1 THE FIFTH STEP: Theology
DEPARTURE FROM BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY
Modern existential theology finds its origin in Kierkegaard, as does secular existentialism. They are related together at the very heart of their systems—that is, “the leap of faith.” Theology comes as the last step, but it is by no means isolated from the rest of the cultural consensus we have been reviewing.
There is diversity within the unity of the new theology. There is a difference, for example, between neo-orthodoxy and the new liberalism following the new Heidegger. Careful scholarship demands that we appreciate such differences. But if we miss the unity which binds together all expressions of modern theology, we have missed the essential point.
At the time of the Reformation, the reformers were confronted with a total system. They did not say that there were no Christians within the Roman Catholic Church, nor did they say that there were no differences in the teaching and emphases of the various Roman Catholic Orders. But they understood that there was one underlying system which bound every part of the Church together, and it was this system as a system that they said was wrong and in opposition to the teaching of the Bible.
Today evangelicals are again confronted with an overwhelming consensus, a methodology accepted by theologians on every side. Thus, while one can get some insights (for example, Bultmann has some good exegesis in some details), yet this is not the place for ambivalent judgment—nor mere disagreement concerning details—we must realize that their system as a system is wrong.
As Senghor pointed out that the basic factor of Marxism was neither its economic theory nor its atheism but its dialectical methodology, so the unifying factor of the new theology is its wrong methodology. Since its concept of truth is wrong, what sounds right often means something entirely different from that which historic Christianity means by the same phrase. It is naive to discuss the theological questions as theological questions until one has considered what truth means to the one who is making the theological statements.
Theology has been through the same process as philosophy, though several decades later. Prior to Hegel, rationalistic man was still trying to draw his circles to encompass the whole of life. Then came the line of despair. Naturalistic theology has followed this very closely. The old liberal theologians in Germany began by accepting the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes as a closed system. Thus they rejected everything miraculous and supernatural, including the supernatural in the life of Jesus Christ. Having done that, they still hoped to find a historical Jesus in a rational, objective, scholarly way by separating the supernatural aspect of Jesus’ life from the “true history.”
But they failed in the same way that the rationalistic philosophers had failed. They too were caught in the round room without an exit. Their search for the historical Jesus was doomed to failure. The supernatural was so intertwined with the rest that if they ripped out all the supernatural, there was no Jesus left! If they removed all the supernatural, no historical Jesus remained; if they kept the historical Jesus, the supernatural remained as well.
After their failure they could have done two things in order to continue in a rational and logical framework. They could have left their rationalism and returned to the biblical theology of the Reformation (which they had rejected on the basis of naturalistic presuppositions); or they could have become nihilistic concerning thought and life. But instead of choosing either of these two rational alternatives, they chose a third way, just as the philosophers had already done—a way which had been unthinkable to educated man before this, and which involved the division of the concept of truth.
Why did theology follow philosophy in this tremendously important step? For two reasons: first, their old optimistic rationalism had failed to produce a historically credible Jesus, once the miraculous had been rejected; second, since the surrounding consensus of thought which they were carefully following was normative to them, when philosophy developed in this direction, they eventually followed.
So it was not so much neo-orthodoxy which destroyed the older form of liberalism, even though Karl Barth’s teaching might have been the final earthquake which shook down the tottering edifice; rather, it had already been destroyed from within. To say it in another way—if Barth had spoken fifty years before, it is doubtful if any would have listened.
Neo-orthodoxy gave no new answer. What existential philosophy had already said in secular language was now expressed in theological language. We can represent it like this:
Neo-orthodoxy leaped to what I call the “upper story” in order to try to find something which would give hope and meaning to life. The “lower story” is the position to which their presuppositions would have rationally and logically brought them.
So theology too has gone below the line of despair:
The new theology has given up hope of finding a unified field of knowledge. Hence, in contrast to biblical and Reformation theology, it is antitheology.
Seen in this way it is naive to study the new theology as if it were a subject on its own. Some years ago I was speaking at one of the most solidly biblical seminaries in the world. I began by saying that if our American theologians had understood the Armory Show of 1913 in New York, when modern art was first shown in the United States, perhaps the big denominations in American would not have been captured by the liberals in the thirties. By that time the trends which would come much later in theology were being foreshadowed in art. This is why, earlier in this book, I gave 1913 as such an important date. Had the Christians understood the message of this art at the Armory Show, it would have been a tremendous opportunity to have been ahead rather than to have lagged behind. Conservative theology has not yet caught up. It has been far too provincial, isolated from general cultural thinking.
Karl Barth was the doorway in theology into the line of despair. He continued to hold to the day of his death the higher (negative) critical theories which the liberals held and yet, by a leap, sought to bypass the two rational alternatives—a return to the historic view of Scripture or an acceptance of pessimism. After the first edition of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, he no longer acknowledged his debt to Kierkegaard. However, still believing the higher critical theories, his “leap” continued to be the base of his optimistic answers. In later years, as his followers have carried his views forward, he drew back from their consistent extensions. But as Kierkegaard, with his leap, opened the door to existentialism in general, so Karl Barth opened the door to the existentialistic leap in theology. As in other disciplines the basic issue is the shift in epistemology.
He has been followed by many more, men like Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. They may differ in details, but their struggle is the same—it is the struggle of modern man who has given up a unified field of knowledge. As far as the theologians are concerned, they have separated religious truth from contact with science on the one hand and history on the other. Their new system is not open to verification; it must simply be believed.
Thus, though their position rests on a “liberal” view of Scripture, yet in the new theology the real issue is now not only their view of Scripture but their divided view of truth.