The Diseases of Man and the Death of God

Extract

Fr Fergus Kerr (Slant g, June-July, 1966) presents as self-evident the proposition that ‘theology is primarily a way of talking about man', and supports this with the historicist description that ‘every major breakthrough in our understanding of God issues from an equivalent breakthrough in our understanding of man’. Our anthropology has undergone a revolution, so it is plain that our theology must, if it is to survive, undergo an equivalent revolution. It might at first appear that Professor William Hamilton of Colgate Rochester Divinity School is the man to work the revolution. After the New Reformation and the New Morality, the New Essence of Christianity? He is certainly aware that ‘all our theology, even our essences of Christianity, must be done afresh in every generation’, and makes a brave attempt at this doing afresh. I want to say something here of how brave the attempt is and why I think that it ultimately fails to engineer the revolution. The kind of thing that Fr Kerr and Professor Hamilton presume about revelation and theology is perhaps easiest conveyed by suggesting that the case of the prophet Hosea has become our paradigm. Hosea’s understanding of his own condition, of his continuing love for the unfaithful Gomer, led him to understand the continuing love of Yahweh for the unfaithful Israel. Hosea’s longing for the return of his wife was not a longing for this or that aspect of her character but a longing for the woman herself, for Gomer. So Hosea thinks of Yahweh’s redemptive hope for Israel as a promise for the whole people. In this his theology differs radically from that of Amos and Isaiah whose experience led them to speak in terms of a remnant of the people having a share in the kingdom. Hosea has first of all made an effort to understand his own situation and has then been able to understand something of God. He has made his experience into a sign for the whole society of Israel. As Kerr says: ‘God reveals himself in a new light to people who have gained some new insight into what they are’.