BOOKS
King, Rofrerr L. & Phillips, Robert & Kelly, James R. & Sloyan, Gerard S.
"f Gave Them a Sword": Behind the Scene* of the Nixon Interview* DAVID FROST Morrow, $9.95 The Ends of Power HR. HALDEMAN with JOSEPH DIMONA Times Books, $12.95 ROBERT L. KING These books...
...That's why it's important to keep replying to the tired arguments of the Laskys, Safires, Prices and Haldemans...
...Kasper holds that the Cyrillian doctrine of the hypostatic union is ultimately a conceptual, ontological expression of the biblical statement that God has manifested himself as love...
...The most satisfactory parts of his 275-page volume are, understandably, those that recount the latter from the period of the second century church fathers to modern times...
...When I rereturned to Washington preparatory to testifying, Nixon called me and asked me if I could review the September 15 tape, too, which I did on July 10...
...Each book, each courtly gesture, gives new stature to the man who went "through a life" for David Frost, who has "suffered enough" in the eyes of others .and who does not deserve public rehabilitation because he will never answer the tough questions in the proper place...
...San Clemente has been opened for a fund-raising bus tour (for charity, to be sure...
...Significantly, the two staffs congratulated Nixon, Frost and themselves after the Watergate taping...
...he did, after all, skillfully extract damning statements from Nixon: "I would have to say that a reasonable person could call that a cover-up" and "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal...
...Haldeman also testified that he chose resignation as "better" and "proper," while in his book he frequently tells us that he opposed resigning and favored a leave of absence...
...Kasper is justified in crediting Cyril with "the brilliant idea of the hegemony of the Logos," as with pointing out the concerns of the East that Pope Leo I, the architect of the Chalqedonian compromise, may not have been sensitive to...
...Much easier to translate, if not to make sense of, is the bold declaration: "Eternal...
...Even here, however, Frost must be concerned with his package...
...Since Haldeman is a convicted perjurer, raising these inconsistencies may seem petty, but The Ends of Power asks us to accept, among other things, his reconstruction of the 18V£ minute gap...
...We can, however, reply to some of the nonsense: —Neither the press nor the Nixonhaters caused Watergate or obstructed justice...
...The net effect of the inquiry is disconcerting...
...Now, he can be more precise: Noting the Senator's interest in that September 15 conversation, I knew what to expect...
...Because of the pardon, Frost's commercial forum had to stand for the courtroom...
...They understandably settle for a Christology of God in a human body (heretical, but never reprimanded in human memory) or else discover a much different Jesus in the gospels and the epistle to the Hebrews and no longer give credence to what they thought was the demand of Catholic/ Orthodox faith...
...Frost, finally, has absorbed the current view of Watergate as "tragedy...
...The book has an academic lecturehall quality which is its strength and its weakness...
...The German theologian sets aside the work of the Dutch one as a reversal of the Chalcedonian formula and consequently a departure from its context...
...he could not be a driving adversary in an early session without ruining the mood and jeopardizing the whole project...
...God reveals himself in Jesus Christ unreservedly and definitively as the one who he is: God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16...
...he is released from this particular historical figure, and consequently Jesus's death and resurrection mediate the coming of the Spirit (ef...
...He is also divine because God through his Word, not a second person in Christ, manifests himself as fully in this man as the limitations of creaturehood allow...
...But, when Nixon says that the gap was innocuous and when Haldeman fills it in to flesh out a private theory, the question comes down to trust—a trust that such men as these could earn only under crossexamination...
...Kasper is a functionalist in his Christology who sees the necessity of asking ontological questions...
...On the way to it there is a summary of modern German theology, another of the data of the gospels ("Part II...
...As a result, one receives a careful account of the problems and solutions proper to Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, and II and III Constantinople...
...Thus we read: "In this all-consuming dedication to the point of death, the Spirit as it were becomes free...
...That this is a modalist Christology and not the three distinct hypos taseis ("persons") of Cyrillian clarity Schoonenberg admits...
...This may be just as well, for although a number of statements throughout lead the reader to suppose that he intends to do his theorizing from the New Testa* meat data, critically examined, he in fact never does so...
...A lawyer, of course, would go for the harder line and for the "real" explanation...
...Aquinas, Scheeben, and Alfaro are then quoted, correctly enough...
...He speaks cryptically of the "extremely unfortunate circumstances" of that decision of 553, and, in a masterpiece of understatement, describes it as "to some extent a subject of controversy even today...
...Jn 16.7...
...Virtually every commentator on Watergate has similarly accepted some form of this debased, popart view of recent history...
...20.22...
...Worse, Frost's instincts led him to aim for an emotional high point, not for an exhaustive truth...
...Perhaps Schoonenberg's...
...When he dissembled, he dissembled in all areas at once, partially and totally...
...a very offputting dawn...
...That God must be such in himself as to allow of this expression, which is personal in the case of Christ and by analogy of the Spirit also, is abundantly clear...
...to the sort of purging statement that both history and justice required...
...But the concept of a human being who is not a human person—that function being more than adequately fulfilled by a divine person, the Logos —is a subtlety with which most Christains have not been able to cope...
...The book is written in the theological shorthand employed by modern Germans and translated by a team that at times seems totally mystified by it...
...If some people actively enjoyed seeing Nixon in trouble, that's irrelevant...
...Certainly Chalcedon could have said this and certainly it took the pains not to...
...The outcome is various...
...He speaks of Nixon's "catharsis," and of being "close...
...He nonetheless points the way to a careful Spirit Christology, which we have a right to expect soon from some other hand...
...Joined to the indisputable fact of the Spirit's action in the world as the precondition of the person and work of Jesus are a dozen ringing propositions that are thoroughly debatable...
...The patristic and conciliar statements about Jesus as the Christ that won out are presented as if nothing better could have been hoped for...
...HALDEMAN with JOSEPH DIMONA Times Books, $12.95 ROBERT L. KING These books should be required reading for anyone who believes that the pardon of Richard Nixon was, in Gerald Ford's words, "the right thing to do...
...Careful treatises of 500 pages end up in lists of names, categorized as tendencies or schools...
...With Nixon's book due in May, we can't let the simple repetition of absurdities wear us down...
...Haldeman speaks of being "brought low" by the "tragedy...
...The demythologization of the conciliar and creedal language is not only done without strain...
...As he approaches the interviews themselves, the focus is sharper...
...the Christ WALTER KASPER Paulist, $12.95 GERARD S. SLOYAN This challenging volume is an updated version of the author's university lectures at the Catholic theological faculties of Muenster and Tuebingen (where he now teaches) ¦and the Gregorian University in Rome, delivered over the last dozen years...
...The "relative importance of Watergate" cannot be known by measuring reels of tape or by the bulk of Haldeman's notes on other matters...
...But it is not so clear to Schoonenberg that an eternally thrice-distinct godhead as to "persons" is a demand of the New Testament data...
...yet he also probes into who Jesus is that he can do this...
...78, 102, 121...
...I Gave Them A Sword" Writing the book has evidently sharpened Haldeman's memory...
...J. Nolte is quoted as having said (by way of radical demythologization, Kasper points out): "Accordingly, the Christ-matter has to be radically relativized and seen merely as an intermediate, didactic and symbolic concretion of a permanent truth-value...
...With Nixon weakening (on obstruction of justice), Frost says, "Had it not been for the obvious anguish that Nixon was experiencing, I would have been sorely tempted to return to the harder line," and of another moment, "Whatever the explanation, the emotion was real...
...life is God's final definitive act of freedom for man...
...Kasper does not do his own exegesis but relies on the findings of others...
...Without some test, we cannot really accept the book's most challenging assertions: * that the Soviets asked us to join them in a "surgical" nuclear strike against China, that Nixon ordered the break-in, and that the CIA allowed it to fail...
...The History and Destiny of Jesus Christ"), and an exploration of the mystery of Jesus under the titles "Son of God" and "Son of Man...
...as love communicating itself, God's selfcommunication between the Father and Son is the eternal nature of God himself [viz., unfathomable and inexplicable love...
...Frost sprung this material on a surprised Nixon to break through his well-lacquered facade, and it worked...
...Kasper's book is thoroughly sexist in its language...
...This fanciful prose occurs in the midst of some unexceptionable readings of various New Testament passages...
...He writes: "Precisely because Jesus is no other than the Logos, in the Logos and through him he is also a human person...
...He makes clear that while Sabellius and the other monarchian modalists were rightly repudiated, the only presence of God in Christ and in the world through the Spirit taught by the New Testament is one that suggests two distinct modes of presence of the one indivisible godhead...
...Indeed, the opposite is insinuated throughout (so that there ¦will be no summonses to Rome to interrupt theological progress...
...As to, "This bodily in-the-worldness of man and this in-manness of the world is so essential and constituent for both, that man would not exist without this real being-in-the-world and conversely the world as such would not exist without this reference to man," one does not know whether to yawn or mail it to The New Yorker...
...Yet II Constantinople incorporated fully the Neo-Chalcedonianisms of the Cyril party by stating that the one hypostasis is that of the Logos into which the human nature is assumed...
...As part of the latter, something must be said on everything...
...For him the "one person and one hypostasis" of the definition is the man Jesus of Nazareth...
...Because this solemn declaration is followed by a worthwhile discussion of the relation of the Christian hope in eternal life to respect for this world, one does neither...
...As a result, the opening chapters of "/ Gave Them A Swordt' could be sub-titled "The Romance of the Dollar" as we follow Frost jetting around the world, raising money for his project, lunching in the right places...
...his glosses of some of Nixon's remarks are penetrating and exact...
...numbered, autographed copies of the memoirs are being made available for a regal fee...
...Still, to call II Constantinople's interpretation of Chalcedon "legitimate and logical" is not to reckon with the practical monophysite Christology which has been ¦the legacy of popular Christianity ever since...
...Nor to this reviewer...
...In the latter, biblical categories are subordinate to doctrinal...
...the book, nicely paced...
...Rather, he carefully plots the post-biblical development of Christology (the theology of Jesus as •the Christ) in the Greek East and Latin West, and presents a modern understanding of his subject that derives from, and accords with, the conciliar outcomes of those debates...
...On balance, he renders a sendee more than he offends...
...Perhaps most' impressive is James Reston Junior's research because it produced three previously unpublished exchanges between Nixon and Colson —all three pointing to an early coverup...
...Ill Constantinople preserved the two distinct wills in Christ, it is true...
...Inconsistencies didn't bother him at all, not even inconsistencies in the same or consecutive sentences...
...Conversely, use of the book's index on Anselm, Hegel, or Barth will yield clear summaries of their Christology or the way their overall thought-world encompassed a Christology...
...When Sam Dash asked who suggested that Haldeman listen to one of the tapes after his resignation, he replied, "I am not sure whether I did or whether the President did," nor could he remember the date on which he played it (although his questioners thought that the date was very important...
...Kasper is himself often betrayed, as in: "The time of grace had dawned, but it was...
...Whether Jack Kennedy swore, LBJ taped, or Teddy broke the sixth commandment, has nothing to do with the validity of the charges against Nixon...
...He promises to get away from the difficulties inherent in scholastic theology and more recent Hegelian readings of it by hewing to the New Testament texts that link the incarnation to the work of the Spirit...
...Much of Haldeman's case could not withstand the distinction between motive and intent that David Frost turned on Nixon...
...The history of the biblical tradition that he presents is derivative...
...That was one of the historic Nixon tendencies...
...Although he produced a better record than many expected, the success of the interviews is disturbing because, however well he and his staff prepared, the values and demands of show business defined the limits of their approach...
...But what Schoonenberg has done is interpret Chalcedon in a New Testament rather than a Cyrillian spirit, thereby saving it for usefulness to a modern purpose...
...When the same truth of faith is presented in modern existential or phenomenological language, it is as if nothing from the past needs to yield...
...In older Catholic writing the Church was often seen as the historical instantiation of the kingdom of God...
...Maybe it's just a verbal crutch for some, but the total effect of the usage is to turn a political crisis into a completed fiction, beyond reach and beyond thought...
...Piet Schoonenberg has done much better than Kasper allows in facing the problems created by the NeoChalcedonian "orthodoxy...
...If ending the war, reorganizing the bureaucracy and other circumstances kept the good guys in the White House from dealing with Watergate, then they must take responsibility for those other circumstances that created an atmosphere for fall-guy Colson to thrive in...
...It is fairly clear that he cannot...
...While the author dialogues at length with a few positions he dismisses others with a brief and inadequate characterization...
...It goes, by the way, to Nixon's suspicions that Charles Colson was behind the break-in...
...The words were attached to each other at random...
...European theologians dearly love a final definitive act, and they know of quite a few...
...Yet if the prose is often gummy and the going heavy, the persevering reader who already knows a great deal about the subject will come upon many a good insight clearly expressed...
...If God then reveals himself in Jesus Christ...
...The secular-priest author is a professor of dogmatic theology committed to the method of his predecessors Karl Adam and Josep R. Geiselmann, namely, the exploration of the history of biblical and ecclesiastical tradition...
...By that logic, Adam and Eve could have saved Eden for us by showing God all the fruit they didn't eat...
...What he proposes is acceptable enough, so far as it goes...
...Although Ford claimed "to firmly shut and seal this book," his pardon brought forth the Frost interviews and book, and The Ends of Power resulted from Haldeman's distress over the interviews...
...Kasper is so vigorous in maintaining the inadequacy of various modern Christologies, Catholic and Protestant, that he cannot but disappoint in presenting his own...
...We must, then, decide which Haldeman to believe—the one who testified that listening to one tape "confirmed" his memory but did not add "a great deal," or the one who now needs "new evidence" to tell us how the missing conversation with Nixon "might have gone...
...To be specific, Kasper thinks that the studied compromise of Chalcedon between the Monophysite and Nestorian positions, which confessed one and the same Christ in two natures, "both concurring into one person and one hypostasis," was not basically reinterpreted by the declaration of II Constantinople...
...Frost's list of what the public record reveals is also impressive...
...He pays adequate attention to the fact that Jesus is believed by Christians to be the savior of humanity, its reconciler with God...
...but in support of that proposition, which presumably they might have trouble agreeing to...
...There is no notice given to the reader that it needs to be done...
...Kasper concludes by presenting his Christology of the Spirit in the last twenty pages...
...For these and other reasons, Frost can justly claim to have done something worthwhile...
...His nature is human by definition...
...It also wrongly supposes that God's firm and final offer in Jesus Christ was "rejected by Israel as a whole" (pp...
...Thus, in a verse-by-verse presentation of the Johannine prologue we read: "Despite the distinction between God and Logos, both are united by the one divine nature...
Vol. 105 • April 1978 • No. 8
