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2.
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What
areas of Christian theology were especially affected by the ideas
of the Enlightenment? Why was this so?
The
susceptibility of the Protestant Northern European and English-speaking
world and its Christian theology to the critique of the Enlightenment
is thought to be due to the failure within its own theological method
and commitments (Karl Barth). The desire to present a reasonable
faith is seen early in the Protestant movement with the Protestant
orthodoxy movement (pp76-80). As challenges from rationalism developed,
enabled by a confidence of personal, intellectual and even political
freedom, the stress of many theologians was to proof the claims
of revelation on the grounds of reasonableness of belief. Theology
moved into an apologetic stance, seeking external grounds and warrants
for its unique claims of reality as understood from revelation expressed
in the bible and in doctrine. This was particularly strong in England
in response to Deism, with its proposal that Christianity was analogous
to a more general natural religion. Eventually the stress shifted
to the stronger claim that not only was Christianity roughly analogous
to what could be understood from reason's natural religion (neology)
but Christianity is judged and reformed in its claims, doctrines
and even practices by the principles of reason alone (e.g., Kant's
famous Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone). Of course, as
pointed out, the localness of each flavour of Enlightenment ideology
would be mitigated by the existing theological milieu creating very
different responses to the Enlightenment critique (p 92).
Running
parallel to the intellectual challenges, there were also some very
pragmatic attacks, again derived from the early historical stresses
on philology and recovery of literary arts, on the bible in particular.
The strict rigour of philogical method and application of historical
methodology (and later the discovery of new variant manuscripts
of the bible) would, in Reimarus and Lessing (see question 1 of
chapter 12), challenge the doctrine of inerrancy largely held by
the then Protestant church. This forced Christian theologians to
respond with new constructs for the ground of Christian theology
that seemed more secure as derived from universal foundations in
either reason or religious experience.
In
most general terms the doctrine of revelation was most profoundly
affected, with consequent effects on Christology. Revelation was
no longer held to be a true indication of any universal truth that
remained for reason alone. In other words, anything that was 'true'
had to be universal in scope and the only tool that could be used
in this search was reason itself. The particular (contingent) revelation
of God in Jesus Christ, which Protestant theologians had held to
be the sole and exclusive summation of God due to the doctrine of
the Trinity, was reduced to a truth of one time and one place. Even
the crucial doctrine of the incarnation itself, as in the case of
G E Lessing, had to be evaluated by the timeless truth of reason.
The particular, Jesus Christ and the meaning of that one person
as the God-man, must yield to the investigation of the universal
and necessary (meaning able to be understood by all right thinking
persons) as declared by reason - usually by means of historical
investigation. Christology, in Deist and German thought, became
the study not of a supernatural revelation of the redeemer but the
more simple and universal study of the perfect person. The Christ
differs in degree from us, not in kind. The 'Jesus of faith', mired
in superstition (it must be said often equated with Judaism in Germany
giving rise to an intrinsic anti-Semitism) and thereby inaccessible
to historical method, needed to be replaced by the 'Jesus of history'
who was credible only as a moral teacher and exemplar. Any authority
or relationship of Jesus the Nazarene to Christianity resided almost
exclusively in this moral consciousness or personality. Jesus the
Nazarene was the Son of God in that he manifested more perfectly
than anyone else in the history of humanity the moral or civil will
of God. The evaluation of any ontological relationship, via the
incarnation and Trinity (pp 366-393), was reduced to inconsequence
in favour of a degree Christology (see question 4 of chapter 11).
The
first step in this radical movement in Christology was the challenge
of proof of miracles (p 381), of which the incarnation must be thought
of as the greatest. In short, miracles, according to Hume, fell,
by definition, outside the realm of normal laws of nature and therefore
could never be proven as true by any scientific, meaning universal,
means. As such, they become irrelevant in the human pursuit of meaning
of truth. Biblical claims, such as the resurrection, being merely
human testimony (and thereby prone to error) of an event, had no
analog in present experience (i.e., no one rises from the dead today)
and as such cannot be the grounds for any universal truth claim
lacking a principle of verification. Once Christ's miraculous ministry
and resurrection are challenged, it follows that all that remains
is his moral teaching as a skeleton of Christianity. The soteriological
meaning of the death-resurrection-ascension of Jesus follows suit.
It becomes the example of self-giving and dedication, an inspiration,
and not the work of God as saviour: Soteriology is reduced to morality
(pp 425-429).
Other
doctrines particularly susceptible to the Enlightenment critique
are the doctrine of sin, and in particular original sin, and the
problem of evil. Sin was reshaped from a rejection of God to a rejection
of a moral self-knowable law by reason. Original sin, our fatalistic
recourse, was felt to encourage moral laxity, as according to it
sin was the human lot no matter how one struggled against it. Original
sin was considered an oppressive or anti-ethical notion, telling
the individual that striving for moral perfection in the confines
of a universal reason was useless. That, in reference to regeneration,
original sin, that which separates the human creature (as one with
sin) and God (who has no sin), is tied to Christology (as the locus
of God's intervention for sin) is also clear (see question 1 of
chapter 14). Once original sin is rejected, any soteriological understanding
of Christianity becomes problematic, as does a major ground for
separation of identity between the human person and God. In addition,
it was thought that original sin also seemed to have two additional
negative theological effects, both still carried in contemporary
theologies. First, it seemed to charge God with our moral failures,
after all we are born with it. Second, it seems to make our 'situation',
where we find ourselves as acting persons, a co-agent in our moral
destinies rather than our responsibility. In the former case, the
question of theodicy is raised and in the latter the issue of responsibility
for moral acts.
In
conclusion all this brings to the fore the issue of theodicy (pp
292-295). Strictly speaking this is the presence of moral and personal
evil in the created world given the constraints of a kind, loving
and omnipotent Creator. The Enlightenment seemed to challenge this
basic Christian claim of an omnipotent God of love in light of the
presence of evil and the demand for moral responsibility in the
Christian doctrine of atonement. However, theodicy has also been
expanded to deal with the natural evil, with the justice of God
in regard to other faiths and to evils such as the holocaust and
racial inequality in which forms of the institutional churches have
historically actively or passively participated in. More simply
put, the Enlightenment has challenged the postulation that God is
'in' the world in terms that modern theology still continues to
grapple with.
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| 3. |
Summarize some features of the following movements: liberal Protestantism;
neo-orthodoxy; evangelicalism; and liberation theology.
Liberal
Protestantism:
Liberal Protestantism is the egress of the general movement of the
Enlightenment and Christianity to form a coalition between 'modern'
knowledge and Christian faith and thought. Liberal Protestantism,
for many, is concerned with the question of 'prolegomena', focusing
on the how we can know God rather than what we know (p 148). Usually
the figure of Friedrich Schleiermacher, with his famous Speeches
to the Cultured Despisers of Religion (1799) and his massive The
Christian Faith, is presented as the father of liberal Protestantism.
Schleiermacher's
programme is the larger programme of the movement, to reconstruct
Christian faith and belief in terms of other recognizable serious
and credible academic disciplines. In his case this was to adopt
a universally acceptable methodology. His theology was based on
the notion of 'feeling' or 'absolute self-dependence as self-consciousness'
and his ethics based on the model of the natural sciences (pp 97-98).
Schleiermacher felt a high degree of freedom in both abandoning
and reinterpreting Christian doctrine and the bible in order to
rehabilitate theology as a 'scientific' discipline amongst equals
at the University of Berlin. Assisting this theoretical project
was the continued pressure of historical investigation not only
of the bible but also of the history of dogma. This placing traditional
Christian interpretations into relative contexts meant that liberal
Protestant thinkers felt it necessary to re-construct the meaning
of Christian doctrine in a manner that made sense within the emerging
modern worldview of the natural sciences, psychology, anthropology,
sociology and later in philosophies such as Marxism (p 98-101) and
existentialism (p 189-191).
Two
near contemporary theologians have come to exemplify the movement.
Albrecht Ritschl, seizing on the new biblical studies of Johannes
Weiss and the apocalyptic nature of Jesus' thought and combining
it with G W F Hegel's phenomenological understanding of history
as process, reintroduced the ethical realm into the currency of
the movement. Ritschl stressed that in Jesus' call to the kingdom
of God one saw the ethical norms of the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. Civilization, especially the then contemporary
German-Prussian culture, was the zenith of that ethical call of
Jesus two thousand years ago. Undergirding this theoretical foundation
was the simple hope, shattered by World War I, that human nature
was unfettered in its ability to improve and to master its destiny.
Ritschl, in his adept marriage of biblical studies, Hegelian idealist
philosophy, and Christian doctrine, is an excellent example of the
broader liberal tradition and its hope in a reinstatement of tradition
Christian faith and sources of theology with contemporary culture.
Paul Tillich, although German trained, impressed liberalism deeply
into the American theological heritage with his programme of 'correlation'
(p 103). Tillich's theological task is the formulation of a conversation
between theology and the church with the wider culture. Culture
continually raises 'ultimate questions' (existential) in its philosophy,
literature and arts which concern the human situation and which
theology must answer. However, and differing from Karl Barth, for
Tillich, theology must speak the language of the culture back to
the originating culture meaning that theology must be ready to be
informed by cultural analysis and its norms in a mutual correlation
and correction.
To
summarize, liberal Protestantism, most broadly, is dedicated to
establishing a dialogue with the wider culture on questions of the
human situation. In particular, historically it has tended to stress
the role of experience (Schleiermacher), to reflect the dominant
cultural values too strongly (Ritschl) and, for some, to give a
prescriptive voice to its dialogue partners at the expense of Christian
specificity (Tillich).
Neo-orthodoxy:
The movement is dominated by its most able spokesperson in Karl
Barth and as a result it is sometimes termed 'Barthianism'. Other
labels used are 'dialectical theology', referring to its methodology
of difference between God and humanity over liberal Protestantism's
emphasis on similitude and the self-referential 'crisis theology'
interpreted in terms of its historical occasioning after World War
I and to its theological cry of the 'Otherness of God' and need
for God to intervene to redeem sinners in crisis (Emil Brunner).
Barth is often presented as the father of neo-orthodoxy. He was
influenced both by earlier theological movements and his own digust
with the German church approval of World War I. The latter caused
him to challenge his own theological training in a liberal Protestant
tradition and forced him to read the mediating theology of the 19th
century, the Marburg philosophical school and individuals such as
Kierkegaard and Blumhardt, and to re-evaluate his own teacher W
Hermann. Barth's impressive work, Church Dogmatics, is a massive
refinement of a collection of influences in Barth ranging from the
schools and thinkers above to his interest in Reformed dogmatics
(via H Heppe) and, in mid-career particularly, Calvin (hence, neo-orthodoxy)
and his own biblical exegesis (this is usually under estimated despite
the recasting of his Romans commentary which announced his initial
brilliance to the world in 1919). There are other theologians associated
with the movement and its journal Between the Times (Zwischen den
Zeiten) including Emil Brunner, F Gogarten, and even to a lesser
degree Rudolf Bultmann. By the end of the 1930s the movement began
to show cracks in coherent methodology amongst its loose membership.
It began to be dominated by the massive intellectual work of Barth
whose own development led him in a very public forum to an ever-increasing
radicalizing of theological method away from the perceived semi-liberal
sympathetic original members such as F Gogarten (history and sociology),
R Bultmann (existentialism) and E Brunner (natural theology and
anthropology). In North America neo-orthodoxy has been larger filtered
through the work of the Niebuhr brothers and later Yale theologians
connected with the 'narrative school' (p 167-171).
Barth's
contribution to theology is his insistence that theology is properly
a reflection on the exclusive and particular self-revelation of
God in Jesus Christ. As such, this 'theology of the Word of God'
(meaning Jesus Christ) as revealed in Scripture and proclaimed in
the church ( p 167) is to be concerned not with human questions
or situation (the liberal project) but is a response to what God
has revealed. As a response rather than human construction, theology
(and faith) creates its own 'possibilities' and grounds in describing
the human situation from revelation. Key theological concepts for
Barth become those doctrines traditionally restricted to 'faith'
and not provable by reason (although to be expounded logically)
such as the Trinity and Christology and an appeal to the uniqueness
of the Church due to its unique calling by God.
Critics
of neo-orthodoxy, more specifically of Barth, generally cite three
broad aspects of his theology as problematic. First, an appeal to
the 'otherness of God' tends towards a cold theology or conception
of God. The 'death of God' movement, for example, tries to address
this (pp 276-280). Second, the claim that revelation creates, in
essence, its own 'grounds and possibilities' meaning its own 'proofing'
has been labelled fideist in nature. Critics argue that the circularity
of revelation in Barth (p 204) means that it can never be challenged,
or correlated, with other human sciences or knowledge. Finally,
Barth's insistence that religion is idolatry has come under attack,
whether other positive religions or informally as loose sets of
disparate beliefs (see question 2 of chapter 17). It is thought
hostile to inter-faith dialogue and theologies of natural religion
(p 214-216) which might provide a dialogical base for theology with
other human sciences and other faiths.
Evangelicalism:
Evangelicalism has lately become associated with a transdenominational
movement, originally centred in N America and England but due to
mission activity now found throughout the globe, that adopts a particular
understanding of Scripture in Christian life. As such, as in the
case of many other movements examined, it is largely a method of
interpretation but there are also corresponding doctrinal or ideological
commitments. Four foundational concepts form the core of the evangelical
movement or method. First is the authority and sufficiency of Scripture
in matters of doctrine and life. Second, the uniqueness or exclusivity
of the redemption won by Jesus Christ. Third, the need for a personal
conversion, and finally the necessity or urgency of evangelism as
a result of the former three commitments is stressed. Of course,
how these assumptions are worked out is almost as vast as the number
of evangelical denominations since commitment to a specific form
of ecclesiology is less emphasized than in mainline denominations
(p 498).
The
term 'evangelical' has a long history in Protestant thought, beginning
as a largely derisive term and then adopted by reformers who wished
to return to a more 'bible'-centred understanding of Christianity.
It remains in usage in German theology (evangelisch) as a simple
reference to Lutheran theology, and this is often confusing to non-German
readers in dealing with texts written in the last century, especially
in regard to the neo-orthodoxy movement (although Barth was a Reformed
theologian) as seen in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other German Lutherans
who thought in the shadow of the greater movement.
Nor
is it the case that the evangelical movements' core assumptions
find exclusive representation in the recent centuries. Indeed, the
so-called Protestant scholastics (pp 76-80) by and large shared
the commitment to a form of inerrancy of Scripture. Of course, the
commitments to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and the need for
personal conversion are themes found in many other earlier movements
such as pietism. The urgency of evangelism is also seen in the revivalist
movements that have occurred throughout European history. This raises
the question, for many critiques of evangelicalism, as to its origin
in the pre-modern world. However, the rigour of the evangelical
commitment to inerrancy and to forms of apologetics due to its evangelical
commitments, point to origins in the modern period, at once sharing
and reacting to Enlightenment commitments.
What
makes the movement particularly difficult to identify is its reluctance
to form a coherent ecclesiological identity. The movement adopts
a methodological reading of the New Testament, which seems to assume
that no church structure is normative, or rather more precisely,
is open to interpretation independent of any prior tradition. This
'minimalist' and individual interpretation of ecclesiology has two
effects. Positively, it allows a breadth of ecumenical interaction
as evangelicals can, in theory, work across a large spectrum of
church manifestations. Thus, for example, nearly every major mainstream
denomination has an evangelical membership. Negatively, it continually
allows sectarianism in that the number of possible interpretations
of the New Testament (and subsequent form and doctrines) can seem
to match the number of possible readers. Many evangelical groups,
despite the obvious potential for unity, end up hopelessly splintered
over adiaphora.
Finally,
like the radical reformation, from which many modern evangelical
denominations trace their ancestry (further occluding the origins
of the movement), there is a counter-balance to this centrifugal
heterodox force. This is the propensity 'to steal', or adopt, more
classically Protestant orthodox forms in their thought and even
organization and doctrine. This is most clearly seen in the renaissance
of evangelical scholarship in concord with many of the themes of
post-liberalism (pp 118-120). In this regard, evangelicalism seems
to be addressing some of its origins and influences from both the
pre-modern and modern periods. By addressing issues of particularity,
communal life, praxis in interpretation and historicism, the movement
rejects modernity's stress on universals in favour of pre-modern
themes. In adopting a general assumption of foundationalism - the
rational explication of Christian doctrine as found in its apologetic
stresses and knowable by reason - the movement seems to run counter
to its rejection of modernity. This confluence of evangelicalism,
in terms of praxis, doctrine and ideology, with other modern forms
of theological thought, seems to beg the question of its overall
identity.
Liberation
Theology:
Once more the term describes a method of interpretation rather than
a specific set of Christian doctrines. The common method across
liberation theologies is the assumption that Christianity is associated
with the dispossessed in any society, usually economically or politically,
and is therefore largely a critique of oppressive secular ideologies
(in which the church often participates) such as capitalism, patriarchy
or male euro-centrism, and finally racism (usually against non-white
European derived groups). The dominant stress is that the history
of God as recorded in the bible, whether in the Exodus, the Prophets
or in the Incarnation, is the narrative of liberation from oppressive
ideologies. Salvation becomes not a personal preoccupation, but
the identification and rejection of oppressive ideologies that are
interpreted as structural or 'original sin'. God, it is argued,
is for those marginalized and oppressed by the powerful few. As
such, liberation theology encompasses feminist or womanist theologies
(pp 110-112) and black theology (pp 117-118). The historically accurate
term, however, is restricted to a form of theology originating in
Catholic Latin American countries preoccupied with the plight of
the urban poor and criticizing the wider church's role in propagating
or compliancy with this economic oppression.
The
initial, specifically Latin American, form of liberation theology
borrowed heavily from Marxist philosophy (pp 98-101), particularly
from the seminal work of G Gutiérrez, and married this to
a hermeneutical stress of liberation as the dominant theme of the
bible in both Testaments. From Marx the movement adopts a social
theory of alienation connected to capitalism and provides a positive
programme for the dismantling of such structures in favour of socialism
(see question 1 of chapter 17). However, this 'tool', it is argued,
is not an add on to Christian belief and praxis but rather a philosophical
method, recalling a long history of philosophy as ancillary to theology,
that runs in concord with the larger biblical framework of God's
action in the world on behalf of the oppressed. It is this latter
notion that seems to have caught on most in the non-Catholic world
and which has spread the influence of liberation theology beyond
its initial preoccupation with economics. One can add feminists
such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, black theologians such as James
H Cone and non-specific theologians such as J Moltmann (pp 279-281)
to this latter list of influenced theologians.
Liberation
theology has been criticized on four fronts arising out of its method
and hermeneutic. In regard to its method, the relationship of secular
philosophy to the Christian exegesis is often challenged, calling
into question which is prescriptive in the dialogue. Many think
that Christian doctrine is translated, such as original sin as ideological
situation, beyond the constraints of Christian orthodoxy (although
nearly every Protestant post-Enlightenment movement such as liberalism
and neo-orthodoxy do a similar argument for original sin as 'structural'
due to the Enlightenment critique of the doctrine). Others have
criticized the movement for its biblical hermeneutic of oppression,
citing a lack of balance and ill-informed by biblical scholarship
(although the Jesus Seminar movement has given new impetus to the
interpretation of Jesus as a radical thinker). The preoccupation
with the secular and emancipation therein has been challenged as
omitting the transcendent and eternal character of God's salvific
work and acts. Finally, the movement is criticized, despite its
emphasis on love for the oppressed, as being un-loving to those
who might participate in oppressive structures but who are themselves
unaware of this activity. This 'demonizing of the oppressor,' making
them un-human, seems to give specific Christian status to the oppressed,
articulating a belief that only the oppressed have any access to
the true Gospel. Some have even suggested that this points to an
essential precondition in being oppressed in order to hear the Gospel.
However,
despite the original narrowness of liberation theology in its critique,
it has fostered or run in concurrence with other theological identities
in the 'death of God' movement (pp 276-280), as well as feminist,
womanist and black theologies. It also appears, on the threshold
of a new century, that an ever-increasing dissatisfaction with global
corporate-style capitalism in the West amongst the continued challenges
by other issues such as persistent patriarchy and racism, the need
for a Christian ecology and even the voice of non-Western theologies
to the West (pp 123-127) will ensure that liberation theology remain
a dominant and important theological movement.
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