The Predicament of Modern Theology

Once queen of the sciences, theology today seems to have become a serf of speculation. If it retains contemporary status as a science, it does so no longer in the classic sense of systematized knowledge of the spiritual world. Rather, theology is downgraded to science in the modern sense—a body of assumptions with no claim to finality. In fact, creativity in dogmatics is now often associated with some inherent necessity for change and revision. Decline of biblical theology and the doom of systematic theology are the inevitable result.

This sad development in the fortunes of systematic theology results from modern, mainly anti-intellectual speculative views of divine revelation. Schleiermacher’s notion, that God does not communicate truths about himself and his purposes, is still prevalent (not only in rationalistic liberalism but in neo-orthodox irrationalism); the possibility of divinely revealed doctrines is thereby ruled out in advance. The consequences for both biblical and systematic theology are plain: prophetic and apostolic teaching, no less than dogmatics, become simply devout theorizing on the basis of religious experience.

There are even more disturbing implications, however. Were the theology of the Bible reduced to theorizing about a special revelation divinely given to the sacred writers in the form of concepts and words; were such theorizing itself related in turn to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, one might still assert a rather high (even if inadequate) view of the Bible’s intellectual content. But the modern tendency is to insist that the biblical writers, too, were controlled by the cultural outlook of their time. Mediating evangelical thinkers have applied this premise half-heartedly to limited segments of Scripture, to the creation narratives for example. But under the pretense of “demythologizing” the Bible, Rudolf Bultmann’s theology wields this scalpel to emasculate almost all of the Gospel.

If Bible writers were culture-bound in their day, Bible expositors in our day too, it is assumed, are likewise culture-bound. Curiously, the modern critics usually press the embarrassment of culture dependence more damagingly against the apostles than against themselves. By invoking the contemporary philosophy of science as the first article of his credo, Bultmann therewith deletes from the Apostles’ Creed the permanent significance of virtually every article except that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” We ought not to underestimate the peril of this new German gnosis, which Oscar Cullmann rightly describes as “the great heresy of our time.”

The dilemma of modern theology is obvious. If it aspires to be systematic theology drawn from biblical theology, it does so only as modern culture-bound theorizing (the climax of biblical culture-bound theorizing!). What this means, of course, is that theology no longer is genuinely scientific, however much it may dignify itself still with the semantic title of theology because it makes reasoned statements in a methodical manner. Such theologizing demotes the knowledge of God to inferences from religious experience.

Dogmaticians themselves confess that whatever biblical theology is being written in the second half of the century differs from that written in the first half. In fact, they apparently take pride that every generation is producing its own biblical theology—not merely by special relevance to the prevailing situation in life, but by affirming its own peculiar assumptions. We now get “systematic theology” like that of Paul Tillich of Harvard Divinity School. For him God is not a living, personal acting God but simply the dimension of depth in everyone which “becomes personal” when man “rightly” relates himself to it. Or we are offered “New Testament theology” like Bultmann’s, whose twentieth-century gnosis has much more in common with Martin Heidegger than with Paul of Tarsus.

The worst aspect of this situation is not that modern theologians sometimes propound their heresies from comfortable seminary chairs established sacrificially by devout evangelical donors who assumed that a revealed theology (not merely a “theology of revelation”) exists in the scriptural writings. Those donors indeed expected the professors whom they endowed to expend their energies within this conviction. Yet, however distressing this circumstance is in matters of private morality and academic conscience, more serious is the lack of any sense of deformity, let alone guilt, in the modern pursuit of theological aberrations. Ministers shift theological views—happily often for the better—and even find grace to acknowledge to their congregations such revision of previous convictions. But seldom does one find a sense of guilt and repentance, an awareness of theological responsibility for souls whose view of God and of Christian life and duty were earlier stunted by sub-biblical proclamations about the realities of revelation and faith.

Except in soundly evangelical circles, Protestant theology seems to have lost hold of any fixed and final norm. It speaks of the historic Christian confessions and creeds (and not simply of contemporary theological formulas) in terms of testimony. It specifically rejects the inherited view that the Bible itself supplies the test of theological fidelity. Former generations whose ecclesiastical sights were set on truth as fully as on unity could sing “The Church’s One Foundation” with feeling for such phrases as “By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distressed.” Twentieth century ecumenism lacks heart for doctrinal concerns in depth; it is more distressed by schism than by heresy. That is precisely why the plea to transcend the fragmentaries of Protestantism often sounds so hollow.

Whoever passes external criticism by weighing contemporary theology on the normative scale of biblical theology is soon deplored by critics for exalting himself as both prosecutor and judge. It is “all right” to venture internal criticism—that is, to show what inner inconsistencies and self-contradictions may exist in modern theological excursions. It is even “quite acceptable” to place contemporary theology alongside biblical theology—provided one thereby intends nothing more than to compare and contrast two fallible theologies, or provided one concedes in advance that the Bible itself contains a multiplicity of theologies rather than a unified biblical theology. All that, as the moderns see it, is tolerable enough. What is intolerable, from the standpoint of many vocal theologians today, is the reaffirmation of an authoritative theology, of revealed doctrines, of an inspired Bible.

For this reason so much of Protestantism is plagued today by unauthoritative theologies; each decade is swept by new winds of doctrine, and is preoccupied with many modern writings where scriptural light and life are dim or dead. Protestantism so often seems like the one “world message” that simply cannot make up its mind, a message multiple-minded in intellectual content, lacking precision and power. For this reason one generation of vigorous, exacting scholarship can pass into the next without yielding enduring theological fruit in the churches, and without activating evangelistic compassion for a lost world.

What is needed? If Protestantism wishes to speak authentically for the Christian heritage, in the face of world paganism and ecclesiastical divisions, it must return to the incarnate Word and to the inscripturated Word, foci around which the conversation of the early Church revolved. There must be a new balance of power in theology, one that a vagabond generation does not easily come by. Instead of rushing to the bookstores to see what Barth and Brunner, Bultmann and Tillich and Ferré, say about the Lord of glory and about his prophets and apostles—a pursuit which assuredly has its proper and necessary place in the study of current trends—it is time we searched the Scriptures afresh for what the Lord of glory says, and for what the prophets and apostles say. Theological endeavor must revolve once again around its true norm, and not fade merely to contemporary comment. Something is desperately awry with the balance of theological power when, in discussing the Virgin Birth, for example, the divinity student or young minister feels that Brunner’s negation settles it; or in discussing the resurrection of our Lord, that Barth’s latest affirmation establishes it, or that Bultmann’s continual depreciation really disallows it. The factuality of the Virgin Birth and of the bodily Resurrection does not turn at all upon peculiarly twentieth century considerations. The relevant evidence is first century evidence; the relevant testimony is first century testimony. The twentieth century can only supply new rationalizations of the rejections of that testimony, or adduce new reasons for hearing afresh its challenge to the schematized unbelief of our own era. When a minister of the Gospel finds in Paul Tillich rather than in Paul the Apostle, his decisive references or when he is surer of such scribes as J, E, P, and D, or Q, than he is of Moses and Matthew, something significant has happened to the balance of power in the Christian pulpit. Nor is it difficult to define precisely what has happened. Whereas nineteenth century Christianity assumed that higher criticism is against Christ and the Bible, the twentieth century hails higher criticism as for Christ and the Bible. Thus the modern critics gain strategic power and authority. The power of the critics becomes, in fact, the decisive power. If the Lord of glory and of the sacred Scriptures are to be allowed any significance; if they retain any virtue; if they remain supernatural in their being and work, they do so only by permission of the critics. By becoming a religion of the critics more than the religion of Jesus Christ and the Bible, modern Protestantism has lost its ancient power. Can there really be any rebirth of theology without a rebirth of theologians, or without return to the incarnate Word and to the inspired Word of God?

BISHOP PIKE’S MIND HAS CHANGED: THE CREED BECOMES POETRY

Bishop James A. Pike of the Episcopal Diocese of California, now one of the prime movers in the cause of Big Church amalgamation, tells how, over the last ten years, he has become more Broad Church, more Low Church, and more High Church in outlook (in the Christian Century series on How My Mind Has Changed Dec. 21 issue).

The Bishop illustrates his increase in breadth by his rejection of the Virgin Birth of Christ as historical fact, though at one time he had himself crossed swords with Norman Pittenger because of the latter’s disbelief of this dogma. “Now I am with him,” he confesses. Pike does not deny the possibility of the miracle, but submits that “the biblical evidence and the theological implications seem to be in favor of assuming that Joseph was the human father of Jesus.” It would be interesting to know precisely what “biblical evidence” and which “theological implications” have induced the Bishop to make this assumption. Certainly neither of the two Nativity accounts which the New Testament contains, for in these the biblical evidence could not be plainer nor more explicit. Bishop Pike has a legally trained mind: on what valid grounds does he dismiss this explicit evidence in favor of a contrary conclusion which belongs to no higher category than that of “assumption”? And how will he persuade a straight-thinking jury that he does not “deny in the least the doctrine of the virgin birth”? His explanation that by this he means “the paradox which the myth presents so well” is calculated to befog rather than enlighten theological understanding.

I Believe …

When Jesus Christ is no longer the central theme and reality of preaching, the Christian pulpit soon loses its compulsive power. If the invisible God truly became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth; if the son of Mary is veritably the Son of God; if the Father’s revelation in Christ Jesus dwarfs all others; then this news is the most exciting message in our century as in any other. If the pulpit deviates to other themes (however noble), the Living Head of the Church is wronged. Such truancy may not forthrightly deny the Incarnation; nevertheless it may unwittingly imply its irrelevance to modern life. A Christian pulpit that regularly preaches at a distance from the Gospel is an affront to Jesus Christ.

Bishop Pike has become “broad” also on the doctrine of the Trinity—a doctrine which, he tells us, he did not question ten years ago. Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, so much impressed Pike by saying that he could “not understand why we had to develop the Trinity concept,” that Pike is now “with him in thinking that all the verbiage associated with the Trinity is quite unnecessary.” Is it not his duty, as a bishop of a Church which affirms the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, to defend his testimony that he sees “nothing in the Bible, as critically viewed, which supports this particularly weak and unintelligible philosophical organization of the nature of God”?

Broader still and broader: Bishop Pike assures us that, although he now finds his earlier neo-orthodox orientation entirely too “vertical,” his theology is still completely “grace-centered.” He interposes, however, that he “no longer regards grace, or the work of the Holy Spirit, as limited explicitly to the Christian revelation.” In other words, he has dethroned special grace from its own proper sphere and has kicked it into the field of common grace. This gives him the maximum degree of breadth, so that all may be included in his gospel—“yes, even Buddha, … Socrates, and Freud”—on the ground that “all truth is God’s truth” and that “there is much truth and goodness in natural man.” The Bible “seems” (!) to indicate that no one is saved except through Christ. “Fine,” rejoins Pike, “—assuming that we identify Christ with the Word.” To say that no one is saved except through the earthly Jesus Christ “would be impossible;” but “that no one is saved except through the Word is certainly my belief.” The means of salvation “is on this earth broader than any historical revelation, even the full revelation in Jesus Christ.” How will Bishop Pike justify before the jury his disregard of the clear teaching of the Incarnate Word concerning man’s salvation when he professes such respect for the Word of the Fourth Gospel?

One consequence of this broadening process is that Bishop Pike now prefers the Creed to be sung. “There are several phrases of the creed that I cannot affirm as literal prose sentences,” he testifies, “but I can certainly sing them—as a kind of war song picturing major convictions in poetic terms.” It is a strange concept that a rational man, and a bishop at that, can conscientiously sing what he cannot conscientiously say, and that prose when sung is ipso facto transmuted into poetry. A fresh complication has been introduced into theology, because from now on, for purposes of classification, we shall have to ascertain whether or not a bishop is a singing bishop.

It is a splendid thing to be large-hearted, and the Bishop’s affirmation that “the Holy Table is not an Episcopal table but the Lord’s Table” is welcome. But it is proper to ask where we are likely to end up if men of similar “breadth” to that which Dr. Pike now boasts are to lead us to the “coming great church.” What sort of a church is it going to be? What guarantee is there that it will not be a church which has turned its back on special revelation and special salvation, on Jesus Christ as the sole Redeemer and Mediator between God and man, on Holy Scripture as the authoritative Word of God? What assurance can there be that a Trinitarian statement in an ecumenical basis of belief really means anything? or that the articles of the Creed are to be interpreted in accordance with historic orthodoxy? Will it be a creedless church—or a church in which the Creed, and also perhaps the preaching and the prayers, will be sung—a church, in brief, which is “broad” enough to welcome into its fellowship Buddhists, Socratic philosophers, and intellectual atheists like Freud? And, “broad” as such a church promises to be, will there be room in it for those who can say the Creed, who accept ex animo the historic doctrines of the faith, and who proclaim that there is but one Name under heaven whereby we must be saved?

Can it be denied that in important respects Bishop Pike’s new-found position represents a break with the position consistently maintained by the historic church until comparatively recent times? Bishop Pike may belong to the “historic episcopate,” but is he not in danger of moving out of the historic Church of Jesus Christ? We ask this with all respect and in Christian charity.

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