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your computer.”
    “Then you’re giving me the green light on my project?”
    “Not at all. It’s not for me to give you a light of any color. If you want to apply for a special research grant from this school—which is very poorly endowed, I should state, the clergy not being a wealthy class of alumni and already having many claims on their charity—if you want to apply, I repeat, they have all the appropriate forms in the front offices downstairs. The head of the Grants Committee is a very nice bland man, I can tell you, called Jesse Closson. For myself, I must confess I find your whole idea aesthetically and ethically repulsive. Aesthetically because it describes a God Who lets Himself be intellectually trapped, and ethically because it eliminates faith from religion, it takes away our freedom tobelieve or doubt. A God you could prove makes the whole thing immensely, oh, un in teresting. Pat. Whatever else God may be, He shouldn’t be pat.”
    “But, sir, think of the comfort to all those who want to believe but don’t dare, because they’ve been intellectually intimidated. Think of the reassurance to all those in trouble or in pain and wanting to pray.”
    I said, “I doubt that reason ever kept anybody desperate enough from doing just what he wanted along those lines.”
    This startled him. His brows and lids lifted and his eyes lightened like tiny rooms where the shades have been rattlingly raised. “Begging your pardon, but I’m not sure that’s true. I think people are very conscientious about trying to be up-to-date—look at all the science news in the papers, for instance, and these shows about mimetic insects on public television. You mentioned faith, and removing it and so on, but remember we’re not trying to prove anything about the Incarnation, or the Trinity—a Hindu could be just as happy with this news as a Christian; in fact, Fred Hoyle’s righthand man is a Sinhalese, Chandra Wickramasinghe. There’s still lots of room for faith and different modes of worship. I mean, all we’ve got here is the absolute basics—the bottom line, as it were. The individual still has to fill in the specifics. There would still have to be all these matters of faith. But you’ve got to remember that faith wasn’t meant to be an everlasting virtue, just a kind of holding action until Christ came back and declared the Kingdom and everything came clear. Paul and those others didn’t expect the world to last past their lifetimes.”
    “There has been, of course, some question on that, on exactly what the disciples expected. As well as on exactly what they saw. But I really must go to my class, Mr. Kohler. I will say …”
    He jumped at the gap, the glimmer of light. “Yessir?”
    “I probably shouldn’t say anything,” I allowed, and wondered, indeed, why I was seeking collusion, adopting a toadying, seductive tone with this pale and presuming young man, “but it would be a relief, as far as I’m concerned, to underwrite something around here other than black or feminist studies. Or these pathetic papers on ‘street religion,’ which amounts to gypsy fortunetelling and superstitions about numbers on license plates and subway cars. If you do go ahead with the application, you can say on it you talked with me and I found your ideas and facts … what shall we say—?”
    “Compelling?”
    “Amusing.”
    I pulled my notes toward me and stood, looking down at them. Marcion a more radical Paul Galatians. Circumcision. Judaism legalistic, exclusivist. Marcion’s Christology Docetic: dokein, decent . What did they mean? I had a dizzying, dreamlike sensation of total ignorance, like a foreign traveller who has forgotten the local language.
    “All I’d ask for would be something to cover my time.” The young man was rising and hurrying the words. “I’d use the computers over at the science buildings, on the sly. How can I phrase that in the application?”
    “Just say you’re robbing the