The Christian Future

In his 1946 preface, Rosenstock-Huessy writes:

“I had two classes of readers before me when I wrote: one the free fighters, men and women between twenty and thirty who struggle with the spirit in the form of the spirit of their own age and time. To them their generation is a secret society, and it has incommunicable tastes, enthusiasms and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity. The other class contains the men who have experienced the spirit as the great translator from age to age because they themselves have been drafted for this supreme service.

“The three men to whom this book is dedicated [Carl Muth, J.C. Oldham, and Ambrose Vernon] belong to this group. The dedication of this book is part of its ambitious aim. All these men have retranslated the forms of the spirit, for their own Church and day. They have strengthened my faith. In them I have been able to recognize the life-giving power of the Church’s spirit.

“The book, however, which I am allowed to inscribe with their names, is a kind of apology for my different approach to the same eternal problem. For it tries to present the difficulties of a new era and of a new generation: of the generation who showed their faith by becoming soldiers of war. The crux of my life and of the life of the young has been the same: to break the impasse between the tradition of the Holy Ghost and the workings of the spirit of the times in the courage and faith of simple soldiers. The soldier in an army has faith in some spirit. How is this related to the faith in the Holy Spirit, of the Christian tradition?”

Harper Torchbook, 1966. Paperback, 248 pages.