Waldo Beach - "It All Depends" (November 13, 1960)

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-	On the campus calendar for this coming week,	0:21
	I noted the various meetings of a university symposium	0:26
	on post-Christian man.	0:31
	The title is provocative and intentionally debatable.	0:35
	The purpose of the symposium is to focus	0:43
	the attention of our community on some large questions,	0:47
	which lurk in every corner of our enterprise.	0:52
	When some thing like this comes along,	0:59
	it sounds like another extracurricular thing,	1:02
	more meetings to go to maybe if I have time.	1:07
	The common reaction of many Duke students	1:14
	may be a wistful shrug.	1:16
	It's good to have these sessions	1:20
	for those who like that sort of thing,	1:24
	or it may be an impatient shrug of scorn.	1:28
	What good does it do to have a bunch of eggheads debating	1:34
	about something that doesn't really make any difference?	1:37
	You never decide anything or get anywhere,	1:41
	you go round and round and come out the same door you go in.	1:45
	Post Christian man.	1:52
	Sorry, I didn't even have a chance to meet Christian man.	1:55
	I'll have to let this one go.	1:59
	Anyway, I've got four tough quizzes	2:03
	and a big weekend coming up.	2:05
	So we huddle down in our nest of busyness	2:08
	and never look over the edge down into space.	2:12
	We run from the large questions that haunt us	2:18
	by intense preoccupation with busy work,	2:22
	the mechanics of living, laundry, committees,	2:26
	small talk, cosmetology.	2:32
	The science of makeup seems more crucial than cosmology,	2:38
	the theory of the universe.	2:43
	The rat race is frantic, generally cheerful	2:47
	but it's likely to be more an escape from	2:53
	than an encounter with reality.	2:56
	The theme I would like to propose	3:01
	in response to this reaction	3:03
	is suggested by the title phrase, it all depends.	3:06
	For there are three senses	3:13
	in which this familiar catchphrase holds true.	3:15
	And might become a way of phrasing the meaning	3:21
	of the themes of this week's symposium coming up.	3:24
	The first sense in which this is true,	3:31
	is that our whole educational enterprise	3:35
	depends on the answers we give to the great questions.	3:38
	Far from being an extracurricular activity,	3:46
	or the monopoly of the bearded clique	3:52
	of those who major in religion or philosophy.	3:55
	The great questions, who am I at the core?	4:00
	What am I here for?	4:05
	How will we all wind up?	4:07
	What is finally sacred in the universe?	4:10
	Is there a rhyme or reason within this unrhyme and unreason?	4:14
	What is the one in the many?	4:21
	These questions are encountered at every turn.	4:23
	They rush onto us not only at life's tragic extremities	4:28
	in a sudden death in the family,	4:36
	or when we are surprised from behind by joy.	4:40
	But they lurk in the every day and the common place too,	4:45
	in between the lines of the text	4:51
	in economics or art history.	4:54
	In the decisions about dates and courses, and activities.	4:58
	We meet them especially at the boundaries of fields	5:05
	and disciplines.	5:08
	That is where one field leaves off and another one begins.	5:09
	They show up as soon as you turn a subject over	5:15
	from its fact side or data side,	5:19
	to its value side or meaning side.	5:24
	For the underside question of the meaning	5:29
	of the particular truth at hand,	5:32
	take one swiftly to the ultimate question	5:36
	of man's nature and destiny.	5:38
	Now, sure enough, they can't be answered	5:43
	with any IBM accuracy or certainty.	5:47
	At best we can suppose and wonder and doubt and look again	5:53
	and go on our best hunches.	6:00
	Even our surest answers to the big questions	6:05
	are fragile and unsteady.	6:08
	But the provisional answers we find to these things	6:14
	provide us with what synoptic wisdom we have	6:20
	within all the piles of information we learn	6:25
	for quizzes and forget.	6:28
	The residue of wisdom is what we really take away.	6:31
	The motivation or staying power to study, to keep at it,	6:39
	is derived from the answers we instinctively make	6:44
	to the great questions.	6:51
	Hidden in the little decision about going to the library,	6:53
	or just fooling around,	6:59
	between raising the sharp question in class	7:02
	or hiding in the safety of the textbook answer.	7:05
	The decision between accuracy or getting by on a lab report.	7:11
	The decision between the right touch of mascara	7:20
	or the right touch of consideration,	7:24
	between one course, one date, one major versus another.	7:28
	These immediate hard questions about priorities	7:34
	in our campus economy of scarcity are made	7:38
	whether we know it or not out of loyalty	7:43
	to the answers we give to the large and final questions.	7:46
	So all our life at this university,	7:52
	turns on the answers we give to the issue, who is man?	7:57
	What is he here for?	8:04
	The question of our existence	8:07
	depends on the question of our essence.	8:10
	If we can say then that the questions are unavoidable	8:16
	and that they are significant,	8:21
	and that to attend to them is indeed a major function	8:23
	of a university education.	8:27
	Then there's a second sense of our title,	8:31
	a way in which the questions are disposed off neatly	8:37
	and with quick dispatch.	8:43
	It all depends on how you look at it.	8:46
	Next to the campus catch phrases and passwords,	8:52
	like, I'll see you or take it easy, or he snows me.	8:57
	This one, it all depends on how you look at it.	9:06
	The last part is understood without being spoken.	9:15
	This one is part of our common currency	9:19
	and it's apparently the first and last word to be said	9:22
	on everything from the weather to God.	9:25
	There's a kind of pilgrimage of faith	9:30
	that most students go through.	9:32
	A freshman may arrive with some single, simple,	9:37
	unexamined program of absolutes about his universe,	9:41
	homegrown and all neatly tied up.	9:47
	This is my Father's world, God looks after us from heaven.	9:51
	Be good, and you'll be happy.	9:57
	A man has a soul.	10:00
	He should love everybody, and that means being nice.	10:03
	He gets an education to adjust to his destiny,	10:07
	which is happiness in suburbia.	10:12
	(audience laughs)	10:15
	Where he will raise his happy children,	10:18
	maybe his happy grandchildren, and then go on to heaven.	10:22
	Which is a kind of subdivision of suburbia in excelsis.	10:28
	(audience laughs)	10:32
	But he is not around here very long	10:39
	before the freshman gets all shook up.	10:40
	And by the time of sophomore year,	10:45
	everything that was neatly tied up has come loose.	10:48
	The most devastating realization that shakes anybody up	10:55
	and seems to destroy all the security of cherished beliefs,	10:59
	is the realization of relativity.	11:04
	The truth of any matter is not simply and surely out there,	11:08
	but it's in how you look at it.	11:15
	It's in the angle of vision.	11:18
	The old fable of the blind man and the elephant	11:22
	is repeated in the daily process of education.	11:24
	And in your mornings run from economics to biology,	11:28
	to psychology, to English literature.	11:31
	What is the ultimate stuff of the universe?	11:34
	What is man, his core, his soul?	11:38
	It all depends on what class I'm in at the moment.	11:44
	In anatomy, my soul turns out to be	11:49
	a kind of spasm of my diaphragm, like a silent hiccup.	11:52
	In economics, I'm homoeconomicus, an acquisitive animal.	12:00
	In psychology, I'm a nexus	12:08
	of telephone switch board connections of axons and neurons.	12:11
	In philosophy class, I'm a thinking read,	12:18
	more or less if it's an eight o'clock class,	12:23
	rather less than more.	12:25
	But alas, it's all a relative matter,	12:32
	for the truth about man lies in the point of view.	12:34
	And our indefinite points of view	12:39
	and no one of them can claim finality.	12:42
	There are then as many men, as there are points of view.	12:46
	Or the question of what is good, what is right and wrong,	12:53
	which seems so simple and unambiguous,	12:58
	now evaporates, it erodes with relativism.	13:02
	Morality looks differently depending on where and when,	13:09
	and with whom I am.	13:14
	Saturday night or Sunday morning, in the lab, the gym,	13:17
	in chapel, in the union.	13:24
	Moral truth is not out there sure and so,	13:27
	it all depends on whom I'm talking to,	13:34
	which face in the crowd I want to please,	13:38
	what my date expects.	13:41
	It depends on the time of day, so it goes.	13:44
	The cold wind of relativism	13:51
	blasts all my pretty absolutes out of the window,	13:53
	and reduces my final convictions to partial prejudices,	13:57
	which I realize now are derived from my temperaments,	14:03
	my hormones, my family background, my region, my fraternity.	14:08
	I suspect that the gray sickness known as sophomoritis,	14:18
	is very closely connected with this relativism.	14:25
	For the attempt to reorganize	14:30
	the furniture of one's house of faith,	14:32
	to reconstruct the whole thing	14:36
	on the basis of a master principle.	14:38
	It all depends on how you look at it,	14:42
	is largely shattering and demoralizing experience.	14:46
	It may end you in a kind of slough of despond,	14:53
	extending right through senior year or beyond.	14:58
	The pilgrimage of faith need not end here, however,	15:07
	there's a third sense to the phrase, it all depends,	15:14
	which lies the other side of relativism.	15:20
	Once convinced by the realization	15:26
	that our view of truth is refracted by our angle of vision,	15:30
	and that there are many angles of vision.	15:38
	Once we are bitten by relativism,	15:43
	we can never go back to the simple, absolutes,	15:48
	and again, sing the songs of innocence.	15:53
	But while relativism is slick and shrewd	15:58
	and it's a devastating gambit	16:04
	in the intellectual game of one upmanship,	16:06
	it does not seem finally to satisfy the serious seeker.	16:11
	And in dealing with the great questions,	16:17
	one can push beyond the relative	16:19
	to a deeper insight and a more sophisticated assurance.	16:22
	Now I must grant that the truths I hold	16:30
	are always refracted and partial,	16:34
	always limited and conditioned by my angle of vision.	16:38
	But this does not mean per se,	16:46
	that I don't get some glimmer of truth.	16:48
	I must see everything from a point of view,	16:53
	but I may see something more than my point of view.	16:57
	I see through a glass darkly, but it's not just a mirror	17:03
	in which I see just my own eyes.	17:10
	If I'm aware of the refraction,	17:14
	I can make out something objectively there,	17:18
	something to solve, something more universal and inclusive	17:21
	than my partial and prejudiced images of it.	17:27
	It's not all a relative matter.	17:31
	What looms up beyond relativism	17:37
	is the realization that it all depends in a third sense,	17:42
	the whole booming, buzzing confusion hangs on something.	17:47
	It is contingent, it is derived.	17:55
	It depends on something other than itself.	17:59
	No matter where you start in your search	18:04
	for the answer to the big questions,	18:07
	just a question, what is man?	18:11
	You're driven sooner or later to ask,	18:15
	what does his nature derive from?	18:17
	Of what fire is his humanity the spark?	18:22
	In what image is he created?	18:28
	If we persist in the question, who am I?	18:34
	This weird featherless, vapid, uttering guttural noises	18:38
	with my larynx.	18:45
	And who are you sitting there?	18:48
	A bag of bones yet haunted by a summons	18:52
	from beyond the boundary of time,	18:58
	and moved by a vision of the holy?	19:01
	Final answer to that question	19:08
	is to be made in terms of that	19:10
	in whose image man is conceived.	19:11
	In the image of dust or the image of the divine.	19:17
	Robert Frost's lines are apropo.	19:25
	"Our worship humor, conscientiousness	19:32
	"went long since to the dogs under the table,	19:36
	"and served us right	19:41
	"for having instituted downward comparisons.	19:42
	"As long on earth as our comparisons were stoutly upward	19:48
	"with God's and angels, we were men at least,	19:53
	"but little lower than the God's and angels.	19:58
	"But once comparisons were yielded downward,	20:02
	"once we began to see our images reflected in the mud	20:07
	"and even dust, it was disillusion upon disillusion.	20:11
	"We were lost piecemeal to the animals	20:16
	"like people thrown out to delay the wolves."	20:19
	Thus thrust the image of dust or the image of the divine.	20:27
	The first and last affirmation of the Christian faith	20:39
	is that the whole universe and man within it,	20:43
	hangs on the power of a transcendent personal faithful will.	20:48
	It all depends on God.	20:57
	This is an affirmation of faith	21:02
	which includes and absorbs the obvious truth of relativism.	21:05
	That particular truths are colored	21:12
	by the glasses of the viewer.	21:16
	But this faith pushes beyonds	21:19
	to the claim that there is an absolute, a universal,	21:21
	which is assumed and sought	21:26
	even in our acknowledgement of relativity.	21:28
	For even the idea of relativity makes sense	21:34
	only as we infer the presence of an absolute,	21:40
	against which the relative is known as relative.	21:45
	Just as the word slant makes sense	21:51
	only if we assume that there is something straight.	21:55
	The final question of our existence	22:01
	is that of ultimate dependence.	22:03
	All the lesser questions resolve themselves into this one,	22:07
	the final option which faith confronts.	22:12
	It all hangs on God, or it all rests on nothing.	22:17
	There is either a yes at the end of our searchings,	22:26
	or there is silence.	22:34
	There is a single order of truth and good out there	22:37
	beyond and within our fleeting glimpses of it,	22:43
	or there is no truth.	22:49
	Every man to his own prejudice.	22:53
	Either we are children of a divine power,	22:58
	creatures who respond to the holy and the sacred,	23:02
	or we are clods of earth.	23:08
	Either, our little life is rounded with a sleep,	23:12
	or it is surrounded and sustained	23:19
	by one with whom we have first and last to do,	23:23
	before whom the generations of men rise and pass away,	23:29
	on whom it all depends, whose name is God.	23:35
	Let us pray.	23:46
	Oh, God, who hast set eternity in our hearts,	23:57
	who has created us for thyself,	24:02
	with spirits restless until we rest in thee.	24:06
	Grant us afresh, the remembrance of what we are,	24:13
	utterly dependent upon thee, held in thy hand.	24:20
	That we may go forth from the height of this place of prayer	24:29
	to live as becomes the children of the most high.	24:35
	Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,	24:42
	the love of God and the communion of the Holy spirit,	24:47
	be with you all now and forever.	24:53
	(slow music)	24:59
	♪ Amen ♪	25:03
-	One, two, three, four.	28:21
	But he's not around here very long	28:34
	before the freshman gets all shook up.	28:36
	And by the time of sophomore year	28:39
	everything that was nail down has come loose.	28:40
	The most devastating realization that shakes anybody up	28:44
	and seems to destroy all the security of cherish beliefs,	28:47
	is the realization of relativity.	28:51
	Dear Sir, would you please send me a copy of the sermon,	29:00
	an analogical doctrine of man preached	29:04
	by professor James T. Cleland on October 30th, 1960,	29:07
	at homecoming service.	29:12
	This was indeed one of the best sermons I have ever heard.	29:14
	Sincerely Henry J Starkely,	29:18
	3B Savage street, Charleston, South Carolina.	29:21
	♪ Once in a while you won't call ♪	29:32
	♪ But it's all in the game ♪	29:35
	♪ All in the wonderful games that we know and love ♪	29:40
	♪ And he'll kiss your lips ♪	29:48
	♪ And caress you waiting fingertips ♪	29:51
	♪ Oh, worship the King ♪	30:00
	♪ Oh, glorious above ♪	30:03
	♪ Oh gratefully sing His power and His love ♪	30:06
	♪ Our shield and defender, the ancient of day ♪	30:13
	♪ Paviolioned in splendor and girded with praise ♪	30:20
	♪ I've been working on the railroad ♪	30:38
	♪ All the live long day ♪	30:42
	♪ I've been working on the railroad ♪	30:46
	♪ Just to pass the time away ♪	30:49

Item Info

Title:

Waldo Beach - "It All Depends" (November 13, 1960)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4wm17v57

Date:

November 13, 1960

Speaker:

Beach, Waldo

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0124
ref5449_c4t
uachapelsermaud
duke:628120
dcrau002144
ark:/87924/r4wm17v57
d0a72fb0-3000-4bae-8759-dcece3099480

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Waldo Beach - "It All Depends" (November 13, 1960)

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1. Waldo Beach - "It All Depends" (November 13, 1960)

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Waldo Beach - "It All Depends" (November 13, 1960)

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Duke University Archives

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