Volume 6, Number 9 · May 26, 1966
What Is a Christian?
By J.M. Cameron
Belief and Unbelief: A Philosophy of Self-Knowledge
by Michael Novak
Macmillan, 223 pp., $4.95
The Christian Intellectual
by Jaroslav Pelikan
Harper & Row, 151 pp., $3.75
They Call Us Dead Men
by Daniel Berrigan S.J.
Macmillan, 192 pp., $4.95
What shall I do to be saved? All men can give a sense to the question that made Bunyan's pilgrim forsake his family and his city for a journey the end of which could be believed in and hoped for, not known. It would be a mistake, sometimes a terrible one, to conceive of salvation on the analogy of a piece of candy given to a child for good behavior. Certainly, good behavior deserves a piece of candy and we find it a deficiency in the world that candy is distributed to or withdrawn from the just and the unjust without regard for merit. But the question of salvation arises seriously when a man is faced with a decision that has nothing to do with the calculation of advantages and disadvantages in the ordinary sense, for what matters is what a man makes of himself apart from all calculation. Of course, we can wonder if there could be such a decision, for we have the feeling that only if the world has a certain character, so that decisions of this kind can be given a sense and a description, can we dare to think there are such decisions: and, in consequence, that there is something we have to do if we are to be 'saved.' That the world might not have such a character is a mere speculative possibility, for to maintain this would be to maintain that the descriptions 'being a scoundrel' and 'being a hero,' 'hating the goddamned niggers' and 'having compassion on the multitude' were in effect equivalent. To deny that salvation has a sense and is a possibility is an academic pose.
Review, 2398 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |