[from Robert W. Bretall, ed., The
Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman (The Library of Living Theology –
Volume IV), Macmillan, 1963]
Chapter 12
THE WORD OF GOD
Edmond La B. Cherbonnier
Strictly
construed, the subject of the present essay could be exhausted in a paragraph or
two, for, as Wieman himself acknowledges, his theology makes but sparing
reference to the word of God. It remains for the critic to examine the consequences
and to inquire whether more attention to the word of God would strengthen his
theology or weaken it.
The
answer is brief: In the context of his thought as a whole, such an emphasis
would constitute a defect. The word of God can be consistently incorporated
only in a theology whose God is a speaker. Wieman, however, regards the
idea of a speaking God as crude anthropomorphism, and rejects it in favor of a
God who is nonpersonal and therefore speechless. In such a theology, the word
of God has little place, and he is careful to point out that if the phrase is
used at all, its meaning must be metaphorical only.1
He thereby avoids the ambiguity of the theologian who, perhaps in deference to
tradition, retains the phrase but changes the meaning.
Apart
from a God who speaks, to invoke his word is gratuitous. Discussion must either
come to an end at this point, or proceed to the prior question which it
implies: Does a silent, nonpersonal God put the theologian in a stronger
intellectual position, or on the contrary, does it involve him in perplexities
from which a speaking God could deliver him? The remainder of my essay
1 SHG, p. 216. (For footnote abbreviations, please consult
ABBREVIATIONS at the conclusion.)
265
266
will apply
this question to Professor Wieman’s theology. It will ask whether his own intentions
are more effectively served, and philosophical problems more adequately solved,
by the anthropomorphic God who can speak, or by a nonpersonal God which cannot.
What
are the criteria for judging between these rival gods? Happily, one need go no further
than the principles so clearly and cogently laid down by Wieman himself. Unless
theology abides by canons of verification, he asserts repeatedly, it will
deserve the charge of dogmatic obscurantism. In theology, even more than
elsewhere, “propositions that cannot be tested should not be believed.”2
Like any others, theological propositions must be tested both by objective,
empirical evidence, and by their consistency and coherence .3
Wieman
is particularly skeptical of the claim that theology expresses “truths” that
are transrational, and can therefore be expressed only in paradox. He silences
this claim with an unanswerable argument: How can the allegedly transrational
be distinguished from the merely subrational or irrational? By what criterion
are some paradoxes recognized as true and others false? If these questions
receive a rational answer, then the allegedly transrational has been abandoned.
If not, then the only alternative is dogmatism, even though it go by the name
of humble faith. True humility consists not in “abandoning the pretentious
claims of human reason,” but in acknowledging some standard by which one’s
errors may be detected. What the truly humble theologian abandons is not the
requirement of logical consistency, but rather the pretense that his own
utterances enjoy a privileged immunity from them.4
Failure
to satisfy this criterion of consistency is Wieman’s reason for rejecting the
God who speaks. Such a concept of God, he maintains, infects any theology with
a crippling inner contradiction. The following pages will challenge this contention
by examining his own treatment of four basic theological problems: the nature
of God; religious knowledge; the distinction between good and evil; and man’s
“religious needs.” The conclusion will be that at these four points Wieman’s
God leads him into contradictions which might have been avoided by the God who
speaks.
2 NPR, p. 123. 3
SHG, p. 211; IA. 4 SHG, pp. 211, 215.
267
I. THE NATURE OF GOD
Wieman
is resolved to avoid at all cost the charge that theology is necessarily
ambiguous and obscure. In no other field, he contends, is it more important to
speak with clarity and precision. God
must therefore be a “definite and well‑defined reality, clearly
distinguishable from other entities;”5 otherwise we can never be certain that we are not
serving the “demonic powers of destruction.”6 Unless theology can “guide us to something that can be
known in truth to be the creative and redeeming God,”7 we shall be
delivered into “religious promiscuity.”
However,
it is easier to prescribe such a policy than to follow it. For to predicate
clear concepts of God automatically sets limits upon him, since by implication
every affirmation also denies something. (In traditional language, “determination
is negation.”) For example, if God is simply creative, then the destructive
aspects of the universe are thought to elude his control. Hence the
theologian’s reluctance to use unequivocal language. His resolve to be
intellectually respectable conflicts with his fear of setting limits upon God.
As a result, theology often reflects the ambivalence of a man in the service of
two masters.
Wieman
is no exception. Despite his intention to speak of God with precision, he also
declares that God is really ineffable, that all attempts to describe him are
futile, and that the reality of God must in many ways be antagonistic to any specific
idea of him.8 It
is difficult to see how true propositions could be framed about such a God, or
how they could be tested. And when he advocates “loyalty to the uncomprehended
will of God, without knowing what its specific nature may be,”9 can one help
wondering how to distinguish it from the “demonic powers of destruction?” In
fact, such an inscrutable deity is not far removed from the transcendent,
“wholly other” God which Wieman constantly and effectively criticizes.
It
is this indeterminate, unknowable God, not the God who speaks, which obliges
the theologian to violate the standards of clarity and precision. On its account,
Wieman “refuses to specify with any finality the character of that for which he
supremely lives:”10 Accordingly, his idea of God appears vulnerable to the
5 RLR, p. 6. 6
IA. 7 RLR, p. 9. 8 GR, p. 341. 9 Ibid., pp. 485f. 10
Ibid., p. 341.
268
charge of
ambiguity. To say that God is “the supremely worthful for all mankind”11 does specify one of the functions of the term “god,” but
can hardly be said to identify the legitimate claimant to the title. Likewise,
such descriptions of God as “the richest flow of felt quality” or “the growth
of meaning and value in the world” are tautological. They correctly describe
the way one feels about the object of one’s worship, whatever it may be; but
they are of little help in discriminating among rival gods. A Marxist could
make exactly the same statements about Communism, or a militarist about war.
These
difficulties result directly from the preconceived notion that, by definition,
God must be unlimited, hence indeterminate, hence nonrational. It has yet to be
proven, however, that “limitation” of itself is bad and that a limited God is
necessarily inferior to the undifferentiated blur we are exhorted to worship
instead. In fact, there are grounds for suspecting that certain kinds of
limitation afford a more adequate foundation for theology. The distinction
between good and evil, for example, implies a limit. An unlimited God cannot be
good. The same applies to the distinction between true and false. When the
“limit” which separates them is obscured or denied, then all speech becomes
meaningless. Until it is clearly proven that “limitation” is ungodly,
therefore, the theologian need not cultivate self‑contradiction as a
meritorious act, nor regard it a religious duty to sacrifice his intellect on
the altar of an unknowable God.
Once
prejudice against the idea of a knowable God is removed, the theologian may be
free at least to consider on its merits the possibility of a God who speaks.
Such a God would satisfy Wieman’s quest for a “definite and well‑defined
reality, clearly distinguishable from other entities.” Loyalty to him would
therefore not compromise intellectual integrity; he would not demand
inconsistency as a token of fealty.
But,
runs a plausible objection, such a proposal is fatal to the very idea of God.
As Augustine observed, a God understood is no God at all, for the knower enjoys
a certain advantage over the thing known. The indeterminate, incomprehensible
God, by surpassing all rational categories, preserves his unapproachable majesty
against all human attempts to “pluck out the heart of his mystery.”
11 APR, p. 295.
269
The
same purpose is accomplished equally well, however, by the frankly anthropomorphic
God who speaks. As Creator, he exercises his dominion with an authority which
is difficult to ascribe to a nonpersonal deity; as judge of the nations, he can
cause the mighty to tremble at the day of reckoning. As free, purposive agent
he is forever doing some new and unpredictable thing. To say that God can speak
does not mean that men can read his mind. On the contrary, it is precisely the
words (and deeds) of another person that can never be known in advance. Wieman’s
remark about “commitment to the will of God before one knows what it is”
makes perfectly good sense provided that God is Someone. Loyalty
to another person, to God as to a military commander, means that, although
one’s marching orders may come as a surprise, one is loyal to them in advance,
before they are ever issued. The awesomeness and majesty of God may thus be preserved
without banishing him beyond the frontiers of meaningful discourse.
Still
another of Professor Wieman’s s purposes might be accomplished more
successfully by a God who speaks. Having described God in terms of “cosmic process,”
he faces the question of whether we should see the hand of God in destructive
processes, such as typhoons and earthquakes. No, he concludes, they are not
worth worshipping, because they lack any consistent direction, and are
therefore subhuman.12 But does his nonpersonal God escape this criticism? He
answers that the true God is not subpersonal but suprapersonal. Such a conception,
however, is open to the same argument which Professor Wieman uses against the
concept of the “transrational.” Until it can be distinguished from the merely
irrational, it looks very much like the same package with a different label.
Similarly, until the suprapersonal can be distinguished from the subpersonal in
more than name, it remains quite as unworthy of worship as the cataclysms of
nature.
If
“consistent direction” is one of the clues to the true God, then the God who
speaks can qualify more readily than “cosmic process.” The latter is notoriously
meandering. It will yield any “direction” one cares to read into it, from a
tale told by an idiot to a machine for the making of gods. One of the dominant
characteristics of the God who speaks, however, is constancy of pur-
12 GR, p. 325.
270
pose. It is
this kind of steadfastness, possible only to Someone, which not only
gives unity to the various strands of meaning in nature and history, but which
could also save the theologian from violating his own standards of consistency.
II. RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
The
conflict between rational consistency and an unknowable God extends to other
aspects of Wieman’s theology, particularly to his discussion of religious
knowledge. On the one hand, in keeping with his emphasis on a God that can be
known, he refuses to gratify the layman’s desire for mystification, or to call
obscurity by the name of profundity. He rejects the “evasive ambiguity by which
problems are concealed instead of solved,”13 and
insists that theological statements justify themselves by the “resources and
methods of rational and observational inquiry.”14 It
is difficult to recall more profitable reading than his brilliant exposure of
the latent dogmatism behind every attempt to dispense with objective standards
of verification.
He
is particularly critical of two common sources of religious knowledge: myth and
“religious experience.” However useful myths may be in quickening the
imagination, they can never be the source of an allegedly supranational truth.
This he establishes by means of a single question: Can true myths be distinguished
from false ones? If the answer is yes, then myth has been subordinated to some
nonmythological criterion. If the answer is no, then all myths are equally
valid, and the pursuit of truth has been abandoned. On the strength of this
argument, he taunts the exponents of religious myth with not knowing what they
mean.15
His
criticism of “religious experience” as a test of truth is equally effective. If
a proposition becomes self‑justifying the moment one has an intense
inner conviction of its truth, then error is impossible. Disagreements can no
longer be settled by intelligent inquiry, but are reduced to a quarrel over
who had the most intense experience. Wieman therefore makes a special point of
giving “religious experience” its requiescat as a foundation of
religious knowledge:
13 GR, p. 433. 14
RLR, p. 9. 15 GR, p.
444.
271
When they
repudiate the tests of reason and set up . . . myth and paradox which do not
require anything but untested “experience” and untested “insight” to validate
them, they have set their feet on that slippery descent that plunges at last
into the abyss.16
The
reason why the theologians Wieman has in mind resort to myth and untested
experience is that their God cannot be apprehended under the ordinary modes of
rational knowledge. Conversely, their obscurities could be avoided only if
ordinary categories of thought do apply to God. As already indicated, however,
Wieman, too, asserts that God far transcends and even contradicts rational
description. Such an assertion places him squarely in the camp of his
theological opponents, and it is consequently not a total surprise to find that
he also appeals to the same sources of religious knowledge as they: myth and
religious experience!
The
cornerstone of his theology, he says, is not something that can be adequately
formulated. Indeed, it is susceptible to differing and even contradictory
formulations. Prior to all intelligible structure is the “experience of
unshakable security and fresh rejuvenation.”17 The ultimate religious reality is not known by reason,
but is “quality apprehended by way of feeling.”18 This
experience of the “flow of felt quality” below the level of structured consciousness
would seem susceptible to all of his own criticisms. To call it “relatively
unstructured”19 seems rather to acknowledge the problem than to
solve it.
If
God can be known only in a nonrational way, then religious discourse will take
the form, not of conceptual language but of myth. Consequently, despite his own
convincing critique of myth Wieman also makes use of it, and in a manner difficult
to distinguish from the usage he deplores. The vagueness of myth, he says, is
more adequate to the religious object than more exact language.20 Myths “adumbrate” what the human mind cannot analyze or
clearly discriminate.21 How does this use of myth escape his own strictures?
These
inconsistencies are due to the same dilemma already encountered, the one which
seemingly drives the theologian to choose between intellectual honesty and
loyalty to God. For in-
16 GR, p. 433. Cf.
GR, pp. 424f.; RLR, p. 8. 17 IA. 18 SHG, p. 304. 19 IA.
20 WRT, p. 180. 21
RLR, p. 12.
272
tellectual
honesty requires clarity and the possibility of refutation, while God himself
appears to summon him beyond these “merely finite” considerations to a “reality”
which surpasses everything human and defies all attempts at rational description.
Consequently, since it cannot combine both loyalties at once, theology is no
better than a half truth. On the other hand, it can always plausibly profess to
be serving one of its two masters, the rational or the irrational, and
therefore can always claim immunity to criticism.
Is
theology permanently saddled with this dilemma, or is a third alternative
provided by the God who speaks? Knowledge of such a God, like knowledge of any
other person, would depend upon what he said and did. It would thus satisfy the
requirement so stressed by Wieman: it would be radically empirical, even “experimental.”
For knowledge of a person’s words and deeds is obtained, not by abstract
deduction, but altogether a posteriori.
Such
knowledge would also satisfy the requirement of intellectual honesty, in that
it would be perfectly clear and unambiguous: “I am the Lord thy God, that led
thee up from the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage.”
But
in the case of the God who speaks, intellectual integrity need not exclude his
mystery and majesty. The mystery would consist, not in ambiguity or obscurity,
but in the element of surprise. For God’s words and deeds are
unpredictable and underivable, never deducible in advance from speculative
first principles. They continually upset and confound the calculations of men:
“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
There
is reason to suspect that if one’s aim is to preserve the mystery of God, one
can do it more effectively by way of surprise than by obscurity. For theologians
who boast an unknowable God seem usually to know more about him than they could
ever know about another person. One could take liberties with the “flow of felt
quality”; for example, which would be unthinkable in the case of the God who
speaks. There is no searching of his understanding, for his ways are past
finding out (until they are disclosed). There may even be a “famine of hearing
the words of the Lord.”
Perhaps,
therefore, Professor Wieman has not pressed his empirical method far enough.
Perhaps the only completely experi-
273
mental
religious knowledge must come from the God who speaks. And perhaps the dilemma
of intelligibility‑versus‑mystery can be solved by the God who can
say, “Be still and listen.”
III.
GOOD AND EVIL
The
discrepancy between rational consistency and an unknowable God complicates
also the discussion of good and evil. “Devotion to value,” which motivates so
much of Professor Wieman’s work, requires that good be clearly and unmistakably
distinguished from its opposite. He severely criticizes theologies which cloud
the issue, particularly those which, by regarding evil as mere privation,
reduce the problem from qualitative to quantitative terms. Evil, he insists, is
opposed to good, not merely a diminution of it. Conversely, the good is not to
be equated with the “all embracing” or the “most inclusive.” It positively excludes
evil.
In
any theology, however, the nature of the good depends upon the nature of God.
Where God provides a principle of discrimination, it is possible to make a
qualitative distinction between good and evil. But when Wieman denies that God
can be known or described in intelligible terms, the possibility of a clear
definition of the good begins to fade.
Here
again, the theologian is plagued by opposing loyalties. On the one hand, if he
keeps to a clear, determinate definition of the good, he automatically
circumscribes and restricts it. But if goodness has no limits, then it is
indeterminate, and hence indefinable. When stating his methodology, Wieman
chooses the first alternative. The content of his theology, however, reflects
the second.
Accordingly,
despite his declared intentions (but in keeping with an indeterminate God), he
concludes that the good is unknowable. The deeper levels of value are “too
complex and rich with quality for the human mind to comprehend.”22 Since it is incomprehensible, goodness, along with God,
is transferred from the domain of rational clarity to the realm of feeling: it
is “the vast and uncomprehended complexity of qualified structure relative to
feeling‑reactions.”23 Consequently, despite the promi-
22 SHG, p. 56. 23
Ibid., p. 173
274
nence of the
term “value” in Wieman’s thought, it is not easy to discover its precise
meaning.
Where
goodness is incomprehensible, the theologian is hard put to say what he means
by evil. Indeed, if goodness cannot be defined, there remains no way to
distinguish it from evil. The most tempting way out of this problem is to deny
that evil exists at all. Though Wieman explicitly rejects this solution, he
nevertheless suggests it at times. In his Intellectual Autobiography, for
example, when he says that all human experience is meaningful, he also denies
that any meanings are evil. It would seem to follow that evil is not an aspect
of human experience: “Meaning includes all the dimensions of human experience,”
but “no meanings are intrinsically evil.”
There
is one other way to distinguish evil from an indeterminate good. As the
opposite of good, evil becomes the determinate! Whatever is organized,
structured, limited, whatever tries to capture “the infinite” within finite
concepts or institutions, ipso facto perverts the good: “Every specific
organization of existence is an obstacle to the realization of further
possibilities.”24 This definition of evil in terms of any
determinate structure lies at the root of the famous “tragic view of life,” according
to which man is obliged to do evil by the very conditions of human existence.
This
tragic philosophy apparently receives Wieman’s full endorsement. Every finite
act, no matter how noble, is structured. And structure, by excluding, opposes
the claims of other, equally important values. One is therefore obliged, in the
language of traditional Protestant theology, to “sin boldly.” Or, as Wieman
puts it, one must strive to actualize the good through the means at hand, even
though every “working devotion involves disloyalty to God.”25 This tragic sense, becoming more and more pronounced in
Wieman’s writings, is the dominant note in one of his recent books:
“Righteous”
here means utmost striving to do the right while despairing of success. Man’s
highest moral attainment is thus to combine moral despair with moral striving .
. . The despair is not misery but carries a sweetness and a peace with renewed
effort.”26
24 NPR, p. 164.
25 NPR, p. 152; cf. p. 164. 26 SHG, pp. 50f.; cf. pp. 25‑27, 308f.
275
As
in all tragic philosophy, the word “good” is used equivocally. On the one hand,
it refers to the incomprehensible, absolute good, which is betrayed by every
“finite” act. On the other hand, it is a term of approval bestowed upon those
who acknowledge that this is so. This paradoxical ethic is the counterpart, on
the moral plane, of the same dilemma already encountered in the area of
religious knowledge. Although, in attempting to speak of God, the theologian
can never do justice to the whole truth, he can always find consolation in the
thought that he is at least expounding a half truth. Similarly, on the plane of
action, although every “finite” act is necessarily untrue to the “infinite
good,” the agent nevertheless rates a kind of “E” for effort, provided only
that he recognize the paradox. This is sometimes called “justification by
faith.”
The
ultimate consequence of such philosophy is to undermine every criterion of
truth and every principle of action. The intellectual enterprise thus ends in
relativism, followed shortly by the arbitrariness which is quick to take over
in the absence of objective standards. On the practical level, the tragic
temper alternates between moods of futility and outbursts of frenzied action.
It
goes without saying that Wieman would repudiate these extreme consequences of
tragic philosophy. Having adopted its incomprehensible God, however, he cannot
easily disown them. It is worth inquiring, therefore, whether his own intent
could be accomplished more effectively by a theology based upon a God who
speaks.
In
such a theology, the good receives a perfectly straightforward, intelligible
definition, neither circular nor all‑inclusive. It consists in loyalty to
a definite, concrete personality, and in the readiness to do his will. The theologian
is thus delivered from the tragic notion that “the good” is incompatible with
the very conditions of human existence. He also receives from the speaking God
the ability to discriminate between the varying shades of gray with which life
may confront him: “For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than
any two‑edged sword, . . . quick to discern the thoughts and intents of
the heart.”
Despite
its clarity, such a criterion need not be open to the charge of narrowness and
rigidity. If the God who speaks were a tyrant, the charge might stick. But if
it should transpire, through the spoken word, that his will is the promotion of
love between
276
man
and God and between man and man, then the resulting ethic would be completely
flexible. The test of every action would be pragmatic, based upon whether it
obstructs or promotes love. As Augustine said, “Love ‑ and do as you
please.” Given the final objective, men would be free to work out the strategy
on their own initiative. In devising tactics to fit the occasion, they could
make creative use of all the specialized disciplines.
Such a conception of goodness would
be flexible without loss of discrimination,
precise without stifling creativity‑consequences which Wieman would welcome.
The question is simply whether they are compatible with an unknowable God.
There is evidence that such a God provides neither the principle of
discrimination nor the sense of personal involvement implied by genuine love.
The closest approximation to love, consistent with such a God, is reflected in
the militantly neutral phrase, “appreciative understanding.” One may readily
join Wieman in rejecting “the letter that killeth:” But one may also wonder
whether, either in theory or in practice, a speechless God can provide “the
spirit that giveth life.”
Finally,
Wieman raises the question: Which of the two rival gods is more adequate to the
actual needs of men: the silent, incomprehensible God, or the God who speaks?
His approach to the problem can scarcely be improved upon. On the one hand, he
points out that questions of true or false are completely independent of human
needs and wishes. “One cannot find the true idea by following the guidance of
human craving.”27 In
theology, no more than in other disciplines, can such yearnings supersede the
objective criteria of truth.
On
the other hand, a theory which first satisfies these criteria is in a far
stronger position if, in addition, it also ministers to basic human
needs. He therefore insists that, once a theology has discharged its debt to
truth, it must also “meet the needs of human life.”28 On this basis, he criticizes theologians who, while defining
religion as “ultimate concern,” speak of a God which could scarcely be of concern
to anyone. His own God, he contends, “does respond to the intimate needs and
attitudes of each individual personality,”29 and does so more effectively than the God
27 GR, p. 347. 28
SHG, p. 193. 29 GR, p.
361.
277
who speaks.
Indeed, to meet the most basic human needs, God could not be a personality.30
The
truth of this claim is far from self‑evident, for it is difficult to see
how a nonpersonal God could answer to the needs of personal beings, except on
one condition. It could do so provided human beings are after all not so
personal as they had imagined. In other words, a nonpersonal God could meet the
needs of men only if these needs operate below the level of personality.
This, in turn, would mean that men are not unique centers of conscious, purposive
freedom, but are rather complex instances of impersonal process.
This
apparently is what Wieman has in mind when he reduces man to a kind of psycho‑physical
organism;31 when he declares that “value,” far from being a distinctively
human category, is experienced by all organisms;32 when
he redefines human freedom as a kind of determinism;33 and when he defines love as “that whole system of
connections of mutual support which keeps all the cells and organs of the body
working together, . . . which brings the riches of thought and feeling to the individual
from his social environment and from the accumulated meanings of the past . . .
deeper than at the level of consciousness. . . “34 In other words, to claim that a particular conception of
God “speaks to our condition” really presupposes an analysis of human nature.
By first denying that human beings are personal, one can readily show that a
nonpersonal God meets their needs.
If
men really are centers of purposive freedom, however, then their needs involve
not the impersonal categories of organic process, but the distinctively personal
categories of decision, judgment, forgiveness, promise, trust, and love. Needs
like these can be met only by a God who is himself a free agent, to whom these
same categories also apply: in short, an anthropomorphic God.
In
rejecting such a doctrine of human nature together with its corresponding
conception of God, Wieman appears to depart from his own stated principles. Having
granted that “meeting human needs” is a theological asset, he nevertheless objects
to these doctrines on the ground that they “satisfy the cravings of the human
heart.”35 They reflect an insistent need of religious de-
30
Ibid. 31
GR, p. 363. 32 SHG, p.
165. 33 Ibid., p. 301. 34 GR, p. 362.
35 GR, p. 362.
278
votion to
think of God as a person.36 There is a trace here of the Nietzschean dogma that the
only way to be truly a man is to wish not to be. The error, as in Nietzsche’s
philosophy, consists in the unwitting use of a double standard of judgment: In
the case of one’s own philosophy, “relevance to human needs” constitutes an
asset ‑ but in all other cases, it is mere wishful thinking. If
anthropomorphism is really so misguided, there should be a more legitimate way
to refute it.
There
is one hint in Wieman’s writings that those needs which are distinctively human
could be met only by a genuine word of God. In an eloquent passage on the power
and significance of speech, he declares that the human mind and personality are
creatively transformed by the spoken word.37 Had this hint been pursued, it might have led him to
test on its merits the idea of a God who, by speaking his creative word, could
transform the plight of men. Apart from such a God, they appear doomed forever
to raise a question that has no answer, to perform the human drama in a tragic
mask.
What,
for example, is to deter men from setting themselves up as tin gods ‑
unless the true God can say, “Thou shalt not”? Can men really be held
accountable for their own actions ‑ unless this same God can say, “Adam,
where art thou?” Can men help relapsing periodically to the level of the beast,
can they find an enduring purpose in their lives ‑ except in response to
a God who can call, “Follow me”? Can they find a meaning in life which cuts
athwart the endless cycles of nature, or which gives direction to the
meanderings of history‑apart from the God who can “declare his purpose
from the beginning, that we may know”? Can a man honestly worship, without
tongue in cheek ‑ if “there is no voice, neither any to answer”?
Although
such considerations do not establish a rational argument, by Wieman’s own
standards they do constitute a weighty asset. If, in addition, the God who
speaks can be defended on independent, rational grounds, then one may rejoice
to find that he is also the most adequate to human needs. I have suggested that
such a God does satisfy both the requirements of logic and the needs of men.
Evidence has also been found that the theologian is driven to violate the laws
of consistency, to jeopardize
36 SHG, p. 266; cf. p. 210; GR, pp. 348f., pp. 361, 365. 37 GR, p. 465.
279
religious knowledge, to confuse good and evil, and to
depersonalize human nature ‑ as long as he remains in the service of a
God who is dumb.
Professor Wieman will no doubt be
able to show that at least some of the foregoing criticisms are inconclusive.
Even if all were valid, however, they would not at all detract from the greatness
of his contribution to contemporary theology. On the contrary, they testify to
it, for it is no sin for the theologian to make mistakes. Sin enters only when,
by refusing to acknowledge any objective standard by which his mistakes could
be detected, he makes an implicit claim to infallibility. At a time when so
many theologians are trying to prevent reason from corrupting faith, Wieman has
shown that there is far more to fear from faith corrupting reason. Like
Socrates, he tells the critic exactly how to find whatever errors his thought
may contain, and invites him to amend it as part of a grand, co‑operative
enterprise. If these
pages have managed to find any such errors, it is only
because he has skillfully and generously equipped his reader with the tools of
criticism. The future belongs to theologians who can follow his example.
EDMOND La B. CHERBONNIER
TRINITY COLLEGE
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
ABBREVIATIONS
In the footnotes, books of Henry Nelson
Wieman, including those of which he is a co‑author, and a few composite
volumes in which important essays of his appear are referred to by the
following symbols:
APR: American Philosophies of Religion (1936)
CAT: Contemporary American Theology
(1932,1933)
CG: A Conversation about God (identical with Is There a
God?) (1932)
DH: The Directive in History (1947)
GR: The Growth of Religion (1938)
IA: Intellectual Autobiography (original version)
(1957)
IAr: Intellectual Autobiography (revised and shortened) (1959)
IL: The Issues of Life (1930)
ITG: Is There a God? (Identical with A Conversation about God) (1932)
MPRL:
Methods of Private Religious Living (1927,1928)
MUC:
Man's Ultimate Commitment (1958)
NPR:
Normative Psychology of Religion (1925)
NWMC: Now We Must Choose (1941)
PC: The Protestant Credo (1953)
RESM:
Religious Experience and Scientific Method (1926)
RLR:
Religious Liberals Reply (1947)
RN: Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political
Thought (1956)
RR:
Religious Realism (1931)
SHG: The Source of Human Good (1946)
VB: Ventures in Belief (1930)
WRT: The Wrestle of Religion with Truth
(1927)