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This book is about the people who write theology rather than
about theology itself. The author has interviewed some of the
best known theologians of the day, and new presents his impressions.
Not all the theologians discussed can be called “new.”
Some of them, like Tillich, Niebuhr, Barth and Bultmann, have
been known for a generation. There are, on the other hand, important
new theologians, both Roman Catholic and German Protestant, who
are barely mentioned. Thus the really “new” theologians
presented in this book are mainly the so-called “death of
God” school of American Protestants and their much less extreme
British counterparts, often called the advocates of “South
Bank religion” because their leaders are concentrated in
the diocese of Southwark, consisting of London south of the Thames.
Ved Mehta, a writer for The New Yorker, has obviously
read widely in the works of the people whom he interviews. He
makes long quotations from their writings and addresses many perceptive
questions to them. Inevitably, there are some gaps and blunders.
Only once is there a mention of the philosopher Martin Heidegger,
who has been one of the major formative influences in current
theology; and it seems that Mr. Mehta has confused him with someone
else, for he is indexed as Johann Heinrich Heidegger. Yet on the
whole, the theological background to these interviews has been
accurately filled in.
[Some of]… the interviews… are lively and interesting,
and in a few cases even throw new light on some aspect of the
thinking of the person interviewed…. One of the best interviews
is with Paul van Buren, the most coherent among the small group
of thinkers who are seeking to develop a version of Christianity
without God. His remarks are clear, intelligent and straightforward.
He explains how, in his view, modern empirical philosophy has
made any God-talk impossible, and indicates that his views have
become more radical since he wrote his book, The Secular Meaning
of the Gospel, in 1963. In reply to Mr. Mehta’s questions,
he frankly states that he no longer prays or exercises his ministry,
and that he understands Christianity simply as an ethic built
around the figure of Christ. This interview helps to straighten
out some of the ambiguities in van Buren’s book.
Anglican Bishop John Robinson, author of Honest to God,
emerges from his interview with much less credit. Like other critics
of Robinson, Mr. Mehta thinks there are many inconsistencies in
his writings, and he presses the Bishop hard on what he considers
key issues. But the Bishop is evasive. Three times the author
elicits the answer: “That is a secondary problem!” It
is hardly surprising that Mehta suspects Robinson of wanting both
to eat his cake and have it. The Bishop likes to be counted among
the radicals, and he likes to applaud them; but he does not care
to follow them very far into the wilderness. Van Buren is quoted
as saying, “Robinson has a very conservative streak.”
This interview makes it harder than ever to know what he is really
trying to say.
Perhaps some of the dull passages of the book are intended by
the author as irony. This would seem to be the only reason for
including an account of a BBC television discussion, in which
the participants were Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark (“his
tone of voice alternated unnervingly between the holy and the
stern”) and Nick Stacey, a flamboyant Anglican priest who
headed up a much-publicized but ill-starred parish experiment
in southeast London. The discussion, as reported here, must have
been an extraordinary exercise in futility, being full of vagueness
and irrelevance. One wonders how far this is the image generally
projected by the church today.
Yet all is not a desert. In the final part of the book, Mehta
goes on pilgrimage to Germany, and searches out the history and
the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Here, it seems, our author
finds something more positive and compelling than has so far been
encountered among the new theologians. But what is this? It is
more than 20 years since Bonhoeffer was martyred by the Nazis,
so he can hardly be reckoned a “new” theologian, even
though his ideas (so far as they are understood) are powerfully
influential today. Perhaps what is so compelling in him is just
a quality of life that counts for more than theological formulations.
The author puts a question to Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s
friend, literary executor and biographer: ‘“What do
you consider more important—Bonhoeffer’s life or his
theology” “Ah, that is a very interesting point,”
he said. “I think the two were closely connected, but I,
since I am not an academic type of theologian, would say his life.”
There is surely encouragement in this response. The picture of
the new theologians confusedly striving to make sense of Christian
faith in a secular age could be a depressing one, but there is
hope in the fact that this faith still shows its power in lives
that are greater than any theological formulations. Theology will
always be needed, because we are thinking beings and faith looks
for understanding. But no theology could ever be final, or even
adequate, for life, any more than thought.
The New Theologian has set himself the old task of equating
faith and theology with reason and secularism—and doing so
without any sacrifice on either side, a task, in its way, no less
tantalizing than squaring the circle. But it is a testimony to
the continuing power of the message that there should be modern
Acts of the Apostles... Perhaps the New Theologian might find
courage by remembering how the Psalmist of the Old Testament,
at times, gave himself over to doubt and despair, and yet praised
God no less devoutly. How ancient was the problem of the urge
to praise God! —The
New Theologian
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