Secularization Theology by Robert L. Richard, S. J. (review)

REVIEW ARTICLE Secularization Theology. By RoBERT L. RicHARD, S. J. Foreword by Martin E. Marty. Pp. 200. New York: Herder and Herder, 1967. $4.95. To review this book adequately is a difficult, if not indeed an impossible task. Dr. Martin E. Marty, who contributes the foreword , describes it as a " protestant " book which demands from its author a " catholic" sequel. That sequel however will, alas, never be written, for Fr. Richard, who was clearly a young theologian of great promise, died suddenly almost immediately after his book was published. Dr. Marty asserts that "Father Richard makes clear that he agrees in the main with the secularizing theologians," but this judgment seems to me to be doubtful. What is evident is that he had considerable sympathy for their angle of approach, which he took to be more relevant to the twentieth-century situation than that of traditional Roman Catholic apologetics. Nevertheless , the defects which he discerned in them are glaring and lethal, and this leads us to regret all the more that this ultimately destructive work must lack the " catholic " and constructive sequel for which it so obviously calls. In the first part, "The Genealogy and the Message," he is primarily concerned with Dr. John A. T. Robinson and Dr. Harvey Cox; in the second, "The Break from Tradition," with Dr. Paul van Buren; and in the third, "The Creative Insights," with Cox and Robinson again, concluding with a short section, " The Future of Secularization," which is largely devoted to Cardinal Cushing's pastoral letter "The Servant Church." Other writers, such as Schubert Ogden, Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton and Leslie Dewart (and even Teilhard de Chardin and Lonergan) receive incidental and briefer mention, and, of course, the shade of Bonhoeffer hovers over all. Perhaps the most useful thing I can do in the present review will be to list some of the reflections which I find in my mind after reading Richard's book. First, then, although the " radical " or " secularizing " theologians have a common dissatisfaction with practically everything that 106 SECULARIZATION THEOLOGY 107 Christian theologians earlier than Bonhoeffer have ever written, and a common conviction that they themselves have found the way to make Christianity both intelligible and attractive to people of the twentieth century, it is extremely difficult to find any positive and constructive feature that unites them. For some of them, God does not exist and never has existed; this is certainly van Buren's position. For some of them, God, they assure us, is dead, though Robinson would not say so. For Vahanian, Altizer and Hamilton, the death of God is the very heart of the Gospel. However, even those who preach the death of God understand it in such a variety of ways that it is astonishing to find them apparently under the impression that they are in substantial agreement and differ only on minor and unimportant details. For some of them (as for Vahanian), God does exist but has withdrawn himself from the vision of modern man. For some (as apparently for Cox), God does exist, but it is hopeless to attempt to get modern man to see this, though perhaps it may again become possible in the future. But, in that ultima Thule of secularized Christianity, Thomas Altizer's Gospel of Christian Atheism, with which Hamilton in his latest phase seems to agree, God (who is identical with Satan) used once to exist but destroyed himself on Calvary, in order than man might be free from the obligation of serving him, although the Christian Church throughout the ages mistakenly supposed that he still existed. There is, of course, a common concern with Jesus; the label " Christian " could hardly be claimed without this, but there is little agreement as to who and what Jesus is. For Altizer he certainly was God, though he presumably ceased to exist when God did. For van Buren he certainly was not God, though, like everyone else, he ceased to exist when he died. A certain ambiguity arises through a tendency to re-define God in terms of perfect humanity. When this is done (as it is by Dr. John Knox, though he would not, I think, associate himself...