Faith Under Scrutiny by Tibor Horvath (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 311 subjects or persons: as " l's." God is only related to a person as the past constitutive of the person's present. Man is related to God as the past constitutive of his present. However, they are never personally present to one another in the present. Hence one must conclude that God and man do not know each other as contemporary subjects but only as past objects. Man worships and adores only the past idea of God, not God himself. Thus it is difficult to see how such a relation could in any real sense be called "intimate,"" personal,"" loving," or" dynamic." What Hartshorne means then by man enhancing God's glory is clear. He does this not in any personal way, but solely in the sense that God prehends man's past into his present. It is a completely self-constituting affair on the part of God which bears no personal relation to man at all. (The only other subject that Hartshorne deals with at any length in his lecture is the process concept of God as dipolar. Space limitations do not permit a treatment of that.) Hartshorne's thought has in many ways dominated the philosophy of religion over the past several years. This is precisely because, as his Marquette lecture shows, he treats questions which are of the utmost importance . Even if one does not accept his answers, he forces one to recast one's own, and this is no small merit. Georgetown University Washington, D. O. THOMAS WEINANDY, 0. F. M. Cap. Faith Under Scrutiny. By TmoR HORVATH. Fides Publishers, Inc., Notre Dame, 1975). 343 pages. $5.95. This book represents an attempt to establish and explain a method for Christian apologetics, which the author understands to be the self-reflective dialogue of faith carried out in response to challenges to the Church and its faith. A cursory history of apologetics is intended to illustrate the variety of forms which the Church's apology has taken, from early New Testament times through Vatican II, including a suggestion of what the next great challenge to apologists will be. The major concerns of recent times began with the nineteenth century inquiry into the origins of Christianity, an enterprise which inspired the tremendous growth of biblical scholarship. In the second half of the twentieth century the concern shifted from the origins to the meaning of Christianity, with the Church asking itself what it can offer to the needs of the human community which this community cannot find elsewhere. This is the age of BOOK REVIEWS "religionless Christianity," the death of God, the theologies of hope, liberation , and politics, in which the Church is urged to acquaint itself more directly with the values and needs of contemporary society. Now we are on the threshold of a new "man-computer symbiosis," which for the apologist means a " believer-computer symbiosis." As a highly developed tool of communication the computer will transform man's habitual way of talking, writing, and believing. Religious man, Horvath says, will have to translate into " machine language " the dynamics which he perceives in his behavior as a believer, and the subsequent description of the elements of an " authentic faith experience " is intended to serve as a first step toward that end. At the center of the difficulties of recent apologetical efforts is the role of the divinity of Jesus: is it a legitimate concern of apologetics? If so, how should it be approached? If not, how does one avoid presenting Jesus as merely a religious teacher or prophet? Horvath's work attempts to rescue apologetics from its confusion by redefining its object in terms of the role of apologetics in relation to the general task of fundamental theology . Whereas fundamental theology proper studies the ways and forms in which God reveals himself to man, apologetics concerns itself with the historical traces of revelation, asking whether it did happen in the manner in which the Church believes it did. His proposed schema for fundamental theology would include, first, ·a consideration of revelation from its theological (as given) and anthropological (as received) sides in confrontation with fundamental human needs; second, an apologetics of the revelation of...