The Church and its theology—like many other things—is often put before the dilemma of being conservative or progressive. In spite of repeated attempts to show how false this dilemma is, it manages to keep its power to falsify the truth. The terms vary. Sometimes it is put as conservative versus modern. But the dilemma is the same. We wish to point out that his way of stating the alternatives that face the Church and theology gives us no help at all in analyzing the theological situation.
It is not hard to illustrate how useless the conservative versus progressive approach to the characterization of men and thought is. Take Jeremiah, for instance. This prophet was the man who called the people back to “the old paths” (Jer. 6:16) and who was also the prophet of the “new covenant” (Jer. 31:31). Consider Paul also. The apostle told Timothy to hold fast to that which he had received (1 Tim. 6:20). Yet, no one was more possessed with the vision of the new than was Paul (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 17). One quickly senses how meaningless the opposition between “conservative” and “progressive” becomes when it is used to typify men and their positions. This is especially true when the term “conservative” is meant to describe someone who cleaves to the past and turns away from the future.
Many modern theological movements today manifest strong conservative tendencies. Consider the powerfully conservative attitude that liberal theology has shown in regard to miracles. Liberal theology has held on to the old attitudes regarding myth and world-view, redemption and Christ, and many other positions typical of the nineteenth century. Liberals still consider old positions untouchable. Whenever someone declines this conservative attitude and seeks with new joy to develop the perspectives of the Holy Scriptures, when someone, that is, tries to shed himself of the stubborn conservatism of liberal theology, he is branded as a “conservative theologian.”
The zeal with which many orthodox theologians have staked claim on the adjective “conservative” is, in my judgment, regrettable. They mean by their self-designation as conservative to take their position on the side of the Gospel and the faith of the Reformation. Sometimes one means by the term “conservative” to indicate that he is not liberal. But we must, I think, get away from this defensive tactic; we must decline the conservative-progressive dilemma. We ought not to be forced to accept either horn of the dilemma; we ought not accept the term conservative as describing our position. The word does nothing to suggest the presence of the dynamic power and the perspective for the future that are inherent in the Gospel.
To call the Reformation a conservative movement is on the face of it a bad half-truth. To be sure, the Reformers reached back across the centuries to the old Gospel. But they also looked to the renewal of all of life through the Gospel. And life was renewed. Preaching was again set in the center of the Church. Scholars went at the serious business of exegeting the Word from which, in turn, all sorts of new perspectives came to light, perspectives for the practical life of the people. The false dilemma, “progressive” or “conservative,” in no way really illuminates what happened at the Reformation.
The broad divisions between the theological schools are real and significant. But these divisions are not clarified in the least by calling one side conservative and the other side progressive. Surely, orthodoxy does not swear by the old while liberal theology searches for new perspectives. The Gospel does not face us with an option between old and new, as such. The choice presented by the Gospel is that between the power and blessing of the new life in Christ and the weakness of the old nature and the old dispensation.
I strongly suspect that we are talking about more than mere words. A confusion has arisen from the habit many have had of seeing a basic polarity between the conservative and progressive attitudes. A bad and wrong impression has been created by the orthodox’s acceptance of the designation of their position as “conservative.” The theology which seeks to live and work by the Word of God, the Word which is always in movement toward new paths of power, is not conservative. But the impression created by letting the liberal position take possession of the word “progressive” is just as wrong. Liberal theology is showing its bondage to traditional ways more clearly than ever these days. Liberalism is bound to the past; it shuts the door to the new and unexpected.
There is always the danger of trying to preserve what is not worth preserving. We always run the temptation of refusing to follow the new ways to which the Gospel calls us. There is the danger that, flying the conservative banner, we lose our power to speak to the modern world, that we give the impression that the Gospel, interpreted by conservatives, has nothing to say to modern man. To avoid the dangers, we must continuously, earnestly, and with intellectual integrity keep close to the Bible. We cannot rest with the delusion that we have rather completely grasped what there is to be known from the Bible. Fresh biblical research is constantly necessary; where it goes on things can happen to break new ground for the Church. Renewal in theology as well as in the Church comes only where men bow with open ears before the Word. For men who really do listen to the Word, there is no such thing as a dilemma between the progressive and the conservative way of looking at things. The Gospel transcends this false dilemma. We must refuse to let ourselves be branded as conservative. Conservatism is not the mark of the man who lives and works in the truth and power of the Gospel.
