Adam Begley Quote
Barth was possibly the less efficacious of the two remedies. A bracingly stringent Calvinist, he did supply Updike with one of the enduring tenets of his personal creed (the idea that God is Wholly Other: We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us), and he did become, in the sixties, Updike’s favorite theologian (Ipswich belonged to Barth)—but as Barth himself insisted, theology cannot protect faith from doubt. For Updike, it was one buttress in a system of reinforcements necessary to sustain belief.
Adam Begley
Barth was possibly the less efficacious of the two remedies. A bracingly stringent Calvinist, he did supply Updike with one of the enduring tenets of his personal creed (the idea that God is Wholly Other: We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us), and he did become, in the sixties, Updike’s favorite theologian (Ipswich belonged to Barth)—but as Barth himself insisted, theology cannot protect faith from doubt. For Updike, it was one buttress in a system of reinforcements necessary to sustain belief.