In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of an impenetrable mystery that lies behind all creation, both human and divine. He emphasizes the inexhaustible energy that exists in even the smallest particles of matter, demonstrating that matter is merely a representation of a powerful and luminous reality beyond our senses. The preacher also mentions the idea that man's destruction is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, as the spirit that first breathed upon the waters will create a new man. He concludes by urging the audience to focus less on the achievements of individuals and more on the imperishable energy that they were a part of. The sermon references passages from the book of John to support these ideas.

I call this the line of despair. The line of despair. And this is a timeline, registering that as we come down the steps, the time gets constantly later. We put here philosophy, this is in philosophy, and we put as a doorway, Kant and Hegel and Kierkegaard, and said this is the doorway from the classical philosophy into the new attitude of despair in philosophy. Running down here finally to the three branches of existentialism, to logical positivism, and the defining philosophy. And I won't repeat what I said then, but simply say the word that these are philosophies of despair if you compare them with the classical philosophy, which purported to set forth a circle in which all knowledge and then life could be placed. Second was art, this was philosophy, art as an expression of this, and we put the impressionist as the doorway, and we ran down here, not that he's the most important by any means, but nevertheless, for reasons we'll point out in a few minutes, we mentioned Salvador Dali with his surrealism, which is a combination of Dada and Freud's subconscious. In music, we came down finally ending with Music Concre, Paul Schaeffer's work in Music Concre. In general culture, we came down into finally ended with Henry Miller, and not again anywhere near the most important man, in a way, and yet for reasons that I'll show tonight, I think I'll leave it there. And we ended there. We put this line as 1930, and this line as 1965. Now tonight in dealing with theology, and this is theology, and I pointed out last time that we could divide this into a hundred divisions as easily as into the five steps. I've included a basket of general culture, just simply because this can't break down everything in anywhere near careful form. Theology is last, but theology also, if we do this, we come to Kierkegaard again, and we come down then to Karl Barth. And the reason I would put 1930 is just a rough day for Barth, simply a rough day. Now, the new theology is not something isolated from the general cultural consensus. It seems to me often both those who are not Christians and those who are Christians make a mistake in comprehending the new theology and are taken by surprise by developments in the new theology because they don't realize that it is not something that is isolated, that it really is a part of the general cultural consensus as a whole, of which we spoke for an hour or more last time. In this I would say that it seems to me that any real distinction in a historical sense between theology and philosophy has totally evaporated. And so in reality, the theology is a part of the philosophy, and yet, under a separate heading, I've kept it over here just simply for clarity. Now then, if we put Karl Barth here, I would suggest if we come down to 1965, we could think of two men, we could think of Tillich, and we could think of Robeson with Honest to God. Again, one might say that he's the most important, that isn't my point, that's simply to fit into the texture of the lecture as we will develop it. And we must understand that this stream of modern theology, the new theology, comes from Kierkegaard just as much as secular existentialism comes from Kierkegaard. They both come equally from him. He is the father of both. There are great differences among the new theologians, tremendous differences, and equally among those who sometime are called, spoken of as the new liberalism, which has, in a way, come after the new, the neo-orthodoxy. And tremendous differences among those who constitute this general school. Yet nevertheless, yet nevertheless, there's a definite unity too. And I would suggest that this loss of unity has been the loss of the concept of this unity of something called the neo-orthodox theology, the new theology, or, using the continental word, the mentality of neo-orthodoxy, the loss of the concept of the unity of this in studying the diversity between Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, and so on, has been a real loss in understanding it. Real differences, and it's worthwhile to spend time as to the differences, but if one only sees the differences, it seems to me, one misses the point of a mentality, a unified personality, a unified system that reaches throughout the neo-orthodox flow. Now we must see that in theology, you have the same basic situation prior to the rise of Karl Barth in here that you had back here in the philosophic circle. And the breakdown of the optimistic humanism, thinking that a universal philosophy could be built upon a purely humanistic basis, the breakdown that came before Kant repeated itself also here in theology. In theology, the old liberalism had come to a full stop, a dead stop. And the reason it had come to a dead stop was simple in its basis, and that is that liberalism had a naturalistic presupposition or a humanist presupposition, remembering my term of humanism I have defined as not the narrow sense of humanism such as technically the Huxleys or the humanist frame, but rather humanism, man at the center and working out only from himself. And the old liberalism had this naturalistic presupposition or humanist presupposition, and having it, it set out a task for itself, and that is, on the basis of objective scholarship, that it would separate that which it considered unacceptable, the supernatural, from the life of Jesus, while finding the historical Jesus as someone one could build something upon. Prior to the time of Karl Barth, this had come completely to an end, practically so. It had come to real bankruptcy. It had come to the place where no longer were they thinking that they could produce such an objective scholarship that would give a base to really build on. That's back here. That's back here. Now we have pointed out that the line of despair does not mean people sit around and cry all the time, but it does mean that when we reach the line of despair, whether we have seen it at the time in philosophy or in the artists we have studied, in the musicians, the general culture, it means that men have come to the place that on a humanist, rational, logical answer, on the basis of this, they no longer expect to be able to draw a circle which will encompass all of knowledge and life. And it's despair in this sense, despair in a negation of all the previous concepts of philosophy. Whether you start back at the time of the Hindus or, as I said, or the Greeks or the Renaissance, it doesn't matter. Coming up through the German thinking prior to Kant, some would include Kant, this is the technical question which has no real interest here, I think. But nevertheless, before that, philosophy had an ideal, the statement that on a humanist basis a proposition could be put forward which would encompass universally knowledge and life, these two aspects, knowledge and life. We have said that this line is the line of despair in the sense that here in philosophy, here in art, here in music, here in the general culture, and now here in the, here in the, yes, still working, it's fine. I didn't fasten this patch, so it's not my fault. And here in theology, also, that men gave up the concept of a, of a rational solution, a totally rational solution. This in theology showed itself starting with Barth, I would say, and running through, say, Tewick and Robeson, this breakdown of the hope of the rational showed itself in the separation of, quotation marks, religious truth from contact with the cosmos and with history, with the cosmos meaning those things touched upon by science. So here you have a, you have a new situation, a situation that the old liberals really scorn and still do where they exist, and that is that you have set aside a basic rationality. You have set aside a proposition that you're going to find a solution on the basis of objective scholarship and there it will stand in the full circle of men's thinking. Instead of that, you find a situation wherein there is a separation made between that which covers religious truth, quotes, and the things that would touch the cosmos and the things that would touch science. In short, anything that is verifiable is removed from the consideration. This being so, it really is the same thing as we considered in the philosophic position of Sartre, let us say, and Karl Jaspers. This is the reason Kierkegaard may honestly be said to be the father of both. The method is the same. The method is the same. The irrationality rests at the point of this separation. The separation of that which is verifiable where science would touch the cosmos and where history would touch history. This division, therefore, would be a parallel to that wherein in secular existentialism purpose is divided from that which is rational and logical. Now I assume you heard the first lecture. I'm not trying to fill in all the details. Now we have two steps, I would say, in the despair. I wasn't sure of the order I should give this lecture, but what I've done is to speak a little bit of a new theology, then show that it relates to a second step of despair in the secular world, intellectual world, then come back to the new theology. So that's the order of the lecture from this point on. There are two levels of the despair. They're both despair, but they stand two aspects, two levels, as we shall see. I would say that this aspect, the second aspect of despair, is exhibited in the new theology by the fact that religious terms are used to give an illusion of communication without definition. They're used to give an illusion of communication without definition, and therefore, they seem to be optimistic at first blush. That, I would say, would be the hallmark of the second aspect of the despair. And that is a seeming optimistic statement with no reason to make it. And in the new theology, it seems to me, this rests at the point of using religious terminology to give an illusion of communication without definition. For example, the cross. As soon as the word cross is used in our culture, the cross, whether it's painted or used in words, immediately a certain connotation arises. It's not just an emotional connotation, but a total connotation. Carl Gustav Jung, of course, has said there's a collective unconscious. I do not think he's right, as he defines it. And yet it must be said that in each culture, one can find a collective mentality, in a sense. A collective consensus, or memory would be better. That's better, not consensus, if you'd remove that. A collective memory in each culture, reaching back far into the memory of the people. Now when we use the word cross in our culture, it reaches back almost to that place where in our culture can be said to begin. It reaches back all the way to the time in the Christian era. Consequently, the word cross carries a connotation. It carries a connotation which is loaded with emotionalism, which is loaded with motivating powers, just because the word cross is used. If, for example, on the other hand, one used the word cross in the world of Islam, it would be quite a different reaction. If you used the word crescent here, it would be quite a different reaction. There are loaded words rooted down into centuries of thinking, and centuries of structuring in a whole culture. So when the word cross is used, something is brought forward in this connotation. Notice in this sense that these religious words are only symbols. They are used as symbols, but that they have exactly the opposite purpose than religious symbols, I mean than scientific symbols, exactly the opposite than the usage of scientific symbols. But by using the word symbol, the new theologian comes in on the prestige of the scientific use of the word symbol. Because it's a great symbol, it's a tremendous, tremendous matter of prestige in this day in our age of science. We're in the right building to say this. Now when you are here, when we think about this, therefore, we find that in a scientific symbol, the thing that makes the symbol increasingly valuable is an increasingly fine definition. So eventually, if a man puts forth a brand new theory that is far out in the world of the new physics, maybe only two or three men understand his symbols at first. And they're the only ones that can understand the new proposition. But the use of the symbol is an exact speech, which rests upon a very careful exact definition, at least between two men. Otherwise, the scientific symbol is not used. Now on the other hand, in the religious symbols, as is used in the new theology, it is exactly opposite. In the new symbols, instead of the, in the new theology, instead of that, the value is upon no definition. So they're exactly opposite. For example, when Tillich says the God behind God, this is an undefined word. This is a symbol. But it's a symbol that's never defined. But it isn't only the word God that's never defined, but intrinsically in the system, none of the symbols are defined. Not really. The words are used in an undefined form in order to bring forth an illusion of communication and to tie down into the memory of the race. So then when these words are used, you think you know what it means, and then you find that you haven't been told after all. This therefore, I would say, is in clear exhibition that indeed we are dealing with despair in this theology if we think of despair in the sense of a denial of the old classical philosophic concept or the concept of all educated men, and that is dealing with things wherein there was a unity of truth, wherein things could be discussed rationally and logically even if one finally came to a negative conclusion. So it is rational despair. Tying it into the very last thing of our lecture last time, where we listened to the disc on Musique Concrète, I would say it's as though I had played the disc of Musique Concrète and then said please as an act of faith hear this as the unity and diversity of Bach. Now those of you who heard the disc, I am not exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. I think it is exactly that and exactly that and exactly that. Note that in this use of the new theology there is no bass presented to us. The bass is already made impossible because of the intrinsic separation of religious truth from that which is verifiable. But on the other hand, man cannot live in the despair of no meaning. This is a strange thing for modern man. Modern man can put forth man as a machine but he finds he cannot live as a machine. This is first of all individually but also in the social structure. Man finds that he is not able to live on the basis of the fact that rationally he is only mathematics and the machine. This is not so. And so therefore, men ask us in the new theology to accept a jump without a bass in order to give us an optimistic answer when the rationality would lead to a pessimistic answer. It is therefore to be called a faith in faith. A faith in faith. Rationality would lead to pessimism. Merely rationality, logic, mathematics, machines. No meanings to the particular and peculiarly no meaning to man. But the other is presented to us as a faith in faith that we give an optimistic statement rather than a pessimistic. And I would relate it again to the music on Cray and asking you to listen to it as though it were the unity in the midst of the diversity that Bach gives us. But now I would point out that this is not shut up into the new theology. This faith in faith is in order to get an optimistic answer when the rationality would give us a pessimistic one is not only in the theological statement of the new position, it is also about as on many sides in the secular world. This is the second aspect I'm speaking of now or the level of despair. And to exhibit this, here you Leonardo da Vinci can be said to be the first modern man. Leonardo da Vinci of course followed Pacino. He was a Neoplatonist and this was the dominant thinking of Ferencia at the Renaissance. Now Leonardo da Vinci had a line and in the line being the first mathematician in a sense of modern sense, one can say he's the first mathematician in the modern sense. In that sense you have mathematics and this he saw would lead only to the particular. And he saw this just as much as any man has ever seen it since. No modern man has gone beyond Leonardo da Vinci at this point. But Leonardo da Vinci put his hope in painting and he hoped to paint what the Neoplatonists called the soul. The soul. Now the soul is not to be confused with the soul as used in Christian thinking. The soul is the universal. So you would have a soul of the universe just as much as the individual man having a soul. I want to read a little bit from a work of Giovanni Gentili who before his death was probably the greatest philosopher in contemporary Italy. Gentili is not a Christian but he understands and sets forth Leonardo da Vinci's position most clearly. And this is shown through innumerable multiplicity susceptible of mathematical treatment which Leonardo was the first to proclaim anticipating the canons of Galilean science which is modern science. It is a multiplicity that can be ordered in a closed and fixed system necessary and mechanically invariable according to causal relationship which is nothing but the factual connection between the condition and the conditioned capable of endowing the totality with a mechanistic character proper to the single element. This is a very hard and clear statement by Gentili. But Gentili continues and says this. The unity of the inward illuminates the fantasy and the intellect comes to break up this unity into the endless multiplicity of sensible appearances. Hence the anguish and the innermost tragedy of this universal man that is Leonardo divided between two irreconcilable worlds leaves in the mind an infinite longing made up, as it were, of regret and sadness. It is the longing for a Leonardo different from the Leonardo that he was. One who could have gathered himself up at each phrase and remain closed himself off either altogether in his fantasy or altogether in his intelligence. It's a little bit rough because of the translation from the Italian. But the thrust of this is certainly obvious. What is fine we said, Gentili said, he wasn't able to paint the soul. He was not able to prove that the painter could bring forth the universal. And consequently he was forever torn. He was torn between seeing that mathematics leads only to the particulars and machinery. But on the other hand he could not give up the hope of some sort of a universal. Gentili said if he could have chosen either one or the other and just sort of shut himself away he could have come to peace. But he couldn't do this. Why couldn't he do it? He couldn't do it for the reason I indicated last time. And that is prior to the time of Hegel and that which followed no educated man could do it. It was considered the absolute antithesis of an educated man and of rationality. He could not do it. It was against thousands of years of rationality of thinking. Hundreds of years and up to the day of Hegel. No educated man could accept. I would remind you again of the circles I drew that made up the study of the history of philosophy prior to Hegel. Now the first step of the despair of modern man is that modern man has accepted the dichotomy which Leonardo could not accept and nobody accepted. Modern man with all his knowledge of the particulars has become on the background of human thought of thousands of years as we trace it the uneducated man regardless of the particulars. If they're right modern man is in the wilderness no matter how much technology he knows. Now then here in this section of blackboard I would point out I would make this line again this is this line no modern man modern man therefore sees rationality on his humanistic base and logical base leads to mathematics leads to the machine. Now he has a possibility his possibility is to accept the dilemma and just say I'm a machine and some men have and tried to live with this but let me point out that these men are few. These men are few. The second act of the tragedy of the modern man in despair is the man has found he cannot live actually accepting with rational rational fullness. That this is all there is. I'm not saying no one has but in general it has not been so and these men I have set forward in the first lecture I have largely chosen because they're fine brilliant examples of men who haven't been able to stand merely having this under the line. Now I would put it into three categories. First the philosophy and you remember that I mentioned Karl Jaspers of Switzerland though he's not known as much in this country as either Heidegger and Sartre, Camus yet I think really in some ways he is the most brilliant of the existential thinkers. Karl Jaspers as I pointed out last time said this is true that if you deal in rationality that's all you get but there is a possibility to sit in non-rationality to sit in the non-logic and when you do this you can wait for the final experience and in the final experience one has if one has the final experience one has some certainty of being and one has some hope of meaning. These are the two areas. One has some hope or some certainty of being and some hope of meaning. But notice in order to achieve this after you say that the logical and rational always leads to this you must as I said last time be honest here and say this is non-rational non-logical and a man like Jaspers would acknowledge this very very simply that this is so. Consequently he says well you can have a final experience but as I pointed out last time it brings the whiplash of no communication. No communication either with others as to what the final experience is and no communication to yourself two weeks later what the final experience was. At least you can't talk about it in any terms that would be in words. At least this. You can talk about it in other ways but that's a different problem. But communication is lost. Communication is lost. And one finds these men in a tension that is very difficult. Yet nevertheless it is a specialized kind of despair. It is not a despair of the man who comes to full cynicism and full nihilism. When a man comes to you filled with nihilism a consistent nihilist a consistent man with full cynicism it is a different matter. He says alright that's it there's no purpose there's no meaning. At places I am not sure of my own being and regardless of what next step he takes at least he is intellectually honest in the old area of the concept of rationality. But this is a specialized despair. It is a despair that is accepting a final experience above rationalizations and above verbalizations. I would suggest also as I pointed out last time that Aldous Huxley with his emphasis on drugs not only for escape and not even primarily for escape but primarily for a first order experience exhibits the same thing. In faith these men are saying on the basis of rationalization of rationality we cannot move but there is a faith in us a hope in us that there is something what I would call upstairs. If you make this downstairs then this is upstairs. And there is a hope in something a faith in something upstairs. So it is a special kind of despair. A despair that seeks answers out of all contact with rationality. Now in the discussion of intellectual thinking through the years there has always been the line of nature and grace. Think of Thomas Aquinas Dante Raphael Van Eck all these men wrestled with the problem of nature and grace. Botticelli these all can be fit into this general structure. But one thing that was always accepted prior again to the breakthrough of the line of despair is that there was a unity between nature and grace. There was a unity between nature and grace. Now this was made as a statement without any basis for the unity very often and I personally think it is only biblical Christianity that can give a statement of the unity of nature and grace. So I don't want to go into that tonight. But nevertheless the mentality the expectation was that there was a unity if one could find it. But notice now in these divisions I have pictured here with Carl Gustav Jung for example Carl Jaspers I beg your pardon Carl Jaspers and the first order experience under drugs and I would say OSD is and I think in the same direction. You have a different situation. Instead of grace and nature with an accepted unity you have a very different concept and it's a fantastically different concept because now instead of nature and grace you have rationality and faith. And that changes the world. The faith with no contact in the rational. And one thing I find difficult as I said last time with many Americans is that they think that secular existentialism can be counted as an optimistic statement. When reality in France practically nobody would accept it. I'm thinking of the Sarkind as an optimistic statement. It isn't so. To understand Karl Jaspers at his heart you have to understand that the only way you can hope for the final experience is completely abstracted from a total dichotomy from all rationality and all logic. As soon as you bring in the ringer as I used last time of rationality and logic you have destroyed the basis of the possibility of the final experience if rationality and logic leads mathematically to machinery only. You can't have both. You can't have both. So therefore we have a situation in which we have rationality in opposition to faith and faith in a total sense. A faith you cannot talk about. A faith you cannot communicate. A totally non-propositional faith. A faith above verbalization. A faith in which all content is minimized if not completely removed. A best way to say it is a faith in faith. In contrast in any sort of idea of faith that the value of the thing would be a faith in what it is fixed. The word faith has two different meanings in the historic Christian faith. I'd point out the value of faith is not in the faith. The value of the faith is in the object upon which the faith is fixed. In this new mentality of tension, of faith and rationality, the value of the faith is a complete abstraction from rationality. An entirely different situation. So, therefore, in my lecture, for example, on existentialism, as I did fairly recently in the University of Freiburg, I would always draw the line between the two different meanings of faith. This is where the difference, I think, comes to its clearest line. So now here we have rationality and faith. I would say again, it is still despair in the fact that there is no hope of a rational, logical answer or even in the hope that anything can really be discussed about these things. Not really. Not really. But because man cannot stand on the basis of only the bottom line, he is forced to this jump which is a disavowal of all that which was considered education through the mark of educated men and the denial of classical philosophy all through the ages. And it is hard to stand there. I have met a few men in the far-out group who have tried logically to stand with courage only on the basis of mathematics and the particulars and so on. But there are very few. It is very, very difficult to do. Carl Gustav Jung again marks the two things cut across us, the external world and he says the collective unconscious from inside. Never mind the collective unconscious part of it, but it is true these two things cut across us. It is very difficult to live as things are only machinery both from the world that faces us and more peculiarly who I am. And then beyond the who I am, those social relationships which make up so much of the importance of human life. Men find it very difficult to do and so they're forced into this act of irrational faith. I have a friend of mine who is considered one of the most brilliant young men in physics in England at this present time. And he was talking to me one time. I was in Lloyd's, Lion's Corner House near Marble Arch and I stimulate him. I understand enough what he's talking about so he likes to talk. And we were talking. And he was way out and far, far out someplace in the matter of particles moving in opposite directions in the vortex. And he was talking about this thing. And so we find that reality had pretty well come to the place of only electric charges moving in opposite directions in a vortex. And he was speaking of all this, he was rather excited about it. I was learning all sorts of things, very pleased. And then I reached across and I put my hand on his. And he had recently become a Christian with us at La Brie. And I said Peter, and he said yes Dr. Schaefer. And I said that's fine for you as a Christian because you know who you are. But what do your friends do who do not know who they are when reality to them is only this sort of a mathematical formula. When they come home to their wife. And this is not an easy question. It's nothing to smile about. Some of the I've met men who stand and weep at this point. And he looked at me and he said, he thought a moment, and he said well thinking them over I suppose that the way each of them live is in a complete dichotomy. And here you go. In the laboratory they're under the line. But when they come home and they take their wife in their arm, they move into an area of irrational secular faith. It's irrational secular faith. If you ask them to justify it, they couldn't possibly answer two words in their scientific mathematical framework. It doesn't exist to them. But they cannot stand it. And so when they come home they take their wife in their arms and they view her on an entirely different level. Non-rational it is true, but in a dichotomy. One time I was crossing the Mediterranean from Lisbon to Genoa and we were on the boat and I met a man who was building radio stations in Africa and other places for a large American concern. Very bright man, very nice one. But when he found out I was a pastor, I'm sure he thought he could have some entertainment. And we started to talk and I must say I enjoyed him. I really thoroughly enjoyed him. We had a good time. But as I got toward the end of the evening and the moon was setting over the Mediterranean and if you've ever seen this you know what I mean. And the next day we were coming to Genoa and I had noticed he had a very beautiful and lovely wife. She was Jewish and beautiful, warm, vivant, just everything. And so we found here that as I watched the way he handled her at the table, I knew he loved her. I just knew he loved her. And what I did to him, I must say, caused me great pain. But I thought, I want to preach the gospel to this man and I want him never to forget. And so I said to him, excuse me, I'm sorry, but before you go in I want to ask you a question. And he said yes. I said, when you take your wife in your arms at night, do you always know she's there? And I have never in my life seen such a thing. It was as though I had caught a fox in a trap. I've never forgotten his eyes and I've never forgotten him and I never will. And I hated it and yet I felt that maybe he would realize his position and listen to the answers I had given him. And he just shouted at me, no, I'm not sure she's there. Went in and slammed the cabin door. It is not easy to accept this position. I'm not saying nobody does. I've met some men who tried. Pollock played it out until he committed suicide and one must say his works were both valid to his mentality and he had courage to the end. But it's a difficult thing to do. Even here in Harvard, thinking of a man whose connection with Harvard, the B.B. Bernson, the world expert on Renaissance art. There's a book written about him that says this, that he lived with his woman Mary for a number of years. Then he married her. But as it says in the book, that they had agreed to be independent as to love affairs. And when anybody chided B.B., he would always say something in the nature of, and this is given in the book as a direct quotation, he had little patience with optimistic idealists who would forget quote, the animal basis of our nature. So he lived his sex life consistently. But there's the other side of the picture. B.B. hated modern art. Boy, he hated it. He really hated it. And when people asked him why he hated it, his standard answer was because it was beastle. It is a very difficult thing to live consistently on this other basis. In fact, I say it's impossible if one thinks of consistency. But it's certainly difficult. Therefore, we are surrounded now in the second era, the second level of the despair. The making of the dichotomy with nothing up above, in a sense, and then the making of the dichotomy be putting a secular jump of faith up above. A secular mystical jump and I, if you're taking notes, the word mystical has some importance. A secular mystical jump into the upper story, non-rational, non-logical, no base. Faith demanded in a way that historic Christianity has never asked that men have toward historic Christianity. Faith that is of such a nature that a discussion is not possible in the area of the verifiable. No historic Christian position that's really historic Christian biblically placed has ever asked such a thing. A faith that is total in this sense. Now, in each of these areas, you can find illustrations of the second level of despair. And first of all, let us look at art. I have discussed Aldous Huxley and especially Karl Jaspers in the area of philosophy, making the upstairs. Now as an example, We have a play from Switzerland, of course. And play is one of the few modern artists who have ever lectured on the theory of making pictures from a viewpoint of modern art. He did this in Germany before he was put out by Hitler. And also back about 1920, he wrote a book with some other men of the same general thinking, putting forth their theories. And as rather the crux of this, I would read you a very, very short quotation from play. This is his own writings as to what he said he viewed his art to be. He called it, this section, plastic polyphonic equals elements and the regrouping. Elements would be a technical term to clay. I'll just mention quickly it would be point, line, space, tone value as to weight, this sort of element. This technically is his word element as he uses it by definition. Elements and the regrouping, then quote. But that is not art in its most exalted form. In its most exalted form there is behind the ambiguity a last mystery. And at that point the light of the intellect dies away miserably. It's exactly the same thing. And in a previous section in this same book he told how you make a picture and you begin and it just unconsciously unfolds itself like this. Unconsciously unfolds itself. And as you listen to this which I've read and on the background of the way he says this art is produced, you find you have a kind of an artistic Ouija board, if I could express it that way. But there is a great difference. The old person who took the Ouija board seriously believed in spirits. Believed in spirits. And they believed that the spirits were moving the Ouija board. But Clay did not believe in spirits. This word mystery here is a very profound word in this setting, a really profound word. It means in the unconscious of the universe yet nevertheless in a mystical non-intellectual, non-rational way, a mystical meaning boiled forth which was higher than any thinking. That's just what I've said. A mysticism, a faith that is beyond comprehension in any kind of rational intellectual terms. The faith, the faith of an unconscious universe, and of course immediately you feel overtones of pantheism here, or pan-everythingism I would suggest, because you can't call it pantheism in a setting like this. There's no theism to it. Pantheism only equals pan-everythingism. That's all. And these men mean by this this factor. As a matter of fact, I think classical Hinduism does too in its philosophic content, but surely these men do. So what you have now is Clay, as I say, setting these things forth, and there's a kind of an automatic writing. And as a matter of fact, some of the men have paralleled this idea to automatic writing. But an automatic writing of a specific kind, now please listen, I'm not just repeating myself for padding. It's an automatic writing with nobody there. It's an automatic writing mystically attained from an impersonal universe, in which there's nothing to speak as far as any concept that will do with thinking is concerned. This is what I mean by a faith that is beyond all comprehension. Salvador Dali did exactly the same thing. And the reason I put his name here, Salvador Dali, is because he illustrates this point so beautifully. Salvador Dali, of course, first of all, painted in surrealism. And surrealism is Dada, which means nothing, plus Freud. And this is the basis of surrealism. Well, it's true. What you have is Dada, you have Dada, Marcel Duchamp, and so on. Dada, which says there's nothing in a very real sense, nonsense. And then you add the subconscious and man to it. And this was surrealism. But at a certain point, he broke. And he's done exactly the same thing as some of these other men. He wasn't able to stand it. And I have in my hand a little thing that he himself wrote in explanation of Christ of the Cross in the Glasgow Museum. And he harks back to a previous painting as the one which began his new era, and I would say this is his present era, of painting, following surrealism. He says in artistic texture and technique, I painted the Christ of St. John of the Cross in the manner in which I had already painted my basket of bread, which even then more or less unconsciously represented the Eucharist to me. So he equates his painting the basket of bread to the Eucharist as unconscious, but by the time he gets to St. John of the Cross. Now the thing about the basket of bread is that he has painted three paintings called the basket of bread. The first was in 1926 in the midst of his revolution, in which the basket of bread was just a coarse piece of Spanish bread. In 1945 he painted his second basket of bread, and again it was just a coarse piece of Spanish bread. But in 1945, I'm not sure of the date of his painting, he made a sketch, I know the date of the drawing, which he called Gala. And Gala is his wife. And I didn't see the sketch until after I saw the reproduction of the painting. It came about that same period, a little later. And when he painted Gala, it was very obvious he was looking at her with different eyes. You have a feeling of love in the painting of this woman. Surrealism would not do. And you find this very, very often. I pointed out I guess in the discussion last time, I forget if it was in the discussion or in the lecture, that Picasso did the same thing when he painted the bottom of his canvas. There's a painter in Holland who is very much known as the rebel. And he's painting really nothing with swear words and means to paint it this way. But one time when his wife was pregnant, he drew a line drawing of her. And it was a beautiful drawing. It wouldn't do to paint her now swearing and cursing. Here is something that has no relationship to rationality. It is simply that in the feeling of that which man intrinsically is, he cannot in a certain situation live under this line of nothing and just swearing and cursing against the God who isn't there. It won't go. Things give way. And Salvador Dali painted his wife this way. And the interesting thing is in this, he painted her and one breast is exposed. That's why he calls it basket of bread. But basket of bread now means a very different thing than the hard course, meaningless Spanish bread that he had used to sort of swear with and about in his previous paintings. Salvador Dali switched. You notice in this thing I read from himself, he said more or less unconsciously he already thought of it as the Eucharist. He went on and painted two different crucifixions, St. John of the Cross in Glasgow and the painting of the crucifixion in the Metropolitan. The crucifixion in the Metropolitan is a mystical statement. And then he went on and he painted the Last Supper and he names these all in a series in Washington. But these things, if you will examine them, have nothing to do with the historic Christ. They have nothing to do with that which you would express in historic space time terms. They're a mystical statement exactly like Clay's automatic writing. The Last Supper in the gallery in Washington is clearly this. It's surmounted by this figure with a head cut off, you remember, partially cut off. And if you know anything about Hindu architecture, you immediately statuary, you feel the motion here. It is the same message. He has the mystical sign of the universe that goes back to the Greek philosophers. This is not a Christian painting. It is a mystical statement using Christian symbols in painting. And Salvador Dali is intriguing at this point because he parallels his painting of the bread to the Eucharist. So he uses a Christian term that has no meaning but allows him to think in loving terms and he paints in the same symbols. It has no relationship to historic Christianity. It is simply using historic Christian terms in an entirely different context. An entirely different context. A mysticism using Christian terminology and symbols in his paintings as a statement of mystical faith with no logical basis which really takes up a form of pantheism. This is not the first time this has happened in the world's history. It cannot be proved but I think that there are clear indications that the Harappa culture back at 2,500 years before Christ or 2,600 already in the Harappa culture had the same kind of motion either then or when the Aryans came in contact with it. One or the other. A statement of nothingness and yet with a statement of nothingness the growth of the whole Hindu pantheistic system to state in personal terms the basic concept of impersonality. I think it's already way back there. But whether it is or not it certainly is what has happened in our own generation but I have a feeling in my studies that we can draw a very great parallel between what happened back there somewhere in the Indus Valley so many thousand years ago and our own culture and the direction in which it is moving. Now I've spoken therefore of Clay and of Dolly in art. I would now speak of music and the man whom I would use is John Cage. John Cage. And I am quoting here from the profiles of profiles of John Cage in the New Yorker magazine as it came out a little while ago. Let me read just a little bit. I'll try not to read too much. What he, that is John Cage, is proposing is essentially the complete overthrow of the most basic assumptions of Western art since the Renaissance. The power of art to communicate ideas and emotions. That's what he's denying. One. Two. To organize life into meaningful patterns. Three. The third thing he's denying. To realize universal truths through the self-expressed individuality of the artist are only three of the assumptions that Cage challenges. In place of a self-expressive art created by the imagination, taste, and desires of the artist, Cage proposes an art born of chance and indeterminacy. Isn't that what I've said? Here we have it. I've given you a couple of illustrations in art. Now here is John Cage in music. And it relates it here and quite properly to the influence he had on Pollock and Pollock had upon him. And speaks here of Jackson Pollock who sought in the accidents of thrown or dripping paint a key of creation beyond the reach of the artist's conscious mind and will. But actually Cage has gone further than Pollock because he hasn't just sought something out of his unconscious mind but he sought something out of exactly the same place as Clay sought it. And that is a mystical message a mystical message out of pure chance. This is a further step of mysticism that Pollock would have wrestled with. Cage found this idea perfectly summed up in the words of the 17th century English music commentator Thomas Mace who once wrote that the function of music was quote to sober and quiet the mind thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences end of quote. How can music do this? That is Cage's. But notice there's something here. It's a thing I've been emphasizing. When Mace wrote this it was so that that which was divine which is in his mind really was there could communicate. Cage lifted it out in a universe in which there is no divine and he wants that to communicate. This is a very different thing than Mace. A very different thing indeed. This is drawn to full force in how he has made his indeterminate music. At a certain period it says here one day young Wolf brought a copy of the ancient sheet music the I Ching or the Book of Changes which Pantheon had just published in an English translation. Quote the moment I opened the book and saw the charts and the hexagrams that were used for obtaining oracles according to the tossing of coins or yarrow sticks I saw a connection with the charts I was using Cage says. I was immediately it was immediately apparent to me that I could derive a means of composing from these operations and right then and there I sketched out the whole procedure for my music of changes which took its title from this book. Now notice what you have. What did the Chinese work out? The Chinese with real care worked out a series of throwings that made it mathematically impossible or conceivable that the individual doing the throwings could influence the results. But they did it for a reason. They did it because there was just the same thing again. Somebody was there who then could speak. So therefore by working out this careful careful mathematical precision they were able to be sure that it was who was there that was speaking and not just not just the thrower. But now Cage takes it and turns it over. There's nobody there. So what you have when you work out such a careful procedure is not anybody speaking. His own unconscious is removed. The whole area of the old idea of surrealism is gone. Pollock's concept is gone in a sense. Though Pollock I think was wrestling with the other two at the time of his death. But nevertheless there's no sense here of making it possible for me to communicate by the unconscious. It is that the universe, the impersonal universe would produce in pure chance something and that's Cage's music. It again can be said to be simply a Ouija board against the universe in which there is no one home. No one home in this sense. Now then however you are immediately brought to a problem. Here you have a mystical faith rooted in chance and it is pan-everythingism. Over and over again Cage points out he believes in a pan-everythingism. It's deeply related to a certain kind of Zen in his studies. And you find here that he is presenting a mystical faith rooted in chance and a pan- everythingism. But the interesting thing is he cannot live with it. And he cannot live with it at the most spectacular point. And this is what it says about him. We find that when he was at Stony Point, Rockland County, 40 miles from New York, he became interested in raising mushrooms and gathering mushrooms. And this is what it said. No matter how much mycology one knows, and Cage is now one of the best amateur mycologists in the country with one of the most extensive private libraries ever compiled on the subject, there is always the possibility of a mistaken identification. Quote, I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operations, I would die shortly, Cage said. But the conclusion, considering that he is an honest and sincere man, more honest than some that play romantic games, is a sad sentence. So I decided that I would not approach them in this way. This is a concept of the universe which is a unity in his thinking and it can be carried over into the expression of music and it's what music is to become, according to Cage. But at the same time, when you gather mushrooms, the structure is of such a nature that you cannot live this way in the external world. It just cannot be done. So you find the same thing. So here you have Pollock following Van Hock before him, and Gauguin also. Pollock committed suicide when he came against Raw Chance. On the other hand, Cage, following this new movement of despair, simply moves upstairs. That's a deeper despair than the worst of nihilism. It's a deeper despair. In general, we could speak of various fields, various people. I would point out, I think that all optimistic, evolutionary humanism falls in the same category. You can take Julian Huxley as he puts this forth, or a man like Metawar, and you will find that if you ask for verification of the optimism of their position, they will tell you that two things. You will find out from reading them. In the first, there is no clinical point of observation to demonstrate a new step of evolution. And secondly, there is nothing in yesterday's history or today's history to which you can point to show the optimistic hope. This optimistic humanism is a faith, a faith rooted in always tomorrow. Always tomorrow because you cannot live this way in the external world. It just cannot be done. So you find the same thing. So here you have Pollock following Van Hock before him, and Gauguin also. Pollock committed suicide when he came against Raw Chance. On the other hand, Cage, following this new movement of despair, simply moves upstairs. That's a deeper despair than the worst of nihilism. It's a deeper despair. In general, we could speak of various fields, various people. I would point out, I think, that all optimistic evolutionary humanism falls in the same category. You can take Julian Huxley as he puts this forth, or a man like Medawar, and you will find that if you ask for verification of the optimism of their position, they will tell you that two things. You will find out from reading them, and the first, there is no clinical point of observation to demonstrate a new step of evolution. And secondly, there is nothing in yesterday's history, or today's history, to which you can point to show the optimistic hope. This optimistic humanism is a faith, a faith rooted in always tomorrow, always tomorrow, because after all, today we have Vietnam, and yesterday we had Algeria, and before that there was something else. And manana, it will be the same. This is a faith, therefore, a faith that is more strenuous in its humanism than any faith that has ever been asked for by biblical Christianity. As a matter of fact, Julian Huxley has felt the thrust of this to such an extent that he has set forth the need of a religion without a God, not because he thinks anything is there, but simply because he sees his dilemma, and he sets forth this merely as a sociological help of structure. But perhaps I would say the most interesting man in the whole general field is Henry Miller. And the reason I put him here is because I feel that he points this up very well. Henry Miller, of course, is a man who is known in his tropics and so on as a man who has brought the problem of non-antithesis, as I pointed it out last time, even to the place where you have a philosophic statement in the book homosexuality, of the denial of the antithesis even between the sexes in any way that has value. Here you have a man then of which the term anti-law would be magnificently applied in its full scope. And yet we find that Henry Miller, again, has made a jump of faith, and a most spectacular one. I have in front of me here a copy of his introduction, which recently has come out to the new edition, the new French edition of Élie Fauve's The History of Art. And he has written the introduction. It's a republishing of the French work. And he calls this a sense of wonder. I think the word wonder is of importance here, the word wonder. As you read through it, at first, if you were reading carelessly, you'd think Henry Miller had become a Christian. Halfway through, it's a short thing, you can read it quickly, he speaks of the divine. A little bit further, he says, speaks of man as investing himself for the powers of a God. Man has divorced himself from God and from the universe as well. A little further on, he says, as the good book says, all blessings flow. And it doesn't say that, but it's all right. Another place, he quotes from the first chapter of Genesis, and says the spirit which first breathes upon the waters will create anew. A little further, toward almost the end of the article, he says, there is no last word unless it be the word itself, quote, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. The end of the introduction reads, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. And you say, has Henry Miller become a Christian? And the answer is no. No, Henry Miller has taken the same jump, a mystical faith that these other men have. A sense of wonder would bring this, would open a door to our thinking in this. He says, referring back to Fauve, though I'm not sure this is true of Fauve, but it'll do for Miller, above all he was a devout worshipper of the creative spirit in man. His approach, like our own Walt Whitman's, was nothing less than cosmic. Again he says, what impact his work may have today, particularly on the young, who are almost immune to wonder and mystery because of all the knowledge that has been crammed into their heads. In other words, here's the antithesis, if the knowledge is crammed into your head, you can't expect to have the wonder. You can't expect to. He goes on and he says a little bit further in this same thing, it forces me, the knowledge of this truth, to observe, as I have, again and again, that behind all creation, whether human or divine, lies an impenetrable mystery. All those epic-making names which he reels off in his works, devastating forces when one thinks of it, because forces for good and evil simultaneously, and this is, of course, upon everything, all bear witness to the inexhaustible energy, which invests even the tiniest particle of matter and demonstrates in miraculous everyday fashion that which is called matter or substance is but the adumbration of a luminous reality, too powerful for our feeble senses to apprehend. It's exactly the same thing we've seen in the other cases. And then he says, will man blow himself up? It really doesn't matter, because it is only embryonic man, to be sure, who is staging this dramatic, this drama of annihilation. The true self is indestructible. And then toward the end, art more than religion offers us the clue to the life, but only to those who practice it. Those who dedicate themselves and who come ultimately to realize that they are but humble instruments whose privilege it is to unveil the glory and splendor of life. Investigating myself for the powers of a god, man has divorced himself from God and from the universe as well. That which was in inheritance, his gift in salvation, he has vitiated through pride and arrogance of intellect. You've got to get rid of your intellect if you're going to come up with this. He has not only turned his back on the source, he is no longer aware indeed that there is a source. The source from which, as the good book says, all blessings flow. And the end. What matter in the ultimate if for a few eons of time this creature called man remains in abeyance, absent from the scene? This is an end, one of many, the endless cycles of pantheism. This is an end, one of many, not the end. What man is in essence can never be destroyed. The spirit which first breathed upon the waters will create anew. Man, this embryonic form of a being which has neither beginning nor end, will give way to man again. Present day man, the man of history, need not and will not be the last word. Then he quotes from 1 John and then he finishes. Let us, or from John rather, the first chapter, let us therefore in reviewing this vast panorama of human achievement think less of what was accomplished by the giants who prayed throughout these volumes and more on that imperishable energy of which they were the fiery spark. I could take you to pieces in Hindu literature and it sounds, it's exactly the same. There's not a hair's breadth of difference. But no rationality, please. Park your intellect. Leave it outside. Just live it. Just live it. Or you can never find the wonder of it. You can never jump upstairs as long as you've got your thinking mechanism turned on. Even one half of one quarter of one kilowatt. It cannot be. Now then, coming back to the new theology and ending on this note, we've seen then that the first act of despair is the accepting of the dichotomy. The second aspect of the line of despair is the acceptance of a mysterious, usually with pan-everythingism involved, with not even a reason that reason cannot even begin to discuss. Now then, as we come to this place and we consider the new theology, this that I have just described is the intellectual climate of the new theology or rather the intellectual climate surrounding us in our total culture and in which I would say this evening the new theology is just one part. It is not simply the intellectual climate separated from this intellectual climate. It is a part of it. The only distinction being it uses religious terms, historic Christian terms, rather than secular terms. And then that's all. Though of course Henry Miller came close to using religious terms, but not in the way the new theologians do. This would include, beginning here, that the breakthrough with Barth, down through Tillich and down through Robeson, there are definite motions toward pantheism. There are definite motions toward pantheism. Just as definitely as let's say in Henry Miller. It's perfectly true that Robeson in Honest to God tries to escape this by saying God is transcendental. And at first this would seem to settle the pantheistic issue. But quickly he says that man is transcendental too. And as soon as man is transcendental too, the word transcendental applied to God is a meaningless sentence. What these men mean by transcendental and Julian Huxley, I think it's in the humanist frame, I remember reading it, but I think it's there. Julian Huxley also says man is transcendental. Their words mean transcendental is a technical term, meaning that you find in man that which you wouldn't expect to find on the basis of his origins. And that's it. So therefore when you apply transcendental to God, it does not change the fact that this is in the definite motion of pantheism. However, in contrast to Miller who just quotes some Bible verses and therefore gives a little feeling of illusion, I would say, these men have a much stronger position. First of all, they are functioning inside of the organized structure of the church. They are functioning inside of the organized structure of the church, and they are using historical rooted deep in those churches and deep in the culture built on the Christianity of the past. Deep in the culture, the total culture which have surrounded us. Therefore, when the new theology uses these terms in the structure of the church, using the same terms, the illusion of meaning and communication boils over. It grows very, very strong until you examine it and ask for definition of the symbol. These symbols are never defined. They just seem to say something. Now therefore, neo-orthodoxy, I would say, in its total structure, the differences between the men, but its total structure as a system is simply this in Christian terms. Faith versus reason. Not nature and grace, but reason, total reason, and total faith in this very, very definite way that I have explained. This can be shown by the fact that you are not allowed to discuss, you are not allowed to discuss. I was lecturing in England not too long ago with Michael Green, Professor Michael Green in England, and he said, and I thought there was a good point, that for twenty minutes each week, Boltman was infallible. It's when he was preaching. No one questions, no one dared to question, there's no discussion, you just listen, that's it. You either accept it or you don't accept it. It's exactly the same thing that we found in all these other structures. Rationality versus this total concept, a non-Christian concept, I would say, of faith. The faith comes in the new theology, as I've said, from separating anything that has to do with religious truth from anything that has to do with the cosmos and history. In short, anything that is verifiable. Some of you will know, perhaps, the little book Objections to Christian Belief. I think it is a very poor book, but there's a one thing I would quote from it. There's a man by the name of Byzant, who's still an old-fashioned liberal. He's about the last old-fashioned liberal, I think, in Cambridge, the last Cambridge theologian, who's an old-fashioned liberal. And Byzant wrote a piece in this Objections to Christian Belief, and in it he not only took a hit at historic Christianity, which he did, but a hit at neo-orthodoxy on the way past. And when he was doing this, this is what he said about neo-orthodoxy. He says, if you tell me, now this is not a direct quote. I didn't have the book with me, but it's substantially accurate. You can check on it. And if you tell me the strength of this, that is this neo-orthodox position, is freedom from verification, I would answer, freedom from verification leads only to freedom from verification and call nonsense by its name. And Byzant is right. In any framework that deserves to be called rational, logical, that which would have fit into anything that would have ever been considered. The field of educated men. This is nonsense. This is nonsense. This difference between neo-orthodoxy and biblical Christianity, I would suggest, falls in three areas. First, the area of personality. The area of personality. From a Christian viewpoint, we begin with a personal universe, not in the sense of a antitheistic personal universe, but a personal whole in the sense that you begin with a personal God who creates all things. So, intrinsically, in this sense, you begin with personality. And then, this God, having created all things out of nothing, also creates man, according to scripture, as personal. Finite, though personal. Now, it is a very simple thing. That is, if you had, if you were in Switzerland with me, and you had three mountain ranges and two valleys, and there was a lake in one, and suddenly the water began to rise in the second, if it rose to the same water level as the first, it would be conceived that it was worth investigating as to whether the water in the second valley wasn't leaking from the first. It's reasonable. But if it went a hundred feet higher, people look for a slightly different explanation. If you begin with a personal source, it is not surprising when you find motions of personality in men that they cannot deny even to the level that we have suggested tonight. But if it is otherwise, the dilemma remains, where does the level come from, if those motions of personality which we cannot deny, those things which we cannot, we cannot forget even when in our systems we make ourselves into mechanics, mechanical things, if man is only the atom plus time plus chance, it becomes very difficult to have an irrational explanation of the motions of personality. Is man the highest thing in the evolutionary apex? Is he? Let me ask you this. Let me frame it in an illustration. If I had a universe, and that universe was made up only of solids and liquids, and there were no free gases anywhere in the universe, total universe, only solids and liquids, and there was a fish swimming in the universe. The fish is at a high point in relationship to this universe because he conforms to the universe. But supposing in the way that we're told by those who would set it for so, that he developed lungs by chance, is he higher or is he lower? He drowns. He's not higher, he's lower. And if man, the atom, plus time, plus chance, produces motions of personality that he cannot live without to such an extent that Julian Huxley says we're going to have to make a religion even if there is no God, then without any question, man is below man on the totem pole. The green legend on the rock is higher than That is man. In our present century's idea of man standing in an evolution apex, even in this area of personality, becomes exceedingly vain. Now, in the new theology, they do not begin with a personal universe and so they do not have this answer. Their jump at this particular place of the area of personality is just as much a faith in the utter dark as is Henry Miller's. Parallel to it, I would say. The second area where there is a vast difference between historic Christianity and the neo-orthodoxy is in relationship to verifiable facts. From the biblical viewpoint, a personal God, who is there, communicates to man in a propositional way. Man, who is made in his image, who is not infinite, who is finite, but nevertheless is personal. A person-to-person communication, a propositional truth that touches not only the religious truths, quote, but where the Bible speaks on history and the cosmos, as well as in those places where it speaks upon purpose. Is this an irrational concept? And I think anyone would have to acknowledge that viewing it objectively, it cannot be said to be an irrational concept. If you begin, even in consideration of the possibility of a personal God and his creating man in his own image, the concept that he couldn't communicate propositionally cannot be said to be irrational. A man might doubt it, but to slough it off as irrational would be hardly fair to the situation. Now then, this does not mean, from the historic Christian viewpoint, that science is junk. Not at all. The Christian must bear the factor of the unity of truth across all the fields, because that's what we say is the fact. That's what the Bible teaches. But nevertheless, in the total unity of truth, though it is indeed we can learn and science is not junk and it is a magnificent thing to learn, yet nevertheless it is quite apparent that you need some sort of an infinite reference point in the area of scientific facts if the thing is going to have a total rational structure. Einstein felt this so keenly at the end of his life that he became a mystic. Now then, the third point is man and his dilemma. Man and his dilemma. Looking at man, we love, modern man speaks of man and his dilemma. It's a good way to put it. It's a modern way to put it, but it's a good way to put it. To look at mankind, one cannot escape the fact that man, as we know him, has a dilemma. There are two possible explanations for man in his present dilemma. The first is a metaphysical explanation. A metaphysical cause. Simply, that man is finite. Man is too little to wrestle with the factors in front of him, and hence his dilemma. The second possibility, which certainly must be set forth as a rational possibility, even if it's later rejected, but nevertheless it's a rational possibility, and that is there is a moral cause to man and his dilemma. Notice if we accept the metaphysical explanation, then man as man intrinsically has this dilemma. And there's no moral answer. And evil and cruelty must be intrinsically a part of all that there is. So Baudelaire could say, the French art historian, a sentence everybody ought to think about, if there's a God, he's the devil. And from a Christian viewpoint, I would totally agree with Baudelaire. If that which man is not now in his dilemma is intrinsically that which he is, which is intrinsically all that there is, then whether you call it God or whatever you call it, the term devil would apply to it in its connotations much nearer than the historic connotation of God. Camus felt this in his plague, his pest. He made very plain in the pest, which is his basic work, that the difficulty was that the man had to choose. He either had to decide with the doctor and fight the pest, in which case he would fight God, or he had to fail to fight God, but in which case he couldn't fight the pest. Camus, when he was speeding his automobile along there, his sports car, and came to his death, had never found any kind of an answer to this problem. It was the thing that drove him on to the day of his death. I would say concerning neo-orthodoxy, that they're caught in the same problem. They're caught in the same problem. By making the dilemma of man metaphysical, which they do, the new theology is caught in Baudelaire's proposition. Therefore, to say God is good is an act of blind faith, without one thing rationally to commend it, or one thing in total human experience. Not one single thing. On the other hand, from the Christian viewpoint, God hates the plague too. Consequently, it is made plain in the Greek, in the story of Jesus before the tomb of Lazarus, that when he stood before the tomb of Lazarus, he not only cried, as is portrayed in most of our translations, but he was furious. He was utterly furious, filled with anger against the past. We fight social injustice, when we fight these things which indeed are the past of mankind, man and his dilemma. We can be sure of this from the scripture viewpoint that God hates the pest too. This immediate raises the question, how? How? And the Christian biblical position begins very gently. As a philosophy, rather than the total Christian system, as a philosophy, it differs in its opening move, in the factor that man and his dilemma is abnormal. All other philosophies in their humanism begin with the first move, that man, as he now is, is normal. Christianity says he is abnormal. Man and his dilemma is an abnormal thing. It is not that which he is intrinsically. Fallen man does not equal man intrinsically. A significant man, in a significant history, in moral revote, is where man is, and not in his intrinsic manishness. Again, you might reject this. I would say to you with all sobriety, it cannot be rejected intellectually. It cannot be done. It cannot be done. It must be faced. Morality has meaning, according to Scripture. Morality has meaning because there is an absolute. Not like Plato's concept of an idea, or ideal back of God, or somewhere unrelated to God, perhaps, but rather, in the Scriptural sense, God has a character. This God, therefore, stands as the law of the universe, an absolute that is an absolute that is an absolute. An absolute that is not God to God because it is not behind God, but an absolute that is absolute in the universe because it is the character of God. If this is true and considered, if this is so, one must say then that indeed there is a true morality, and there is true antithesis of right and wrong. Again, I would say to you, reject it if you will, but don't try to do it by saying that it is irrational as such. You cannot do it. It is only irrational on your own presuppositions and in your own frameworks, and must be discussed in totalities and to where these things lead. Thus, there is a true morality that exists from a biblical Christian viewpoint, and a true guilt caused by a significant man acting in a significant history in which cause and effect is real. This is what Oppenheimer means when he says that it needed Christianity to bring forth modern science. Cause and effect has validity in the Christian system. A significant man in a significant history with cause and effect being valid, man revolting in that, and consequently, man is truly guilty. Man need not now beat himself to shreds as though there is no possible solution because intrinsically this is what he is. But there is a solution because God has granted the solution. It is in the death of infinite value of Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. And more than this, you are not violated in this system. Not only is God not violated in what he is, but you are not violated because this is not enforced upon you as a universality. You are not treated as a stick or a stone. You are given the invitation. On the good evidence, that evidence which God says is sufficient to believe God, upon this evidence, that is good and sufficient. So therefore, in this, neither you are violated, nor is God violated. On the other hand, in the new theology, in the new theology, there is no true guilt, and there is no solution for it if there was a true guilt. Thus, the ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ is reduced to two things. It tends to be reduced to a socialized psychological structure on the basis of the religious terms, the content of which and the direction of which is completely and arbitrarily in the hands of the manipulator of the meaning of the terms. And secondly, a psychological solution for the individual. But that's all the Church of Jesus Christ can become. It is demoted to this and nothing more. In passing, let us, I would say, that there is an orthodox weakness for those of us who are orthodox Christians, and that is often in understanding true guilt, we forget that there is such thing as guilt feelings. But to come to accept the fact that there is guilt feelings and help people meet these needs, it does not mean that the concept of true guilt then has to be completely swept under the rug. Also in the New Theology, all the above carries with it the fact that there is no real antithesis and justification as is set forth in the Pauline writings, the writings of Augustine, the Reformation, and the historic stream of Christianity. Justification, rather than becoming an antithesis, only becomes a quantitative difference rather than the scriptural position that when I have accepted Christ as my Savior, I have passed from death to life, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's dear Son. In this, once you accept the rationality and faith breakdown, you must lose justification as an antithesis eventually. Further, and almost in conclusion, the continuity of the Church has nothing to do with content. Nothing to do with content. The content of the Church only is the continuity of unexpressible existential experiences expressed in the random shapes of the expressions that were common to that particular day. In other words, if I run water into six different glasses, six different shoes, six shoes, six shapes, it takes six different forms. In this idea, the continuity of the Church only is a series of unexpressible existential experiences which then are tried to be expressed in the content of the day. That's all. So the continuity of the Church no longer is a continuity of content, but because of this very factor. It can only be a continuity of unexpressible existential experiences expressed in faulty thought forms. That's all. Therefore, in conclusion, let us notice that the difference between neo-orthodoxy, the difference between the new theology and biblical Christianity is not their view of Scripture. It is not their view of Scripture. It is something much more profound. Their view of Scripture rests further back on their view of truth and their view of knowing. That's where the difference lies. The difference is the total, not just the question of Scripture. Far more. Therefore, Christianity, or the new theology, is not really different from the monolithic culture about us, but only expressed in undefined religious terms which give an illusion of communication and a seeming reason for motivation in a sociological situation. And that is all. Consequently, I would say the new theology in relationship to the intellectual climate is that it is simply a part of the whole. It is not historic Christianity nor is it related to it. It is completely a different system, as different as the concept of the educated man at the Renaissance who could not accept dichotomy and certainly would not accept the jump in the dark. It is different between that and these men we have read who, in secular terms, cannot stand the tension and live.