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The Convert. In many U.S. seminaries, linguistic analysis is still treated as a foe of faith, although there is a growing band of theologians who strongly disagree. One young religious thinker converted to this new method is Paul van Buren of Texas' Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, whose recent The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (Macmillan; $4.95) is a radical and controversial effort to translate a major theological issue into language that would pass the scrutiny of the philosophical analysts.
Van Buren's study focuses on the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) that Jesus was both man and the divine Son of God. Since secular-minded modern man does not understand or accept the notion of "divine," he argues, the church must find a logical but nonsupernatural equivalent of what the Chalcedonian Fathers were trying to express. Van Buren suggests that one persuasive way of referring to Jesus today is as a "remarkably free man." This description capitalizes on an adjective that is a touchstone of contemporary aspirations, but it concurs with the Gospel testimony. The Evangelists constantly refer to the personal authority of Jesus' teaching, his freedom from claims made upon him by parents and brethren, his departure from rabbinical teaching and disregard of the Jewish law.
After the Resurrection, the Apostles proclaimed Jesus the man as the Risen Lord and the Son of God. These words, says van Buren, were an attempt to describe their new understanding of Jesus in language appropriate to an age that saw God in every tree. In a technical term used by some linguistic analysts, the Apostles' expression of this faith was a blik—a statement that is not subject to empirical proof but has its own validity as an individual's interpretation of existence.
"Contagious" Freedom. How should the Christian church translate the Easter blik into contemporary language? Van Buren suggests that after the Resurrection the Disciples suddenly possessed some of the unique and "contagious" freedom that Jesus had. "In telling the story of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, they told it as the story of the free man who had set them free. This was the story which they proclaimed as the Gospel for all men." Down through history, millions of others have been called by faith in Christ—which means, in van Buren's translation: "He who says, 'Jesus is Lord,' says that Jesus' freedom has been contagious and has become the criterion for his life, public and private."