FAITH ENACTED AS HISTORY: Essays in Biblical Theology

Will Herberg, author of Judaism and Modern Man and Protestant-Catholic-Jew and recently retired professor of philosophy and culture at Drew, is a committed Jew who has taught Christians the import of their faith, a biblical theologian who has commented trenchantly on contemporary affairs, and a prophetic radical who has been a harbinger of nco-conservatism. Bernhard Anderson, with Herberg's cooperation, has collected essays, dating from 1943 to 1972, that exhibit the unique range of his thinking and concerns. Much influenced by Franz Rosenzweig and Reinhold Niebuhr, he is a champion of biblical faith, a faith rooted in historical events and to be enacted in the concrete historical present. From this solid vantage he can see the substantial unity of Judaism and Christianity and their linked but distinct vocations; he can discern the challenge posed by the secularization of Christian faith that American civil religion and Marxism represent; and he can affirm the radical relativity of all political programs and movements. Some pieces are quite academic, but most are very accessible and still intellectually fresh.