A Small Summa

By Richard N. Ostling

"A direct question: Why should one be a Christian?" From those opening words, it is clear that Hans Kueng's latest work is no ordinary exercise in theology. But then the professor at Tubingen, Germany, is no ordinary theologian. No Roman Catholic priest of his generation has labored so persistently to defeat dogmas and traditions that distinguish his church from the rest of Christianity: papal infallibility, the "apostolic succession" of Catholic bishops, the sinlessness of Mary, the celibacy rule for priests. His previous writings produced a decade-long struggle and a stern warning--but nothing worse--from the Vatican.

Small Summa. Having declared what he does not believe, Kueng now is declaring what he does. On Being a Christian (Doubleday; $12.95), which has already sold a thunderous 150,000 copies in German, is a survey that Kueng calls his "small Summa." Small? More like 720 pages. But the style is rather brisk for serious theology, and the questions Kueng raises are of importance for any educated person. He writes for those "who believe but feel insecure," those who once believed "but are not satisfied with their unbelief and those outside the church who are unwilling to approach "the fundamental questions of human existence with mere feelings, personal prejudices and apparently plausible explanations."

Why, then, be a Christian? In part, says Kueng, because the other choices are inadequate. Each new "liberation" in technology, politics, education and sex produces new forms of enslavement, he says. Mankind's good will, it seems, is not sufficient. This plight, however, does not demand belief in God, much less in Christianity. Kueng takes atheism more seriously than many theologians, and he discards Catholicism's hoary defense against it. Rational proofs cannot prove God, he states.

Neither, of course, can atheism offer conclusive proof against God. But if the atheist has a "basic trust in reality," he cannot explain it. If he does not have this trust, the result is nihilism, the experience of the "possible futility, worthlessness, emptiness of reality as a whole." Nor can the atheist answer elemental human questions such as Kueng's paraphrase of Kant: "Why is there anything at all? Why not nothing?" Facing the "radical uncertainty" of human existence, therefore, requires a belief in God as an assent to "primal reason, primal support, primal goal." Without such a belief, reality itself seems "unsubstantial."

Fatal Risks. The next problem: If God, then which God? Kueng takes a far more positive view of non-Christian religions than does traditional Catholicism, but he still finds Christianity to be superior. Kueng insists that it is possible to doubt the authenticity of many New Testament stories, as many Bible experts do, and still learn enough about Jesus to believe in him. Kueng himself doubts many of Christ's miracles and considers the story of his birth largely legendary. For him, the center of faith is not Christmas but Easter. He vividly portrays Jesus' growing struggle with the Jewish religious leaders over his reinterpretations of the law and his personal claims of authority. The result was the sentence to the cross. Kueng is perplexed by the Gospel accounts of the resurrection, but, he says, the apostles' belief that Jesus rose from the grave has transfigured subsequent civilizations. "It means a brave life, undertaken by innumerable people, without fear even in the face of fatal risks: through struggle, suffering, death, in firm trust and hope in the goal of true freedom, love, humanity, eternal life."

Kueng doubts that Christ preexisted in the Godhead before his human birth, and he believes the early church's definitions of the deity of Christ to be Hellenistic. To him the point is simply that God was present in Jesus, revealing himself and making known his claims on man and his offer of forgiveness. The test of being a Christian "is not assent to this or that dogma . . . but the acceptance of faith in Christ and imitation of Christ."

Kueng's compendium of doctrine, innovative and stimulating, has one problem at the core. No theologian has been more impatient than Kueng with the Catholic Church's old magisterium (teaching office). Yet throughout the book Kueng urges his readers, in effect, to trust the authority of a new magisterium of university scholars on what should be believed about Jesus and what should be discarded. In doing so, Kueng has become the leading theologian of what could be called the Liberal Protestant party within the Roman Catholic Church. He has also provided the committees at the Vatican with plenty of material for another decade of investigations. Richard N. Ostling

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