An appeal for theological affirmation is precisely what the words indicate: It calls away from the negative trends of much recent religious and theological thought. (The distinction between religion and theology does not seem useful here, though the themes in question are found in both.) Such negations have been: the extreme negation of the death-of-God theology, the reactionary negation of the main insights of Vatican II by Catholic traditionalists, the unbalanced negation of institutional religion in favor of the rights of conscience, the practical negation of Christian social commitments in the name of some vague Jesuistic or Pentecostal charisms, the implicit negation of worship in the urge to celebrate life and nature.