The novels of John Updike have spawned a criticism rather remarkable in its contentiousness. His books have evoked critical outrage, bewilderment, condescension, commendation, and an enthusiasm approaching the fulsome. The same novel might be hailed as a major fictional achievement and dismissed as a self-indulgence or a failure. And evaluations of Updike's importance in the realm of contemporary American literature reflect a similar truculent diversity. However, a careful review of the commentary on Updike's work reveals that much of it is structured by assumptions that have little relevance to the themes, methods, and intentions of his fiction. This is especially true of those studies which discuss the relation of Updike's Christianity to the form and texture of his novels. While Updike has repeatedly expressed his views on religious and theological questions, his critics continue to interpret his work according to theories, religio-ethical systems, and ontologies he categorically rejects and his fiction does not embody. Updike's faith is Christian, but it is one to which many of the assumptions about the Christian perspective do not apply—especially those which link Christian faith with an absolute and divinely ordered morality. (p. 523)
Updike has often quoted approvingly Barth's remark that "one cannot speak of God by speaking of man in a loud voice." For both men the distinction between the divine and the human is absolute. God is Wholly Other. He is unreachable, unknowable. Thus the only religious—which is not to say theological—question is that of faith. But the existence of God, Barth and Updike jointly assert, cannot be proved. So the question becomes not, "Does God exist?" but rather, "Do I believe God exists?" To Updike, an affirmative answer to this question makes one a Christian: "I call myself a Christian by defining 'a Christian' as 'a person willing to profess the Apostles' Creed.'" And the Apostles' Creed is nothing more—and nothing less—than a statement of faith in the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. It requires only that one avow, "I believe."
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