience (along with
others) in the scale of reason as our
culture understands reason, let us
suppose that the Gospel is true, that
in the story of the Bible and in the
life and death and resurrection of
Jesus the creator and lord of the uni-
verse has actually manifested him-
self to declare and effect his purpose,
and that therefore everything else,
including all the axioms and as-
sumptions of our culture have to be
assessed and can only be validly as-
sessed in the scales which this rev-
elation provides. What would it mean
if, instead of trying to understand
the Gospel from the point of view
of our culture, we tried to under-
stand our culture from the point of
view of the Gospel?

Obviously to ask that question is
to suggest a program for many dec-
ades. Let me simply suggest four
points as prolegomena to the an-
swering of the question.

i. The first point to be made is
that modern science rests upon a faith
which is the fruit of the long school-
ing of Europe in the world view of
the Bible. Historians of science have
devoted much thought to the ques-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

tion why the marvelous intellectual
powers of the Greeks, the Chinese,
the Indians, and the Egyptians, in
spite of their achievements in science
and mathematics, did not give rise
to the self-sustaining science which
has dominated our culture for the
past two hundred years. Briefly the
answer seems to be that modern sci-
ence rests upon the faith (which of
course can never be proved) that the
universe is both rational and contin-
gent. If the universe were not ra-
tional, if different instrument read-
ings at different times and places had
no necessary relation with each other
but were simply random facts, then
science would be impossible. Scien-
tists are sustained in their long and
arduous labors by the faith that ap-
parent contradictions will eventually
be resolved because the universe is
rational. But if that were all, science
would not be necessary. If there were
no element of contingency, if all that
exists necessarily existed as the out-
ward expression of pure rationality,
then all the experimenting, explor-
ing, and testing work of science would
be unnecessary. If — as India has
tended to think — all that exists is
emanation from primal being, then
pure contemplative reason alone is
enough for making contact with
reality. If the world were not ra-
tional, science would be impossible;
if the world were not contingent,
science would be unnecessary. Be-
cause it is a rational world, but not
the only possible world, we both can
and must bestir ourselves to find out
what kind of world it is. Science rests
upon a faith which cannot be dem-
onstrated but is simply presupposed,
and the roots of this faith are in the
biblical story which shaped the life

of Europe for the one thousand years
before modern science was born.

2. The second point is this. Mod-
ern science achieved its great break-
through in the seventeenth century
by setting aside the question “Why?”
and concentrating on the question
“How?” It left the question of pur-
pose to what Bacon called the spec-
ulation of philosophers and theolo-
gians and concentrated on the
question of cause. It asked of every-
thing not “What is its purpose?” but
“How does it work?” That question
gave unlimited scope for probing,
dissecting, exploring, and experi-
menting. Purpose is a personal word.
It implies a mind which has a pur-
pose real in the mind though not yet
realized in the world of objects; it
can be known only by listening to
the person whose purpose it is. But
for understanding cause we have to
examine what is already there in the
world of objects. This is a different
kind of enterprise, as different as
dissecting a brain to find out how it
works is from listening to a person
to find out what he means. Both are
proper activities in their proper place.
But clearly the elimination of the
question of purpose can only be a
methodological strategy; if there were
no such thing as purpose then the
scientist could have no purpose in
adopting this strategy. The scientist
acts purposefully when, as a decision
on method, he investigates cause and
ignores purpose. Plainly it is an error
to move from this decision on method
to the conclusion that there are no
purposes at work in nature other than
the investigative purpose of the sci-
entist.

3. The third point is as follows.
Human beings are also part of na-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ture and can be investigated by the
methods ot modern science. For this
purpose they are treated as objects
whose behavior can be understood
in terms of cause and effect and
without reference to their alleged
purposes. The practitioners of what
are called the behavioral sciences seek
to formulate law's of human behav-
ior analagous to the laws of physics
and chemistry. On the basis of these
laws the administrator, the civil ser-
vant, and the advertising consultant
seek to direct or influence human
behavior. In doing so, they are cred-
iting themselves with a capacity for
purposeful activity directed to ra-
tionally chosen ends, a capacity which
the method denies to those who are
investigated. We are familiar writh
the spectre of the ultimate achieve-
ment of this kind of scientific man-
agement of human affairs in the var-
ious scenarios for genetic engineering.
At this point we are bound to ask
the question: What will direct the
behavior of those who use the meth-
ods of science to direct human be-
havior? Science itself cannot provide
the answer to this question because
its method eliminates purpose as a
category of explanation. If there is a
purpose to which in fact all human
life ought to be directed, this purpose
cannot be discovered by the methods
of science. The scientist has his own
purposes, but they have no basis in
the world of “facts.” They are his
personal choice. Science acknowl-
edges no objective wrorld of values
in the light of which his purposes
could be judged right or wrong. And
since the scientist, like every human
being, has different purposes at dif-
ferent times, and since his method
excludes the possibility of an objec-

tive criterion for judging between
these purposes, he is left under the
control of whichever is the strongest
impulse of his nature. He becomes,
in fact, an agent of nature. Man’s
mastery of nature turns out in the
end to be nature’s mastery of man.
We have been conned by the oldest
trick in the book. Marching trium-
phantly forward we failed to notice
the jaws of the trap closing behind.

4. Fourth, this way of understand-
ing things w'hich we call the modern
scientific world view has now
achieved global dominance. There
is, of course, no way in which it can
be proved to be the truth about things
from outside of its own pre-suppo-
sitions. When, as those who have
served as missionaries know, it meets
older traditional views, such as those
of India and Africa, which are equally
coherent and equally compelling to
those who dwell in them, the deci-
sive argument has usually been: Look!
Our view works. It delivers the goods.
Look at our machines, our medi-
cines, our technology. It works! To-
day we are not able to give that an-
swer with the same confidence. We
acknowledge the enormous achieve-
ments of the modern scientific world
view, but its failures are becoming
apparent. It is not opening for us a
rational view of the future. We can
no longer say, as we did a generation
ago, “This is just how things are."
And more to our present purpose, it
will no longer do for Christianity to
accept, as P. Berger invites us to do,
a position in one of the enclaves of
this culture, even as one of its priv-
ileged old age pensioners. It will no
longer do to say that the Christian
faith is one among the possible pri-
vate options available within the pa-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

rameters of this culture. It will no
longer do to confuse the fact of plu-
rality with the ideology of plural-
ism— the view that since no one can
really know the truth we must be
content with a multiplicity of opin-
ions. It will no longer do to accept
the dichotomy between a public world
of so-called “facts” and a private
world of so-called “values.” We shall
have to be bold enough to confront
our public world with the reality of
Jesus Christ, the word made flesh,
the one in whom the eternal purpose
of almighty God has been publicly
set forth in the midst of our human
history, and therefore to affirm that
no facts are truly understood except
in the light of him through whom
and for whom they exist. We shall
have to face, as the early Church
faced, an encounter with the public
world, the worlds of politics and eco-
nomics, and the world of science
which is its heart. It will not do to
accept a peaceful co-existence be-
tween science and theology on the
basis that they are simply two ways
of looking at the same thing — one
appropriate for the private sector and
one for the public. We have to insist
that the question, “What is really
true?” is asked and answered.

I confess that when I say these
things I feel alarmed, for I can hardly
imagine all that they will entail. And
yet I cannot avoid believing that they
are true. Nearly one hundred fifty
years ago W. E. Gladstone wrote these
solemn and prophetic words:

Rome, the mistress of state-craft,
and beyond all other nations in
the politic employment of reli-
gion, added without stint or scru-
ple to her list of gods and god-

desses, and consolidated her
military empire by a skillful med-
ley of all the religions of the world.
Thus it continued while the wor-
ship of the Deity was but a con-
jecture or a contrivance; but when
the rising of the Sun of Right-
eousness had given reality to the
subjective forms of faith, and had
made actual and solid truth the
common inheritance of all men,
then the religion of Christ be-
came, unlike other new creeds, an
object of jealousy and of cruel
persecution, because it would not
consent to become a partner in
this heterogeneous device, and
planted itself upon truth and not
in the quicksand of opinion. . . .
Should the Christian faith ever
become but one among many co-
equal pensioners of a govern-
ment, it will be a proof that sub-
jective religion has again lost its
God-given hold upon objective
reality; or when, under the thin
shelter of its name a multitude of
discordant schemes shall have been
put upon a footing of essential
parity, and shall together receive
the bounty of the legislature, this
will prove that we are once more
in a transition state — that we are
travelling back again from the re-
gion to which the Gospel brought
us to that in which it found us.

What Gladstone foresaw is essen-
tially what has been happening in
the years since he wrote. The end
result is not — as we imagined twenty-
five years ago — a secular society, a
society which has no public beliefs
but is a kind of neutral world in
which we can all freely pursue our
self-chosen purposes. We see that now

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3*>

for the mirage that it was. What we
have is, as Gladstone foretold, a pa-
gan society whose public life is ruled
by beliefs which are false. And be-
cause it is not a pre-Christian pa-
ganism, but a paganism born out of
the rejection of Christianity, it is far
tougher and more resistant to the
Gospel than the pre-Christian pa-
ganisms with which foreign mis-
sionaries have been in contact during
the past two hundred years. Here,
without possibility of question, is the
most challenging missionary frontier
of our time.

Can the West be converted? God
alone knows the answer to that ques-
tion. I do not see except in the dim-
mest way what would be involved
in a serious response to this chal-
lenge. I can only see that it must
mean great changes in the way we
see the task of the Church. There is
no space at the end of this lecture to
do more than suggest the headings
of an agenda that will take decades
rather than years to undertake.

1. I would put first the decleri-
calizing of theology so that it may
become an enterprise done not within
the enclave, in that corner of the pri-
vate sector which our culture labels
“religion,” but rather in the public
sector where God’s will as declared
in Jesus Christ is either done or not
done in the daily business of nations
and societies, in the councils of gov-
ernments, the boardrooms of trans-
national corporations, the trade
unions, the universities and the
schools.

2. Second, I would place the re-
covery of that apocalyptic strand of
the New Testament teaching with-
out which Christian hope becomes
merely hope for the survival of the

individual and there is no hope for
the world. The silencing of the apoc-
alyptic notes of the Gospel is simply
part of the privatization of religion
by which modern culture has emas-
culated the biblical message.

3. Third, I would put the need for
a doctrine of freedom which rests
not on the ideology of the Enlight-
enment but on the Gospel itself. The
world will rightly distrust any claim
by the Church to a voice in public
affairs, remembering that the free-
dom of thought and of conscience
which the Enlightenment won was
won against the resistance of the
Church. But the freedom which the
Enlightenment won rests upon an
illusion — the illusion of auton-
omy— and it therefore ends in new
forms of bondage. Yet we have no
right to say this until we can show
that we have learned our lesson: that
we understand the difference be-
tween bearing witness to the truth
and pretending to possess the truth;
that we understand that witness
(marturia) means not dominance and
control but suffering.

4. Fourth, I would affirm the need
for a radical break with that form
of Christianity which is called the
denomination. Sociologists have
rightly pointed out that the denom-
ination (essentially a product of North
American religious experience in the
past two hundred years) is simply
the institutional form of a privatized
religion. The denomination is the
outward and visible form of an in-
ward and spiritual surrender to the
ideology of our culture. Neither sep-
arately nor together can the denom-
inations become the base for a gen-
uinely missionary encounter with our
culture.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

5. Fifth, there will be the need to
listen to the witness of Christians
from other cultures. The great new
asset which we have for our mis-
sionary task is the presence among
us of communities of Christians
nourished in the cultures of Asia,
Africa, and the West Indies. We need
their eyes to see our culture afresh.

6. But finally, and this is funda-
mental, there will be the need for

courage. Our wrestling is not against
flesh and blood but against the prin-
cipalities and powers — realities to the
existence of which our privatized
culture has been blind. To ask, “Can
the West be converted?” is to align
ourselves with the Apostle when he
speaks of “taking every thought
captive to Christ,” and for that — as
he tells us — we need more than the
weapons of the world.

Shall the Moral Majority
Prevail?

by Conrad H. Massa

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Con-
rad //. Massa is an alumnus of Columbia
University and Princeton Theological
Seminary. He has served churches in Roch-
ester, New York, and East Orange and
Newark, New Jersey, and was an assistant
professor of homiletics at Princeton Sem-
inary. Dr. Massa is presently Charlotte W.
Newcome Professor of Practical Theology
and Dean of the Seminary at Princeton.
This sermon was preached in Miller Chapel
on September 27, 1984.

Text: And behold, there was a man with a withered hand. And they ashed him,
“ Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath ?" so that they might accuse him. He
said to them, “What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a
pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out ? Of how much
more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the
sabbath." Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand.” And the
man stretched it out, and it was restored, whole like the other. But the
Pharisees went out and took counsel against him, how to destroy him.
(Matthew 12:1-14)

The tie between religion and mo-
rality, very much in the news in
these days, is inevitable, but it is a
relationship which has been marked
by ambiguity for as long as humans
can remember. Historically it is not
difficult to demonstrate that what
one religion has forbidden another
has required; what one religion has
denounced as sinful, another has
permitted as morally neutral; what
one religion has fought to obtain as
a social good, another has just as ve-
hemently opposed as an oppressive
wrong. There is no automatic cor-
relation between religious belief and
what is described at any particular
time as morally acceptable behavior.

Jesus Christ lived in a time when
religious prescriptions had the
standing or the force of civil law and
social custom. These prescriptions
described what was religiously ac-
ceptable, morally respectable, and le-

gally responsible. Civil order was
therefore thought to be dependent
upon retaining the religious struc-
tures, and public morality wras be-
lieved to be dependent on the out-
ward observance of religious practices.
The Gospels make it clear that Jesus,
by relegating the public observance
of some (perhaps all) religious prac-
tices to a secondary position tor him-
self and his disciples, was thereby a
threat to the social and moral sta-
bility of the community.

The situation was heightened in
the incident where Jesus was chal-
lenged to heal a man on the Sabbath.
It was like a gauntlet being thrown
down before the fact. “Is it against
our Law to cure on the Sabbath.2 “
Jesus reminded them that if they had
a sheep which had fallen into a deep
hole on the Sabbath, they would lift
it out. So, he indicated, it is lawful
to do good for a man which he then

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

proceeded to do for that man with
the crippled hand. This was a vio-
lation of the law which stipulated
that medical assistance could be ren-
dered on the Sabbath only to save a
life. Jesus simply declared that he
was Lord of the Sabbath. In the sim-
ilar account to this incident in Mark’s
Gospel, Jesus adds, “The Sabbath was
made for the good of man; man was
not made for the Sabbath.”

Thus Jesus took this philosophical
question of the relation of morality
and religion and made it into the
theological question of the relation-
ship between law and grace. When
we see this we understand the rad-
ical difference which Jesus Christ and
the Christian faith make. That rad-
ical difference is an expression of the
new relationship between God and
humanity which was incarnate in Je-
sus Christ. Too many who call them-
selves Christian today still have not
recognized and assimilated that rad-
ical difference!

A cartoon appeared in a Minne-
apolis newspaper. Three boxes. In
the first Jesus is saying “Let him who
is without sin, cast the first stone.”
Second box, a fusillade of rocks hurl-
ing through the air. Third box, Jesus
is saying “Damned Moral Major-
ity!” The Moral Majority is con-
fronting us with the issue of law and
grace. They would ask Jesus, “Is it
wrong to heal on the Sabbath?” They
would expect Jesus, moral man that
he was, to say, “Yes, it is wrong.”
The Moral Majority has not figured
out how to deal with change and
diversity in human conditions. They
yearn for the world as they want it
to be. They look back on a time as
they thinly it was. They must not be
permitted to prevail, however, be-

cause they would make their morality
our religion.

In the cartoon strip Peanuts , Lucy
is talking with Marcie: “I have it all
figured out, Marcie . . . the way I see
it, there seem to be more questions
than there are answers.” “So?” “So,
try to be the one who asks the ques-
tions.” There is theological wisdom
in that. The question always sets the
agenda and identifies the priority. So
every Christian who is exercising
discipleship in the world will un-
derstand herself or himself not so
much as one who knows the right
answers but as one who knows and
asks the right questions.

Look at the sensitive issue of the
day, abortion. The Moral Majority
is against it. So is everyone. I have
counselled with women about abor-
tion and I have never met or heard
of one who had gotten pregnant so
she could consider abortion. If we
permit the question to be simply, “Are
you for or against abortion?” we
would all have to answer, at least,
that we think abortion is undesira-
ble. But that isn’t the right question!
Because that isn’t the question as it
confronts us in human existence
where the question comes in a per-
son who is suffering inner turmoil.

If we are going to cast such a
question in hypothetical or gener-
alized terms, we must look at what
is, not at what we would like the
world to be. We would all like a
world in which no child was con-
ceived who was not wanted. But the
world is not like that. So Jesus saw
a law which was against healing on
the Sabbath. Then he looked at the
crippled hand of a man standing be-
fore him. It was a paradigm of the
way human need presses in upon us.

4°

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

It never comes at a convenient time
and it never comes in the previously
described formulations. People with
crippled hands should come on
Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday
is a good day. My schedule is lighter
then. But this paradigm of human
need makes it clear that human suf-
fering does not come like some con-
venience food, packaged to be opened
at our convenience. T his man came
to Jesus on that inconvenient and un-
lawful Sabbath, and Jesus reached
out and healed him, sending him
into his future a whole man.

So the question is, “What do you
do about a social situation in which
each year tens of thousands of women
who become pregnant do not want
to bring that pregnancy to full term?”
A response which looks at the hu-
man being in her predicament says,
“You make a variety of options
available to such women so that their
individual differences and situations
may be given due regard as they ex-
ercise their human dignity of choice.”
Even to phrase the question that way
requires empathy. It requires us to
enter with compassion into the pre-
dicament of another human being to
help bring it to a healing conclusion.

Jesus did not respond to the real-
ity of human need with answers
framed in non-existent situations. He
was, if anything, practical because
human suffering touched him so
deeply. Many of you undoubtedly
read the remarkable interview which
Lech Walesa, the Polish labor leader,
gave to Time magazine shortly be-
fore his detention a couple of years
ago. He said, “I don’t believe ... in
holding Mass at Solidarity meetings.
. . . All of us cannot be dressed as
priests. Somebody has to be in the

factory, somebody must commit sins.

. . Somebody must commit sins!
That could only be said by a Chris-
tian who had to struggle in the kind
of complex social and political mi-
lieu in which Lech Walesa lived and
worked to bring about humane so-
lutions. Lech Walesa knows that there
are no pat answers, but he lives by
the grace of Jesus Christ where the
law seeks to define the limits of his
humanity and his morality. He knows
he will sin in making choices — but
he k nows he will sin more if he does
not exercise that human responsi-
bility and dignity. He believes in a
God who forgives sin through Jesus
Christ.

The Moral Majority, and those
who think like it, must not prevail
because they represent the triumph
of law over grace, a reversal of the
Gospel which makes a travesty of
the freedom of human choice and
response. The Sabbath was made for
man, not man for the Sabbath!

The Moral Majority must not pre-
vail because they represent the
triumph of morality over Christian
faith and make a travesty of the sov-
ereignty of God. Jesus said, “I am
the Lord of the Sabbath.”

The Moral Majority must not pre-
vail because they represent the
triumph of nostalgia over hope as
they seek to reconstruct a past rather
than to claim and to shape a future.
Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out
your hand.” And it became whole —
as does every life which dares to reach
out to him in faith.

Ours is the tradition of the good
news of the grace of God in Jesus
Christ. Professor John Leith of Union

1 Time , January 4, 1982, p. 34.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Theological Seminary, Richmond,
has written, “Tradition is the living
faith of dead people. Traditionalism
is the dead faith of living people. For
this reason tradition is a source of
the church’s vitality and tradition-
alism the occasion of its death.”2
God grant that in our striving here
at Princeton Seminary after God’s

truth and the richness of the Chris-
tian tradition, we may have what
Peter Gomes of Harvard has de-
scribed as “thinking hearts and lov-
ing minds” as we seek to live in and
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 John H. Leith, Introduction To The Re-
formed Tradition (Atlanta: John Knox Press,
1 977)’ P-31-

Should Affluent Adults
be Admitted to the
Lord’s Supper2

by Norman D. Pott

A native of New jersey, Dr. Norman
D. Pott has received degrees from Wheaton
College, Princeton Theological Seminary,
and the University of Edinburgh. Active
in ecumenical and presbytery affairs, Dr.
Pott is currently pastor of the Community
Presbyterian Church in Davis, California,
and has also served as adjunct professor at
San Francisco Theological Seminary. It is
customary to invite the newly elected
Alumni/ae Trustee to preach in Miller
Chapel in October in conjunction with the
fall meeting of the Board of Trustees.

Text: Then the children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on
them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people ; but Jesus said, “Let the
children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the
kingdom of heaven." And he laid his hands on them and went away.
(Matthew 19:13-26)

In our congregation in Davis we are
facing the question of whether
children should be included in our
celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. I
wish I could say that we were ap-
proaching that question out of a Bib-
lical theological perspective or with
the guidance of the church’s long
tradition, but the issue turns more
on the weightier issues of, “What
will other people think if my child
wiggles too much or makes too much
noise?” or “I take care of the kids
all week long; won’t you allow me
thirty minutes of peace?” If we can
consider the possibility of sanctuary
for homeless refugees, how about
some sanctuary for harassed par-
ents? But flying in the face of such
concerns we are boldly forging ahead;
the children will be in worship for
the whole service, at least on the first
Sunday of the month when we cel-
ebrate the Sacrament, and the res-
olution of all of our questions is
forthcoming: Will the children be
still and quiet? Will the children be

able to understand and receive what
is happening? Will parents survive?

The basis for our decision in Davis
is found in the first part of our morn-
ing Scripture from Matthew’s Gos-
pel, in the no questions, no barriers,
no requirements, all-inclusive, free
ticket invitation of Jesus, “Let the
children come.”

In Matthew 19 the children pre-
sent no problem. The question in
Matthew 19 is whether adults should
be admitted to Communion, or at
least wealthy adults. Jesus, reflecting
on the inability of a good man to
divest himself of all of his baggage,
says, “It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God.” Now as a middle class Amer-
ican living in Davis, California, I find
that I can usually maneuver out from
under that remark. I am not one of
the rich. The rich are Michael Jack-
son, Dave Winfield, J. Paul Getty,
or anyone from Saudi Arabia. With
very selective vision I can find a lot

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

of people who have much more of
this world’s goods than I have. But
we have just celebrated World Com-
munion when we are encouraged to
extend the borders of our usual frame
of reference outwards to embrace a
global community, and when I place
myself in any kind of world context
then I am no longer able to dodge
this word of Christ.

Robert Heilbroner, in his Inquiry
into the Human Prospect , gives us some
very graphic suggestions for ena-
bling us to identify with more than
a billion of our fellow human beings
who live on an income of less than
two hundred dollars a year. Take all
the furniture out of the house except
for a few blankets and perhaps a
kitchen table and chair; empty the
cupboards except for a little flour,
sugar, salt, a few potatoes, a dish of
fried beans; dismantle the bathroom,
shut off the water, take out the elec-
trical wiring, in fact take away the
house itself and replace it with a shack
or tool shed; cancel all newspaper,
magazine, and book club subscrip-
tions; move the nearest hospital or
clinic ten miles away; eliminate the
car; eliminate all bankbooks, stock
certificates, and pension plans; think
of the land you live on as your only
viable means of support and begin
to cultivate it knowing that a third
of the crop will go to the landlord
and a tenth to the money lender, and
finally lop off about twenty-five to
thirty years of life expectancy for every
member of the family.

There is nothing in my experience
that even remotely connects with
that — though I must admit that the
first thing that came to mind was
beginning my married life in Hodge
Hall in the fall of 1954, back in the

good old days when you had to stick
a chair out in the hall to announce
to the other inmates that you were
using an iron because more than one
iron at a time was likely to black out
the building. But still Heilbroner’s
portrayal is so far removed from even
that experience of Seminary depri-
vation that it is facetious even to
mention it. If I set myself in any kind
of world community as our faith en-
courages us to do continuously then
I can only conclude that I am in a
small minority of the world’s
wealthiest people, the very ones who
are the hardest to squeeze into the
kingdom. So that when the disciples
observe that it is impossible to thread
needles with camels I squirm just a
bit, and find some relief in the re-
sponse of Jesus because it seems to
leave the door open at least a crack
for us rich people. “With God all
things are possible.”

So I want to look at those God-
given possibilities. One thing I am
almost certain of after all these years
is that no one is likely just to give it
away, to divest voluntarily, that’s
about as rare as camels making it
through needles. Nor do I think we
will ever be able to legislate it. The
Council in John Calvin’s Geneva tried
in 1558 to curb excesses of wealth
and lifestyle through what were called
“Sumptuary Laws,” designed to clip
the excess from the rich and distrib-
ute it among the needy, but pre-
dictably this legislation failed for lack
of community support, and Calvin
concluded that contributions to the
work of the Deacons posed a more
effective and positive channel fon ad-
dressing the needs of the poor.

That says to me that neither will-
power nor force are enough. The

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

crack in the door, the possibility of
the kingdom tor us rich folk, will
come when the church is being itself
and is continuously creating the
channels of giving and serving that
will inspire me to share out of my
excess with those who are less for-
tunate. It will only happen when the
church is being itself and putting us
in positive relationship with people
here and everywhere.

When I ask myselt the question,
at what point in their lives are people
willing to give sacrificially tor the
sake ot others, I conclude that this
quality is most visible in the giving
of parents to their children. Parents
are ready to accept almost any cost
in order that their children might
enjoy all of the advantages of this
society. The church then needs to
enlarge our sense of family out into
the world community, giving us many
new brothers and sisters and sons
and daughters for whom sacrificial
giving will become a natural re-
sponse.

Finally, the church, when it is being
itself, is deluging us with possibilities
for action, for service, for giving.
Yesterday it was the Peacemaking
offering, next week the fall pledge
campaign begins, then the Christ-
mas offering, in January the Pres-
bytery’s New Church Development
Campaign, the One Great Hour of
Sharing follows on the heels of that,

then the Crop Hunger Walk, and
interspersed are all the appeals from
all the organizations who have man-
aged in some mysterious way to get
my address, including of course
Princeton Theological Seminary. It’s
so easy to become calloused and say,
“I'm being nickeled and dimed to
death,” and then turn your back on
the whole pile. Perhaps looking again
we may be able to see this parade of
causes as possibility and opportunity,
as God’s gracious persistent effort to
keep us soft, pliable, and in touch
with our human family, and perhaps
in some marvelous miraculous way
to coax us into the kingdom through
that beautiful escape clause, “all things
are possible with God.”

Jesus actually said two things to
the young man. The first he heard
loud and clear, “sell what you pos-
sess and give it to the poor," but he
really didn’t hear the second and vi-
tally connected part of the invitation,
“Come and follow me.” The two
belong together. They are simulta-
neous. It is only in coming and fol-
lowing that we will ever be able to
give it all away and it is only through
giving it away in witness, in service,
in stewardship, in jhe quest for jus-
tice and peace that we can receive
and experience the World Com-
munion that is God’s precious gift
to us all.

BOOK REVIEWS

Crenshaw, James L., ed. Theodicy in
the Old Testament. Philadelphia: For-
tress Press, 1983. Pp. 176. $6.95 (paper).

This volume, number four in the Issues
in Religion and Theology series, offers a col-
lection of eight essays published between 1905
and 1975 on various aspects of the title topic.
Four of these essays are made available for
the first time in English translation. The es-
says discuss Old Testament theodicy in con-
nection with the following subjects: provi-
dence and covenant (W. Eichrodt), Ancient
Near Eastern backgrounds (R. Williams), di-
vine retribution (K. Koch), Jeremiah’s
confessions (G. von Rad), Job (A. S. Peake),
Psalm 73 (M. Buber), Sirach (J. Crenshaw),
Koheleth (H. Gese). Editor Crenshaw’s in-
troduction highlights ways in which various
Old Testament writers tended “to save God’s
honor by sacrificing human integrity” (p. 7).

The volume as a whole is successful in-
sofar as it gathers important and represent-
ative essays on the topics listed above. It is
especially good to have Koch’s argument
against a theory of divine retribution avail-
able in English. What is lacking, however,
is any editorial indication of how the essays
were selected or (more important) how they
have figured in scholarly discussion subse-
quent to their original publication. Koch’s
1955 essay, for example, has provoked con-
siderable debate in the last three decades; yet
the uninitiated reader would have no idea
that the discussion had taken place. The con-
cluding four-page bibliography is helpful, yet
since it is unannotated it does not really al-
leviate the non-specialist’s problem of read-
ing the essays in a vacuum, without a clear
sense of their historical impact or current
viability.

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld
Princeton Theological Seminary

Murphy, Roland E., O. Carm. Wis-
dom Literature and Psalms. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1983. Pp. 158. $6.95
(paper).

Roland Murphy’s contribution to the In-
terpreting Biblical Texts series makes effec-
tive use of the series format. He introduces

the reader to key features of Israel’s wisdom
literature, as developed by modern scholar-
ship, lays out his own interpretive assump-
tions as he considers the role of such material
in the life of the church, and offers repre-
sentative illustrations of these scholarly and
hermeneutical concerns at work from both
canonical and deutero-canonical literature.
A similar treatment of the Psalter occupies
the last third of the volume.

As a long-recognized specialist in wisdom
literature, Murphy is well equipped to sift
through the vast literature on the subject.
The resulting statement of scholarly consen-
sus on the origins and features of biblical
wisdom literature in its Ancient Near East-
ern context is admirably concise and clear.
Murphy’s discussion of “cultural baggage”
and of “tensions and conflicting viewpoints”
within the Bible raises issues essential to any
constructive consideration of this portion of
the canon.

While the volume offers useful review and
reflection for pastors, it will be useful pri-
marily for beginners in biblical studies who
seek an orientation to the meaning of wis-
dom writings for Christians today.

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld
Princeton Theological Seminary

Walaskay, Paul W. "And So We Came
To Rome’’: The Political Perspective of St.
Lu\e (Society for New Testament Stud-
ies Monograph Series 49). New York
(Cambridge and London, UK): Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983. Pp. 121.
$27.50.

“Luke was decidedly pro-Roman and he
intended, in part, to present an apologetic
on behalf of the empire to his own church”
(p. 13). The thesis of Paul Walaskay contra-
dicts the traditional interpretation regarding
the political perspective of Luke- Acts, which
sees the apologetic moving in the opposite
direction, an apologetic on behalf of the church
to the empire. Walaskay seeks to show that
such an interpretation turns the evidence up-
side down, and that the sources indicate rather
that Luke has written an apologia pro imperio
to the early church.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Walaskay begins in the first chapter (pp.
i -i 4) by reviewing the development of the
traditional perspective of politics in Luke-
Acts. He briefly surveys the Tubingen ap-
proach, the reaction against Tubingen, the
classic presentation of Luke’s apologia pro
ecclesia as represented by H. J. Cadbury’s The
Maying of Luke -Acts (1927), the redaction
critical approach, and the current perspec-
tive, which has a more neutral leaning. He
notes the increasing uneasiness among con-
temporary scholars to accept the traditional
view that Luke wrote an apologia pro ecclesia.

In the second chapter (pp. 15-37) Walas-
kay poses three questions: First, did Luke
present a politically harmless picture of
Christianity? In this section he presents ma-
terials concerning Simon the Zealot, Jesus’
command to buy swords (Luke 22:35-8), Je-
sus as lord and king, and the ending of Acts.
Second, how does Luke handle the anti-Ro-
man sentiment expressed in his sources? In
this section special attention is given to Luke
13: iff. And third, are there passages in Luke-
Acts that not only indicate a pro-Roman bias,
but suggest an apologia pro imperior Wa-
laskay presents the decree of Augustus as a
positive backdrop to the birth of Jesus (Luke
2:1-5), the preaching of John the Baptist to
the crowds, the tax-collectors, and the sol-
diers (Luke 3:10-14), the payment of tribute
to Caesar (Luke 20:20-6), and Jesus’ dis-
course on kings and benefactors (Luke 22:24-
7). This last question is pursued in more
detail by an investigation of the trials of Jesus
(chapter 3, pp. 38-49) and Paul (chapter 4,
pp. 50-63) as they are presented in Luke-
Acts. The book ends with some concluding
remarks on the political perspective of Luke.
The book is very well documented through-
out (of the 121 total pages, pp. 68-103 are
extensive notes), provides a thorough bibli-
ography, and includes an index of passages
cited.

At the very least, this book is valuable for
challenging the longstanding interpretive
tradition that sees in Luke-Acts an apologia
to the empire on behalf of the church. The
book succeeds in calling to our attention the
simple observation that the primary audience
for Luke-Acts was the early church and not
the Roman Empire. It is in light of this ob-
servation that Walaskay asks the reader to
rethink along with him the underlying evi-
dence and assumptions that have sustained
this tradition.

In the end, however, Walaskay’s thesis is
intriguing but unconvincing. He overstates
Luke’s positive view of imperial authority,
interpreting Luke’s concern that the church
be able to live peaceably within the Roman
Empire as a pro-Roman apologetic. Is it really
the case that “God’s plan for salvation is
being worked out in concert with the con-
tinuing history of the Roman empire” (p.
26)? Does Luke envision a Holy Roman Em-
pire? Did the first century Christians, es-
pecially in Palestine, embrace the Augustan
reforms as a sign that the Roman Empire
was now being used as a divine agent whereby
the gospel might be spread?

As Conzelmann and others have shown,
Jerusalem is central to Luke. Walaskay ac-
knowledges this, but goes on to argue that
“the goal of Luke’s two volumes, from be-
ginning to end, is Rome” (p. 62). Accord-
ingly, “the Christians have only this to un-
derstand: That the Roman government has
been divinely chosen to act out the proph-
ecies of Jesus; the empire has a significant
place in the divine plan for the salvation of
the world” (p. 48). Is Luke’s vision really
that “the church could stand in partnership
with the empire” (p. 66)? The reader wishes
that Walaskay would have spelled out in
more detail the exact nature of this “part-
nership.”

Certainly Rome is important, especially
within the schema of Acts, but to assign the
motif of an apologia pro impeno so prominent
a role within Luke-Acts creates as many
problems as Walaskay hopes to solve. The
book does succeed in raising the question of
Luke's political perspective in a creative way.
Walaskay provides a helpful survey of the
traditional interpretation and a thoughtful
and challenging counterthesis. But in the end
Walaskay’s portrayal of Luke-Acts as an
apologia pro imperio overstates the evidence
at hand.

Jeffrey S. Siker

The Graduate School
Princeton Theological Seminary

Weber, Otto. Foundations of Dogmat-
ics. Vols. 1 & 2. Translated by Darrell
L. Guder. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981 and 1983.
Pp. xv + 659 (vol. 1) and xiv -F 721
(vol. 2). $27.00 (each).

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY B ULLETIN

The English translation of Otto Weber’s
two-volume Grundlagen der Dogmatic is a
happy event for pastors, teachers, and stu-
dents of theology. Originally published in
1955 and 1962, this impressive work has had
until now only a limited if highly apprecia-
tive circle of readers outside of Germany.
Thanks to the prodigious translation efforts
of Dr. Darrell Guder, Weber’s text is now
available to a much wider readership.

Otto Weber was Professor of Reformed
Theology at the University of Goettingen
from 1934 to his death in 1967. Closely as-
sociated with the theology of Karl Barth, he
is best known in the English-speaking world
for his one-volume digest of Barth’s multi-
volume Church Dogmatics. (Barth once de-
scribed Weber’s summary as like a small
tugboat which guides a huge ocean liner out
to sea.)

While lacking the striking originality and
constructive power of Barth, Weber was
nevertheless a distinguished theologian in his
own right. A careful thinker and a first-class
Calvin scholar, his command of the history
of doctrine was masterful. His prowess as a
historian of doctrine helps to make his two-
volume Dogmatics one of the most learned
and judicious productions of neo-orthodox
theology. Writing when the controversy be-
tween Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann had
polarized the Protestant theological world,
Weber wanted to avoid onesidedness in his
own work and intended to provide readers
with a balanced theological orientation, rooted
in a respectful, although not uncritical re-
ceptivity to the classical Reformed tradition,
and of course, especially to Calvin and Lu-
ther as expositors of the Word of God.

Although written more than two decades
ago, Weber’s work can still serve as an ad-
mirable resource for pastors and seminari-
ans. His central theme is the covenant faith-
fulness of God decisively revealed in Jesus
Christ as attested in Scripture and made ef-
ficacious through faith by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Like Barth, Weber sought to
avoid reducing the gospel to a system of
thought and emphasized that faith is the
joyful personal response of men and women
to the free grace of the living Lord rather
than the acceptance of a set of ideas or doc-
trines. Also like Barth, Weber was an active
churchman for whom the reality of the com-
munity of faith was always accorded a cer-
tain priority over the faith of the individual.

Again, like Barth, Weber pursued Dogmat-
ics not for its own sake but for the sake of
more faithful Christian praxis, i.e. more bib-
lical and more self-critical Christian proc-
lamation and discipleship.

While the influence of Barth’s theology is
everywhere discernible — in the doctrine of
the threefold form of the Word of God, in
the critique of natural theology, in the per-
vasive christocentric orientation, to mention
only a few examples — Weber sometimes goes
his own way. Unlike Barth, Weber takes up
the doctrine of election not as part of the
doctrine of God but like Calvin, as the con-
clusion of the doctrine of grace and as the
transition to ecclesiology and eschatology.
According to Weber, the doctrine of election
does not deal with abstract decrees of God
in himself. Weber agrees with Barth’s crit-
icisms of the traditional construal of the Re-
formed doctrine of the eternal decrees of
God whereby some individuals are chosen
for salvation and others for damnation.
Properly understood, the doctrine of election
has to do with the sovereignty of the grace
of God offered to humanity and with the
basis of confidence in the faithfulness of
the God of free grace who addresses us in
the proclamation of the gospel. But while
the content of Weber’s exposition of the doc-
trine of election is very close to Barth’s, We-
ber appears to have feared that Barth’s highly
original treatment inclined toward a spec-
ulative universalism.

Also in contrast to Barth, Weber argues
that at the center of Christology is an irre-
ducible paradox that cannot be rationalized.
Therefore the use of paradoxical statements
is required. In Weber’s view, shared by Ber-
kouwer and other critics of Barth, there is
a tendency in Barth to rationalize the chris-
tological mystery. This supposedly takes the
form of an absorption of the earthly history
of Christ into its trinitarian background. Here
again Weber is suspicious of what he con-
strues as a speculative element in Barth’s
thought. Weber mentions in particular Barth’s
revival of theopaschitism by the way he speaks
of the obedience, humility and suffering of
God. The issues involved here are still very
much alive in contemporary theology.

Yet another example of Weber’s disa-
greement with Barth concerns the latter's
identification of the image of God with the
co-humanity of male and female. Weber
contends that while the sexual distinction is

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the most prominent and ineradicable sign of
humanity’s being in the image of God, this
image is constituted by interperonal, I-Thou,
relationality.

Probably most conspicuous and most im-
portant of Weber’s disagreements with Barth
is in regard to infant baptism. Like Barth,
Weber is aware of the problematic of infant
baptism as a church practice in modern west-
ern society. He does not attempt to establish
its validity on the basis of traditional exe-
getical argumentation. For him the issue is
not whether infants were baptized in the
New Testament church (the historical evi-
dence points to a negative judgment). The
real question is whether the New Testament
understanding of baptism permits infant bap-
tism, and Weber argues that it does.

In general, Weber’s theology is more cau-
tious, more reserved, less daring, less inde-
pendent, less provocative than Barth’s. Barth
himself thought it a fault in Weber’s work
that he labored so long over accurate por-
trayals of the views of others that his own
position was not sufficiently developed. Barth’s
judgment notwithstanding, Weber’s Dog-
matics is one of the major statements of Re-
formed theology in the 20th century. Pastors
and theological students will find in Weber’s
two volumes a very high-quality and com-
prehensive, even if now somewhat dated
presentation of Christian doctrine from a Re-
formed perspective.

Guder’s translation is both faithful and
readable. The splendid editing of the foot-
notes enhances the value of the text for the
English reader. In a massive translation ef-
fort like this an occasional slip is understand-
able. One occurs when the original, “Die
Schrift ist Meisterin ueber das Dogma,” is
rendered, “Scripture is mistress of dogma,”
instead of “Scripture is sovereign over dogma”
(Vol. 1, p. 38).

Daniel L. Migliore
Princeton Theological Seminary

Cobb, John B., Jr. Process Theology as
Political Theology. Manchester, England
and Philadelphia, PA: Manchester Uni-
versity Press and The Westminster Press,
1982. Pp. xvi & 158. $8.95 (paper).

John Cobb, in the spirit of his circuit rid-
ing heritage, is always taking process the-

ology on the road — to theologies, disciplines,
social movements, and religions near and far;
moving from one engagement to the next
with enviable energy, clarity, and commit-
ment to inquiry, and with a style of argu-
ment that resorts neither to easy reconcili-
ation nor to caricature and insult. In Process
Theology as Political Theology , Cobb takes up
the “challenge" of political theology through
a conversation with the German theologians
Johann Baptist Metz, Jurgen Moltmann, and
Dorothee Solle. The form of the book is
dialogical, but the purpose is constructive:
“My aim is to become a political theologian
in the tradition of process theology” (p. xi).

Cobb surveys briefly the history of the
term, “political theology,” and its distinctive
meaning in the thought of Metz, Moltmann,
and Solle. For these theologians, “political
theology" represents a critical and self-crit-
ical stance vis-a-vis the social order rather
than its religious sanction, and a concern for
“the indivisible salvation of the whole world”
(Solle) in contrast to the “privatization” of
the Gospel in modern Christian theory and
practice.

His introduction of process theology as a
partner in this dialogue is especially intrigu-
ing, for Cobb locates process theology in the
tradition of the Social Gospel and the socio-
historical method of biblical and theological
interpretation identified with the Chicago
School. He acknowledges that process the-
ology has fallen into a more abstract and
apolitical mode of thought, especially under
the influence of Charles Hartshorne and
Henry Nelson Wieman. But this recovery of
“narrative memory” sets the stage for a con-
versation between two essentially political
theologies.

In the remaining chapters, Cobb develops
this conversation with specific reference to:
1) theological method, focusing on the po-
litical interpretation of the Gospel, the sig-
nificance of the narrative structure of mem-
ory for Christian faith, and the priority of
praxis ; 2) the doctrine of God; 3) the relation
of theology to politics, cast primarily in terms
of the capitalism-socialism debate; 4) the sta-
tus of nature in political theology; and 5) the
interpretation of history. On each topic, Cobb
summarizes the argument of Metz, Molt-
mann, or Solle, assesses its contribution to
process theology, and offers a critique and
constructive alternative on the basis of proc-
ess thought.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Certain themes appear throughout Cobb’s
analysis. He is a persistent critic of absolutes,
whether hermeneutical, theological, or po-
litical. Secondly, he offers a subtle defense
of theory. Specifically, he argues that an ad-
equate political theology requires a system-
atic doctrine of God and of history, and that
the conditions for “radical self-criticism” in
cross-cultural and other contexts with di-
verse “horizons of meaning” are not met by
the praxis model of current political theology
(pp. 60-61). Thirdly, Cobb calls for a deeper
and wider understanding of relatedness at
every point — in the interpretation of Chris-
tian narrative memory, and in the relations
of Christian faith and other faiths, humanity
and nature, and the world of God.

By virtue of its dialogical organization,
Process Theology as Political Theology estab-
lishes important points of contact between
process and political theologies, illumining
both convergence and divergence. In the
process, Cobb raises fundamental issues: the
nature and status of biblical interpretation
as well as philosophical inquiry in theol-
ogy— whether the horizon of political the-
ology is anthropocentric or “ecological” (in-
clusive of nature). And his observations
regarding German political theology are often
insightful and provocative, for example on
the relation between an anthropocentric (and,
specifically, urbanized and industrialized)
perspective on history and the advocacy of
development defined in terms of GNP (i.e.,
getting people into the money economy) in-
stead of, say PQLI (which measures infant
mortality, life expectancy and literacy rather
than per capita income) (pp. 95 & i2off).

However, this approach also has its limits.
It is not conducive to the comprehensive and
systematic argument that a political theology
founded on a process interpretation of God
and the world requires. One clue to the prob-
lem is the absence of an analysis of the mean-
ing of justice or, for that matter, of “politics”
(a failing of the German political theologians
as well, as Cobb notes on p. 13). Secondly,
a political theology in the tradition of the
Chicago School needs to be more explicit
about the criteria of evaluation of alternative
analyses of public issues and their status within
the framework of political theological in-
quiry.

Nevertheless, Cobb’s Process Theology as
Political Theology is a valuable discussion of
the critical elements and dilemmas of a po-

litical theology and a timely call for process
theologians to provide an intelligible and ap-
propriate interpretation ot the Christian
foundations of the struggles for justice and
peace in our time.

Lois Gehr Livezey
Princeton Theological Seminary

Lucyk, Stanford B. Growing Amid the
Thistles. Burlington, Ontario, Canada:
Welch Publishing Co., Inc., 1983. Pp.
J32- $7-95 (paper).

A book of sermons by the senior minister
of Canada’s largest Protestant church creates
a measure of real interest and deserves care-
ful evaluation. The blurb on the jacket says,
“Both the radio audience and the congre-
gation of the Timothy Eaton Memorial
Church (Toronto) are already indebted to
the senior minister for his clear and intelli-
gent presentation of the Christian faith as it
relates to the complex issues facing each of
us in Canada today.” The volume comprises
six clusters of sermons under group head-
ings: Basic Christianity, Life’s Crises, Prayer,
Feminism, Hosea, and Jewish/Christian
Dialogue. It is a miscellany of treatises and
the author seems to adopt Milton's strategy
in his poem, Lycidas, where he said “he
touched the tender stops of various quills.”

Each of the eighteen sermons is short and
no one can accuse this preacher of belaboring
any subject or issue. He has read widely and
consulted the biblical commentaries; modern
literary figures are quoted frequently, al-
though one is puzzled over the absence of
contemporary theologians and the better
writers of today’s religious literature. His
grasp of biblical history and Hebrew culture
is commendable, although often his factual
catalogue of names, places, and persons would
scarcely be grasped even by a professional
audience. Much of this sort of material would
defy freedom of delivery (a la Scherer or
Weatherhead) and if read, would be deadly.

Any connoisseur of sermons will take usu-
ally into account: literary style, form, the-
ology, and message. In all of these this series
of sermons falls short: (a) Literary style: there
is here a dominant essay-like style which
may recruit readers but alienates hearers.
Lucyk over-quotes and makes some para-
graphs a rash of inverted commas. Idioms, al-

5°

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

lusions, fragments tumble out in freshets and,
like Macbeth, we are inclined at times to cry
HOLD! Moreover, there is a plethora of
oddities: Calvary is always “skull hill”; “God
self’ placates those who eschew male pro-
nouns tor Deity; “navel grubbing” is gauche;
“leshua” (for “Jesus”) is not a little fanciful
among derivatives; and somewhat insensible
are sentences such as “that bit of animated
Hebrew clay quivered and went limp on a
chunk of Roman wood stained with blood
and body waste” (this out-Swaggerts Swag-
gert !).

(b) Fosdick, that exemplary sermon crafts-
man, emphasized constantly the necessity of
an object in every sermon. This gives shape,
movement, and purpose to one’s homiletical
product. This is a lack in so many modern
sermons which comprise frequently a series
of impressions loosely related theme-wise,
but never propelling us logically or emo-
tionally to a verdict or conclusion. Lucyk is
a cousin of these; he is a static thinker, hence
these sermons do not carry us so much to-
wards a geometric Q.E.D., as to a bother-
some “So what?”

(c) Theologically Lucyk is an Old Tes-
tament Christian. There is no sign here of
a Trinitarian faith. His realism about our
sinfulness is clear and his multiple references
to sex, divorce, anti-Semitism, etc., indicate
a sensitivity to the obtuse mores of any met-
ropolitan constituency, but at the same time
we miss glimmerings of the need for and
the splendor of the re-born life and the vic-
torious note of the Easter faith. Indeed one
senses by the over-abundance of Hebraic ad-
ulation almost a mild cynicism concerning
the triumphalism of Christ. Without the
framework of an over-arching and positive
Gospel, mere word studies can lead into bib-
licism and to an absence of theological
wholeness necessary to match the voices of
the world.

There is, however, in these sermons a real-
ism and humanity that much of our preach-
ing needs. Some of the illustrative material
here is “old hat”; yet several sketches of life
situations are powerful. What we are needs
certainly to be dramatized in our preaching;
what we ought to be is unattainable without
the completely positive message of the New
Testament.

Donald Macleod
Princeton Theological Seminary

Buerlein, Homer K. How to Preach
More Powerful Sermons. Richmond, VA:
American Historical Foundation, 1984.
Pp. 199. $14.95 (paper).

In his Foreword to this book, Albert C.
Winn remarks: “Most books on preaching
are written by preachers or teachers of
preachers. The voice of the congregation is
seldom heard in the conversation.” Books on
preaching from the perspective of the pulpit
are legion; apart from George W. Pepper’s
Yale Lectures in 1915 (A Voice from the Crowd),
however, no thoughtful monograph has pur-
sued the theme in dialogical format such as
we have here. To read this book is to hear
enlightened feedback from the pew and
whether a preacher is just starting out or a
veteran of some decades of sermonizing, none
can fail to find here some of his or her faults
exposed and some adequate remedies ready
to hand.

The author, a Presbyterian elder, and ex-
ecutive vice-president of the American His-
torical Foundation in Richmond, VA, has
listened to sermons for fifty-five years, yet
he develops his theme intentionally within
limits, and wisely so. He does not venture
into the content area of preaching; that is
not on the agenda of his expertise, although
I wager he could hold his own with the
average preacher rather competently. His fo-
cus is upon form, style, literary and vocal
principles, and the rapport and effectiveness
the best of these achieve with a worshipping
congregation.

Buerlein writes in a clear, clean style, and
although this book is largely theory, the au-
thor never divorces it from persons, largely
because he comes through as a very human
individual himself. He does not carp; he has
a high respect for the ministry; moreover,
from his wide range of acquaintances and
of auxiliary reading, his judgments have per-
spective and invariably make good sense.

Altogether there are twenty-three chap-
ters here, covering nearly every aspect and
facet of communications theory relative to
preaching. Happily his discussions are not
pedestrian; continually he surprises us with
fresh examples and shrewd perceptions. His
aim is to make sermons more palatable and
as a litmus test in classroom or study, any
sermon would profit from his instruction.
This is a practical book in which the message

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

is easily practicable for anyone willing to
accept its challenge.

A few errata occur: Sweazey is misspelled
“Sweazy” and his book is Preaching the Good
News (p. 62). Homiletical, not “homilectical”
(p. 1 5 1 ). Buffon’s quote is less pointed than
his Le style est I’homme meme (p. 89). Fosdick
urged ONE hour in the study for every min-
ute in the pulpit (not one-halt hour).

Donald Macleod
Princeton Theological Seminary

Capps, Donald. Life Cycle Theory and
Pastoral Care. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1983. Pp. 127. $5.20 (paper).

One of five books already published in
Fortress’s Theology and Pastoral Care series
(Don Browning, editor), this book asks: what
is the role of pastoral care in helping persons
become better oriented in their world? In
pursuit of answers to this question, Donald
Capps has produced yet another fine volume
for those involved in both the theory and
practice of pastoral care.

The “orientation motif’ is borrowed from
Erik Erikson’s life cycle theory, and in this
motif Capps sees an issue of vital importance
for pastoral care, especially in the modern,
and often fragmented, world. The middle
chapters of the book discuss three threats to
our orientation in the world: the loss of moral
order, the loss of coherence and meaning in
life, and severe suffering. In a corresponding
fashion, three roles for the pastor are dis-
cussed which Capps believes can begin to
address these threats: the pastor as moral
counselor, as ritual coordinator, and as per-
sonal comforter.

The book’s first chapter, “Erikson’s Life
Cycle Theory,” is the best short exposition
of Erikson’s thought that I have read yet.
One immediately recognizes this book’s value
as a text in any course pertaining to the hu-
man life cycle. Especially helpful is the way
in which Capps helps us to appreciate the
negative aspects of Erikson’s bipolar frame-
work: some mistrust, doubt, guilt, etc., are
necessary for healthy development to occur.

The genius of this book is the way it helps
us to understand at a deeper level elements
which are so common to all of our lives. We
all go through “stages,” we all struggle with
vices, we all have our rituals, we all know
the severity of pain. Yet with careful analysis

Capps shows us what these things mean in
terms of our orientation or disorientation.

The book is not completely free of weak-
nesses, however. The difficulty with a model
building method such as Capps’ is that one
occasionally wonders whether things have
not been a bit forced or contrived to get a
perfect fit. For instance, when a correlation
of Erikson’s moral virtues with traditional
“deadly sins” confronts an eight to seven
mismatch, Capps is forced to divide the clas-
sic vice of sloth into indifference and mel-
ancholy. Though there is historical prece-
dence for the split, one could still argue as
to which correlations would make the most
sense. Another weakness is a certain incon-
gruent treatment of the theme of orientation.
In the third chapter, which focuses on the
importance of ritual for maintaining a sense
of meaning and coherence in life, Capps seems
to advocate that while many aspects of life
will change, some few must remain steadfast
if a healthy sense of orientation is to be at-
tained. Yet in the final chapter, “Pastoral
Care as Therapeutic Wisdom,” he suggests
that the wisdom tradition of our Judeo-
Christian heritage provides only an “order-
within-relativity.” Given the importance of
the orientation motif to the overall structure
of the book, this ambiguity is unfortunate.

But the book’s most important weakness
pertains to the second chapter on the pastor
as moral counselor. Capps embraces the stand
taken by Don Browning (The Moral Context
of Pastoral Care, Religious Ethics and Pastoral
Care) that pastoral care should have a self-
consciously moral dimension. I have no
quarrel with this point as such, but what I
find lacking in Capps’s treatment (and in
Browning’s too for that matter) is any dis-
cussion of how sensitive pastors can over-
come reservations about giving moral coun-
sel, when they can see the “immoral” aspects
of themselves all too clearly. In short, how
does one reconcile Romans 7, with the role
of moral counselor ? In a book which intends
to focus on those doing pastoral care (p. 13),
some struggle with this issue is greatly needed.

Yet these faults notwithstanding, the book
provides most insightful reading. If only for
gaining a clearer understanding of Erikson’s
theory our efforts would be justified. But the
unique contribution of the book’s fourth
chapter makes it all the more compelling.
Here Capps takes one distinct element of the
Eriksonian model, shame (which is the bi-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

polar opposite of autonomy in the second
stage), and explores its theological depths in
an unparalleled fashion. Capps has long been
interested in the theme of shame (see his
inaugural address, “The Parabolic Event In
Religious Autobiography,” in The Princeton
Seminary Bulletin IV, i). With the possible
exception of Carl Schneider, whose Shame,
Exposure, and Privacy appeared in 1977, no
one has done more to make us aware of the
theological significance of shame than Capps.

In this volume, Capps treats shame as par-
adigmatic of severe pain, suggesting that an
embracing of pain is at the heart of the Chris-
tian experience. He encourages us to do as
Augustine did in his Confessions and share
in the prayerful presence of God the painful
exposure which shame occasions. When our
hidden, shameful self is taken as the core of
our Christian identity, we are forced to trust
completely in God’s grace. (I would question,
however, whether Capps actually means what
he says on p. 91, that in so exposing ourselves
“we create the inner climate in which God
becomes revealed to us.” Such conditionality
pertaining to grace is strangely inconsistent
with the freedom of God on which Capps
focuses in the final chapter.)

Capps’s treatment of shame will undoubt-
edly cause us to be surprised both by how
much we already know of the emotion from
experience, and how useful an understand-
ing of shame can be in our pastoral work.
This fourth chapter is one that will make
you lean back, sip the coffee, puff the pipe,
and think,.

The book concludes by offering a model
for pastoral care as therapeutic wisdom. Here
one of Capps’s strengths surfaces clearly: his
knowledge and use ot the biblical materials.
He grounds the model in the Old Testament
wisdom literature, particularly Proverbs, but
then places it in creative tension with the
parabolic tradition of the New Testament.
Thus he argues that our sense of orientation
can develop as our sense of God’s gracious
presence is enlarged by surprising parabolic
encounters.

For those who want to know where pas-
toral theology is headed, this book can point
the way. And its straightforward, unembel-
lished prose makes it delightful reading.

Brad A. Binau

The Graduate School
Princeton Theological Seminary

Gerkin, Charles V. The Living Hu-
man Document. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1984. Pp. 224. $10.95 (paper).

This book by Charles Gerkin, professor
of pastoral psychology at the Candler School
ot Theology and the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences, Emory University, is the third
major work in the area of pastoral theology
and pastoral care to come out of Atlanta in
the period of but one year. In 1983, E. Brooks
Holifield, a colleague of Gerkin’s at Emory,
published a major work entitled A History
of Pastoral Care in America and John Patton,
executive director ot the Georgia Association
for Pastoral Care, published a most impor-
tant clinical work, Pastoral Counseling, A
Ministry of the Church , thereby giving At-
lanta bragging rights, at least, for being on
the cutting edge of this area of practical the-
ology.

This work is important for at least two
reasons. First of all it is a work dealing with
the theory and practice of pastoral counseling
that is written by a person involved in the
ministry of counseling as well as teaching.
Far too often books dealing with pastoral
counseling and pastoral care themes have
been written by academics long retired from
active ministry or having never been in-
volved in ministry at all. On the other hand,
however, this work is no facile “how to” or
“hints and helps” piece of therapeutic tech-
nology far removed, save for some ecclesi-
astical lip service, from theological sensitivity
and scholarly competence. The subtitle of the
book gives some hint of the theological in-
tegrity the reader will encounter: Re-Vision-
ing Pastoral Counseling in a Hermeneutical
Mode.

Gerkin’s thesis is a very shrewd one. Us-
ing the work of Anton Boisen, the founding
father of the modern pastoral care move-
ment, Gerkin argues that much psychopa-
thology or personal problems are based on
a disjuncture between ideas and meanings
and common experience. Emotional crisis
occurs “. . . at a point of blockage or distor-
tion in the process of interpretation ot what
has occurred in the life of the person" (p.
48). With this paradigm based upon the work
of Boisen and others such as the object re-
lations theorists (Klein and Winnicott most
particularly as well as Kohut and Kernberg
and their work with the borderline person-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ality) Gerkin then makes a creative step to-
ward understanding the work of counseling
as being a process of hermeneutics. Here the
author uses such hermeneutical luminaries
as Gadamer and Ricoeur. In essence the
counseling process is described first as a lis-
tening for the story of the counselee; second
there is the fusion of the story of the coun-
selee, the story of the counselor, and the story
of the gospel (what Gadamer calls the fusion
of the horizons of understanding); and third
there is the reinterpretation of the coun-
selee’s past and present that will be more
congruent and creative than the previous dis-
tortion that lead to counseling in the first
place. The person of the counselor is very
important, even more so than with most other
forms of psychological counselors (either
psychiatrists or psychologists and social
workers). “Who one is as a pastoral coun-
selor within the Christian tradition cannot
be determined simply by introspective self-
reflection. In Wilhelm Dilthey’s language,
our self-understanding as pastoral counselors
requires a ‘hermeneutical detour,’ an excur-
sion into reflection on those theological im-
ages and symbols that have given shape to
Christian self-understanding historically” (p.

55)-

Gerkin’s theological method for under-
standing and elucidating pastoral counseling
is not unlike Hiltner’s in that it relies upon
a dialogue between the Christian tradition
and the empirical experience of living as in-
formed by the human sciences. For this rea-
son it is not hard to understand that Gerkin
has great respect for Tillich’s notion of cor-
relation. He also uses Moltmann’s notion of
individual identity as relational identity and
the work of the spirit. It is on the notion of
relational identity that Gerkin comes clean
on a most important issue (one I fear Patton
fudges on) and that is the context of coun-
seling as being firmly based in the work of
the spirit in the church. Gerkin seems not
to allow for a private practice among pastoral
counselors. Here he manifests his ecclesias-
tical integrity.

About two thirds of the book deals with
theoretical issues. The remainder of the work
deals with clinical technique, making oper-
ational the hermeneutical (both theological
and psychological) notions put forward in
the first part. Gerkin illustrates his points
with many very clear and helpful case studies

and vignettes. His reporting of his work with
“Warren” is most useful in its illustration of
the usefulness of “demythologizing” ossified
and possibly inaccurate notions of significant
others in past relationships. Gerkin’s use of
Crossan’s schema of the five ways of using
language (The Dar\ Interval ) is also useful
and is suggestive of the work done by Capps
(Biblical Approaches to Pastoral Counseling),
particularly the notion of the tension be-
tween the myth and the parable, the latter
being subversive of the former which can
often be the seat of the distortion leading to
crisis in the first place. The book ends with
points that the author feels need further clar-
ification such as the relationship between
pastoral counseling and spiritual direction.

While I think that this is a fine and sig-
nificant contribution to the field of pastoral
theology I do think that there are some weak
points. My major problem with Gerkin is
his proclivity for open-ended counseling. By
this I mean that Gerkin seems to be seduced
by the psychoanalytic inclination toward open-
ended counseling contracts. He justifies this
with the explanation that unraveling and re-
constructing the story can take time espe-
cially if the various defenses often confronted
in counseling occur. He does in a couple of
places wonder if his hermeneutical method
could not be used in short-term counseling
but seems to opt for the open-ended mode.
Of course open-ended counseling is a rare
"luxury” for most parish ministers who have
little time for long-term counseling. Indeed
my guess is that most parish ministers are
more often than not confronted with re-
quests for counseling that have a more stra-
tegic and short-term nature. There has cer-
tainly been a number of very fine works in
recent years that seem to indicate that short-
term, goal-directed counseling has much
usefulness (works by psychiatrists such as
Mann and Sitneos and psychologists such as
Luborsky in time-limited therapy have wide
appeal and applicability for the parish min-
ister). I do not think that Gerkin’s preference
for psychoanalytic or dynamic therapy would
be compromised by a short-term approach
though it does appear that other therapeutic
methods such as cognitive and behavioral
therapy are time-limited by design.

A second criticism that I have is one that
I must admit I have very little hard evidence
to substantiate. Nevertheless I did have some

THE PRINCETON S E, M 1 N A RY B U L L E T I N

vague notion that Gerkin (and so many others
who discuss counseling in terms of mutual
passage making) understands that the coun-
selor and the counselee are peers both on
some kind of pilgrimage. While both the
counselee and the counselor probably have
more in common than they have that is dis-
similar and share a common humanity, I
believe that to forget that the pastor is ad-
dressed with a person’s problems precisely
because he or she also has sapiential and
moral authority is to risk trivializing the
counseling experience from the beginning.
People do not go to pastors for counseling
because “they are just like me” or because
"the rev could learn something about her
own self by counseling me." People go to
pastors who they know are good at coun-
seling and like to do counseling and have
the training to do counseling. What the pas-
tor learns about humanity including the pas-
tor’s own humanity is a secondary benefit
and one that often happens but is nonetheless
secondary.

These criticisms aside this is a very im-
portant book and should be “must" reading
for any minister, parish or specialized in some
other area, interested in and doing counsel-
ing. This is a book that unlike many dealing
with pastoral counseling not only offers the
reader some sound technical material but
also details some constructive theology that
not only buttresses the counseling but is in
fact produced out of critical reflection upon
the counseling experience.

Brian H. Childs
Princeton Theological Seminary
Trinity Counseling Service

Ulanov, Ann and Barry. Cinderella and
Her Sisters: The Envied and the Envying.
Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1983. Pp. 192. S9.95 (paper).

What does a fairy tale about such things
as a fairy godmother, a glass slipper, and a
young woman and her three stepsisters have
to do with envy? Everything, if we realize
that this story is the story of envy. Taking
the fairy tale as a serious form of literature,
we can discover that the Cinderella story has
much to teach the adult world about envy.
This book examines the often overlooked
power of envy to injure, and even destroy,

the one who envies as well as the one who
is envied.

The coauthors creatively approach envy
by interpreting the Cinderella story psycho-
logically and theologically, drawing heavily
on Jungian psychology. In good Jungian
fashion, they introduce envy in terms of op-
posites, the one who envies and the one who
is envied. They then move to a discussion of
the opposites in terms of an “envy complex”
existing in each of us. This complex provides
a lens through which to view women (and
men), psychotherapy, and society.

Cinderella represents one side of the envy
complex, the one envied, while the stepsisters
represent the other side, the enviers. The
remaining characters represent different as-
pects of the Jungian psyche seen in relation
to envy. The good fairy godmother and the
bad stepmother represent the good and bad
aspects ot the primal Mother archetype. The
prince represents the animus , which is the
masculine or contrasexual component of the
female psyche. Finally, there is “the good."
This character, logically playing the self ar-
chetype in traditional Jungian terminology,
is what the envied Cinderella possesses that
the envious stepsisters want to steal.

As the story unfolds, Cinderella and her
stepsisters reveal two different responses when
they encounter each character. In psycho-
logical terms, the two types of response re-
veal the effects of envy on several aspects of
the individuation process. For example, in
chapter three we find that Cinderella can
relate to the good mother, whereas the step-
sisters cannot. The result is that Cinderella
moves toward developing a strong feminine
identity, while the stepsisters remain locked
in a destructive relationship with the bad
mother. This has important consequences for
the encounter with the prince.

Of course, Cinderella also must relate to
the bad mother and to the envious stepsisters,
at whose hands she suffers. The crucial dif-
ference between her suffering and that of
the stepsisters is that she refuses to deny or
reject whatever bit of “the good" she pos-
sesses or has possessed. By this means she is
enabled to acknowledge her suffering and
bear it with dignity, to acknowledge her de-
sire for what she does not yet have, and even
to become a “good mother" for the stepsisters
in the midst of her suffering. For reasons
such as these the coauthors see in Cinderella
a female Christ-figure, the suffering servant.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

In the second section, envy is examined
theologically. Envy is one of the traditional
cardinal sins, second only to pride in dead-
liness. Envy as sin focuses on the absense of
“the good” in ourselves, or our inability to
see ourselves as creatures of the Creator. As
enviers, we discover in our neighbors that
which we lack, wanting either to steal that
goodness or to destroy it. This view draws
on the Augustinian tradition of sin as pnvatio
boni.

The effects of envy as sin on the envier
are discussed as the envier’s “spiritual plight”
and “sexual plight” in chapters eight and
nine respectively. Its effects on the one en-
vied are discussed as “the plight of the good”
in chapter ten. The coauthors discuss the
process required for overcoming envy in the
next three chapters. This process is sum-
marized in the following quote: “In repent-
ance, we see that goodness had turned to us
before we turned to it. Our turning is a
response to a prior presence. In consenting to
the good, we discover goodness has consented
to us. In corresponding to the graces given us
we come upon a goodness very different from
our imaginings” (p. 149). The key to initi-
ating this process is the initial presence of
“the good.” We find that as we experience
this process we come to see envy as “a herald
of the good” (p. 126). Envy, while remaining
a negative thing, now assumes a positive role
in the movement toward wholeness.

Appreciation of Cinderella and Her Sisters,
will partly depend on one’s appreciation of
a Jungian perspective on feminine psychol-
ogy, the critique of society, and theology.
Important as these issues are, however, they
should not blind us to the book’s primary
message about envy and its effects on human
life. This message is very worthwhile and
needs to be taken seriously. The coauthors
succeed in communicating what the perva-
sive effects of envy are and what is needed
to combat them. We should not close our

eyes to this unique perspective on human
nature.

The book would be stronger if such con-
cepts as “the good” had been clearly defined
from the outset rather than used ambigu-
ously. Also, further development of theolog-
ical and biblical resources would have been
helpful.

In the theological section, the coauthors
unfortunately abandoned their original pro-
cedure. One expects a thorough theological
interpretation of the Cinderella fairy tale, as
in the psychological section. However, Cin-
derella is all but replaced with an array of
examples from literature. This shift is re-
grettable because the coauthors miss an op-
portunity to further develop the Christolog-
ical image of Cinderella as suffering servant.
In the psychological section, the book em-
phasizes the “suffering” aspect of the image,
while neglecting its “servant” aspect.

A thorough theological interpretation of
the Cinderella fairy tale could have facili-
tated development of the “servant” aspect of
the image, whose very core is mediation of
“the good.” Indeed, the crux of the matter
is the need for an exploration into the nature
of such mediation. Such exploration would
seem to be vital since, as stated earlier, the
initial presence of “the good” is the key to
what is essentially a salvatory process begin-
ning with repentance.

Cinderella and Her Sisters reminds us that
envy is a destructive, powerful force in the
world, and we must contend with it. This
book is recommended not only because of
the reflection it stimulates on this subject,
but also for the coauthors’ creative use of the
fairy tale. In addition, it raises an intriguing
possibility. Surely there is a need for fresh
exploration of all the deadly sins.

Gene Fowler

The Graduate School
Princeton Theological Seminary

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

SUMMER SCHOOL
1985

JUNE 10- AUGUST 2
Biblical Hebrew
New Testament Greek

JUNE 10-28

Second Corinthians, Cullen I K Story *
Jews and Christians, Kathleen E. Mc-
Vey * Feminism and Systematic Theol-
ogy, Mary L. Potter * Preaching the
Lucan Parables, Richard L. Thulin *
Methods of Teaching in Christian Ed-
ucation, Norma J. Everist * Ministry
with the Divorcing, Lewis R. Ram bo.

JULY 1-19

Old Testament Theologies of War and
Peace, Bennie C. Ollenburger * Chris-
tian Approaches to Other Faiths, Ed-
ward D. A. Hulmes * Communion and
the Congregation’s Mission, E. David
Willis * Intergenerational Ministries,
Carol A. Wehrheim * The Theology
and Practice of Evangelism, Ben C.
Johnson * Pastoral Care and Aging,
Emma J. Justes.

JULY 22— AUGUST 9
Three Apostolic Letters of Faith,
Hope, and Love (Galatians, I Peter, and
I John), Bruce M. Metzger * History
and Theology of the Black Church
Movement, James Melvin Washington*
Money, Work, and Ministry, Mary D.
Pellauer* Persuasive Preaching, Ronald
E. Sleeth * Evangelism in Urban Amer-
ica, William E. Panned.

AUGUST 5-9 (Followed by one month
of independent study.)

Local Curriculum Planning, D. Camp-
bell Wyckoff * Five Apologists: Pascal,
Kierkegaard, Newman, Austin Farrer,
Simone Weil, Diogenes Allen.

Each summer school course carries credit for three semester hours (each language
course, six semester hours). Provision is also made for unclassified students.

For full information write to Summer School Office, Princeton Theological Sem-
inary, CN821, Princeton, NJ 08542 or phone (609) 921-8252.

Princeton Theological Seminary admits qualified students of any race, color and national or
ethnic origin and without regard to handicap or sex.

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