Toward An American Theology by Herbert W. Richardson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Toward An American Theology. By HERBERT W. RrcHARDSON. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Pp. 18~. $3.95. It is rather refreshing these days to be told by a theologian that the notion of a personal God is not necessarily opposed to a concern for science, to the individual and his freedom or to a new metaphysics. In his first essay on the sociotechnic age Dr. Richardson rejects most of the assumptions of the theologians of the secular age or of the death of God. In his opinion they are asking antiquated or false questions. They are criticizing a notion of God which is itself a modern invention or they are confusing problems of principle with problems of practice. Atheism is the sign of a period of transition and crisis not only in religion but in the whole culture. If we have already entered a sociotechnic age in which the methodology of science is fully accepted and the organization of society is governed by technology, the positive task is not to criticize the past but to discover God as the unity of that particular, highly differentiated type of social structure. It seems, therefore, that Dr. Richardson is not accepting secularization as the inevitable outcome of modern history but, on the contrary, is advocating the integration and the sanctification of sociotechnics in and by Christian tradition. This vocation is particularly given to American theology because it understands the sociotechnic culture and has in its tradition the right answers to the new needs (Chapter 5). One of the answers is the emphasis on faith as the power of reconciliation going beyond the relativism of fragmented perspectives and striving toward unity. To discover this, it is necessary to distinguish five forms of secularism: gnosticism, rationalism, naturalism, skepticism, relativism, correlated to five kinds of faith: crucificiens, quaerens, perficiens, formans, reconcilians? This categorizing seems a little artificial in view of the complexity of history and the unity of biblical faith. What is more interesting is the effort to go beyond relativism. The scientific culture is highly differentiated and specialized and is in danger of advocating a variety of disciplines and points of view unrelated and purely relativistic. The gain of modern culture is the differentiation of many approaches to reality, but it may become a sheer multiplicity without unity. The author's intent is to keep the differentiation but to find a principle of unity. He is therefore using as instruments of the faith reconcilians what he calls a metacritical knowledge and a philosophy of unity. The metacritical point of view is a philosophy which does not deny the critical approach of science but uses it without by-passing or absolutizing it. In Dr. Richardson 's view this metacriticism requires a metaphysic of unity. Relativism 127 us BOOK REVIEWS cannot be overcome by a universal sociology of knowledge but by an implicit or explicit ontology. Plotinus and Thomas Aquinas (ens et unum convertuntur) appear on the horizon. But Dr. Richardson begs to differ with them. His unity is not formal and is somehow above being. (The difference with Thomas Aquinas is not clear.) There are three hypostases of unity: wholeness, individuality and relationality allowing a plurality of category-systems but leading or implying, finally, a unity of unities. The actual argument for the existence of God is henological. Dr. Richardson's argument is less developed than Henry Dumery's phenomenological approach to the same problem. He does not seem aware of the difficulty that henology presents for the doctrine of creation. The last part of the book is devoted to the outline of an American theology . Three questions are raised concerning the reasons of creation, incarnation and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The author stresses the meaning of the puritan and theocratic Sabbath as the sanctification of the world, the glory of God in the Incarnation instead of the need for redemption in man and the real indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The main points are not sin and redemption but the glorification of God and the sanctification of man. One wonders if it is with tongue in cheek that Dr. Richardson is finding a Christological, trinitarian, Mariological and spiritual theology typically American? But...