The wave of Bultmannian teaching and writing now flooding American seminaries is a sorry commentary on religious thought in this country. Not only does it attest the lack of independent theological virility in America, a fact lamentable in itself; it also repeats the costly tendency to popularize speculative notions already discredited abroad. Before World War II, liberal theologians in America were indoctrinating seminary students with a theology supposedly as up-to-date as tomorrow (the modernism these young professors had absorbed in their doctoral studies abroad). But in the meantime classic modernism was already being discarded in Europe as outworn and untrue. Then the American “frontiersmen” moved toward crisis-theology, and by 1958 almost as many Protestant ministers listed themselves in the neo-orthodox camp as in the modernist movement. Barth and Brunner were the luminaries of these Americans, and little mention was being made of Bultmann. Barth and Brunner, however, were soon to acknowledge Bultmann’s command of the theological dialogue. And now that the Bultmannian empire is breaking up in Europe, the American Protestant seminaries are predictably becoming a Johnny-come-lately Bultmannian circuit.
Amid the professorial cross fire and combat on Continental seminary campuses, most European students are withholding any personal commitment to Bultmann’s theology. They learn Bultmann’s positions, yes, but fly no Bultmannian banners. As George Traar, superintendent for the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church for Vienna, puts it, students are equally interested in “what others are saying—not only Bultmannians, but anti-Bultmannians.” “Bultmann’s solutions are bypassed and his methodology of existential interpretation is under such fire,” says Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg, “that students no longer are transfixed by the claims of the Bultmann scholars, and their minds are open to a hearing for alternative viewpoints.”
“The German students like the ancient Athenians are especially on the lookout for novel points of view,” remarks another Continental theologian. “That is why our textbooks live only for a couple of years. Students are interested in watching a fight—in hearing theologians who make cutting remarks about competitors and colleagues; scholarship and relevance and dialogue no longer seem to assure an atmosphere of enthusiasm. The younger generation now seems more disposed to watch the theological controversy than to join it.”
In America things are worse. Seminary students are content with European leftovers specially seasoned by American dieticians against decomposition.
Despite the decline of Bultmann’s prestige and influence in Europe, and just at the time when Continental scholars and students are veering from a commitment to his views, American divinity students abroad and some seminary professors in the States are rallying to “modern” perspectives already considered dated and doomed on the European side. The latest theological fashions in America have traditionally lagged a half generation or more behind European influences. Subsequently this European inheritance has been carried to radical extremes, long after its underlying presuppositions were abandoned abroad. There are numerous indications that this unpromising process may now be repeated once again.
No wholesale exportation of Bultmannism to the United States is likely, it should be noted, for the simple reason that American philosophy does not contain the background of existentialism which this theology presupposes. Where no background of existential philosophy exists, the Bultmannian insistence that Christianity must be translated into existential categories to become relevant and intelligible to the modern man becomes nonsense. This dissimilar philosophical background is one explanation for the difficulty of negotiating effective American-European theological dialogue on the frontiers of contemporary religious thought.
Yet an avant-garde minority is energetically carrying Bultmann’s theology to the American scene. And through its influence upon ministerial students in the seminaries, the Bultmannian speculation sooner or later will be felt in certain church-related colleges and in the churches themselves. American graduate students abroad, always open to new idols and finding none at home during liberalism’s present transition period, are committing themselves to Bultmannian positions in conspicuously greater numbers than are Continental scholars. At the Montreal Faith and Order Conference in 1963 it became clear that World Council programming hoped to give Bultmann scholars a larger role in the theological dialogue. American seminaries have welcomed an increasing Bultmannian exposure. Bornkamm and Conzelmann have given lectures here in the past; Käsemann comes in 1965 to Yale and San Anselmo; at Drew, Union, Claremont, and Harvard, Bultmannian scholars have served or are now serving as professors. Macmillan will soon publish its volume on Bultmann in the Kegley and Bretall “Living Theologians” series, and denominational as well as secular publishing houses have increased the tempo of Bultmann-oriented religious books. Volumes one and two in the Harper and Row series devoted to European-American dialogue on major theological issues, edited by James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb of Southern California School of Theology, are given over to existentialist concerns. Both books, The Later Heidegger and Theology and The New Hermeneutic, are so heavy and abstruse as virtually to nullify a similar complaint by one of the contributors against German theologians! Yet those who peruse the recent volume entitled The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ (Carl E. Braaten and Roy A. Harrisville, editors, Abingdon, 1964), with its essay on this central point of contemporary theological debate, will find the complaint amply justified. Not all the volumes on the margin of the Bultmannian controversy settle for Bultmannian or post-Bultmannian positions. Some, like Hugh Anderson’s Jesus and Christian Origins (Oxford, 1964), deplore the new quest’s correlation of historical inquiry with a special brand of philosophical speculation. Anderson demands a larger role for the historical ingredient in Christianity, yet gives half his case away to the demythologizers. Some of the new works are basic theological tools. But none says openly what needs to be said—that contemporary Protestant theologians are largely lost in wildernesses of speculation, and that further progress can now be made in theology only by asking not where Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann end but where the Bible begins.
Despite the absence of a native American tradition of existential philosophy, other factors contribute a mood compatible with Bultmannian views. The American theological interest in Kierkegaard and in Barth and Brunner as well as in Bultmann has encouraged religious interest in both dialectical and existential premises. Much of American liberalism had already shared neo-orthodoxy’s skepticism over the ontological significance of reason; that is, over the rational structure of the metaphysical world and the competence of human reason to understand spiritual realities. Further, the trend toward analytic philosophy and linguistic analysis has tended to limit the search for universally valid meaning to the world of sense realities. The most influential theological figures in America, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, themselves have emphasized that reason can expound the supernatural realm only in symbolic or figurative categories.
There is, in fact, increasing prospect of a synthesis of the positions of Bultmann and Tillich. This development signifies that neither position has won a permanent hold, and that disciples of each are seeking exterior reinforcement.
Despite its pursuit of the latest fashions in European thought, theology in American seminaries is touching mainly the formative principles that distinguish Bultmannian from non-Bultmannian positions. Whereas European scholars reflect a mood that runs increasingly contrary to Bultmann, American religious speculation at the frontiers reflects much more Bultmannian sympathy. In their studies of the Bultmann tradition, American graduate students abroad scarcely have time to keep up with the most recent books. Many volumes are increasingly critical of Bultmannism; many are not yet translated, and some undoubtedly never will be. It is strange, indeed, that pulpits of university churches and teaching posts in church-related colleges as well as in seminaries so often are reserved for doctorate-holding scholars who return to America as flag-wavers for European systems, especially when abroad these systems are already outmoded and in disrepute.
In view of the breakup of Bultmannian positions, Werner Georg Kümmel of Marburg, president of the Society of New Testament Scholars, cannot understand why “the younger grandsons of Bultmann keep getting chair after chair in the theological seminaries.” “The post-Bultmannians continue to get the spoils,” he comments, “although the unity of the Bultmann school is shattered.”
Many seminaries have become so much the purveyors of abstruse theological speculations, and give so little evidence of a fixed authoritative norm, that they seem to be making themselves theologically dispensable. Contemporary theologizing has become an exceedingly perishable commodity. Doubtless some seminaries remain denominationally or ecumenically indispensable for ecclesiastical objectives. But in a warring age at the brink of self-destruction, when scientists think that 22,300 miles out in space is no place for mistakes, one might wish that the seminaries on terra firma would forego the business of propagating heresy generation upon generation.
It is as true in America as in Europe that on university campuses the theologians are today looked upon as an inferior academic species. Claiming a private pipeline to the supernatural, they refashion their gods every generation. And American theologians are notoriously predictable. Unless they stand in the mainstream of evangelical Christianity, committed to the God of Moses, Isaiah, and Paul, they are forever resurrecting the ghosts of recently buried European dogmatic speculation. The theologians can hardly be fully blamed—they are student-victims of earlier theologians addicted to the same error. And each generation of students seems to drink from the same bitter wells.
No Universalism At The Temple Gate
Concerning Gerhard Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, the Journal of Biblical Literature has aptly commented: “One of the few biblical studies of this generation that is destined for immortality.” Even while manifesting a wide diversity of theological conviction—contributors range the spectrum from Hermann Sasse to Rudolph Bultmann—the Wörterbuch has managed to make itself virtually indispensable to serious biblical scholarship.
One article in Geoffrey W. Bromiley’s English translation of the first volume (Eerdmans, 1964) is of particular significance to the current theological ferment in this country concerning the doctrine of universalism. Debate is particularly lively among American Baptists in a contest over the nature of that denomination’s evangelistic thrust.
Leipzig scholar Albrecht Oepke wrote the Wörterbuch article on apokatastasis, which means basically “restitution to an earlier state” or “restoration.” The word appears only once in the New Testament. After healing the lame man at the temple gate, Peter spoke to the crowd that gathered: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord: and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:19–21).
Origen (c. 185–c. 254) understood apokatastasis to mean the restoration of all created beings. Though rejected by official theology, especially in the West, Origen’s teaching has found followers such as Scotus Erigena, F. D. Schleiermacher, and more recent universalists. But Oepke points out that the neuter gender of “all things” in the Acts passage means that apokatastasis “cannot denote the conversion of persons but only the reconstitution or establishment of things.” Oepke’s words merit careful attention in the current debate: “On the question whether the [New Testament] teaches a final restoration of all fallen sinners, and even of Satan, to the harmony of all created things in God, no light is shed by this particular text. In general such an idea is just as remote from the NT world of thought as the Jewish.”
What Evangelism Is
There is much confusion regarding the nature of evangelism. Can it truly be described as “social legislation,” as being “buddy-buddy” with people, as demonstrating kindness to those in need—“changing a tire for a fellow,” for instance?
Evangelism is not “letting one’s light shine,” important as that is. Rather is it telling of the One who is the Light and the Life. Evangelism is a message of God’s supreme act of redeeming love in Christ, available to all who will receive it.
Physicians now and then face the problem of dealing with Christian Scientists, whose denial of the actuality of disease is frustrating. If persisted in, such denial can be fatal for the victim.
Within Protestantism itself there is far too little recognition of the fact and consequences of sin and of the remedy God has provided in his Son in redeeming men from the guilt and penalty of sin.
Evangelism centers in the great facts of Christ crucified, dead, buried, and risen again. Omit this true center of evangelism and the substitute is unworthy and unavailing. Our Lord commissioned his disciples to be witnesses of the One who alone “opens their eyes, turns them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they might receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them who are sanctified by faith” (Acts 26:18).
Evangelism is not telling people what to do for mankind or for God but telling them what Christ has done for them. On this foundation the Church must be built.
Signs Of A Bultmann-Tillich Merger
The theological scene now reflects increasing prospect of a synthesis of the viewpoints of Bultmann and Tillich. Talk of such a synthesis signifies that neither man’s position has fully won a permanent hold, and that disciples of both are seeking exterior reinforcement. Otto Weber of Göttingen has recently noted the growing impact of Tillich’s philosophy upon Bultmann’s position, because Tillich’s thought includes an appealing apologetic element absent from Bultmann’s presentation.
Quite understandably, Bultmann would be less than happy over a synthesis. All such mergers of systems are ideological reductions, and they imply that neither of the positions involved is independently adequate. Bultmann still criticizes Tillich’s view as “less Christological and more philosophical”; one critic notes that Bultmann promotes independence of all philosophy, existentialism excepted. Moreover, Bultmann disowns Tillich’s interest in psychology and depth psychology, because of his own distinction of true-being and non-being and his understanding of man on the basis of Worthaftigkeit.
Nonetheless, some components are common to both viewpoints, and there are noteworthy similarities between the two scholars. Both have influenced many young intellectuals—divinity students more than scientists. Both are more theological in their sermons than in their systematic theology. Both oppose traditional dogmatics and ontology from the standpoint of critical reason. Both reject any knowledge of God objective to personal decision. In respect to anthropology, moreover, Bultmann says Tillich and he concur. Both scholars have sharply accommodated Christianity to modern philosophy of science. Yet Bultmann professedly seeks a Christological systematics, while Tillich’s structure is more obviously that of a religious philosophy.
Bultmann insists on the reality of a personal God who specially confronts all men in the Word alone; Tillich, on the other hand, considers personality as applied to the Unconditioned purely symbolic, and finds a special side in all general revelation. Tillich’s influence in Europe has thus far been impeded by his lack of emphasis on historical criticism and on the newer exegesis ruling the field. Aspects of his thought, however, are now being reworked by the so-called Pannenberg scholars, who consider history and exegesis within the framework of a revelational concept. Above all else, the trend toward a synthesis of these systems signifies that both European and American liberalism have entered upon a major period of dissatisfaction and transition.
The Triple Revolution
Common to American news commentators is the delusion that extremism in the United States is more typical of the political right than of the left. The stigma of radicalism, they imply, attaches to a long string of right-wing groups besides the K.K.K. and the John Birch Society, while except for the Communists all left-wingers are commendably respectable.
But to identify conservatism mainly in terms of white-backlash and Red-baiting maligns rather than understands the movement. At grass-roots level, the citizenry intuitively recoils from such distortions.
Multitudes of Americans believe that this is a time for second thoughts about socialism, and not, as the left-wingers would have it, a time for growing acceptance of a social philosophy that expands the incursion of bureaucratic government into the private sectors of life.
Recently an amazing document was prepared and commended to the White House by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, whose spokesman appears to be W. H. Ferry, vice-president of the Fund for the Republic’s so-called Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. The document declares that the cybernation revolution (automation), the weaponry revolution (nuclear missiles), and the human rights revolution (civil rights crusade) demand a new society in which (take a deep breath here!) the traditional doctrine of work and reward must be discarded and an income assured to all persons irrespective of work. In short, the thirty or more signers of the research paper call for a massive increase of public funds in the private sector. In writing of “the wave of the future,” they propose no new panacea but a society not unlike the Marxian state which rewards man not for his effort but according to his needs (or wants, as it will appear). The society of the future bears outlines of the corporate state and also has elements of a fascist philosophy.
In their letter to President Johnson, the minute-men of the triple revolution assert that “the very near future” will require “public measures that move radically beyond any steps now proposed or contemplated.” If their proposals are ignored, they say, “the nation will be thrown into unprecedented economic and social disorder.” This “new science of political economy will be built on the encouragement and planned expansion of cybernation,” they add. And cybernation, in turn, will require an answer to such questions as these: “What should be the basis for distributing individual access to national resources? Are there other proper claims on goods and services besides a job?” Since over 8,000,000 people are assertedly unemployed (many admittedly no longer in search of jobs) and 38,000,000 (one-fifth of the nation) are said to live in “poverty,” bold action is urged.
And what do these apostles of abundance, these men who have no sense of scarcity, propose? For one thing, new patterns of income distribution must recognize the disadvantaged Negro’s special plight among “the millions of impoverished.” We are told that “the economy of abundance can sustain all citizens in comfort and economic security whether or not they engage in what is commonly reckoned as work.… We urge, therefore, that society, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, undertake an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right.” (All politicians ready to run on this platform please line up on the moderate left!) “The unqualified right to an income would take the place of the patchwork of relief measures—from unemployment insurance to relief.…” The establishment of this “right to an income will prove to have been only the first step in the reconstruction of the value system of our society.…”
Before detailing “practical” proposals for implementing the abundant society, one may be forgiven for noting that, when the significance of the concept of right is thus corroded, nobody need be surprised if some political commentators can no longer tell left from right or right from wrong. In a society where the relation between work and income is broken, it would appear to be unjust, if not unwise, for anybody to work. We are unconvinced that such a workless utopia can emerge from a finite, fallen world by the miracle of paper pamphlet assurances.
The document’s signers are pregnant with specific interim proposals: federal programs for training an additional 100,000 teachers annually; $2 billion or more annually for public works programs: a massive cooperative public-private housing program for 700,000 to 1,000,000 units annually; federally financed rapid transit systems; a public power system; major tax revision to redistribute income; empowerment of trade unions to bargain for the jobless as well as for the workers; and enlargement of government licensing and regulation in the cybernatic age. In a word: “Planning agencies should constitute the network through which pass the stated needs of the people at every level of society.… A principal result of planning will be to step up investment in the public sector.… A central assumption of planning institutions would be … that the nation is moving into a society in which production of goods and services is not the only or perhaps the chief means of distributing income.”
It is no wonder that enlightened spokesmen in both political parties voice mounting concern over the federal government’s growing incursion into private life. For the triple revolutionists, the present national concessions to socialism represent a half-way house to welfare statism; the conservative movement, on the other hand, views the present compromise as a malignancy whose destructive consequences for a free society can be avoided only by radical surgery.
The Passing Parade
Youth, it seems, will have its idols, and the Beatles are hardly the worst of all human possibilities. They are no “four-footed beasts” but unshorn, creepy creatures who slyly beat the barbers. They defy rationality more than morality.
The Bible says, “Keep yourselves from idols.” But it also utters that reassuring word, “An idol is nothing.” These idols too shall pass.
Squared Away—For What?
The conclusion of nominations by the Democratic National Convention now finds the two major parties and candidates squared away in a contest for popularity and votes that will be waged relentlessly, perhaps fiercely, until the November elections.
It has often been affirmed that Christians should prove themselves a nation’s best citizens. Unfortunately this does not always eventuate. Far too many regard lightly the privilege and duty of voting. None should be confused by the phenomenon of partisan politics—that men of equal gifts and piety, or the lack of these, will inevitably be found on both sides.
The primary concern of Christians is that righteous principles shall prevail. To that end they should pray and work. While taking neither side among parties and personalities, CHRISTIANITY TODAY sincerely hopes that statesmanship shall prevail over expediency, and that America’s image abroad shall be that of a nation which values honor and principle above all else.
For more than thirty years American foreign policy has been largely based on accommodation. More and more this is proving a snare and a delusion. Compromise of principle never pays. Lavish use of money cannot compensate for an obscure righteousness. Neither device will win friends or establish peace.
The Christian citizen’s primary duty is to make his influence felt in the home, in the market place, and in the polling booth. Righteousness in national and international dealings and Christian character in her citizens make a nation great. On the other hand, sin corrodes from within and, unless checked, leads to national oblivion.
Relevance That Breeds Irrelevance
The relevance of the Church to the world of today depends on her understanding of her mission and message. In the midst of a secular and temporary world her mission must be spiritual, her message geared to the eternal. Otherwise she fails.
Social concerns are leading many Christian spokesmen to ignore the regeneration of the human heart, that spiritual dynamic by which alone reformation can be effected. Without giving priority to the spiritual and eternal, the Church can never discharge her responsibility to the world or to her Lord. The frantic effort to make the Church “relevant” to the world of today often reflects more concern about the living conditions of the prodigal in the far country than about bringing him back to his Father.
Peripheral concerns are valid, but not to the neglect of concerns that are central. A study of the debates and actions of most major denominations yields the sober conclusion that should all their recommendations for social action be carried out, men would still be lost and without Christ.
The Apostle Paul was concerned about many things within the church at Corinth. But he based his ministry on the gospel message, which he affirmed to be of “first importance.” He stated that message clearly: “That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Only as that message comes first can the Church be relevant to the needs of the world today. Concern for peripheral matters can become a tragic excuse for neglecting that which should come first.
In Defense Of Property Rights
So prominently has the erosion of property rights figured in this generation’s loss of liberty that one may take heart from a recent Conference on Humane Economy that set sights on this theme. Meeting in Appleton, Wisconsin, at The Institute of Paper Chemistry, affiliated with Lawrence College, almost two dozen distinguished American economists, historians, and political scientists deplored the growing incursion of government into the arena of private property, and particularly into the decision-making process.
The diminution of property rights, in the view of the Wisconsin conference, amounts actually to a diminution of the self. This verdict is a wholesome antidote to the prevalent contrast of human rights and property rights. When man’s goods are expropriated, his deeds coerced, his decisions dictated, his thoughts controlled, he is injured in his humanity.
The right of private property needs to be vigilantly protected today, when the attack on property rights takes many subtle forms—economic, political, psychological, ecclesiastical, and even pseudo-theological. The biblical supports for a philosophy of human freedom and responsibility need special emphasis in an age when political decision-makers readily cast themselves as divine arbiters of a never-never land of compulsion and coercion. Neglect of high intellectual interest in questions of property and ownership has, in fact, contributed to the climate of indifference in which socialist influences have increasingly modified historic American ideals, institutions, and practices. Happily, signs are now multiplying of a mounting concern over the erosion of property rights, and of a widening dedication to the defense of private property.
