Neo-orthodoxy forum?

[Paidiske]

I vote for reading and discussing at various intervals.

Well, why don't you start a thread, perhaps suggest two or three books people might like to vote on, and link it back here? I'll definitely check it out.

The other thing to remember is that CF doesn't have to be everything. There are academic websites and there are also websites devoted to preaching. Some specialization will improve quality.

True, but the kind of discussion I have in mind - where a group of preachers talk about the readings they're looking at, the themes they suggest, the approach they might take, the issues live in their congregations - is something I haven't found anywhere.

Never mind; maybe one day!

 

[dms1972]

To hedrick

Yes well I am not always sure if Schaeffer is correct. But the way he sees it:


"Modern existentialist theology finds its origins in Kierkegarrd, as does secular existentialism. They are related together at the very heart of their systems - that is the 'leap of faith'...There is diversity within the unity of the new theology. There is a difference, for example, between neo-orthodoxy and the new liberalism following Heideigger."

"Theology has been through the same process as philosophy, though several decades later."

"What existential philosophy had already said in secular language was now expressed in theological language. We can represent it like this:

THE NONRATIONAL ¦ A crisis first-order experience. Faith as an optimistic leap
AND NONLOGICAL ¦ without verification or communicable content
________________________________________________________________________________
THE RATIONAL AND ¦ The Scripture full of mistakes - pessimism
LOGICAL ¦

Neo-orthodoxy leaped to what I call the "upper story" in order to try and 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."

"Neo-orthodoxy at first glance seems to have an advantage over secular existentialism. It appears to have more substance in its optimistic expressions than its secular counterpart. As we have seen, one difficulty is of the final experience is that no one has found a way to communicate this experience - not even to himself. But in the New Theology, use is made of certain religious words which have a connotation of personality and meaning to those who hear them. Real communication is not in fact established, but an illusion of communication is given by employing words rich in connotations. Expressing the inexpressible existential experience in religious connotation words gives an illusion of communication"

"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 his first edition of his Romans commentary, he now 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 carried his views forward, he drew back from their consistent extensions. But as Kierkegarrd with his leap, opened the door to existentialism in general, so Karl Barth opened the door to existentialisic leap in theology. As in other disciplines the basic issues is the shift in epistemology."

Quotes from Schaeffer's book : The God Who Is There

The key idea for Schaeffer is a unified field of knowledge. Which he says Scripture alone gives.

 

[zippy2006]

Well, why don't you start a thread, perhaps suggest two or three books people might like to vote on, and link it back here? I'll definitely check it out.

You pastors are so good at passing the buck! The book club was your idea, Paidiske! The next religious book on my list is Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option. You can put that on your voting list if you like.

True, but the kind of discussion I have in mind - where a group of preachers talk about the readings they're looking at, the themes they suggest, the approach they might take, the issues live in their congregations - is something I haven't found anywhere.

Never mind; maybe one day!

I think it's a lacuna. Build the website, or test it here and then build it. ...And don't you dare convince me that it was my idea so I am the one who should do it.

 

[Paidiske]

Passing the buck! Excuse me; if I did everything myself, would I not be open to accusations of clericalism, disempowering the laity and encouraging passivity? I can't win!

In reality, my moderating duties keep me busy, and at the moment I'm training a new moderator as well. I thought perhaps it better if someone else take primary responsibility for a thread with which, at times, I might struggle to keep pace (especially if there ends up being a lot of reading).

 

[FireDragon76]

Not really sure Barth represents a 'school of thought' but more of a new paradigm theologically. Its been said as you have pre-Einsteinian and post-Einsteinian Physics, so its a case of pre-Barthian, and post-Barthian theology. The difference between the Older theology and the New Theology is in the concept of Truth. So Barth's critics say it has a divided concept of Truth, that the New Theology is a form of semantic mysticism with nothing there, that it is faith in faith.

I can see why both theological liberals and conservatives might think that, since both are coming from a similar place in terms of their influences. Both are very much shaped by the Enlightenment, but in different ways. Whereas the "New Theology" is post-Enlightenment.

 

[hedrick]

To hedrick

Yes well I am not always sure if Schaeffer is correct. But the way he sees it:

I read Schaeffer’s book when it first came out. It was clear then, as it is now, that it is ideology, not scholarship. In fairness to him, it was published two years after "The Death of God." This was also a period when Bultmann's theology (and his conclusions about what little we could know about Jesus) was influential. You can make a case that Bultmann actually fit Schaeffer's description of liberal theology. I can see how someone could get the impression that liberal theology was self-destructing, particularly if the person was hostile to the use of critical thought in the first place. Seeing Barth as the source of its problems, though, is hard to understand even at the time Schaeffer wrote. And it turns out it didn't actually self-destruct. Liberal theology is doing just fine, though the mainline churches aren't.

But if you looked at things from a broader perspective, critical scholarship had been applied to the Bible since at least the Reformation. Indeed the Reformation depended upon an early form of it. The idea that the Bible is a witness to God’s acts of revelations rather than revelation itself was around well before Barth. I have no idea why it would be considered either negative or despair.

Barth sold the movement he was part of as a rejection of liberal theology. He felt that liberal theology had been too weak to stand up to Hitler. His attack was in some ways similar to Schaeffer’s. He believed that liberal theology was too vague, so he tried to place it on a rational groundwork. He saw it in the “otherness” of God, and thus our dependence upon Christ as his revelation. It’s true that some of his early work was considered existentialist in flavor. That wasn’t his intent, and in most of his work he tried to make that clear.

I can’t judge German liberal theology in the 1930’s, but I think many people now realize that Barth's attack on liberal theology in general was unfair. Or at least that it didn’t apply to much of liberal theology. In the US, for example, liberal theology was more willing to stand up to powerful interests than traditional theology. That continues to this day. Perhaps our version of liberal theology was different from pre-War Germany’s. But I think of people like Rauschenbusch in the US and the whole historical Jesus effort.

The influence of Barth was strong enough that when I was in college liberals such as Rauschenbusch weren’t considered worth looking at. But in the last few decades the mainline churches have recovered our understanding of just how much we depend upon Schliermacher and the whole liberal tradition.

 

[hedrick]

A problem with a neo-orthodoxy forum is that theologians today tend not to follow a specific school. Barth's influence may be strong, and some people are classified as Barthian, but even they are influenced by other streams of thought.

 

[FireDragon76]

American mainline Protestants, so used to our struggle with a culture dominated by Fundamentalism, can't easily appreciate that theological liberalism could potentially be problematic.

I believe Barth and Bonhoeffer's critiques of liberal theology were relevant, esp. as how it corrupted German Evangelical churches. The German Christian movement would not be possible without liberal theology gutting Christianity of actual theological content and focusing heavily on civil ethics. That spiritual vacuum was filled by concepts such as volk as an order of creation.

 

[hedrick]

American mainline Protestants, so used to our struggle with a culture dominated by Fundamentalism, can't easily appreciate that theological liberalism could potentially be problematic.

I believe Barth and Bonhoeffer's critiques of liberal theology were relevant, esp. as how it corrupted German Evangelical churches. The German Christian movement would not be possible without liberal theology gutting Christianity of actual theological content and focusing heavily on civil ethics. That spiritual vacuum was filled by concepts such as volk as an order of creation.

I can see how it could happen. I just don't think it's an essential characteristic of liberal theology. The mainliners that I know think there's actually a God, and that he makes demands on us. Civil ethics follow from that. Believing that all God cares about is that we're "saved" can be (and is) just as much a problem.

 

[hedrick]

I've been thinking about the question of resisting Naziism. I understand why Barth thought there was something wrong with German Christianity. But I'm not so sure it was liberal theology. The problem is that every theological family has at times allowed Christianity to be confused with loyalty to the nation or the culture. It's perfectly possible to have people who care passionately about orthodoxy but hate people or are insensitive to mistreatment.

Indeed this paper argues that the problem with German Protestantism wasn't liberalism so much as traditional Lutheran attitudes towards the State and Jews, and that Barth's theology wasn't actually that helpful: https://www.mbu.edu/seminary/theological-misinterpretations-confessing-church/. One aspect of Barth's theology is that he discouraged preaching on political topics. (https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewco...tpsredir=1&article=1001&context=sermonstudies)
.

 

[FireDragon76]

I've been thinking about the question of resisting Naziism. I understand why Barth thought there was something wrong with German Christianity. But I'm not so sure it was liberal theology. The problem is that every theological family has at times allowed Christianity to be confused with loyalty to the nation or the culture. It's perfectly possible to have people who care passionately about orthodoxy but hate people or are insensitive to mistreatment.

Neo-Orthodoxy seems to suffer from this less so. Jacques Ellul in particular comes to mind. He was critical of modern technocratic nation-states. Some have described him as anarchistic.

One aspect of Barth's theology is that he discouraged preaching on political topics. (https://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewco...tpsredir=1&article=1001&context=sermonstudies)
.

If I had to venture a guess, it would be that Barth objected because, as ugly as Nazism is, if we allow the Church to become a political party, that would have consequences for the Church's mission. And I believe Barth, as well as other Neo-Orthodox theologians, is skeptical that human beings are in such a place, due to human depravity, that they have the sort of knowledge to pontificate in a religious way about secular politics.

 

[dms1972]

I read Schaeffer’s book when it first came out. It was clear then, as it is now, that it is ideology, not scholarship. In fairness to him, it was published two years after "The Death of God." This was also a period when Bultmann's theology (and his conclusions about what little we could know about Jesus) was influential. You can make a case that Bultmann actually fit Schaeffer's description of liberal theology. I can see how someone could get the impression that liberal theology was self-destructing, particularly if the person was hostile to the use of critical thought in the first place. Seeing Barth as the source of its problems, though, is hard to understand even at the time Schaeffer wrote. And it turns out it didn't actually self-destruct. Liberal theology is doing just fine, though the mainline churches aren't.

But if you looked at things from a broader perspective, critical scholarship had been applied to the Bible since at least the Reformation. Indeed the Reformation depended upon an early form of it. The idea that the Bible is a witness to God’s acts of revelations rather than revelation itself was around well before Barth. I have no idea why it would be considered either negative or despair.

Barth sold the movement he was part of as a rejection of liberal theology. He felt that liberal theology had been too weak to stand up to Hitler. His attack was in some ways similar to Schaeffer’s. He believed that liberal theology was too vague, so he tried to place it on a rational groundwork. He saw it in the “otherness” of God, and thus our dependence upon Christ as his revelation. It’s true that some of his early work was considered existentialist in flavor. That wasn’t his intent, and in most of his work he tried to make that clear.

I can’t judge German liberal theology in the 1930’s, but I think many people now realize that Barth's attack on liberal theology in general was unfair. Or at least that it didn’t apply to much of liberal theology. In the US, for example, liberal theology was more willing to stand up to powerful interests than traditional theology. That continues to this day. Perhaps our version of liberal theology was different from pre-War Germany’s. But I think of people like Rauschenbusch in the US and the whole historical Jesus effort.

The influence of Barth was strong enough that when I was in college liberals such as Rauschenbusch weren’t considered worth looking at. But in the last few decades the mainline churches have recovered our understanding of just how much we depend upon Schliermacher and the whole liberal tradition.

Its really postmodernism I think is my problem, (or just unbelief) having passed into something like that in my twenties. Yet because of my confusion at that, in some way in my mind I tried to dissociate from that way of thinking, but its hard to explain.

Anyway you say "You can make a case that Bultmann actually fit Schaeffer's description of liberal theology". What would that case look like?

Schaeffer wrote: "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 concept of truth."

 

[FireDragon76]

Indeed this paper argues that the problem with German Protestantism wasn't liberalism so much as traditional Lutheran attitudes towards the State and Jews

They seem to be hitting hard on the Two Kingdom doctrine.

It is true a simplistic understanding of the Two Kingdoms doctrine could lead to a kind of political quietism, but the Two Kingdoms doctrine itself does not give absolute autonomy to either. The Church is an institution in society governed by law, just as the state is. They can be separated (as in the Free and Pietist churches), they can be in a kind of Byzantine symphonia as in Germany or the Byzantine world, but neither one is inherently wrong or right, per the doctrine.

Luther and many early Lutherans favored autonomy of the Church but as history progressed, that did not happen, the Church became an organ of the state and pastors became effectively civil servants. This is one thing that lead to the formation of the LCMS and similar bodies, because they objected to what they saw as state interference in the Church in matters of doctrine.

 

[dms1972]

I can see how it could happen. I just don't think it's an essential characteristic of liberal theology. The mainliners that I know think there's actually a God, and that he makes demands on us. Civil ethics follow from that. Believing that all God cares about is that we're "saved" can be (and is) just as much a problem.

It seems like their are two views (or at least two which dominate in America) on the Gospel. Dallas Willard said for one group (on the Right) the Atonement is the whole story (i admit this is mainly how I have heard the Gospel explained).

In this view Jesus died to pay for our sins, and if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die.

In this way he says what is one theory of the atonement is made to be the whole message of Jesus. Justification had taken the place of Regeneration. Being let off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life, "from above".

"What it is to believe that Jesus died for us is currently explained in various ways..."

Willard examines two current views on this : John MacArthur's 'Lordship Salvation' : which states you cannot have a "saving" faith in Jesus Christ without also intending to obey his teachings. You must accept him as Lord, hence the name Lordship salvation. The other view that of Charles Ryrie who believes that "the Gospel that saves is believing that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead.", "The good news is that Christ has done something about sin [paid for it] and that He lives today to offer His forgiveness to me." , "You can believe that what He taught while on earth was good, noble, and true, and it was...You can believe He is able to run your life, and He is surely able to do that, and He wants to. But these are not issues of salvation. That issue is whether or not you believe that His death paid for all your sin and that by believing in Him you can have forgiveness and eternal life."


I think a lot of it is do with how one understands the terms salvation, eternal life etc. For Willard eternal life is something that begins now when someone is born from above, not after they die. Salvation for Willard means more than forgiveness or justification.

On the other side Willard says are those who view the Gospel as entirely social. "It would be a mistake however to refer to them as 'liberal' without considerable qualification", he writes. "They are indeed the legitimate offspring of the liberal Christian church of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. But anyone familiar with ministers and theologians from the older liberalism (up to the 1960s) may find many of them closer to MacArthur and Ryrie, in the substance of their teachings as well as in their morality and practical spirituality, than to the currently dominant figures and teachings of the Christian Left."

 

[FireDragon76]

It seems like their are two views (or at least two which dominate in America) on the Gospel. Dallas Willard said for one group (on the Right) the Atonement is the whole story (i admit this is mainly how I have heard the Gospel explained).

In this view Jesus died to pay for our sins, and if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die.

In this way he says what is one theory of the atonement is made to be the whole message of Jesus. Justification had taken the place of Regeneration. Being left off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life, "from above".

What it is to believe that Jesus died for us is currently explained in various ways...

Willard examines two current views on this : John MacArthur's 'Lordship Salvation' : which states you cannot have a "saving" faith in Jesus Christ without also intending to obey his teachings. You must accept him as Lord, hence the name Lordship salvation. The other view that of Charles Ryrie who believes that "the Gospel that saves is believing that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead.", "The good news is that Christ has done something about sin [paid for it] and that He lives today to offer His forgiveness to me."

From a Lutheran perspective, Lordishp Salvation is even worse than Roman Catholicism's take on salvation in its confusion of Law and Gospel.

I agree that salvation is more than just legal theater. But we must preserve the promise aspect of the Gospel that is lost into legalism with the "Lordship Salvation" approach.

I suspect a reason there is so much controversy about this is because the Baptist take on justification by faith alone is influenced by the Puritan and Reformed notions of justification as a discrete, past event in an ordo salutis. For the Lutheran, justification has a nuance that is more like the Catholic take on the doctrine. It's not a process of becoming more justified, but neither is it strictly limited to the past. It's not something that happens to you just so you can go on to the business of Christian living or a higher life, it is the undercurrent of all Christian living.

 

[dms1972]

Donald Bloesch has depicted the various models of salvation in Protestantism. He describes Justification in the Lutheran Model to "a umbrella that covers our unrighteousness and makes us acceptable to a righteous and holy God. Sanctification or regeneration is the demonstration of a christian life motivated by outgoing love to our neighbor, not by a desire to ensure the permanance of our salvation. In sanctification we go forward but always under the forgiveness of sins. The christian life consists of ever new beginnings as we seek to conform ourselves to God's holy will."

What do you think of his description?

I think I have several views/models jostling around in my mind, and perhaps I am synthesising them to some extent - which probably isn't a good thing!

 

[FireDragon76]

Donald Bloesch has depicted the various models of salvation in Protestantism. He describes Justification in the Lutheran Model to "a umbrella that covers our unrighteousness and makes us acceptable to a righteous and holy God. Sanctification or regeneration is the demonstration of a christian life motivated by outgoing love to our neighbor, not by a desire to ensure the permanance of our salvation. In sanctification we go forward but always under the forgiveness of sins. The christian life consists of ever new beginnings as we seek to conform ourselves to God's holy will."

What do you think of his description?

I think I have several views/models jostling around in my mind, and perhaps I am synthesising them to some extent - which probably isn't a good thing!

That's a fair analysis. Though we also do agree with the Reformed that there is an inner regeneration. It just doesn't have the emphasis or necessarily the implications that it does in the Reformed churches.

 

[hedrick]

Willard examines two current views on this : John MacArthur's 'Lordship Salvation' : which states you cannot have a "saving" faith in Jesus Christ without also intending to obey his teachings.
...
The other view that of Charles Ryrie who believes that .... You can believe He is able to run your life, and He is surely able to do that, and He wants to. But these are not issues of salvation.

It’s hard to understand how one could read the Gospels and take the second view. People probably think of this as Luther, but it’s not, nor is it the usual Lutheran view.

...
On the other side Willard says are those who view the Gospel as entirely social.

The term “social gospel” has to be looked at carefully. Conservatives have misunderstand and perhaps even misrepresented it. It’s not the replacement of Christ’s Gospel with something separate that’s about politics. Rather, the point is that the Gospel as taught by Jesus is inherently social. It is about relationships with other people and the relationship between God’s people and God. The atonement is, after all, reconciliation with God, on the basis of which we are to become agents of reconciliation. The Kingdom of God is the rule of God, not something we can construct independent of him.

 

[hedrick]

I suspect a reason there is so much controversy about this is because the Baptist take on justification by faith alone is influenced by the Puritan and Reformed notions of justification as a discrete, past event in an ordo salutis.

Is that actually the Reformed view? My understanding of justification is that it's basically more a state than an event. It's being in the right with God.

 

[dms1972]

The reformers didn't talk about an ordo salutis. That came later in reformed scholasticism. Calvin's focus was on Regeneration, rather than Justification. The Westminister Confession moves from discussion of Election to the historia salutis (history of salvation) - the Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection etc. of Christ, ie the accomplishment of salvation. The ordo salutis refers to the application of salvation in individual lives.

What is the ordo salutis?