T h e o t h e r e v e n in g a fight was being waged outside my office window. Two men were arguing and each was trying to outdo the other in abusive language. Reduced to printable epithets, the struggle went some thing like this: “You’re a bum!” “Oh yeah? Well, you’re a dirty bum!” “ Is that so? You’re a dirty rotten bum!” “ Huh! If you looked in the mirror, you’d see that you’re a filthy, dirty, rotten bum!” And so it went on. Like two little children utilizing superlatives in derogatory remarks, these grown men were trying to get the better of each other. This is commonplace among infantile, uneducated persons. It becomes ludicrous and shocking among intellectuals. Yet, this is essentially what has been happening on the theological scene of late. Each theologian or group of theologians seems to be trying to be a bit more brash than his predecessors. The liberal tries to outdo the
fundamentalist. The neo-orthodox theologian looks ask ance at the liberal. The neo-liberal berates the neo orthodox. Then Bishop Robinson says “A plague on all your houses” and comes up with Honest to God. This set off a chain reaction which has even out-Bult- manned Bultmann. As a result, therefore, we have the current fad — a “ Christian Atheism” in which God is dead, embalmed and buried. It will take a little while for the idea of God’s fu neral to get down to the grass roots of the Christian populace. But, though it may come as a surprise to the average church-goer, professors in our theological seminaries and universities are not just living in a post-Christian age; they’ve arrived at a post-God age. Dr. Thomas J. J. Altizer, associate professor of re ligion at Emory (Methodist) University feels that “ the death of God is a historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.” And, lest we think this simply means that today’s secularized world is reluctant to accept the Christian concept of God, the
16
THE KING'S BUSINESS
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs