Man: Believer and Unbeliever by Francis M. Tyrrell (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Man: Believer and Unbeliever. By FRANCIS M. TYRRELL. New York: Alba House, 1974. Pp. 4~6. $5.95 (paperback). Francis Tyrrell, formerly professor of philosophy and now professor of fundamental theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York, has given us in this book reflections that are obviously the fruit of many years of study and teaching. The spirit that breathes through this work is one of sympathetic understanding for the multiple faiths of our modern world and a sustained effort at dialogue with them. The author seeks to help men of our time appropriate themselves as orientated toward God and as finding themselves in Christ, and to do this in a period of conflicting humanisms. The book then is dedicated to help us to believe, and so is in the field of foundational theology. There are three main parts to Tyrrell's work. In the first of these he analyzes the problem of belief in our time. Here, in chapter 1, he presents the central positions of the formers of modern consciousness (particularly Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Comte, Dilthey, and Freud), who have in common an interpretation of man through his desires and values. For them, the Christian God is an alienating factor for man, and they want to help man grow from the state of childhood characterized by religious consciousness to an adult state, though they do this, of course, in differing ways. Largely because of their cumulative influence , believers are now a cognitive minority, and we have witnessed the demise of cultural Christianity. These men generally interpret the Christian belief in God as man's projection. In the process of man's transcendence, he forms projects; the projection of God occurs because of the difficulties man meets in life; modern man is called to go beyond this stage so that he may fully possess his humanity. As Tyrrell points out later in his book, this theme of man's self-transcendence is common to Christian humanism and atheistic humanisms: at the core of every one of these diverse understandings of man is man's selftranscendence as the radical dynamic o' which all (their) themes are so many formulations and by virtue of which the human dimension of being is set off from every other existent form. (810) It is then the signs of transcendence that we should study in a reflection on belief today. Tyrrell goes on, in chapter ~. to analyze the main humanisms current today: an existentialist humanism, a Marxist humanism, and a secular humanism. In the first, he dwells particularly on Heidegger 60~ BOOK REVIEWS 6()8 and Merleau-Ponty. Here we have a vision of man as an intentional being, with his intentionality particularly apparent in his insertion in the practical world. Man is a finite transcendence characterized by time, a subject in history. He is creative of himself, but not totally so; he acts within a framework of goal or value that is partially given, but not within the context of an absolute value. In his study of Marxist humanism, Tyrrell summarizes for us not only Soviet orthodoxy with its view that society creates man but also the positions of some revisionists. He presents the central position of certain Eastern European revisionists who insist that society cannot give the individual his freedom and who complain about the alienating factors in socialism, of Mao Tse-Tung who "sinocizes" Marxism, and of Bloch and Garaudy who have a rather positive evaluation of religion in their Marxist interpretation of man. Finally Tyrrell studies the secular humanism of men like Dewey, Julian Huxley, and Szczesny. These three hold that none of man's goals or values: IS 1mmune from his critical review, all are provisional, subject to the constant test of experience and liable to even the most radical revision. Absolute only is man's right to subject all systems and viewpoints to the norm of serving his individual and collective well-being, and of enhancing his capacity to achieve a better life in the future. (IOfl) It is, of course, this latter position that is particularly prevalent in the United States. In the second part Tyrrell dedicates himself: to construct a Christian anthropology or...