Miller Reaffirms Goals of Faith

In a world threatened by nuclear destruction, what can I believe? Even "if this earth is blackened to a dry cinder by our massive violence and blinding hate, and if no sign of God appears anywhere, then there still remains in man something that would prefer to face disaster with dignity."

Faith retains its meaning in "this terrible world," Samuel H. Miller, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, asserts in the Dec. 5 issue of Look. "Given our world and our experience," it is still sensible to believe in God; in the decency and dignity of man; in the future as a fitting world for our children.

A New Man Needed

"Puzzled by this life, by its heights and depths, by its inexplicable woes and its exquisite ecstasy, by all its contradictions and human embarasment, . . . faith acts affirmatively." We can believe that man will change; that he can transcend the limits imposed on him by the three types of consciousness in Western civilization--Christian, Renaissance, and bourgeois man.

"The revolutionary changes that have been wrought in our world demand a new kind of man. The Christian man must learn to perceive the sanctity of the natural world, and thus redeem the aims of science; the Renaissance man must be broadened to breach the limitations of his individualism; the bourgeois man must be liberated from his false security of things and status."

"Terror Man-Made"

The new man must be "a human being of such magnitude as to pull the mad chaos of our world into some kind of new shape--to put the impress of a larger spirit on it, so men may live undaunted by that terror that is man-made. For the terrible crises we face may be nothing less than God's call to us to reach a new level of our humanity."