The Question of Christian Certainty

St. Paul was so sure of the divine truth which he taught that he wrote: “… I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12). The Apostle knew Christ as his Saviour and therefore was not ashamed of suffering for him; but as he knew Christ, so also he knew the doctrine which he spread by word or epistle to be the divine truth. To Timothy he writes: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them; for in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Tim. 4:16). Such personal assurance of the divine truth is needed by every pastor to lead his parishioners to Christ and eternal life; by every professor of theology to train able ministers of the New Testament; by every church member to stand firm in the faith and do the work which the Lord assigns to him. Without it a person is a “reed shaken with the wind,” “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men.” The personal assurance of God’s truth made the apostles martyrs who, with thousands of other persuaded believers after them, suffered death rather than deny what they knew to be the divine truth.

Now, Paul, as we know, was an inspired apostle who could say of his epistles: “… the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). But he also expected Timothy, who was not inspired, to be sure of the truth which he taught. He was to continue in the things he had learned. Then in the classical sedes doctrinae of divine inspiration he reminds him of the fact that from a child he has known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make him “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. [For] all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:14–17). “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31).

On the basis of these and other passages the Christian church has always held that the only way to secure personal assurance of the divine truth is to adhere faithfully to the divine Word as it is set forth in Scripture. Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Moody, together with hosts of other Christian teachers, confessed with one accord that their personal assurance of the truth rested upon the divine infallible Scriptures. To them the Bible was not a dead record of salvation facts, but “spirit and life” (John 6:63), that is, a living divine Word by which “the Spirit quickeneth.” Thus their personal assurance of the divine truth was based upon the testimony of the Holy Spirit exerting itself in God’s Word.

The Illusion Of Self-Assurance

When crass rationalism had removed Scripture as the foundation of the Christian faith, Schleiermacher endeavored to restore “religiousness” by substituting for the divine Word as the source and norm of the Christian faith the illusion of self-assurance. This means that the Christian, setting aside the Scriptures, must in some way make himself sure of the divine truth. His suggestion was hailed as a valuable theological discovery. Reinhold Seeberg says that “the entire dogmatic labor of the church of the nineteenth century followed the guidelines laid down by Schleiermacher” (Die Kirche Deutschlands im 19. Jahrhundert, pp. 84, 90). This applies in particular to the so-called Erlangen school of theology represented by von Hofmann, Frank, Harless, Thomasius, Franz Delitzsch, Theodosius Harnack, Kahnis, and others, who combated rationalism in its old form but also introduced a more subtle form of liberalism in a new ecclesiastical guise. The teachings of these men show a wide divergence. Some, like Harless, Luthardt, Ihmels, and others, in some respects came very close to the principles of the Reformation, while others, drifting far from the truth, rejected even the vicarious atonement. But all repudiated the inspiration of Scripture and tried to develop the certainty of the Christian truth along the lines of a “scientific theology.” They substituted for Scripture as the agency of Christian certainty something within the theologian, such as his “believing self,” his “Christian consciousness,” his “Christian experience,” and the like. The wide divergence in the theology of these men demonstrates the futility of trying to derive Christian certainty from anything within man himself. Their attempts led to a disastrous subjectivism, as each succeeding theologian condemned the view of his predecessor and endeavored to put across his own subjective notions.

The Subjectivism Of Frank

Perhaps the most noted Erlangen theologian is Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank (1827–1894). His view was developed and propounded in his voluminous work, System of Christian Certainty (System der christlichen Gewissheit), which in 1870 appeared in two volumes of 893 pages (the second edition having even more—954). His basis of Christian certainty was not Scripture, but the Christian’s own “converted self.”

Frank’s System of Christian Certainty is extremely hard to understand even for one who is adept in his dialectic, which he adopted from Hegel. He is often represented as a conservative Lutheran theologian, but the articles of faith, as he developed them out of his “converted self,” are garbled and stunted. Frank defended the thesis that nothing from without can make a Christian sure of his faith; such certainty can come only from the theologian’s “regenerated self.” His methodology was an adaptation of Hegel’s: Every thesis begets an antithesis; then a conflict develops between the two, the result of which is a synthesis, from which stems a new thesis; and so on, ad infinitum. In Frank’s adaptation this reads: Certainty stems from positing an object and is the assurance of the object; between the object and subject there takes place an interchangeable operation because of the similarity of the two; the operation consists in the reaction of the object upon the subject, which produces impressions; the result of these impressions is experience. So Frank argues without end, constantly repeating himself and constantly involving himself in endless illogical conclusions. To the average student of theology Frank’s system makes no sense; nor did it make sense to his many contemporaries who ridiculed his system as hopelessly unsystematic.

Frank desired to oppose the negative theology of Ritschl, but his own system was only a new form of rationalism dressed up in ecclesiastical parlance. Ultimately his analysis, division, and synthesis of what remains of the Christian truths rests upon his critical reason, which continuously and emphatically repudiates Scripture as the true source and norm of faith. He contends that if anyone would want to present the Christian doctrine from Scripture he would not know where to begin and end; and yet hosts of Christian teachers who based their teachings upon Scripture knew very well where to begin and end their dogmatics. Frank frequently reminds his readers of the alleged statement of Archimedes: “Give me a place where to stand and I will move the world.” But since he had no place where to stand, he moved no one. After the publication of his “System” a prominent theologian pointed out that this verbose work was really quite unnecessary, for if one had already experienced the truth it was not needed; and if one had not experienced it, Frank’s “System” could not assure him of the truth since, according to his view, nothing from without can make a Christian sure of the truth. To this he replied that he had at least made a valuable contribution to scientific theology, which Ritschl rejected as absurd.

Frank’s “System” did not endure. He was succeeded by theologians who, while suggesting systems at times even more rationalistic than his own, scorned his method of “raising oneself by one’s own bootstraps.” Nevertheless, by a fortunate inconsistency Frank did not reject all the truths of the Christian faith, though for the greater part they were presented in a garbled version. In fact, there are expressions of his which show that in the practical application of his teachings he neither followed his own theory of certainty nor carried through his repudiation of Scripture as the sole authority of truth and the only means by which to secure certainty of faith. Ultimately he had to admit that only God can make us sure of the divine truth, which the Holy Spirit does by the Divine Word. The confession of every believing Christian is: “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Ps. 119:105).

The Subjectivism Of Karl Barth

Frank’s orientation was Lutheran, while that of Barth is Reformed. But between these two men there is a remarkable similarity despite great dissimilarities. Both reject Scripture as the divine infallible source and norm of faith. Both make of Christian theology a sort of human philosophy. Both follow in the wake of Schleiermacher and employ a dialectic which stems from Hegel. Both are basically rationalistic in their theological methodology. Both fail to escape the subjectivism they so well attack in their critique of Schleiermacher. Both set forth their teachings in sprawling volumes that are tediously long and painfully difficult to understand. Both fail miserably as safe guides to a personal assurance of the divine truth. Both make their subjective beliefs norms for others to follow. In their approach to the matter of Christian certainty both are decidedly anthropocentric, which means that to them truth is not what God clearly states in his infallible Word but what they choose to regard as truth. Nevertheless, both assert certain elements of the Christian faith by a fortunate inconsistency.

John Warwick Montgomery (formerly a member of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, now professor of history at Waterloo Lutheran University, Ontario), after attending Barth’s Chicago lectures in 1961, could not help concluding that ultimately “it is Barth’s personal preferences [italics added] that determine theological truth for him and thus that they [his hearers] had every right to consider ‘his’ theology as but one opinion among numerous conflicting claims of our time—from Alan Watts’ Zen to Sarte’s existentialism” (Dialog, Autumn, 1962, p. 57; quoted in the Confessional Lutheran, February–March, 1963, p. 30).

This is a more just evaluation of Barth’s subjective theology than was the fulsome adulation bestowed upon him by some who attended the Chicago sessions. According to a press report, Barth, when asked about a certain doctrine, remarked: “Scripture says so.” But Barth’s final authority is not Scripture, for he says: “The real obedience of the church is to an authority which has to be distinguished from Holy Scripture to something immediate, absolute, and material, which has to be sought or has already been found side by side or even beyond Holy Scripture” (Church Dogmatics, I/2, p. 541). This means that Barth regards as authoritative what he, with others like him, considers to be the “Word of God.” When asked whether he would make decisive changes in case of a revision of his Dogmatics, he replied that there would be no essential ones.

Inspiring But Not Inspired

Barth also speaks of inspiration, but to him that is no more than a “divine decision continually made in the life of the church and in the life of its members” (Church Dogmatics, I/2, p. 534). This means that Scripture is inspiring but is not itself inspired. Yet this inspiring may take on uncounted forms and decisions. Perhaps this explains his remark that “Biblical dogmatics are fundamentally the suspension of all dogmatics” (The Word of God and the Word of Man, p. 73).

When Barth was asked by Professor Edward John Carnell how he could harmonize his appeal to Scripture as the objective Word of God with the admission that it is sullied by errors, theological as well as historical or factual, he replied that the Bible has proved itself to be a true and fitting instrument to point man to God and his work and words, that God alone is infallible, and that the Bible is a human instrument and document and thus not infallible like God. Nevertheless, he did not want to say that the Bible is not “solid,” though there are in it “tensions,” “contradictions” and “may be, if you prefer, errors” (Criterion, Winter, 1963, pp. 11 f.). But how can such a fallible human book be a safe foundation upon which to rest one’s faith? An erroneous book cannot be authoritative.

According to a press report, Barth suggested that CHRISTIANITY TODAY might be called “Christianity Yesterday.” But his own theology is that of yesterday, namely, the subjective theology that has plagued Christendom ever since Schleiermacher, who rejected Scripture as the sole source and norm of faith. In the meantime scores of believing Christians, while spurning the idiosyncracies and errors of misleading rationalistic theologians, still cling to this divine Word and by the grace of God come to the knowledge of the truth, as they heed the admonition: “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace …” (Heb. 13:9). With Peter they say: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” namely, the divinely inspired Bible; and this is a “more sure word of prophecy,” because “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:19–21).

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.