James H. Nichols

The Council in Action; Theological Reflections on the Second Vatican Council, by Hans Küng, Translated by Cecily Hastings. 276 pp. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1963.

That the World May Believe, by Hans Küng. 150 pp. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1963.

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Critic's Corner: Is the New “Service” Reformed?

Each film, you see, has its moment of contact, of human communication: the line Father spoke to me, at the end of Through a Glass Darkly; the pastor conducting the service in the empty church for Marta at the end of Winter Light; the little boy reading Esters letter on the train at the end of The Silence. A tiny moment in each film-but the crucial one. What matters most of all in life is being able to make that contact with another human. Otherwise you are dead, like so many people today are dead. But if you can take that first step toward communication, toward understanding, toward love, then no matter how difficult the future may be-and have no illusions, even with all the love in the world, living can be hellishly difficult-then you are saved. This is all that really matters, isnt it?

The Heritage of the Reformation, edited by Elmer J. F. Arndt. 264 pp. New York, Richard R. Smith, 1950.

in a new appropriation and a new creation that come out of the depths. “The vital problem for the coming age is how Biblical religion is to be metamorphosed.” From a brief, compact book of this sort one cannot expect to learn what local habitation the new creation will choose. Ronald Gregor Smith, in his valuable introduction to the volume, says that Jaspers is one of the few existentialists who still have something positive and fairly definite to say but that, due to his lack of penetration into the doctrine of the Incarnation, Jaspers’ word is “not definite enough”; for the Christian the new creation must come from Jesus Christ and not merely from a rather indefinite origin. At another level, something even more definite than this would seem to be necessary in any statement that would achieve existential relevance. One may hold with Jaspers that politics sorely needs purification from every pretension to omnicompetence, just in order that it may elicit sincere consensus and compromise rather than partisan fighting for some allegedly orthodox world view; a dominating Catholicism or Protestantism like a dominating secularism will kill discussion and freedom (“limitless communication”). But politics, even in the “subaltern position” here assigned to it, requires a costing participation and a shaping of policy through the organization of power which Jaspers does not explicitly take into account. Perhaps this is one direction in which both Christian existentialism and Biblical religion must be metamorphosed if the European spirit and the freedom to make the Christian witness are to survive, in short if we are to become men from the depths of the origin and the goal that belong to the Lord of history.

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Church; the conflict of orders and French claims on the Madras side, etc.), we find two main forms of development: the normal missionary work in settled areas, and the work among Telugus, Ghonds, and outcastes. Among the Protestant bodies, the Church of England, after Simeon and Henry Martyn’s enterprise, provided first a Bishopric of Calcutta, to be followed by others until the present diocesan system was evolved. Carey’s work for the Baptists receives the full attention it deserves, for his attention to the question of languages and the press at Serampore gave the impetus necessary to the work of translation, which reached its full recognition in the invitation of that great American missionary and scholar, John S. Chandler, to be the editor of the Madras Government’s official Tami l Dictionary. The origin of Methodist missions belongs to the enterprise of Thomas Coke. The Scottish Churches, especially the United Free Church, was responsible for the emphasis on secondary schools and colleges: Duff in Calcutta, Wilson in Bombay, and Miller in Madras probably did more for Indian education than any one else at this critical period. The London Missionary Society and the American Board complete the picture of the major bodies. T h e main problem created by missionary zeal has been the reduplication of Western divisions of Christendom and the bitter words of a Scottish mission Brahmin convert, “I am just a black Scotchman.” Rabindranath Tagore and others have tried to set up, in consequence, societies to promote Christian virtues without denationalizing Indians. The Christians have tried to unite, but the specter of Cyprian is mighty yet. The picture given by Professor Latourette is faithful, his judgments fair, and the orderly arrangement of his immense detail is a work of genius. It is written in readable English, with a sense of the author’s belief in his subject and faithfulness to his task. (It is fitting to record the discovery of one misprint only! “George P. Hendrigh” for “George Pittendrigh” (p. 147).)