Of Tidy Doctrine and Truncated Experience

Within Protestantism there are two classic approaches to theology. The one initially emphasizes God’s action in regard to man. The other begins with man’s experience of God. The former tends toward creedal definition and might be labeled a “theology of the Word”; its trinitarian focus is on Christology (on the revelation of God to man), and perhaps its most representative expression is the theology of Martin Luther. The latter tends toward the intuitive and interpersonal and might be labeled a “theology of experience”; its trinitarian focus is on the Holy Spirit (on man’s experience of God in his creation and redemption), and its classic theological statement is that of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Although the evangelical believes that Schleiermacher, the nineteenth-century romanticist and liberal theologian, made several crucial mistakes in working out his theology, his starting point was not necessarily in error. Even Karl Barth, a strong proponent of a theology of the Word, recognized the validity in principle of formulating an experiential theology. Barth’s term for such a theology was a “theology of awareness.” He said, “What Schleiermacher constructed by means of his theology of awareness by planting himself in the center which for the Reformers had been a subsidiary center, could be the pure theology of the Holy Spirit; the teaching of man brought face to face with God by God, of man granted grace by grace” (Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl, Simon and Schuster, 1969, p. 341).

Evangelicals are beginning to recognize the truth of Barth’s statement as they explore the possibility of an experientially based theology. Influenced by those who stress either a charismatic approach to faith (e.g., Michael Harper, Robert Mumford, Dennis Bennett, David Wilkerson, Larry Christenson) or a relational approach (e.g., Bruce Larson, Keith Miller, Charlie Shedd, Wes Seeliger, Ralph Osborne), evangelicals are beginning to build their theologies around what it means for man to be in the presence of God.

To stress one’s experience, which is an experience of the Spirit, is not, according to evangelicals, to ignore the Word as manifest both in Scripture and in Christ himself. Indeed, to do so would be foolish, for it would result in a formless mysticism. Word and Spirit must be joined together in any adequate Christian theology. What is being increasingly attempted today is a reversal of the Reformer’s approach to the Christian faith. Evangelicals are suggesting that theology must travel from Spirit to Word, not from Word to Spirit, the pattern of their heritage.

In this article I will look at the basis for this change in theological orientation in the evangelical world. I will then consider a criterion for judging the adequacy of any evangelical experiential theology. In conclusion, I will offer a suggestion as to the bipolar nature of theology based on the experience of the Holy Spirit.

Recognizing that theology is at best a stammering, an inadequate attempt to set forth an understanding of God, theologians such as Paul Holmer of Yale have criticized mainline evangelical theology for its desire to be “logically tighter” and “conceptually better defined” than the Bible itself. Evangelicals have been guilty, says Holmer, of a “tidying up complex,” which unfortunately works at cross purposes with the intended goal of their preaching, the development of the Christian’s life. Evangelical intellectualism based on a rationalistic and idealistic philosophy has so abstracted the Christian faith that it risks missing the heart of the Gospel. In their desire for precision, evangelicals have become so analytical, so mired in contrived conceptual schemas, that correct doctrine has superseded faith and life as the focal point of Christianity. The faith and life are there in the evangelical’s hymnody, preaching, and devotional life, but certain extrinsic factors have clouded them over in the theological arena. (Holmer’s comments appear in The Evangelicals, edited by David Wells and John Woodbridge, Abingdon, 1975.)

This charge against the evangelical’s formulations of his faith (not against this faith per se) is also being leveled from within evangelicalism itself. Influenced by the wider Christian world, evangelicals who have adopted either a relational (“incarnational”) approach or a charismatic (“neo-pentecostal”) approach to their theology are more and more challenging their fellow believers to rethink the Gospel from the standpoint of their own experience with it. Their claim is that traditional evangelical theology is largely irrelevant or inadequate.

For example, I spoke recently to a minister who is sympathetic to the charismatic movement and who had just finished a series of sermons on the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church today. He read traditional evangelical statements on the Holy Spirit in his preparation and granted their doctrinal orthodoxy, but he complained that he found them sterile and therefore incomplete. The Spirit, he felt, had suffered reduction. Formal statement did not match the exhibited power of the Holy Spirit within the Christian community.

The prescription for health that is increasingly being sounded from within evangelicalism is this: if the Church is ever again to set forth a relevant and adequate theology, it must begin not with reflection on the person of Christ but with reflection on our experience with him through the Holy Spirit.

In other words, to talk more adequately about the Word, one should begin with the Spirit. It is, after all, the Spirit who is the expression of the Father and Son to man. It is the Spirit who is at work in the world and in the lives of believers. As Jesus himself stated, “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13–15). An adequate theology of the Spirit therefore will be at one and the same time a theology of the Son and of the Father. Its concern is to take seriously how we experience God in Christ within our faith and life, and this begins through the work of the Spirit.

While this critique of mainline evangelical theology has enough truth in it to cause the establishment to bristle in rebuttal, experiential theologians are not without their own potential pitfalls and excesses, as the example of Schleiermacher would suggest. Barth once remarked that even those who are judged to be heretics, with all their “recognized folly and wickedness, should and must have a voice in theology.” Evangelicals must be sufficiently confident of their theology to hear openly and attentively the voices not only of their favorites but of the Christian community in its entirety. For one never knows who among his theological forebears might provide a particularly needed and wholly unexpected word of correction or addition. Thus it may be that Schleiermacher has something to say to us today.

Schleiermacher’s theology was perhaps the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to carve out a theology of experience. It is not that Schleiermacher succeeded where contemporary evangelicals are failing. Rather, it is by the clearcut failure of his attempt at experiential Christian theology that he can be of service.

In particular, evangelicals can cull from Schleiermacher’s writing a criterion for judging any theology of experience. Put most simply, it is this: the success of an experiential theology must be judged by the ease (or lack of ease) with which it moves from Spirit to Word. As evangelicals work out their formulations of the faith in and for the life of the Church, they must keep in mind this built-in test. If Word and Spirit can be held in dynamic union, then experiential theology has the possibility of becoming definitive for the life and witness of the evangelical church today. If not, such theology must be called to task and dismissed as sub-biblical, as Schleiermacher’s was. The Word cannot take the place of the Spirit, as has often happened in conservative circles. But neither can the Word be ignored.

In Barth’s important study of nineteenth-century theology quoted earlier, he noted that Schleiermacher, like the Reformers before him, acknowledged two basic theological motifs: first, the question of man’s action in regard to God; and second, the question of God’s action in regard to man. The former was answered by “the Spirit of the Father and of the Word which enables man to hear the Word.” The latter was answered by “the Word of the Father which is spoken to man.” For Barth, the importance of Schleiermacher in the history of the Christian Church was that where the Reformers said “the Word of God” first and then added the human correlate of faith (justification by grace through faith), Schleiermacher reversed this order (justification through faith by grace). To begin with man, as Schleiermacher did, was not necessarily to dismiss God. Rather, it was to take man in the presence of God as the proper epistemological starting point for theology. Rather than exclude the Word, such a theology of the Spirit sought to bring the Word to bear on it as the other side of an experiential approach to Christianity. Rather than moving from Word to Spirit, Schleiermacher’s theology progressed from Spirit to Word.

A comparison with Luther is instructive at this point. Luther’s theology was above all a theology of the Word. But it was at the same time a theology of the Spirit. “Justification by grace (a theology of the Word) through faith (a theology of the Spirit)” might summarize his position. There was a trinitarian unity to his understanding. He moved with ease from a theological focus in the Word to one in the Spirit. Word opened out into Spirit.

Making use of this insight, Barth asked whether there is to be found in Schleiermacher’s reversal of traditional Reformation theology a similar trinitarian unity. If so, he suggested, it is a genuine, proper theology.

Unfortunately, though Schleiermacher was Christian in his intent and legitimate in his initial approach, the difficulty of convincing his readers that Christology was indispensable to his religious understanding suggests that the spirit that formed the center of his theology was not the Holy Spirit. That is, this theology failed the trinitarian test and thus proved sub-Christian. Even in his failure, however, he succeeded in permanently opening the question of the significance of experience, imagination, and affection in theology.

Until recently, it has been “liberal” theology that has continued systematically to explore Christian theology from the vantage point of the Spirit (e.g., Tillich, Gilkey, Keen). In “conservative” circles formal theology has been dominated by a propositional starting point centered in the Word (e.g., Henry, Schaeffer, Montgomery). But while an experiential starting point has been largely neglected by evangelical scholarship, such an approach has entered strongly into the life and witness of the conservative church through its informal and lay theology.

Such church-renewal movements as Faith at Work, pioneering in developing an “incarnational” approach to life and ministry, have been widely influential among evangelicals. Understood in “incarnational” or relational terms, Christ becomes known preeminently in and through the lives of others. It is for this reason perhaps that most of the literature in relational theology centers on a recounting of personal experiences. “If every man is a priest,” suggests Larson, “every man is a discoverer and a participant with God, and he has something valid to report about God from his own experience” (Living on the Growing Edge, Zondervan, 1968, p. 79). In the books of writers like Larson, Keith Miller, and Charlie Shedd, we learn by observing the Spirit at work in the lives of others. Often the correlate to relational theology is a bias against traditional systematic theology. For those whose lives have been influenced by relational theology with its focus on man’s experience of new life, formal doctrine seems sterile and often irrelevant.

Alongside the church-renewal movement centering in relational theology, the charismatic movement too has made wide inroads into evangelicalism, affecting both life and worship. The charismatics have discovered their focal point theologically in the demonstrated gifts of the Spirit. It is the charismata, not agreement in doctrine, that draws together this widely assorted group. Catholics, Episcopalians, Assemblies of God believers, Methodists, and Presbyterians all come together freely, experiencing the fullness of the Spirit and letting traditional denominational theological distinctives—all formulated with primary reference to a theology of the Word—fade into oblivion.

One of the leading spokesmen of the charismatic movement, Michael Harper, editor of the English neo-pentecostal magazine Renewal, states in writing about the demonstrated success of the Church of the Redeemer in Houston: “The world awaits a fresh manifestation of Christ within His body, the Church. It is tired of … the airy-fairy doctrines of theologians. ‘Show us,’ the world yells at the Church. ‘Let us see you do it. Then we’ll listen to your words.’ ” Harper than proceeds to tell about the experience of this charismatic, community-styled church, stating that he has “discovered a new way of living, not a new way of thinking about life.” We must begin, he says, with the experience of the Spirit, not with what has been written about the Holy Spirit and his gifts (A New Way of Living, Logos, 1973, p. 12).

Both in relational theology and in charismatic theology, an experiential approach to Christianity is being voiced. For Larson, to “live on the growing edge” is to feel “the breeze of God’s Spirit … blowing through the Church today.” For Harper, the new life in Christ is intimately tied to a fresh experience of the life of the Holy Spirit through charismatic manifestation. For both, the experience of the Spirit is crucial as their theological point of entry. It is for this reason that the similarly experientially oriented theology of Schleiermacher can be instructive.

The emphasis on an experience of the Spirit must be ultimately judged by its faithfulness to the Word. In this regard, it is not enough to note that the Word as Scripture is used both in relational theology and in charismatic theology (as it was by Schleiermacher); one must also raise the question whether it is misused. In both charismatic and relational theology, the danger is that of stressing what the Word says (or doesn’t say) to me, at the expense of what it says on its own terms. Evangelicals should reject such an approach. While direct illumination, dialogue, and application are necessary to any adequate reading of Scripture, they cannot lord it over the intended meaning and authority of the text. One’s experience with the Spirit must flow into and out of his experience with the Word, carefully studied.

The misuse of this hermeneutical principle can be illustrated from the literature of both the charismatics and the relational theologians. For example, in A New Way of Living Michael Harper reports being influenced by a woman who said within a worship service at the Church of the Redeemer, “The Lord [= Spirit] has given me a scripture … ‘Thou shalt not uncover thy sister’s nakedness’ [Leviticus].” The spiritual leader present at this occasion interpreted the text to mean, “God is saying that we are not to seek for or allow any publicity for the moment. This is a work of God which should not be uncovered” (p. 20). Given this “word” from Scripture, Harper felt compelled not to write on this particular charismatic group for five years until he was given a new direction.

No explanation of this allegorical interpretation was offered. It was accepted as a valid message from God. Spirit and Word have here been joined, but clearly at the expense of the intended meaning of the Word. Serious exegetical study has given way to a blatant manipulation of the text. Scriptural authority has been marshalled for a direction that has no scriptural basis.

Within relational literature the “Serendipity” books of Lyman Coleman illustrate this same danger of scriptural misuse through an overstress on the experiential. In one of his group Bible studies, for example, Coleman uses the account in John of Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet (13:1–5). He asks you to close your eyes and “allow your imagination to create the scene for you.” He then goes on: “Ask yourself, if Jesus should come to me for the same reason that He went to His disciples—to serve them—how would He minister to me? What is my deepest need at the moment?… In other words, how would he ‘wash my feet’ today?” After meditating on this question the group participant is then asked to share with the others how Christ would minister to him and why (Discovery, Word, 1972, p. 50).

Although it is certainly true that Christ wants to minister to our present needs, is this the intended meaning of the text? Was the problem of dirty feet the focus of the passage? When we look at these five verses in their context, we find that what the author intended here was a statement of the meaning and value of Jesus’ death. Coleman avoids the author’s intention (an interpretation of the atonement) by reducing the twenty-verse pericope to only the first five verses. The foot-washing incident is shorn of its interpretative context and used allegorically. Unfortunately, under the rubric of Bible study, what is actually taking place is “Christian” sharing. The experience might support Christian community, but the Word has been manipulated in the process.

In fairness to both authors, let it be said that faithfulness to the Word seems to be their intention. But this makes matters all the more serious, for Scripture is therefore central, and not peripheral, to their theological formulations.

Let Schleiermacher be a constant reminder and goad to both relationalists and charismatics. An experiential theology must ultimately be judged by the ease with which it flows into a theology of the Word. Any friction created as one moves from Spirit to Word in his theology must be eliminated. Any attempt to hasten an experience of the Spirit by pressing on it a veneer of the Word must be resisted. Teaching and preaching can take place when someone presents the experience of his own heart as stirred by the Spirit. But how is this best done? Surely not by bolstering Christian experience with faulty exegesis. The Bible must not be used as a sanction for one’s independent Christian feelings and experiences.

As Schleiermacher worked out the implications of his theology of experience in his book The Christian Faith, he sought to distinguish two ways in which we become conscious of God’s Spirit, two modes of apprehending our dependence on him. The first was in our experience of the totality of the natural world. The second was related to our awareness of sin and redemption. To put it in simplified terms, we might say that Schleiermacher’s theology attempted to do justice to both general and specific revelation. Or to put it another way, his theology consciously had two points of focus, creation and recreation theology.

While generalizations are hazardous, it seems to me that experiential theology today is having problems similar to those Schleiermacher encountered in emphasizing concurrently these complementary aspects of the Spirit’s work. Relational theology, for example, in reasserting the role of the Spirit in creation, has tended to emphasize the insights of psychology and the human-potential movement. The cure of the soul has been discussed in terms of Maslow’s “Peak Experience,” Mowrer’s New Psychology, Transcendental Meditation, “I’m O.K., You’re O.K.,” the need to show your anger, a sanctified sensuality (and sexuality), and so forth. The uniqueness of the Spirit’s re-creative role as an agent of Christ effecting supernatural change in the life of the believer has tended to become blurred by this redefinition in natural terms.

It was such a danger that the theologians who met at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1975 warned against. In their appeal to the Church, they pinpointed the following themes (among others) as “superficially attractive, but upon closer examination … false and debilitating to the Church’s life and work”: “Theme 6: To realize one’s potential and to be true to oneself is the whole meaning of salvation. Theme 7: Since what is human is good, evil can adequately be understood as failure to realize human potential. Theme 8: The sole purpose of worship is to promote individual self-realization and human community.” What these theologians saw was a movement in current theology toward trivializing the gospel promise, underestimating the pervasiveness of sin, and downplaying the independent reality of God.

Although relational theology has by no means jettisoned the Gospel, sin’s reality, or God’s independence, its stress on self-realization and human community makes this an ongoing peril. Because rebirth in Christ through a personal experience with his Spirit has been central to all definitions of evangelicalism, this danger of overemphasizing the Spirit’s work in and through the natural remains only this—a danger. Evangelicals must take note, however, of the need to maintain the uniqueness of the Spirit’s work in the Church, apart from his creative and preservative role in creation at large.

Charismatic theology has tended to overstress the other focus of the Spirit’s work, his re-creative role within the faithful community. In the process, the Spirit’s creative witness in the world at large has been glossed over or denied. Within the charismatic movement, separation from the world has been a central tenet. Biblical passages such as “[escape] the defilements of the world,” “do not love the world or the things in the world,” “whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God,” and “keep oneself unstained from the world” are used as divine support for underinvolvement or noninvolvement in cultural activity, politics, and secular education. When this suspicion of the world is combined with a life of piety—of study, prayer, singing in the Spirit, group sharing and praise, faith healing, speaking in tongues, evangelism, mutual edification and support—the result is an intense concentration of energy within the believing community. Little time and interest remain for outside pursuits.

An aspect of the charismatic movement contributing to the neglect of the Spirit’s work in creation at large has been the tendency toward “charismania,” a preoccupation or fixation with the gifts of the Spirit so that this experience becomes an end in itself and the only adequate experience of the Spirit. The Spirit’s creative contribution in society and nature is neglected.

If the evangelical community is to be enriched by reflection on the Spirit in our midst, the Spirit’s role must neither be limited to the Church nor reduced to God’s creative presence in the world. Biblical theology can serve as our paradigm in this regard. For example, the insights of Old Testament wisdom literature (with its focus on creation theology) can be productively brought to bear on Pauline theology (with its focus on redemptive theology), and vice versa. In the wisdom literature, the Spirit’s role in creation is appreciated and highlighted in and of itself, even while on the horizon we are pushed outward to look for a further, necessary re-creative act by God (Job, Ecclesiastes). With Paul, on the other hand, the Spirit’s role in re-creation (both in redemption and sanctification) is emphasized, while we still look outward to that work of the Spirit which is preliminary and generally available to all men (Romans, Acts 14:15–18). If one centers on Pauline thought, one might tend to undervalue the richness of created life, of common grace. But to center, as wisdom literature does, only on the Spirit as observed in created life is to bar oneself from the glorious further revelation he provides in Christ. The Spirit’s work both in the Church and in creation at large must be valued within any adequate evangelical theology.

The exact nature of an experientially based theology has not yet been delineated within the evangelical community. Richard Quebedeaux’s The Young Evangelicals has perhaps provided a preliminary and hastily drawn map of the direction it might take. Whether this proves to be so or not, evangelicals will need to ask two questions continually as they develop their formulations of the faith based in their experience of the Spirit. First, does a stress on the Spirit open naturally and authentically into an emphasis on the Word? Second, have the work of the Spirit in creation (natural revelation) and the work of the Spirit in re-creation (redemption and sanctification) been kept in dynamic union? An evangelical theology of experience must be bipolar—Spirit and Word, creation and re-creation. If it is, it could be definitive for the life and witness of the Church in the years ahead.

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