Departure from theological objectivity has always resulted in confusion within the Christian Church. It has been so in the past, and it is particularly so in our own day. Far too many are simply saying what is right in their own minds. Doctrine is relativized, and subjective understandings of reality have become the theological norms. The distressing problem is that tactically, if not materially, orthodoxy, too, may become perplexed in an age of theological confusion.
What are the opportunities that orthodoxy faces in this age? What is its task? And how can it best fulfill this task? Certainly it can do nothing at all if its normative appeal is overlooked or its fidelity to biblical truth is allowed to be thought irrelevant.
1. The first task facing orthodoxy is to perceive and state clearly the basic reason for the current malaise.
At this point Tertullian is an admirable guide. He also lived in a time of theological confusion, but he drew a clear line between real theology, which is based on finding, and speculative “theology,” which consists in seeking. The latter is not actually theology at all. Like the Gnosticism of Tertullian’s day, much of the so-called modem theology is actually speculative mythology. It may use bits and pieces, even larger portions, of authentic Christianity, but it works these into an arbitrary, subjective scheme that aims at truth rather than proceeding from it. Unwilling to be taught by God in his own self-revelation, it plays with mere ideas about God. Failing to honor God in his objective reality, the ground of all true theology, it condemns itself to subjectivity and anthropocentricity. It misses the point that theology, far from being an endless search, begins where the search ends. It fails to see that theology, far from being the domain of subjectivity, is as objective as any science.
Orthodoxy must relinquish all claim to be a competing subjectivity and must attempt to teach a confused age what theology really is—where it begins, in what sphere it is to be pursued, and by what data it is controlled. This is no easy assignment. Speculative mythology seems far more exciting, and the historical study of religions far more scientific, than serious theological work. Nevertheless, by example as well as by analysis, orthodoxy should not fail to address itself to this primary task.
2. The second task of orthodoxy is to present the essential content of objective theology in contradistinction to every pseudo-theology.
Proper fulfillment of this second task presupposes, no less than complements, an attempt to perform the first. Unless a clear distinction is made between objective and anthropocentric theology, orthodoxy will only appear as another voice in the cacophony. No age can be allowed to relativize orthodoxy simply as a venerable system that served its own generation well but that has now been outdated by advances in human thought. So long as the age is able to maintain its confusion by means of simple relativizations of this kind, the presentation of true theology is robbed of its force, at least at the human level.
When Karl Barth delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 1937 and 1938, he argued that the only service he could render natural theology was to confront it with its opposite. In the same way the basic task of orthodoxy is to oppose the objective reality of scriptural revelation to the confused theologizing of the age. Only thus can orthodoxy fulfill its duty to God, to the mission and message of the Church, and to the heterodoxy that, even in opposing, it seeks to reorient and to reclaim.
3. In fulfilling its second task in an age of theological confusion, orthodoxy finds its third. It must emphasize its catholicity in time, its place in the dynamic doctrinal tradition of the Church.
The words “catholicity” and “tradition” have been much abused in church history, but orthodoxy need not be afraid of them. As the Reformers liked to see it, true catholicity is that of biblical and apostolic doctrine, from which the medieval church with its innovations unfortunately diverged. Real ecumenicity is grounded in apostolic orthodoxy. And no zeal for unity can be a substitute for orthodoxy if it is also associated with theological confusion and novelty. Tertullian and Irenaeus saw this in their day when in opposition to Gnostic innovation they claimed to stand for the truth derived from the apostles and shared by all the churches. Far from being ashamed of antiquity, orthodoxy has reason to see in it a sign of authenticity on the one side and of catholicity on the other, so long as it is the antiquity that is grounded in the Scriptures.
The same applies to tradition. The word can be used for unwritten tradition, of course, but in itself it merely denotes what is handed on or the process of handing something on. Genuine tradition is the passing on of the Gospel. The practice of theology is the act of passing it on and is the duty of every generation. There is no premium here on innovation. Orthodoxy can be bold to claim that what it presents is substantially what has been handed on from the first, and that it is itself engaged, not in vapid mythologizing, but in the responsible work of passing on this authentic teaching.
4. In presenting objective theology, then, orthodoxy should emphasize its continuity with the past. But this does not mean that its task is one of simple repetition. Both theology and preaching are commissioned to present in their own terms and to their own age the normative biblical data. They cannot stop at repetition even of the biblical presentation itself, let alone of the formulations of the past. Hence orthodoxy has the constant task of transmitting the authentic message in a form that is as faithful as possible to the norm and yet as pertinent as possible to the time and situation.
In the first instance this will be a task of scrutiny and correction, not, of course, in relation to the biblical norm itself, but in relation to past presentations. Even the best of existing formulations are not necessarily perfect statements of biblical truth in all respects. Orthodoxy is not itself the norm. It cannot claim the same authority as Scripture. Nor can it assume infallibility. It is the orthodoxy of men who, however sincere or learned, are still fallible. And as such, it is always exposed to the threat of some measure of heterodoxy. Its task is that of conforming to the ultimate rule of faith and practice. Hence it must bring its own statements, past and present, under the test of Scripture. It must work at better exposition. It must seek, not merely to pass on what has been received, but to pass it on, if possible, in a purer form than that in which it received it. In this sense orthodoxy can never be content to make a dead and mechanical presentation. It speaks with a living voice. Its aim is to set forth old truth with the power of even more scrupulous fidelity to the apostolic canon.
5. The task of living presentation, however, is also that of linguistic restatement.
Because language changes, there must always be translation within a language as well as from one language to another. For example, even if Chalcedonian Christology is still accepted as the best possible, it has to be put in twentieth-century terms. Even if the Reformation doctrine of justification is thought to be the most biblical, the terms and concepts of the sixteenth century cannot simply be retained.
Historic forms are not to be discarded, for they will always have, under Scripture, a certain normative value. Again, the historic Christian vocabulary, especially when derived from the Bible, ought to be learned by Christians, for it leaves its own mark on language, and some truths will always be better expressed in the historic terms than in their substitutes. One must be on guard against neologizing, that is, introducing new content along with new terms. But in the final analysis, the general presentation needs to be in contemporary concepts. Orthodoxy by its nature, and not unjustifiably, tends to cling to the past. Its task is to use the language of today in the service of the truth—not of yesterday, but of yesterday, today, and forever.
6. The final task of orthodoxy in an age of theological confusion is to bring biblical truth specifically to bear on the heterodoxies of the time.
Something of this may be seen again in the early centuries. The Gnostic denial that the true God made the world finds its answer in the insistence on God as Creator. Docetism is refuted by emphasis on the Virgin Birth and on the real death of Jesus of Nazareth under Pontius Pilate. Dualism evokes the stress on the resurrection of the body. Similarly, the relevance of biblical truth today will best be demonstrated, not by adapting it to modern ideas, but by letting it speak particularly to modern speculations. Thus, the biblical doctrine of the living and life-giving God is the answer to the death-of-God mythology. The historicity of God’s reconciling and revealing work confronts the activities of the de-mythologizers. The biblical doctrine of inspiration is the response to the relativizing of the biblical records. The singularity of the Gospel needs emphasis in the light of comparative religion or vapid universalism.
This does not mean that pure biblical theology is to be distorted by over-emphases. Here is a danger to be avoided. What it does mean is that, since pseudotheology has a parasitic quality, the best answer to it is to be found in true theology, whether by bringing out correctly any particle of truth there may be in the error, or by setting over against it the truth that it minimizes, distorts, or negates. Analysis of error will be needed, as in the works of Irenaeus and Hippolytus. But orthodoxy must not be concerned merely with reaction. In its very reaction it has the opportunity to recapture, perhaps in a new way or with new force, some aspect of the divine self-revelation that it will then be careful to set in balance with the whole.
In this way, by God’s providence, orthodoxy may bring good out of man’s confusion. In this way it may again seize the initiative. In this way, under God and with his help, it will become stronger even in an age of apparent defeat, and better able to present the true word of the true God to a world that has only the imposing but impotent word of man.
