meaning, even in broadcast journalism.
Day by day, week by week in Dr. Williams’ class, however, I was being drenched in philosophies of reason, from Plato to Wittgenstein, with their interest not in the I and Thou of critical presence or in the alienations and anxieties of human subjectivity at all, but in logic, clarity of thought, and the foundations of knowledge. The big question percolating now in my soul had to do with the dissonance between these two alien frames of reference. It was as if two different languages with two different universes, each with its own firmament of suns and moons and stars, were in combat. I am not describing again the tension between intellect and existence, alluded to in a previous chapter, but rather the potentially rocky intellectual relationship between philosophy and theology. But Pilgrim, we will voyage together in this book to both universes and learn both languages.
We start by going back to a point in time one hundred years or so before I arrived in Orange. We flash back for a quick moment to the old stand-off between Kierkegaard and Bishop Mynster in Denmark. Even though theirs was not a clash between philosophy as such and theology, it is a good example of how a theologian can question longstanding tradition and erudition, and how she or he may detect the will to power, self-contentment, and self-deception operative in them.
Kierkegaard was the father of existentialism and Bishop Mynster the cultivated, shrewd, refined establishment Brahmin of Christendom who believed that the church should be kept secure and content by the state. Kierkegaard denounced Bishop Mynster publicly in the press, saying, You are mad with all the worldly pleasures and advantages of your position. You accept not one iota of Christianity’s teachings about renunciation and dying to oneself and being unhappy in this life. You deem the king and the priests and the wellborn infinitely more important than the beggar and the commoner.
My sympathies were very much with Kierkegaard. I still find reading his writings to be like being baptized at 8000 feet in Tenaya Lake, joltingly alarming and refreshing. His vehement attack on Christian hypocrisy, his expressions of solidarity with the beggar and the commoner, and his bald and piercing portrayal of the sickness of human interiority represent to me the best of the existentialist theology I had learned in San Anselmo. But how was I when I was young to weigh Kierkegaard and his theology of existence against the bishops and archbishops of the rationalistic philosophical establishment of the West? Furthermore, was not Kierkegaard on the verge of madness? Was it not just his unbearable manic-depressive condition that catapulted him into his faith?
The vague sense of fragmentation growing within me was validated by a paperback I bought that first year in Orange. Morton White’s Social Thought in America was about important intellectuals in the early part of the twentieth century in America. Chief among them was John Dewey, who helped develop pragmatism, the philosophy of the use of intelligence in human affairs. I bought that book mainly because the brand new edition contained an epilogue which included a critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, and I held my breath as White’s considerable philosophical firepower let loose on the theologian. It was a personal thing with me because of my own investment in theology and because my father had often spoken admiringly of Niebuhr as a stimulating and erudite teacher with whom he had had seminars.
What was shaping up for me was a major heavyweight battle between a gifted and courageous existentialist theologian and an important Western philosopher, John Dewey, represented now by White. It was Niebuhr who had launched his critique of Dewey’s alleged naive optimism about the application of intelligence to human affairs. Niebuhr had flung his net far and wide over human experience to come up with gems about how and why it was inevitable that Dewey’s admittedly humane project would stall. Sin is the serpent spoiler in the garden of reason, warned Niebuhr, in the tradition of Paul, Augustine, and Kierkegaard, and he expounded at length about the depth of greed, vested interests, hubris, lust, the will to power, and all manner of corporate egoism sabotaging the liberal hopes of thinkers like Dewey. Neibuhr insisted that the plans we form, the policies we put in place, must take these surd, untidy, unsettling facts into account.
White, however, defended Dewey and launched his own polemic against Niebuhr. Among other things, Niebuhr appeals to authority. It is the Pauline doctrine of original sin that lies behind his talk about the inevitability of sin. His talk at once about the inevitability of sin and human responsibility for sin is inconsistent. He offers no alternative to the use of our intelligence to make our way forward in the world. White’s diatribe went on and on.
Even at my young age I could see the two different languages and their two distinct universes at work. White was squirmy about the whole idea of sin, let alone the inevitability of sin, as if it was a harking back to some voodoo age of platitudinous gibberish. Even though he said that he agreed with Niebuhr politically, he inveighed against admitting Niebuhr into the halls of philosophical respectability. Brute, primal, and often obscure complexity was a reality belonging to a murky alien universe whose language he could not countenance in modern civilized discourse. Resolved to reduce public dialogue to its lowest, most logical and linear denominator, he was a good example of what the great nineteenth century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher called a cultured despiser of religion.
For my part, I was instinctively on the side of Niebuhr, just as I had been on the side of Kierkegaard in his clash with Bishop Mynster. Not only could I understand the existential language of religion but it seemed to fit me like an old shoe. Sin and Death were still at my heels, and I knew them well. They darkened the counsel of my mind and foiled my best and brightest intentions. I knew that Niebuhr was hardly appealing to authority in his talk about sin, but rather to the tragic in human history. Yet I was unable to sift through the logical wheat and chaff to defend Niebuhr adequately. I let the unrest in my mind and soul lie for the time being. I was clearly not yet ready to resolve it, and I knew that I would return to it when the time was right.
Furthermore I had to attend to my own existence on the ground. Willful as it was, this was such an expansive time to be alive. The orange groves cast their old world glow and fragrance upon the new inventions. The horizon was receding on a daily basis. Los Angeles and Hollywood were just to the north, and they were calling. The beaches were just to the west, and they too were calling. Friday was a good movie impatient to be reached. Saturday was a beach, a surfboard, and the waves of the sea.
8 | Los Angeles
In the wee small hours of the morning
I kept a safe distance from Ruth. There were other men, whose eyes I avoided. Did she know how I felt? Did she feel the same way about me? Her feminine voice and the stately way she held her head aloft filled my dreams, and every day in the quad, the cafeteria, and the classroom hallways I was demure and concealed my shyness.
Except for my ineptitude in love and the perpetual stinging sensation inside, I was happy in southern California. Hollywood, the beaches, the hit songs on the radio, and the palm tree avenues of Los Angeles promised light ocean breezes, dreamy musical rendezvous, soft summer nights, and dancing under the stars. Disneyland had the big Benny Goodman band playing under a large tent canopy, and I danced with a dark-haired brown-eyed young woman, who gave me her phone number.
I had learned how to drive in a flashy red convertible 1957 Thunderbird with automatic transmission. It belonged to a member of our young adult group at First Presbyterian, Paul, who was the son of a local businessman. He was mild-mannered, tall and freckle-faced, with a generous smile; the color of his car was just a shade darker than his hair. Driving his car to Newport Beach and Corona Del Mar with the top down and parallel parking it on a crowded street on a Saturday intoxicated me with breezy joy.
My own first car was a shapely old blue convertible stick-shift Ford which lacked power going uphill, but the radio blared out the new hits: Soldier Boy, Do You Wanna Dance, A Summer Place. Joanie Sommers’ One Boy was my favorite. Her lilting voice was buoyant and wafting like the waves of the sea. She was the one who later did the jingle Now It’s Pepsi for Those Who Think Young. Some of us foreign students went
