Dogmatic Theologian

Christian apologists in the U.S. write a great many books, but generally they fall into two classes: treatises too learned for the hurried layman to wade through, and inspirational works which are clearly written but have little philosophical heft. In a new book, The Retreat from Christianity in the Modern World (Longmans; $2.75), an English visitor has set his American friends a good mark to shoot at. The Rev. Julian Victor Langmead Cas-serley, 43, is a cheerful scholar who this year took over the chair of dogmatic theology at Manhattan's General Theological Seminary (Episcopalian). His new book is a readable discussion, reinforced with some painless history lessons, about the broad problems of Christianity in the 20th century world.

The current retreat from Christianity, as Anglican Casserley sees it, is not solely a modern phenomenon; other times have had their lapses too. What distinguishes the retreat now is its confusion, and one of the two "avenues" it takes. The first, the retreat into the "vacuum" of irreligion, has always been a passing phase. The second is far more dangerous. It occurred when disciples of the "scientific outlook" or "atheist humanism," who began their movements as a protest against Christianity, fell prey to substitute "religions" of their own devising. "[This] retreat from Christianity into religion . . . may fill that [spiritual] vacuum . . . giving life to the paganisms and idolatries . . . from which the gospel once delivered us."

Christ in a Pantheon. There are three modern retreats from Christianity into religion. The first, "natural religion," grew out of the optimistic rationalism of the 18th century. It survives as a faith that man's reason and philosophy can provide the only valid moral standards. The second substitute religion is what Casserley calls "comparative religion." Its disciples strip Christ of his divinity and Christianity of its divine mission, but concede that Christianity contains certain "basic" ethical truths. The result: "A Christ who would never have inspired the martyrs ... a Christ who would be quite happy in a pantheon, His image tolerantly rubbing shoulders with those of Buddha and Confucius, Mahomet and perhaps Gandhi."

Third, and most dangerous, there is the "pseudo-divinity of the modern state . . . a divinity thrust upon it by masses of insecure and frustrated people, insistently demanding some powerful and venerable object of faith and trust." Author Casserley compares the modern revolutionary movements to "the more discreditable phases of church history." Their symptoms: "A minute and hairsplitting dogmatism enthusiastically engaged upon for its own sake: the persecution of deviant shades of opinion; an enthusiastic cult of the [human] savior."

A Byproduct of Greek. The mistakes of modern Christianity have helped to promote the new substitute religions. Anglican Casserley criticizes the Roman Catholic Church for transforming "the whole character and function of dogma" by some of its recent acts, e.g., proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption. Dogma, he holds, should be used only when necessary to fight obvious heresy which threatens the church's existence ("Dogma is not made for dogma's sake"). Proclaiming dogmas in the absence of any such threat plays into the hands of critics who say that the orthodox believer's thought is hopelessly "chained and fettered" by the church's laws.

He is even more severe towards evangelical Protestantism, because the Reformers' emphasis on faith and the Bible took so much of "medieval rationalism" out of

Christianity. It led to "the cult of the 'simple Christian.' " ("No man ever became a good Christian merely by not being an intellectual!") The theologian and the "simple Christian" drifted apart. Theology, instead of being the great unifier of Christian culture, degenerated into pedantic criticism of the Bible--"little more than a byproduct of Greek grammar." If theology abdicates its historic function, modern man, in an age of growing specialization, has no intellectual means of making proper sense out of existence.

Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, was in one of its "feeblest" moments when the Industrial Revolution began: "The foundation stones of modern large-scale urban industrial life were laid with the church absent . . . from the ceremony." The result is an industrialized society in which religion has little traditional place. Says Dr. Casserley: "It would be absurd to pretend that the average cheerful Sabbath-breaker, at the cinema ... or peacefully potting plants in his garden, has just read Darwin, Marx or Freud . . . He cares for none of these things. His conduct must be explained in terms of a pattern of life which he has inherited from his fathers."

Surpassed Indeed!. The theologians now have a good opportunity to reweave Christianity into a new pattern of life, Author Casserley notes, for the substitute religions of the retreat must fail. Morally, they have been unable either to describe or to understand moral failure or sin, and their morals have wavered for lack of a higher goal. Intellectually, "the Christian thinker ... is repeatedly struck by the narrowness of outlook and the intellectual timidity of his time . . . We have ceased, many of us, even to conceive of the reason as the architect of civilization . . . and we have turned it instead into the merely technical instrument of the passions."

Even in their social idealism, the modern religions fall far short of Christianity. "Social justice, democracy and world peace are no doubt well enough in their way," but they are at best "fragments" and, often, "secularized substitutes for the Christian hope." It is unrealistic to think that political and administrative machinery can weld mankind into "a rationalized mass without first transforming [it] into a fellowship." Here again a substitute religion has too limited a goal, hardly the advance on Christianity that it hoped to be. Concludes Author Casserley: "Surpassed Christianity indeed! We have none of us yet caught up with it!"

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