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HRN's analysis of faith, or of the "forms of human faith," and thus of the "conflict of faiths," is his functional equivalent of the existentialist analysis that Bultmann developed on the basis of his appropriation of Heidegger. As such, it is an effort to create a formal terminology/conceptuality in which the issues between anyone any one faith, or form of human faith, and any other can be understandably and fairly formulated (cf. 32).

In many ways, HRN's analysis shows the same conern concern as Bultmann's with the "personal" (or "existential"), as distinct from the "objective." In this respect, especially, HRN's analysis could be said to show signs of a distinctively Herrmannian influence in a way not unlike Bultmann's does.

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12 ff. – What HRN says here about "theos," namely that "[i]t is the name for that objective being, that other-than-the-self, which men have before them as they believe rather than as they see, hear, feel, or even as they reason," indicates that he recognizes a use for "God," even as for "faith in God," other than the use distinctive of radical monotheism, as one form of human faith distinct from and opposed to the two other forms. (Indeed, what he says evidently parallels, or even converges with, my statement that "the primary use or function of 'God' is to refer to the objective ground in reality itself of our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence," or that "'God' is the very meaning of 'reality' when this word is defined in terms of our basic confidence in the significance of life and the kind of questions and answers [that] such confidence makes possible" [RG: 37,39].) This is confirmed, then, in the next sentence when HRN says, "this objective reality – God reality—God or the gods – is gods—is acknowledged or known in faith." In other words, the "God" who is acknowledged or known in faith can be conceived or understood as either "God" (in the sense of radical monotheism) or "the gods" (in the sense of polytheism and henotheism respectively). This can only mean that the first use of "God" is different from the second in being merely "heuristic" (or "self-instructive") rather than "determinate," and that the second, determinate use is the use distinctive of radical monotheism, as distinct from both polytheism and honeotheism, which, in different ways, have to do preciseIy precisely with "the gods" in the determinate sense of these words. How this ambiguity of "God" arises is clarified when HRN goes on to develop the analogy between "faith and God" and "sense experience and physical reality." Just as "reason forms and interpets interprets sense experience," so "reason permeates the activity of faith," in that "it organizes, compares, reflects, criticizes, and develops hypotheses in the midst of believing" (13). Thus, while faith itself and as such is one of "other nonrational activities of men," "reason is present in this faith. . . . faith reasons and faith doubts in its reasoning. It doubts some beliefs about God and about men and seeks surer beliefs" (15, 14). (This evidently parallels, if it does not converge with, my allowance that, although "to question whether the word 'God' as here analyzed refers to anything objectively real is not . . . a sensible inquiry," "[w]e may indeed inquire how the ground of our confidence is most appropriately understood or conceived and whether any among the historical religions is justified in claiming to be its decisive representation or revelation" [RG: 39].) The difficulty with HRN's analysis, however, is that he moves back and forth between heuristic and determinate uses of "God," and of "faith in God," without indicating that he is doing so by making the necessary distinctions between them. Thus, while what he says on p. 12 can only be understood as using "God" heuristically, what he says about theology in the last paragraph of the section (pp. 15 f.) almost certainly requires "God," and "faith in God," to be understood in the determinate senses distinctive of radical monotheism. And yet he gives no indication whatever that he intends the word in more than a single sense.

14 f. – What HRN says here about "the dual task of theology" evidently parallels what I say about theology as both critical interpretation (and thus historical theology), on the one hand, and as critical validation (and thus systematic as well as practical theology), on the other. What could "disciplined development of the reasoning that permeates faith" be, if not precisely critical interpretation of witness as the primary expression of faith, or as the expression of faith on the primary level of living understandingly, and hence reasoningly? And what is the "critique of faith," or "the criticism of faith, not as a subjective attitude or activity only but in relation to its objects," if not precisely critical validation of the claims to validity that the witness of faith makes or implies? – In point of fact, the disciplined development of the reasoning that permeates faith, if hardly also the critique of faith, could be a matter of Christian teaching, as distinct from Christian theology. Another defect of HRN's analysis is that he says nothing to clarify this important distinction.

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15 – Here is only one of many passages where HRN's insistence that "theology . . . must always participate in the activity of faith" is insufficiently nuanced to be acceptable. For all he says to the contrary, the faith in which theology, or the theologian, has to participate is the particular faith, or form of faith, of whose reasoning theology is said to be at once the disciplined development and the critique. But his own analogy of the literary critic, according to which the critic must live, not in the same vision as the poet's, but only "in the same world of values in which the poet lives," suggests that there is and must be a difference between the faithin which theology must participate and the (particular) faith on which theology is the critical reflection, or of which it is the disciplined development and critique. In my terms, the faith in which the theologian must participate is the "basic faith" in the meaning of life presupposed by the question of religion, and thus by every particular faith, or form of faith, while the faith on which theology is the critical reflection is the faith expressed by this particular religion or that, as well as by all of the other forms of praxis and culture explicitly mediated by this or that particular religion. Cf. HRN's own use of the phrases, "all accepted faiths in life's meaning" (18) and "specific loyalties and systems of valuation" (23) with his reference to "the apparently universal human necessity of faith and of the inescapability of its gods, not as supernatural beings but as value-centers and objects of devotion" (23). The faith that is universally necessary is evidently distinct from all particular faiths, or forms of faith, in life's meaning and all specific loyalties and systems of valuation. Not surprisingly, then, HRN can speak of "the forms of human faith" as themselves "faiths," and also speak indifferently of his concern as an analysis of the conflict of faiths or as an inquiry into the forms of faith (II11, 24). 

16 – If, in places such as this, HRN claims only that faith is "apparently"universal or necessary (d. 23), in others, he asserts much more unqualifiedly that to be human is to live by faith (e.g., 22, 24 f., 28, 38, 117, 118).

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27 – HRN's use of the phrase, "one among many," here calls to mind Whitehead's use of the same phrase, or, more accurately, the similar phrase,"one among the many." Considering that HRN also speaks of "One beyond all the many," or, even more tellingly, "the One beyond the many, in whom the [sic] many are one" (24, 16), one may feel confident that he, in his way, shared Whitehead's recognition that "there are two sense of the one – namely, the sense of the one which is all, and the sense of the one among the many."

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33 – Although HRN is quite clear that "the realm of being" is the "cause" of "the principle of being," he nowhere clarifies how this can be the case. How can the realm be "its cause," i.e., the principle of being's cause? This question becomes the more troubling when HRN subsequently speaks of "the cause," and thus the "faith loyalty" that are characteristic of radical monotheism as simply "the realm of being," and thus loyalty to this realm (37, 38, 40, 41, 42). Indeed, he more and more comes to speak of faith as "confidence in the One" and as "loyalty [not to the One, but only] to the universe of being" (41; cf. 40). Significantly, he says that "[t]he counterpart . . . of universal faith assurance" is "universal loyalty," not "universal faith loyalty." And on p. 35, he says that "for faith the kingdom of God is both the rule that is trusted and the realm to which loyalty is given," the second being identified with "the universe of being." That the many participate in the One and derive their being as well as their value or worth therefrom is clear enough. Less clear is that, or, at any rate, how, the One participates in the many and derives its being as well as its value or worth – its worth—its de facto actuality, although not its existence as such – from them.

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