The Cocktail Theologians

In a very gracious and painstaking manner the professor of historical theology in the University of London addresses himself to the unpleasant and unpromising task of unscrambling eggs—the distinct categories and doctrines of Christian theology so curiously scrambled by Paul van Buren, John A. T. Robinson, Schubert N. Ogden, and other cocktail theologians. As far as unscrambling the confusion present in the minds and in the books of the above-named and their playfellows is concerned, Mascall does as much as could be expected. More than many other critics and reviewers, he has made a thorough attempt both to understand and to be fair to these men and their concerns: the title of his chapter on Honest to God, “Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity,” reveals his serious, and one might almost say chivalrous, intentions.

His approach is probably to be commended to those defenders of orthodoxy, like this reviewer, who tend to fly into a senseless rage at the first whiff of Robinsonianism—to be recommended both because it is more compatible with Christianity and scholarship, and also because its net result is to leave several neo-theologians more thoroughly skinned and cleaned than a frontal attack usually does. In his introduction, Mascall hopefully quotes the observation that it is often only when a defective theology has been unequivocally stated “that a definite step is taken forward.” Particularly in his two concluding chapters Mascall makes such a step; they alone are worth the price of the book.

HB

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Harold O. J. Brown

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In a very gracious and painstaking manner the professor of historical theology in the University of London addresses himself to the unpleasant and unpromising task of unscrambling eggs—the distinct categories and doctrines of Christian theology so curiously scrambled by Paul van Buren, John A. T. Robinson, Schubert N. Ogden, and other cocktail theologians. As far as unscrambling the confusion present in the minds and in the books of the above-named and their playfellows is concerned, Mascall does as much as could be expected. More than many other critics and reviewers, he has made a thorough attempt both to understand and to be fair to these men and their concerns: the title of his chapter on Honest to God, “Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity,” reveals his serious, and one might almost say chivalrous, intentions.

His approach is probably to be commended to those defenders of orthodoxy, like this reviewer, who tend to fly into a senseless rage at the first whiff of Robinsonianism—to be recommended both because it is more compatible with Christianity and scholarship, and also because its net result is to leave several neo-theologians more thoroughly skinned and cleaned than a frontal attack usually does. In his introduction, Mascall hopefully quotes the observation that it is often only when a defective theology has been unequivocally stated “that a definite step is taken forward.” Particularly in his two concluding chapters Mascall makes such a step; they alone are worth the price of the book.