The Center of Christianity:
Neuhaus, Richard John
of American society, of the Unknowns and the ignored. He would like to see Denying both logic and history stories told from the point of the bottom up, rather than from official...
...reporting...
...Hick's heart has reasons which he is de- or judicial threats, can give new credibilThe line of argument is similar to Karl termined not to let influence his argu- ity to the idea that what one believes Rahner's more thorough treatment of thatt ment...
...That tradition to which Hick would be faith- ity to one who, according to Hick, so is an honorable purpose, and the invitaful...
...Chamber Music has natural affinities with the theme of Silences, for Caroline At age 90, a life story Newby never thinks twice about giving up her own music career: "To the musiCUM91 music the one glowing coal, in a long, cold, cal world Robert was a much beloved Doris Grumbach dark life...
...PETER STEINFELS is executive editor of The Pblitics of Intrigue in theVatican Commonweal and the author of The Neo- $l2.9 at book and department stores conservatives, the Men Who Are Changing America's Politics, about to be published by Simon & Schuster...
...tive core of the Christian faith, leaving power are still so unequally divided in aside the mass of intellectual barnacles, America...
...tions_ He exposes the unpious ELEANOR B. WYMARD is an associate professor in the English department of Carlow College, Pittsburgh...
...22 June 1979: 377 to the...
...Greeley also had several inside claves called to elect successors Vatican sources, including "Deep to Pope Paul VI and Pope John Purple:" Paul 1. It is an honest look at the REVIEWERS The Making of the Popes 1978 Barque of Saint Peter, and, in the EDWIN DIAMOND, a journalist and broadcast is a brilliant combination of end, a hopeful one"-Father Theodore White's analytical gifts Theodore M. Hesburgh, presicritic, heads the News Study group at M.I.T...
...Worship blind, it is,unacceptable in its satisfacit is impossible to live quite fully without and all that encompasses- sacraments, tions and, most important, it is unacceptreference to religion in the modern preaching, prayer-are never once men- able morally...
...the church...
...giving love one discovers in Jesus...
...In a critique for the Washington Post this past summer of Tillie Olsen's Silences, Doris Grumbach makes the claim that the "passion of [Olsen's] thesis leads her into all kinds of error...
...The year of two papal conmore bottom up journalism hardly consti- by Andrew Greeley in The claves...
...Hick is undoubtedly right-Jesus, bach's novel...
...Hindu thought, reduce this life to illuHick says that is not the question, and Hick's reasons for membership in the sion...
...Service at that institution...
...At age 17 in 1893, Caroline marries man, was important also to me, who Robert Glencoe Maclaren, a young needed private love so much...
...that judgment...
...figure...
...While Gans's case for which have finally been opened 1978...
...But they always do...
...Put world, the church would be among the mind whether there is an after-life or not...
...Caroline Newby Maclaren, the Victorian heroine of Grumbach's third novel, Chamber Music, seems scarcely to be alive...
...In ceptable...
...That, he The College of Cardinals...
...God has become history but Lord...
...Before dying at the age of 34, Once more it is apparent that incarna- church, and an ultimate hope that comes Robert repeatedly fulfills his dreams and tion is the rub...
...He raises believes, would dampen the open- political contests on earth...
...True, but for what are they Hick further discourages the debate he that Jesus is uniquely "Son of God...
...And then, after discovering love, evenh\'here in the \Vorl(ItV unlikely and unsuspected, in a woman - HOPI?N WEB F who dispelled her loneliness, left behind by her death, more alone than ever before, deserted by the single point of light, William Morrow 22 June /979: 379...
...Perhaps so, but as he himself ar- the eucharist_ for his remembrance...
...nalism today...
...Hick rejects the first other religions...
...But this public man, this famous Dutton, $8.9S, 213 pp...
...Hick's inability to affirm these lenge the assertion that the truth of own poetry, music, and painting because claims of catholic Christianity, joined to Christianity, precisely because he is the cultural constraints have limited their his evident desire to be part of that Chris- center, requires that Jesus be God incamate.time and space to create...
...drawn together...
...sociologist and journalist TIME "Father Greeley's book conGans has made us look behind the news calls him "an informational ma- tains interpretative reporting chine gun" ~ covered last year's necessary to the understanding of in a fresh way and think about what we two historic conclaves for over the new style of ecclesial leadersee...
...Doors his stature dare ask and answer...
...ship that emerged from the confor him back in the late 1960s...
...What is surpris- study the various aspects of the society in God of Love, There and in later works he ing is that Hick apparently has not recog- which it lives and to lead experiments in exposes the horror of history and nized the implications of that denial for Christian service to that society...
...have to do with his most explicit denial together...
...One can take history with close to being evasive fancy...
...Pulling back from that brink, Hick perhaps it is not the best way of framing Christian community defy both logic and now writes: "We should accept our morthe choices...
...why corporations have so much power, He is extremely confident about what is about why poverty, unemployment, ra- OHN HICK gets himself into something and is not believable to modern man, and cism and sexism are still with us...
...I'm glad I helped open those doors 100 American newspapers...
...The problem is that subject in his recent and excellent Foun- offers for belonging to the church...
...Hick here suggests, a matter of entertainnotion that Jesus the `Christ is uniquely Just possibly, Hick could agree with ing some interesting possibilities while, the universal savior...
...One can hope beyond comes down to something like incarna- Olsen's long literary essay and Grumthis historical experience because at the tion...
...Except for the deliberately gues (citing Harvey Cox's Secular City), short, they gathered to worship...
...is one that inevitably draws people has long since found to be dead-ended...
...And that, as one reflects on it, tably draw thematic parallels between history is not God...
...It is ('1 record c t fianced to a prodigy who first loved his Colurc]cje, C rnpc55iofl and pe.rsonml mother and then a man, once and fatally (I have now come to believe) before his dro\\ti\ thrOLI(Jll the experiencee marriage to me, a wife caught in a joy- of c]lin st intolerablc trdgc(ILI...
...as "Lord" but he does not explain how, phenomenon called Christianity by mov- In biblical faith this life has meaning only without committing idolatry, it is possi- ing it into a new and more reasonable as it is directed toward, and is lived from, Commonweal: 378 the promise of the coming Kingdom of tianity, results in a sentimentalized to write and conduct his own composiGod...
...Jesus is mad, bad, or one of and the bright possibility in the secular humanists we can say: 'I do not at present several models of self-giving love...
...message of Jesus," an implausible tions...
...tianity" is a clumsy and temporary expe- one ought to make quite clear that one is Talk about the consummation and vindidient employed by Christian theologians not then describing the historical cation of historical experience is not, as to cover up their abandonment of the phenomenon "Christianity...
...is Senior Editor of Worldvie w and author most eye-witness to both Papal elec- I recently of Freedom for Ministry...
...Greeley and "Deep Purple;' you'll tutes a radical proposal, it does provoke Greeley, an eminent priest, see what happened-and how...
...He's t of a bind, and that is too bad because is constantly asserting "recent" and not sure how many people will buy this the intention and intelligence behind the "newly discovered" viewpoints that, as kind of news, and his proposal for fund- book are deserving of respect...
...questions that only someone of mindedness he sees in the best of jour- Behind closed doors...
...Having high aspirations fame...
...In this he surely knows, were perfectly familiar ing "bottom up" journalism through a quasi-national foundation is perhaps the weakest part of his book...
...thought in a craft not given to reflection...
...tion to theological debate should be welgious writers, Hick does make a convinc- Here and elsewhere one suspects that comed...
...Seton, af- in M(111L) ttecIrs...
...the "new directions" Hick wants to dations of Christian Faith...
...Good or bad," writes Hick, "the explore are, for the most part, wellBut the bind, indeed the multiple church was inevitable...
...His indifEleanor B. Wymard American musician who his temporarily ference and discontent with me seemed at interrupted his studying in Germany to the time of no great moment beside his WHEN THE LITERARY critic turns to return to Boston...
...But, he might answer, his at the same time, getting on with the From time to time, Hick refers to Jesus purpose is to change that historical business of a basically all right existence...
...More or- look outwards and to serve God by serv- extra-historical vindications...
...for Jesus' mes- beaten paths that catholic Christianity binds, into which Hick gets himself all sage...
...The explores, sometimes imaginatively, varwhat he wants to assert about Jesus as church will have energy and resources to ious theories of reincarnation and other "the center of Christianity...
...This is evident in the reasons he really does matter...
...Hick holds, quite inac- they have worshipped him...
...And able, for it is acceptable already in its Hick suggests that choosing Jesus as his reasons defy history because-and own right:' '' But if there is anything that one's favored "disclosure" of love is a again Hick surely knows this-the early Hick himself has made clear (especially matter of historical placement and cul- Christians were not drawn together in in his study of theodicy, but also here) tural conditioning, but is nonetheless ur- order to improve the world but in order to and that thoughtful people know with gently important for the shaping of one's encounter God in Christ in the doing of brutal force, it is that this life is not acworld...
...RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS, a Lutheran pastor, Greeley actually makes you an...
...In a word, it is unprecedented...
...They political intrigues that are the elect a Pope in one of the greatest rule in Vatican politics...
...THOMAS V. McGOVERN is an assistant professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and also a counselor in the MidLife Counseling...
...Nice ideas, to be sure, knows that along that route lies a rethe basis of the evidence, we must decide but very limp as reasons for belonging to lativizing of reality that can, as in some whether Jesus is "mad, bad, or God...
...Whatever else Chris= ing despair, or 'the Hindu belief that the all those equally valid "disclosures" in tians have said and done about Jesus, horror is illusory...
...For from the editor of the little book that what it should be, it could "assign ap- instance, some years ago he wrote an caused a minor stir some while back, The propriately trained representatives to admirable book on theodicy, Evil and the Myth of God Incarnate...
...But he thodox apologists have argued that, on ing the neighbor...
...As a mild left- THE CENTER OF CHRISTIANITY rewrite of his Christianity at the Center socialist, he wants more economic John Hick (1970) Hick wants to set forth "the posistories, more analysis of why wealth and Harper & Row, $6.95, 128 pp...
...According to Hick, if invites by his seeming imperviousness to The denial of course comes as no surprise the church were really united in being the implications of what he says...
...of ii n ond women through the rivers of her husband's blood...
...piano by the wordless Mrs...
...Press...
...Grumbach's technique is to allow Carne Maclaren, at age 90, to create herself through the narration of her own life-story: "And so it was for me, acs 1E]ql 1-0(:S t3LDS SIN(iti is Caroline Newby, raised by a lonely, heartbroken mother, taught to play the the ii List ' lL vhq hock I I1c]\'e revel...
...But his own argu- persons-particularly women-who otherwise the negation of all our mean- ment tends to confirm rather than to chal- never have experienced the birth of their ings...
...19th-century liberal theological ble to attribute a traditional title of divin- engagement with the modern world...
...But Hick ends up re-framing history...
...Such debate, without acrimony ing case for affirming the reality of God...
...THE REV FREDERICK SHRIVER is professor of church history at the General Theological Seminary, New York...
...Logic, because on his own ac- tality as something God has ordained-in the choices along infinitely less interest- count of the dismal state of the church his wise love and so live that like the best ing lines...
...Yet...
...Meet thevorld's Still, as a realist, Gans doesn't want the journalist's non-integrated to est politicians paraideology to become a consistent ideology, even a left ideology...
...finitive because God has become history creed of the early Christians, "Jesus is Readers who know Silences will ineviin Jesus...
...Now thanks to Andrew Making of the Popes 1978...
...He also wants stories about Richard John Neuhaus now mostly only of historical interest...
...Understandably so, since can adopt the Stoic posture of building Christian allegiance, and then, if one is worship presupposes that Jesus is who meaning upon the foundation of unyieldof a religious bent, there are, he insists, Hick says he is not...
...More successfully than many reli- obviously neither desired nor warrants it...
...of American society, of the Unknowns and the ignored...
...Olsen laments the lost art heart of its pathos is the Risen Lord who not the doctrine of the incarnation, is the of our "silenced people," those has triumphed over death, which is center of Christianity...
...Apart from and is tempted toward the second, but curately, I believe, that talk about "im- and against that fact it is quite possible to then, inexplicably falls back upon the plicit faith" and "anonymous Chris- affirm some "true message of Jesus" but nostrum that things aren't so bad after all...
...and Woodward-Bemstein's dent, U niversity of Notre Dame His latest book, Good News, Bad News, was aggressive, solidly-documented recently published by the M.I.T...
...He would like to see Denying both logic and history stories told from the point of the bottom up, rather than from official sources and established authority...
...less, dutiful marriage, and freed from it I helie\'e it will strike ei respow~ivc chord at last by the deadly journey of infection in the Ic...
...Given that realization, one world, certainly without any specifically tioned by Hick...
...He was renowned, a talented writing fiction, his words as re- for his talent, Robert wants, eventually, musician, a `composer of genius,' many viewer should never serve to haunt...
...It finally is lionized for his triumphs well beyond religious seriousness and this life as de- does come down to that most elementary the end of his days...
...that way, the debate hardly seems worth least likely places to exercise the self- I do not need one to make this life acceptall the bother...
Vol. 106 • June 1979 • No. 12
