And yet this is exactly the risk we run when we assume, as we too often do, that we can continue to preach the gospel in a form that makes it seem incredible and irrelevant to cultured men. Until we translate this gospel into a language that enlightened men today can understand, we are depriving ourselves of the very resources on which the continued success of our witness most certainly depends.

In arguing in this way, we are obviously taking for granted that a demythologized restatement of the kerygma can be achieved; and that we firmly believe this will presently become evident when we set forth reasons to justify such a conviction. But the main point here is that even if such a restatement were not possible, the demand to demythologize the kerygma would still be unavoidable.

This is what we mean when we say this demand must be accepted without condition. If to be a Christian means to say yes where I otherwise say no, or where I do not have the right to say anything at all, then my only choice is to refuse to be a Christian. Expressed differently: if the price for becoming a faithful follower of Jesus Christ is some form of self-destruction, whether of the body or of the mind -- sacrificium corporis, sacrificium intellectus -- then there is no alternative but that the price remain unpaid.

This must be stressed because it is absolutely essential to the argument of this concluding chapter. Modern man, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer has told us, has ``come of age''; and though this process by no means represents an unambiguous gain and is, in fact, marked by the estrangement from the depths that seems to be the cost of human maturation, it is still a positive step forward; and those of us who so richly benefit from it should be the last to despise it. In any event, it is an irreversible step, and if we are at all honest with ourselves, we will know we have no other alternative than to live in the world in which God has seen fit to place us.