Radicalizing the Radicalizers

As i write this I have just put down the morning paper, which is full of the news of the first night of the Democratic Convention. I have read nine—count ’em, nine—editorialists’ comments on the political scene. My confusion of mind is utter, but then one has to “keep up,” doesn’t one?

But one can’t keep up, can one? As long ago as 1960 I jotted down some figures from a report of the Western Reserve University Center of Documentation and Communication: any normal reader will fall behind to the extent of 1,051,200,000 pages every year; chemists in particular must read 850,000 pages every year just to keep up; and every sixty seconds 2,000 pages are published. I don’t know what the latest figures on this problem are, but without doubt they’re even more staggering.

What is true in general is also true in any one field, such as theology. On almost any contemporary theologian one could build up a five-foot shelf of books. Since in the last fifty years we have had a great outpouring of theological writing, one gets a little leery about facts and opinions on all these matters delivered by the so-called experts. We are crying out for some new systematizer to put it all together. Meanwhile, one has to do what he can himself to see what has happened and what is still happening.

Professors differ from other people in their tendency to be what is called “professorial,” with attendant characteristics like thick glasses, stooped shoulders, pedantries, and absent-mindedness. But they are like their fellow men in being afflicted with things like total depravity and original sin. Toilers in the groves of academe are sometimes anxious about many things and especially about academic preferment. They are given at times to jealousy, political maneuver, non-intellectual stubbornness, selfishness, resentment, small-mindedness, and super-sensitivity in the fields of their own expertise. In and around it all there is the endless fear that they won’t be able to “keep up.” There are many strange fears behind the quiet ivy-covered walls, and not a little infighting when the situation gets really fearful.

Two very evident academic afflictions can be called “me first” and “me too.” There is great nervousness about this sort of thing in all academic circles. Be the first boy on your street to recognize that a “whole new direction” has been hinted at by an obscure Swedish authority on Luther who has appeared in some German footnotes, was explained by the British, and is now ready for the Americans. If you can make some modest reference to such a one in a paper before the local ministerium, it may be that this man will become the next Karl Barth. You were there first. But how can you be sure? Maybe the next big name will come out of Russia or Bulgaria. The reams of reviews, abstracts, criticisms, and other learned papers that keep appearing day after day make for amused or bemused reading. Who will the next man be and who will be the first to know?

If one can’t make it in the “me first” department, he might try the “me too” approach. Now you can get off some word about having been watching this movement all along: “everybody knows” if he has kept up on his reading that this is where it’s at these days. And once the new man and new movement have established themselves, then everyone must offer electives, and seminars and colloquia on them. Whether all this helps to bring in the kingdom is beside the point; the time has come for everyone to be “with it.”

Apart from basic scholarship in such matters, have you noticed the cutbacks in all institutions as they attempt to clear up their deficits? They are cutting off the “fat,” the luxury courses, the proliferation of courses built around the “me too” syndrome. (And just everybody has to use the word “syndrome” these days!)

My very own “me first” and “me too” of recent vintage has been Jacques Ellul, a French Protestant, a professor of political science in the University of Bordeaux. Tell your friends that you read it here first. But how could you? He has been around a long time, and I might have missed him early on if a student hadn’t come to ask to write a term paper on him. Where Ellul stands in the present theological pecking order I would hesitate to say, but I think you should read him just because he refuses to get caught in the “me too” business and may have something really worthwhile in the “me first” business.

With regard to “me too,” think about this:

The World Council precipitately adopted positions that seemed to me scarcely worth taking seriously: problems poorly analyzed, inadequate solutions, superficiality, lack of sound theological thinking, etc. I have a horror of the reign of false experts! [Theological Crossing, p. 45].

Or again.

In my opinion the radical fault of these theologies is their conformity to the world.… But [theirs] is a radicalism that characterizes the whole society, and what is so wonderful about falling in with it? [p. 50].

And as to “me first” Ellul writes,

It is beyond the crisis that we must find the true expression of the Revelation … an expression that is true because, on the one hand, it comes to grips with the problems of our society and its people, and on the other, firmly upholds the reality of the Revelation in its fullness. Today my thinking centers on the search for a Credo for the church of tomorrow [p. 50].

Years ago in Egypt I was impressed by all that missions have done—hospitals, leper clinics, baby clinics, college and prep schools, and so on. All these now have been matched by the state. Shall the mission remain competitive with the state, or try to imitate the state (a common failing in church colleges, for example), or are the credo of the future and the social action of the future to grow out of the obedience to the Spirit, who continues to lead, not to copy? The best is yet to be, but we shall never find it by forcing what is to be next, nor by imitating what we now see about us. The Spirit of God works when and where and how he pleases; we are called upon to listen and to obey, and that will mean his expertise, not ours.

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