In our generation there is danger and hope — danger that these noncognitive accouterments will lose their
aesthetic harmony and hypnotic power when integrated with the basic prehensions of science, and be reverted into impotent and empty symbols, jarring, ugly, and without force in final satisfactions: hope that the power of Jesus as lure will reassert itself in an
aesthetic context devoid of supernaturalism, a context
such that (the language now picks up echoes of van Buren) the vision of Jesus, the free man, free from authority, free from fear, «free to give himself to others, whoever they were «1 —
such that this vision in its earthly, human purity will lure our aims to a harmonious concrescence, integrating scientific insight and moral vision and producing a modern, intensely fulfilling human satisfaction.
It is because I share with Kushner (and Ricoeur) the conviction that any theodicy based on the «ethical vision» (
such as those of punishment, pedagogy and universal
harmony) is inadequate that I have suggested we experiment with an
aesthetic vision of the cosmos.