1967 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 89

ESSAY CONCERNING CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING

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Church of today is indeed equal to the task which she faces in the the immediate future. The answer to this general question is a general no. There are, however, many attempts made to come to grips with the matter involved, each from a different point of view, from a different background. A few of these we let pass shortly in review. Some Anglo-Saxon answers The Anglo-Saxon world is rich in church denominations. Accordingly, there is a variety of different responses to the challenges put by the development of science and by the changing living conditions of western man. Here we could almost say that there are as many concepts of God as there are different understandings of the Scriptures. At any rate. Bishop John A. T. Robinson's attempt 2) to descend beneath the magic, myth and imagery Christendom has surrounded the message of Christ with, is a conscious effort to create an image of God which is closer to modern man than the image suggested by the language of the Bible. His method of searching the truth about existence behind or beneath the biblical language is becoming a universal phenomenon in theologicis. The rationalist philosophers of the past thought to be able to find the ultimate truth via scientific thinking. Many contemporary theologians use scientific thinking to strip the Bible of what is called its mythological language in order to come to grips with the ultimate truth of life. They do not say that language as such is mythological and that, therefore, man has to live without any dependable logic at all. On the contrary, the sciences are thought of to have established a language and a logics of their own, a language that permits the formulation of answers regarding facts, historical facts and otherwise, and the possible laws that govern these facts. The language of theology, on the other hand, according to the same theologians, has to be considered as a means to convey the unwordable Truth behind the truths, that frees man to be truly free, free from others and free from self. 3) A most consequent version of this strip-the-Bible-of-its-mythsattitude is, of course, given by the, in America rather fashionable, „death of God" theologians, the „dysangelists", who have buried God in man's graveyard. Their approach is an attempt to translate the meaning of Christianity for mankind in terms of human culture and science, starting from the view that a God which can not be

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