THE FAITHOF A HERETIC

Beginning a Series on Modern Religious Beliefs in America

One of America's most brilliant young philos-ophers tells why-after' trying two of them-hecannot believe in any of the worLd's great re-ligions. He argues that acute, rational criti-cism of religious beliefs can, and should, existalong with deep feeling for man's religious quest.But for him traditional religious teachings areonly one amung many sources which can inspiremen "to live and, if possible, die with somemeasure of nobility." /

In the following articles in this series, out-standing young Catholic, Jewish, and Protestantthinkers-none of them professional clergymen-will describe their personal faiths and tell howthey arrived at them.

WALTER KAUFMANN

W HEN 1 was eleven, 1 asked my father:"What really is the Holy Ghost?" "The

articles of faith taught us in school-in Berlin,Germany-affirmed belief in God, Christ, andthe Holy Ghost, and 1 explained to my father:"1 don't believe that Jesus was God, and if 1can't believe in the Holy Ghost either, then 1 amreally not a Christian."

At twelve, 1 formally left the Protestant church

to become a Jew. Having never heard of Uni-tarianism, I assumed that the religion for peoplewho believed in God, but not in Christ or theHoly Ghost, was Judaism.

A few months after my conversation with myfather, but before 1 left the church, Hitler cameto power. 'Warned of the persecution that mydecision might entail, I replied that one certainlycould not change one's mind for a reason likethat. I did not realize until a little later that allfour of my grandparents had been Jewish; andnone of us knew that this, and not one's ownreligion, would be decisive from the Nazis' pointof view. My decision had been made inde-pendently of my descent and of Nazism, on re-ligious grounds.

I took my new religion very seriously, exploredit with enormous curiosity and growing love, andgradually became more and more orthodox.''\Then 1 arrived in the United States in January1939, 1 was planning to become a rabbi. A lot ofthings happened to me that winter, spring, andsummer; and when the war broke out I had what,but for its contents, few would hesitate to call amystical experience. In the most intense despair1 suddenly saw that I had deceived myself foryears: 1 had believed. At last the .God of tradi-tion joined the Holy Ghost and Christ.

Of course, I could maintain myoId beliefs by

M FAITH OF A HERETIC

/

merely giving them a new interpretation; butthat struck me as dishonest. Ikhnaton, themonotheistic Pharaoh-as I explained in a letterto my family who were by now in England-could also have reinterpreted the traditionalpolytheism of Egypt, but was a fanatic for thetruth. He taught his court sculptor to make lifemasks of people to see how they really looked,and in one of the heads which the sculptor hadthen done of Ikhnaton, his hunger for the truthhad become stone. T had loved that head foryears. Should I now do what I admired him fornot doing?

You may say that Ikhnaton was wrong andthat it is the essence of religion to pour newwine into old skins, reading one's current insightsinto ancient beliefs. But if you do this, disregard-ing Jesus' counsel not to do it, you should realizethat you could do it with almost any religion.And it is less than honest to give one's own re-ligion the benefit of every possible doubt whileimposing unsympathetic readings on other re-ligions. Yet this is what practically all religiouspeople do. Witness the attitude of Protestantsand Catholics toward each other.

In my remaining two years in college I tookall the religion courses offered, while majoringin philosophy; and I continued to study andthink about both subjects as a graduate studentand in the army. Eventually I got my Ph. D. andit job teaching philosophy. For over ten yearsnow I have taught, among other things, phi-losophy of religion." In the process, my ideasdeveloped-into a book: Critique of Religionand Philosophy."

"Lest this should create a misleading picture ofPrinceton, it should be added that in our popularDepartment of Religion Protestantism is championedvigorouslyby fivefull professorsand a large staff,andordained ministers are encountered in other depart-ments, too. Until his recent retirement, JacquesMaritain was a member of the Philosophy Depart-ment. Great universities, like this magazine,assumethat there is a virtue in confronting students and.readers with a variety of responsible approaches.

""Harper & Brothers, 1958. Many ideas in thisarticle are more fully developed and backed up inthis book which also deals with the positive aspectsof various religions and with many topics not eventouched on in this article; e.g., existentialism,Freud,mysticism,Bible criticism, the relation of religion topoetry, and Zen. Amongthe questions that are barelytouched in this essayand treated more fully in mybook is the inadequacy of such labels as theism andatheism. The contents of the present article, inci-dentally-which is in no sense a summary of myCritique-may greatly surprise many of my students,past and present,

The ideas were not all there as a result of thefew experiences alluded to here: there were hun-dreds of others. Profound experiences stimulatethoughts; but such thoughts do not look veryadequate on paper. Writing can be a way ofrethinking again and again.

In the process of teaching and writing onemust constantly consider the thoughts of menwith different ideas. And prolonged and ever-new exposure to a wide variety of outlooks-to-gether with the criticism many professors seekfrom both their students and their colleagues-is a more profound experience than most peoplerealize. It is a long-drawn-out trial by fire,marked by frequent disillusionment, discoveries,and despair, and by a growing regard for honesty,which is surely one of the most difficult of all thevirtues to attain. What one comes up with inthe end owes quite as milch to this continualencounter as it does to any other experience.

A liberal education, and quite especially atraining in philosophy, represents an attempt tointroduce young people to this adventure. 'Wehave no wish to indoctrinate; we want to teachour students to resist indoctrination and notaccept as authoritative the beliefs of other menor even the ideas that come to us' as in a flashof illumination. Even if one has experiencesthat some men would call mystical-and I haveno doubt that I have had many-it is a matter ofintegrity to question such experiences and anythoughts that were associated with them asclosely and as honestly as we should questionthe "revelations" of others. To be sure, it iseasier to grant others their "revelations" as "truefor them" while insisting on one's own as "truefor oneself." Such intellectual sluggishnessparades as sophistication. But true tolerancedoes not consist in saying, "You may be right, butlet us not make hard demands on ourselves: ifyou will put your critical intelligence to sleep,I'll put mine to bed, too." True tolerance re-mains mindful of the humanity of those whomake things easy for themselves and welcomesand even loves honest and thoughtful oppositionabove less thoughtful agreement.

The autobiographical sketch with which I havebegun may do more harm than good. Someamateur psychologists may try to explain "every-thing" in terms of one or two experiences; someProtestants may say, "If only he had come to. meabout the Holy Ghostl" while some Catholicsmay feel that it all shows once again how Pro-testantism is merely a way-station on the roadto Hell.

This is the kind of gambit that the shut-ins

pull on travelers. As if I had buried the HolyGhost beyond recall when I was eleven, and Godwhen I was eighteen! I merely started relativelyearly to concern myself with such questions-andhave never stopped since. Let the shut-in explore.Judaism and Protestantism, Catholicism andBuddhism, atheism and agnosticism, mysticism,existentialism, and psychology, Thomas andTiIIich. Let him consult the lot and not just hisown present prejudice; let him subject histhoughts about religion to the candid scrutiny ofthose who differ with him and to his own ever-new re-examination; let him have a host of deepexperiences, religious and otherwise, and thinkabout them. That is the ground on which agenuine conversation can take place: it need notmake a show of erudition, if only it has grownout of a series of open-hearted encounters. Butas long as one is content to gloat over the silverlining of one's own religion, one bars any seriousconversation and merely makes the first move ina game of skill.

To an even moderately sophisticatedand well-read person it should come as nosurprise that any religion at all has itshidden as well as its obvious beauties andis capable of profound and impressive in-terpretations. What is deeply objection-able about most of these interpretationsis that they allow the believer to say Yeswhile evading any No. The Hebrewprophets represent a notable exception.·When interpreting their own religiousheritage, they were emphatically not con-formists who discovered subtle ways inwhich they could agree with the religionof their day. Nor was it their point thatthe cult was justifiable with just a littleingenuity. On the contrary.

Let those who like inspiring interpreta-tions be no less forthright in telling usprecisely where they stand on ritual andimmortality, on the sacraments and Hell.on the Virgin Birth and Resurrection, onthe Incarna tion and the miracles, and on:"Resist not evil." And: "Let him whowould sue you in court for your coat haveyour cloak, too." And: "No one comes tothe Father but through Me."

If you must pour new wine into oldskins, you should at .least follow one ofjesus' other counsels and let your Yes beYes, and your No, .No.

When considering Christianity, it is easy. to get lost in the changing fashions ofthought that have been read into it or

BY WALTER KAUFMANN ssreconciled with it-from Neoplatonism (Augus-tine) and Aristotelianism (Aquinas) to roman-ticism (Schleiermacher), liberalism (Harnack),and existentialism (Tillich, Bultrnann, andothers). There is no room here to cross swordswith a dozen apologists; in any case, dozens morewould remain.

The central question about Christianity con-cerns Jesus Christ. If he was Cod in a sense inwhich no other man has been God, then Christi-anity is right in some important sense, howeverChristendom may have failed. To decide whetherJesus was God in some such unique sense, aphilosopher cannot forbear to ask just what thisclaim might mean. If, for example, it docs notmean that Jesus of Nazareth knew everything andwas all-powerful, it is perplexing what is meant.But a large part of what most Christians meanis surely that Jesus was the best and wisest manof all time; and many Protestants mean no morethan that.

Millions of Christians agree on this claim and

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~ FAITH OF A HERETIC

back it up by citing Gospel passages they like;but different people pick different passages. Tosome, Jesus looks like St. Francis, to others likeJohn Calvin, and to many more the way a mannamed Hofmann painted him. Pierre van Paas-sen's Jesus is a Socialist and Fosdick's a liberal,while according to Reinhold Niebuhr Jesus'ethic coincides, not surprisingly, with Niebuhr's.To use a political term: almost everybody gerry-manders, carving an idealized self-portrait fromthe Gospels and much less attractive straw menfrom the literatures of other faiths. A great dealof theology is like a jigsaw puzzle: the verses ofScripture are the pieces, and the finished pictureis prescribed by each denomination, with a cer-tain latitude allowed. What makes the game sopointless is that not all pieces have to be used,and any piece that does not fit may be reshaped,provided one says first, "this means." That iscalled exegesis.

In The Literature of the Christian Movement,Morton Scott Enslin, one of the outstanding NewTestament scholars of our time, remarks that theJesus of the Fourth Gospel is really not veryattractive, and that if it were not for the otherthree Gospels and the fact that most readerscreate for themselves "a conflate," the Jesus ofSt. John would lose most of his charm. Surely,the same 'consideration applies to <Ill fourGospels.

EVASIVE ANSWERS

TO PLAIN QUESTIONS

THO SE who consider Jesus the best andwisest of men should reread the Gospels

and ponder at the very least these five points.First: Are they prepared to maintain their

claim regarding the Jesus of anyone of the fourGospels-and, if so, which? Or is it their pointthat the evidence warrants the assumption thatthe historical Jesus, however inadequately under-stood by the Evangelists, was a wiser and betterman than Socrates and Jeremiah, Isaiah and theBuddha, Lao-tze and Hillel?

Secondly: Although Jesus is widely consideredmankind's greatest moral teacher, the greatestChristians, not to speak of scholars, have neverbeen able to agree what his moral teachings were.Matthew, and he alone, reports that Jesus said:"Let your Yes be Yes, and your No, No.~' Butthe four Evangelists agree in ascribing to Jesusevasive and equivocal answers to plain questions,not only those of the high priest and Pilate; andquite generally the Jesus of the New Testamentavoids straightforward statements, preferring

parables and hyperboles. Some of the parablesare so ambiguous that different Evangelists, notto speak of later theologians, offer different in-terpretations. Nor have Christians ever been ableto agree on the import of the hyperboles of theSermon on the Mount. Luther, for example,taught that Christ's commandments were in-tended to teach man his utter incapacity fordoing good: man must throw himself on themercy of God, believing that Christ died for oursins. On concrete moral issues, Jesus can be, andhas been, cited on almost all sides. The Buddhaand the Hebrew prophets were not so equivocal.

Third: One of the few things about Jesus'moral teachings that seems fairly clear is that hewas not greatly concerned about social justice.This makes his ethic much less impressive thanthe prophets'.

Fourth: Albert Schweitzer has argued in con-siderable detail that this lack of concern wasdue to the fact that Jesus predicated his entiremessage on a false belief: namely, that the worldwas about to come to an end. If Schweitzer isright, as I think he is, Jesus was surely notthe wisest of men. And can we call him thegreatest moralist unless we accept his radicaldepreciation of this life and his belief in Heavenand Hell?

Finally, the Jesus of the New Testament be-lieved, and was not greatly bothered by his be-lief, that God would damn and torment the massof mankind in all eternity. According to allthree Synoptic Gospels, he actually reassured hisdisciples:

"If anyone will not receive you or listen toyour words, shake off the dust from your feet asyou leave that house or town. Truly, I say toyou, it shall be more tolerable on the day ofjudgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrhathan for that town."

This is no isolated dictum; the Sermon on -theMount, for example, is also punctuated bythreats of Hell.

Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin stressed Hell,but many Christian apologists today simplyignore all such passages. A few insist that in acouple of inter-testamentary apocalypses we findfar more detailed visions of Hell. They do notmention that these apocalypses would not beknown today if it had not been for the esteemin which the early Christians held them. For theJews rejected them while accepting the humaneteachings of men like Hillel and Akiba. RabbiAkiba, a contemporary of Paul and the Evangel-ists, taught that "only those who possess no gooddeeds at all will descend into the netherworld";

also that "the punishment of the wicked inGehinnom lasts twelve months."

Of course, Jesus also stressed love, citing-oragreeing with 'a Pharisee who cited-Moses. Butthis as well as the fact that he said some lovelythings and told some fine parables is hardlysufficient to establish the Christian claims abouthim: that much he has in common with Moses,Micah, and Hosea, with the Buddha, Confucius,and Lao-tze, to name a mere half-dozen teacherswho preceded him by a few centuries.

It might be countered that the story of Jesusis the best possible symbol of love. But is it?Consider the story the way it looks to people notcommitted to, and prejudiced in favor of,Christianity: God caused a virgin, betrothed toJoseph, to conceive His Own Son, and this Sonhad to be betrayed, crucified, and resurrected inorder that all those-and only those-migllt besaved who should both believe this story and bebaptized and cat and drink on regular occasionswhat they themselves believe to be the Ilesh andblood of this Son (or, in some denominations,merely the symbols of His flesh and blood);meanwhile, the rest of mankind suffer eternaltorment, and according to many Christian creedsand teachers, they were predestined for damna-tion by God Himself from the beginning.

One might choose to be a Christian in spiteof all this if one could intensely admire the greatChristians who came after Jesus. But Peter andPaul, Athanasius and Augustine, Luther andCalvin, seem far less admirable to me, for alltheir admitted virtues, than Hosea and Micah,Isaiah and Jeremiah, Hillel and Akiba; or theBuddha, Socrates, and Spinoza. Maimonides, un-like Aquinas whom he influenced, did not believein eternal damnation or that heretics should beexecuted. Some recent Protestant writers havebeen wonderfully forthright about Luther's andCalvin's shortcomings; but for candid portraitsof the saints one must on the whole turn to non-Catholic writers-with at least one notable ex-ception. In 1950, Malcolm Hay, a Catholic,published one of the most moving books of ourtime, The Foot at Pride, which is admirablyfrank about some of the most celebrated saints.

In an essay published in Germany in 1939-or rather in a book seized barely before publiea-tion by the Gestapo and destroyed except forabout half-a-dozen copies-Leo Baeck, probablythe greatest rabbi of our time, said somethingprofoundly relevant:

A good deal of church history is the historyof all the things which neither hurt nor en-

BY WALTER KAUFMANN ~

croached upon this piety, all the outrages andall the baseness which this piety was able totolerate with an assured and undisturbed souland an untroubled faith. And a spirit ischaracterized not only by what it does but,no less, by what it permits .... The Christianreligion, very much including Protestantism,has been able to maintain silence about somuch that it is difficult to say what has beenmore pernicious in the course of time: theintolerance which committed the wrongs or theindifference which beheld them unperturbed."

This thought may diminish even one's affec-tion for St. Francis, but not one's admiration forthe prophets.

LIMITS OFTHE HAPPY ENDING

THE world's other religions remain. If weapply the same criteria, only two issue a

real challenge to us, or at least to me: Judaismand Buddhism. I admire Genesis and Job, theBook of .Jonah and the Dhammapada far aboveany book in the New Testament. 'But popularBuddhism with its profuse idolatry, its relics, andits superstitions repels me, and I have reserva-tions even about the teachings of the Buddha. Iadmire much of his profound analysis of man'scondition: the world has no purpose; it is up tous to give our lives a purpose; and we cannotrely on any supernatural assistance. Life is fullof suffering, suffering is rooted in desire andattachment, and much desire and attachment arerooted in ignorance. By knowledge, especially ofthe Buddha's teachings, it is possible to developa pervasive detachment, not incompatible witha mild, comprehensive compassion-and to ceaseto suffer. But consider the Old Testament andSophocles, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, Shake-speare and Goethe: the price for the avoidanceof all suffering is too high, Suffering and sacrificecan be experienced as worthwhile: one may findbeauty in them and greatness through them.

Much of the appeal of Christianity is due tothe fact that it contains at least intimations-but really no more than that-of this tragicethos. But the story of Christ remains uncom-fortably similar to the saga of the boss's son whoworks very briefly in the shop, where he makesa great point of his home and is cruelly beatenby some .of his fellow workers, before he joins his

"The essay, "Romantic Religion," is included inBaeck's Judaism and Christianity, translated- with anintroductory essay, by Walter Kaufmann, Jewish Pub-lication Society, 1958.

38 F A I THO F A HER E TIC

father as co-chairman of the board and wreakshorrible revenge. This "happy" end makes mostof the Christian martyrs, too, un tragic figures.These observations may strike believers as-blasphemous, but they might do well to reflecton the manner in which they pass judgment onother religions, and there may be some point inconsidering how one's own religion must strikethose who don't accept it.

Probably the only great religion in whichgenuine self-sacrifice and tragedy have occupieda central place is Judaism, especially prior tothe introduction of belief in any after life. Mosesis the very incarnation of humane devotion,wearing himself out in the service of God andmen, expecting, and receiving, no reward what-ever, but finding his reward in his work. He asksGod to destroy him rather than his people andintercedes for them again and again. In theprophets, from Hosea to the songs of the suffer-ing servant, we find the same outlook.

Why, then, do I not accept Judaism? In viewof all the things I do not believe, I have no wishto observe the six-hundred-odd commandmentsand prohibitions. that define the traditionalJewish way of life, or to participate in religiousservices. With most so-called orthodox Jews Ihave much less in common than with all kindsof other people, Jews and Gentiles. ReformJudaism seems to me to involve compromise,conformism, and the wish to be innocuous. Tothat extent, it, too, stands opposed to the ethosof the prophets. And if a succession of great Jewsshould equal the boldness of the prophets, whorepudiated the ritual of their day, and go a stepfurther by also renouncing, and denouncing, allkinds of belief-would not this amount to givingup religion?

THE UNEXAMINED LIFE

W HAT remains if you give up the greatreligions? Many people think: only

Communism, Nazism, and immorality. But themorality of Socrates, Spinoza, and Hume com-pares favorably with Augustine'S, Luther's, andCalvin's. And the evil deeds of Communism andNazism are not due to their lack of belief but totheir false beliefs, even as the evil deeds of theCrusaders, Inquisitors, and witch hunters, andLuther's exhortation to burn synagogues andCalvin's decision to burn Servetus, were due totheir false beliefs. Christianity, like Islam, hascaused more wars than it has prevented; and theMiddle Ages, when Europe was Christian, werenot a period of peace and good will among men.

Does it make sense that those who refuse to lettheir Yes be Yes and their No, No-those whorefuse to reject false beliefs, those who wouldrather stretch them and equivocate-should havea monopoly on being moral?

Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in themillennium. Few things about the strategy ofcontemporary apologists are more repellent thantheir frequent recourse to spurious alternatives.The lesser lights inform us that the alternativeto Christianity is materialism, thus showing howlittle they have read, while the greater lights talkas if the alternative were bound to be a shallowand inane optimism. I don't believe that manwill turn this earth into a bed of roses eitherwith the aid of God or without it. Nor does lifeamong the roses strike me as a dream from whichone would not care to wake up after a veryshort time.

Some evils and some kinds of suffering can beabolished, but not all sulfering can be elimi-nated; and the beauty, goodness, and greatnessthat redeem life on earth are inseparable fromsuffering. Nietzsche once said: "If you have anenemy, do not requite him evil with good, forthat would put him to shame. Rather prove thathe did you some good." If life hurts you, themanly thing is neither to whine nor to feelmartyred, but to prove that it did you some good.

No one way is the best way of life for all. Tome the Apology of Socrates, as immortalized byPlato in less than thirty pages, presents a chal-lenge from which I cannot, and have no wish to,get away. Here is part of Socrates' answer to thecharges of impiety and corruption of the Athe-nian youth, on which he was convicted and putto death:

I am better off than he is-for he knowsnothing but thinks he knows, while I neitherknow nor think I know. . . . If you say tome, ... you shall be let off, but upon onecondition, that you are not to inquire . . .in this way any more, and that if you arecaught doing so again you shall die-if thiswas the condition on which you let me go, Ishould reply: ... while I have life andstrength I shall never cease from the practiceand teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyonewhom I meet. . . . Are you not ashamed ofheaping up the greatest amount of money andhonor and reputation, and caring so littleabout wisdom and truth? ... The unexaminedlife is not worth living.. . . If you supposethat there is no consciousness, but a sleep likethe sleep of him that is undisturbed even bydreams, death will be an unspeakable gain ....Eternity is then only a single night.

It would be folly to wish to foist this outlookon everybody. Professors of philosophy discou~-age and fail a large percentage even of theirgraduate students and are assuredly not. eager toturn all men into philosophers. In philosophy,as in religion, teaching usually involves a loss ofdimension; and the Socratic fusion of philosophyand life, critical acumen and passion, laughterand tragic stature is almost unique.

One need not believe in Pallas Athena, thevirgin goddess, to be overwhelmed by the Par-thenon. Similarly, a man who rejects all dogmas,all theologies, and all religious formulations ofbeliefs may still find Genesis the sublime bookpa« excellence. Experiences ann aspirations ofwhich intimations may be found in Plato, Nietz-sche, and Spinoza have found their most evoca-tive expression in some sacred books. Sinr.e theRenaissance, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart,and a host of uthers have shown that this re-ligious dimension can be experienced and com-municated apart from any religious context. Butthat is no reason for closing my heart to Job'scry" or to Jeremiah's, or to the Second Isaiah. Ido' not read them as mere literature; rather, Iread Sophocles and Shakespeare with all my be-ing, too. . . .

Moreover, I am so far quite unable to Justifyone of my central convictions: that, even if itwere possible to make all men happy hy il.noperation or a drug that would stUltI~y t?elrdevelopment, this would somehow be an ImplO~scrime. This conviction is ultimately rooted Inthe Mosaic challenge: "You shall be holy; forI the Lord yuur Gud am holy." .

To communicate to others some feeling forman's religious quest, to arouse an aspirationin them which nothing but death can quell, andto develop their cr itical powers-that is infinitelymore important to me than persuading anybodythat Shakespeare was right when he wrote theselines:

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve:And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a 'rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.

BY WALTER KAUFMANN ss

Dictionary for ModernGeographers

Backward area: an area more backwardthan other backward areas.

Under-developed area: a country tooproud to admit that it is backward.but not too proud to beg.

Vital sector of the free world perimeter:a country too proud to beg, but nottoo humble to blackmail.

-The Economist, London.

I do not believe in any after life any more thanthe prophets did, but I don't mind ljving in aworld in which people have different beliefs.Diversity helps to prevent stagnation and smug-ness; and a teacher should acquaint his studentswith diversity and prize careful criticism farabove agreement. His noblest duty is to leadothers to think for themselves.

Oddly, millions believe that lack of belief inGod, Christ, and Hell leads to inhumanity andcruelty while those who have these heliefs havea monopoly on charity-and that people like my-self will pay [or their lack of belief by sufferingin all eternity. I do not believe that anyborlywill suffer after death nor do I wish it.

Some scientists tell us that in our own galaxyalone there are probably hundreds of thousandsof planets with living beings on them, more orless like those on the earth, and that there areabout 100 million galaxies within the range ofour telescopes. Man seems to play a very in-significant part in the universe, and my part issurely negligible. The question confronting meis not, except perhaps in idle moments, what partmight be more amusing, but what I wish to makeof my part. AmI what I want to do and wouldadvise others to do is to make the most of it: putinto it all you have got, and live and, if possible,die with some measure of nobility.

Coming Articles

The other contributors to this series includePhilip Scharper, Arthur Cohen, and William W.Bartley Ill, who will write, resp~ctively, onCatholic, Jewish, and Protestant beliej.

Harper's Magazine, February 195()