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A Theological Conception of Reality as History
Some Aspects of the Thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg
Article by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Reformed Review
A Theological Journal of Western Theological Seminary
101 East 13th Street, Holland, Michigan
Autumn, 1972
I. Pannenberg in the Context of Modern Theology
In his essay entitled “Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth Century” Karl Barth
speaks with great respect of the daring with which the leading theologians of that
period, which was so replete with magnificent achievements in the arts and
sciences, wrestled with the challenges of the modern world. They displayed an
openness to the world which ought always to characterize theology and they
accounted themselves well, both as Christian men and as scholars. However,
Barth points out, their strength was also their weakness in that they allowed this
confrontation with contemporary culture to become their decisive and primary
concern. This, he maintains, was the key problem of nineteenth-century
Protestant theology.
This general assumption of openness to the world led necessarily to the specific
assumption that theology could defend its own cause only within the framework
of a total view of man, the universe, and God; which would command universal
recognition.1
One of the leading exponents of this point of view criticized by Barth was Ernst
Troeltsch, although his work extended well into the first quarter of the twentieth
century. Troeltsch was critical of the leading representatives of the liberal
tradition also, but for precisely the opposite reason. Though he, himself, had
much in common with the dominant Ritschlian school, he was nevertheless
critical of the Schleiermacher-Ritschl-Herrmann line of development because,
although they accepted fully the application and the results of the historicalcritical method in the investigation of Christian origins, they still maintained the
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Richard A. Rhem
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uniqueness of Jesus, rooting the redemption wrought by God through him in his
person. For all their openness to the modern world and their conviction that
theology must be restructured in the light of the modern world-view of the
natural sciences, the epistemology of Kant, and the newly prestigious science of
history, they nevertheless stubbornly maintained the necessity of the present
experience of redemption being indissolvably related to Jesus of Nazareth. To
Troeltsch this appeared to be a futile grasping after the last remains of dogmatic
thinking which located absolute and definitive revelation in a particular historical
phenomenon. He acknowledged that these theologians had broken with the old
dogmatics of Protestant orthodoxy, but in the light of the development of
historical thinking and the application of the historical method, he was convinced
that they were holding an impossible position. They were resisting the pressure of
consistent thinking by stopping short of admitting the relativity of each and every
historical appearance. For Troeltsch the decisive fact was not the historical
person of Jesus, but rather the idea which was concretized in him and from him
has issued forth into history. Once launched, the idea or principle is independent
of its initiator, its essence to be sought not in its initial embodiment but rather in
the pluriformity of its historical configurations at any given stage in its
development. In the Schleiermacher-Ritschl-Herrmann line of thought Troeltsch
saw a mixing of types of theological method and consequently a failure to
distinguish the person of Jesus from the principle he incarnated. He criticized the
failure sharply to distinguish person and principle, personality and idea, and
likewise the contention that the historical person and a personal relationship to
him were essential to saving faith in God. He saw this position rooted in the later
churchly Schleiermacher and being strongly advocated in his day by Ritschl and
Herrmann.2
In Troeltsch’s view the very historical-critical approach to Christian origins,
especially to Jesus himself, undercut any attempt to salvage from the uniformity
of history a final and absolute revelation of God. This was clearly demonstrated,
Troeltsch maintained, by the fact that the History of Religions school, of which he
claimed to be the dogmatician, had itself sprung from the Ritschlian school,
differing only in the greater consistency with which it pursued the consequences
of the very methods accepted by Ritschl, himself. Thus Troeltsch was convinced
that the theology of the future would have to purge away these last vestiges of the
old dogmatic approach and carry through more rigorously the requirements of
the historical-critical method which draws all historical phenomena, Jesus of
Nazareth not excepted, into the movement of historical process, allowing for no
absolute uniqueness in the midst of the relative.
Paradoxical as it may appear, Karl Barth quite agreed with Troeltsch—agreed,
that is, that to subject Jesus to historical-critical research behind the witness of
the New Testament is to bring him down to where he is one historical person
among others, one in whom there cannot possibly be found the final and
definitive revelation of God. Of course, agreement with Troeltsch, that having
followed the path they did, the great nineteenth-century theologians could not
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Richard A. Rhem
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consistently stop halfway, does not imply that Barth advocates with Troeltsch
that their successors should draw the logical conclusion, as Troeltsch counseled.
On the contrary, Barth examines the Schleiermacher-Ritschl-Herrmann Theology
and discovers their fatal error, not in their failure to follow consistently the
course on which they embarked, but rather in the course they chose to follow in
the first place. It was not their decision to grant recognition to the use of the
historical-critical method and then failure to draw the conclusions to which it led.
Rather it was their understanding of religion as an innate potential of the human
spirit and their failure to see that, defined in such terms, the Christian faith was
not being spoken of at all. If Christianity was a phenomenon of the religious
capacity of man, then it was one religion among others and could be understood
only as Troeltsch maintained, by a comparative historical study. In such an
instance there could be no talk of an absolute and definitive revelatory
significance or meaning in history. If one started where Troeltsch started, Barth
maintained, one would end where Troeltsch ended. But then, according to Barth,
we have to do not with the religion of revelation, but with the revelation of
religion3 and the application of the historical-critical method will discover in
Jesus no more than a man among other men and in Christianity no more than a
religion among other religions. The History of Religions school is only the logical
outcome of a theology that speaks of the believing man rather than of the
revealing God. Theology which takes itself seriously can speak only from the
revelation of God who has grasped it, paying homage to no world-view, be it
ancient or modern, no philosophical system or no anthropological analysis of the
religious capacity of man. Theology must speak from out of the revelation of God
in Jesus Christ.
Thus Barth completely repudiated the counsel of Troeltsch and pursued the
dogmatic method, reducing historical-critical research to a secondary, helpingrole in the explication of the biblical witness to Jesus Christ.
One of the young theologians in the 1920’s who joined with Barth in his revolt
from the theology of the nineteenth century was Rudolf Bultmann. He too
recognized the poverty of Liberalism and its failure to give centrality to the
decisive redemptive act of God in Jesus Christ. He criticized Liberalism for reducing Christianity to a system of timeless and eternal truths and the History of
Religions school for reducing Christ to a cultic symbol.4 However, what for Barth
was a secondary matter became for him the central concern, namely the
hermeneutical problem. Granting that Christian theology must start from the
Word of God, Bultmann could never emphasize too strongly that revelation must
be understandable to man. This man he found most adequately defined by the
analysis of existentialist philosophy as set forth by the early Heidegger. While he,
himself, was unexcelled in the application of the historical-critical method,
Bultmann denied that the results of such research were of any consequence for
faith, faith which was not belief in factual information about Jesus, his life, death,
and resurrection but rather obedience to the kerygmatic Word in the present
moment calling men to a new self-understanding. Bultmann the historian and
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Richard A. Rhem
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Bultman the theologian never met; for apart from the fact that Jesus appeared
faith has no relation to history.
Great differences separate Troeltsch, Barth, and Bultman from one another.
Troeltsch sees no alternative to pursuing the historical method in the analysis of
the phenomenon of religion. Barth rejects the idea that the Christian faith is first
of all a religion and he pursues the dogmatic method, judging all religion by the
norm and criterion of Jesus Christ. Bultmann interprets the Christian faith
within the possibilities afforded by an Existentialist analysis of man. Interestingly
enough, however, there is one point on which they all seem in agreement; that is
the understanding of the nature of history and the principles of historiography.
For Troeltsch, history and the methods by which it is investigated rule out in
advance any final and definitive revelation of God in history. The early Barth
agreed and moved revelation to the frontier of time and eternity. Later he
brought revelation back into history, defining history from the perspective of
Jesus Christ but at the same time he continued to recognize the validity of
historical science as defined by Troeltsch maintaining that it had no competency
to deal with God’s revelatory action in history. Bultmann as a practicing historian
followed the historical-critical method as defined by Troeltsch and, because he
saw history as the realm of the relative and transient, he removed revelation from
the sphere of history to the realm of human existence. All three agreed that
history and historical science are what the great historians of the nineteenth
century said they are and all three agreed that, that being the case, there was no
trace of God’s revelatory action discoverable in history by the historian.
In the last decade this whole conception of history and accompanying
historiography has been called into question by the German theologian Wolfhart
Pannenberg. German theology has often been characterized by drastic swings of
the pendulum and, as Pannenberg’s early writings appeared, it seemed that once
again the pendulum was swinging from the theology of the word which has
dominated the twentieth century in its various forms to a theology of history. As
Pannenberg has continued to address himself to the problems of revelation,
history, and theological method, however, it is evident that we have to do here
with more than simply a reaction to the one-sided emphasis of dialectical
theology, a reaction in its turn as one-sided on the other side of the issue. Much
rather, Pannenberg has sought to do justice to the valid insights of those who
have preceded him. Specifically, he acknowledges the valid insight of Troeltsch
that Christianity cannot be arbitrarily isolated from the rest of man’s religious
experience, but much rather can be understood only in relationship to the whole
of the history of religions. However, with Barth and Bultmann, over against
Troeltsch, he speaks of the priority of revelation in terms of which the respective
religious experience of man is to be judged, rather than seeing religious
experience as the expression of an innate potentiality within man.
With Troeltsch, over against Barth and Bultmann, Pannenberg sees the necessity
of relating the Christian faith to the whole of reality. But over against Troeltsch,
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Richard A. Rhem
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he does not interpret Christianity in subjection to the prevailing worldview of
modern man, but rather interprets the whole of reality theologically, submitting
his argumentation before the bar of human judgement, being convinced that a
Christian interpretation of the whole of reality is more rational than any other.
With Troeltsch and against Barth and Bultman, Pannenberg insists that the claim
of a revelation in history must be historically perceptible by means of historicalcritical research. The central revelatory event, the resurrection, serves as the
model for his understanding of the relation of historical reason and revelation.
But against Troeltsch, he affirms the historical verifiability of such revelatory
action.
In short, Pannenberg pursues the historical method as advocated by Troeltsch
but, rather than ending with the loss of a final and definite revelation of God in
history, he proclaims with Barth and Bultmann the finality of Jesus Christ in the
definitive self-revelation of God. How is this possible? The answer lies in the fact
that precisely where Troeltsch, Barth, and Bultmann were one, Pannenberg parts
from all three; that is at the point of the understanding of the nature of history
and the principles by which the past is known. Troeltsch gave definitive
statement to the understanding of nineteenth century historiography. Barth and
Bultmann recognized that in those terms the final revelation of God could not be
posited within history and, rather than subjecting the understanding of history to
a thorough critique, they removed revelation from the competency of the
historical-critical method (Barth) and from the arena of history itself (Bultmann).
By a critique of Troeltsch’s understanding of history and the principles of
historiography Pannenberg attempts to do justice to Troeltsch’s demand to
pursue the historical method while leaving room for a definitive revelation of God
in history which Barth and Bultmann in their respective manners recognized as
essential to the Christian tradition.
Thus, in a sense, by tracing the understanding of revelation, history, and
theological method in these four thinkers, we come full circle but, through Pannenberg’s critique of Troeltsch, the whole perspective is turned around and,
rather than understanding Jesus in terms of the modern worldview of reality,
reality is understood from the perspective of Jesus, the end of history, who has
appeared proleptically in the midst of history.
II. The Universality of Systemic Theology
The theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg is characterized by a tension which, in his
view, is given with the task of systematic theology itself.5 Systematic theology
always resides in a tension between the two poles of the subject matter with
which it has to do. On the one hand, there is the Christian tradition itself for
which it is responsible, specifically, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as
witnessed to in the Scriptures. On the other hand, Systematic theology must be
concerned with all truth in general as represented in its various facets by all nontheological disciplines. Systematic theology cannot, as is the case in other
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disciplines, devote itself exclusively to the investigation of its special subject
matter, for inherent in its task is a universality which impels it to take up the
question of truth per se. This universality follows inevitably from the fact that
theology purports to speak of God. “One uses the word God meaningfully only
when one intends thereby the Power determining everything that is.”6 To speak
thus of God as the author of all reality brings with it the intellectual obligation to
relate all truth to the God of the Bible and then to understand it anew from him.
Pannenberg acknowledges that the theological task thus conceived may appear
presumptuous. Yet, to the extent that the theologian is conscious of what he is
doing when he speaks of God, he has no alternative. Pannenberg acknowledges
further that the task can never be consummated once for all. But if this
responsibility appears as an almost unbearable burden, it likewise constitutes the
peculiar dignity of theology, especially in an intellectual situation which is
characterized by fragmentation as a result of the present high degree of
specialization, for it falls to theology to seek truth in its unity.
Such a conception of the task of systematic theology is by no means generally
accepted. Particularly in the last hundred years theology has been conceived
rather as an independent science alongside of the other sciences with its own
special subject matter, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ witnessed to in the
Scriptures. Pannenberg counters, however, that the revelation of God is only
really conceived of as the revelation of God when it is understood in relation to all
truth and knowledge and when all truth is integrated into it. Only thus is it
possible to speak of the biblical revelation as the revelation of the God who is the
creator and perfecter of all things.
Since Harnack’s famous characterization of the apologist’s assimilation of the
Greek philosophical quest for the true structure of the divine into the Christian
tradition as the “hellenization” of the gospel, that endeavor has been generally
judged in a negative light. Pannenberg, however, rejects that negative judgement.
While he grants that the apologists were not, in fact, successful in carrying
through the assimilation in all respects, he disputes the idea that their efforts
resulted in a complete capitulation to the philosophical quest. But apart from the
degree to which the early church fathers were successful or unsuccessful in what
they undertook to do, the real issue, as far as Pannenberg is concerned, is the fact
that they undertook the task of offering the Christian gospel as the answer to the
Greek philosophical quest. This undertaking is generally recognized as having
been inevitable in that the Hellenistic world into which the gospel came was
dominated by the Greek philosophical conception of God. Thus, in spite of the
disastrous mingling of the Christian message with Greek metaphysics, there was
no alternative. But such a view, Pannenberg insists, misses the primary point,
which is that the Christian message itself necessitated the encounter with the
Greek philosophical quest. He contends:
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Richard A. Rhem
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The discussion with the philosophical question of the true form of the
Divine was, indeed, occasioned by the encounter with the Hellenistic
Thought-world, but it was also inwardly rooted in the biblical witness of
God as the universal God, responsible not only for Israel, but for all
people.
In the claim of the God of Israel to be the God, alone having jurisdiction
over all men, it was, therefore, theologically rooted that the Christian faith
had to enter into the philosophical question of the true nature of God and
until today must give an answer to it.7
The ancient church fathers as well as the authors of the great scholastic summas
understood the universality of theology, the responsibility that rests upon him
who would speak of God.
That modern theology has not so conceived of its task can be traced to Albrecht
Ritschl’s attempt to carve out for theology its own sphere, the sphere of religious
experience, rejecting all metaphysical elements of the Christian tradition in the
face of the critique rendered by Positivism. Liberal Protestantism passed this
heritage along to Dialectical Theology which had reacted so strongly against it.
Pannenberg observes that Barth’s struggle against every vestige of natural
theology is really in many respects an extension and radicalization of Ritschl’s
idea of an independent theology with its own special theme.8
If we would discover where theology lost its universality, however, we must go
back much further. Evangelical theology has never had a universal character
since it inherited the Scripture-positivism which has been its hallmark from the
doctrine of Scripture formulated in the late Middle Ages in, for example, the
School of Occam. It has been axiomatic in the Protestant tradition that the
theological task consists in the exegesis of Scripture. Thus to find the root of the
loss of universality we must go back into Scholasticism, specifically to the
thirteenth century and Thomas’ careful demarcation of two spheres of
knowledge, natural and supernatural. Pannenberg recognizes the exigencies
under which this bifurcation took place. Aristotelian philosophy prevailed, being
generally acknowledged as the embodiment of all “natural” thought. If one would
hold to the truth of the Christian tradition, one could do so only by setting it
alongside the summation of “natural” truth as unfolded in Aristotelianism.
Aristotelian philosophy represented that truth which could be discovered by
man’s natural faculties; the Christian faith represented that truth which could
only be bestowed by revelation. Neither Aristotelian philosophy nor the Christian
tradition was intended for this kind of reciprocal supplementation, according to
Pannenberg, but he asserts:
It would seem much rather to have been the expression of a compromise
of theology with the intellectual power of Aristotelianism. In this compromise lie the historical roots of the last of the universality of theology.9
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Richard A. Rhem
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For Thomas, who was responsible for the consummate expression of the naturalsupernatural division of the spheres of knowledge, the two spheres were carefully
coordinated into a systematic whole. In the course of time, however, the structure
fell apart rendering the sphere of natural knowledge independent of any
reference to the truth of revelation, the consequence of which was increasingly to
render “supernatural” knowledge superfluous for a knowledge of the world and to
make of theology a positivistic science of Scripture. Such a state of affairs hardly
accords with Paul’s struggle to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (II Cor.
10:5) and, with the unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the modern period in
the wake of the development of the scientific method, the division of spheres of
knowledge formulated by Thomas has resulted in an almost unbridgeable gulf.
The task of understanding the whole of reality in its unity from the perspective of
its author, the God of creation, is formidable indeed, and yet unless it is
undertaken, the universality of theology will never be realized and theology, as an
independent science with its own special theme, the exegesis of Scripture, will
fade increasingly into the background of man’s pursuit of truth. Concentration of
its own special theme has about it a pious sound and it makes for a comfortable
co-existence of theology with the other sciences. It can only signify, however, the
utter failure of theology to carry out its peculiar intellectual responsibility which
is to take in claim all truth as witness to the one true God as the author of reality
and, in turn, to understand all truth anew from him.
Where does one begin? How can such an overwhelming task be undertaken? It is
Pannenberg’s conviction that the conception of theology as an independent
science alongside others with its own special subject matter must be rejected and
that its universal character must be recognized by its addressing itself to the
second pole of its dual concern, namely, to the questions which concern man in
his experience of reality in the present cultural situation. Only by seeking the
truth per se can theology do justice to its special subject matter, the revelation of
God in Jesus Christ as witnessed to in the Scriptures; for in that it purports to
speak of God, it purports to speak of the Power determining all reality. Implicit in
the responsibility of speaking of the Power determining all reality is the necessity
of thoroughly grasping how modern man experiences reality, for only by speaking
of the Power determining reality as it is presently experienced can theology speak
convincingly. It is, therefore, incumbent upon theology to speak of God in terms
of the present experience of reality. Thus the most general question which
theology must answer is how one can speak of God in the present cultural
situation. Only by determining this can theology once again undertake to exercise
its universal function.
III. Revelation As History
Pannenberg’s unique contribution to contemporary theological discussion has
had to do primarily not with the content of revelation so much as the mode of its
occurrence. Stated theologically the question has been, How does God manifest
himself to man? Stated anthropologically it is the question of how man perceives
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Richard A. Rhem
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that self-revelation. The theological question has issued in the debate as to
whether God reveals himself directly or immediately through his word, that is,
through an act of speaking the content of which is God himself, whether he
himself speaks, or another speaks in his name; or whether God reveals himself
indirectly or mediately through his activity, his activity being conceived not in
terms of a series of special acts next to other events explainable as “natural” as
opposed to “supernatural” but rather his continuous dynamic relationship to the
whole of reality as its Creator, transcendent Ground, and Destiny. In
oversimplified terms, it is a question of whether God “speaks” to man directly,
thus making known his essence to man, or whether God’s essence can be known
only indirectly from what he does. Obviously, when stated thus “word” and “act”
are placed in a falsely antithetical relationship and a biblical theology will rather
understand them in a positive relationship with the priority given to word or act
depending on the point of view of the biblical writer. Nonetheless, setting the
question up in terms of the two poles, word and act, is helpful in identifying the
problem.
If we approach the problem from the anthropological side, that is, if we ask how
the revelation of God is perceived by man, then we are asking whether God in his
self-manifestation can be known by man through the exercise of his rational
faculties or whether God can be known only through the means of some suprarational faculty however that may be understood. Essentially this is a question of
whether God in his self-manifestation can be perceived by reason or whether he
can only be perceived by faith. It should be underlined here that this is not a
question of whether man by his own rational faculties can discover God or
whether God must make himself known to man. If the question we are asking is
misunderstood in this way—a not uncommon misunderstanding—the real issue
will be missed. The point rather is: Granted that God can be known by man only
through his self-disclosure, is that self-disclosure rationally perceptible or only
supra-rationally perceptible.
Again, it is not a question of whether the content of God's revelation is rational or
supra-rational. It is possible to hold, as does Karl Barth, that the self-revelation of
God is highly rational and yet deny that man through the exercise of his rational
faculties can discover that revelation apart from an illuminating act of the Holy
Spirit which can be described only as a miracle. For Barth, to be more accurate,
revelation is never “there” to be perceived, but rather it “occurs” in the
illuminating act of the Holy Spirit, although once it is given it is rationally
comprehensible.
From this it should be evident that of the two questions, or rather the two aspects
of the one question concerning the revelation of God, the most basic question is
not whether God reveals himself through word or event but whether man as a
rational creature is able through the exercise of his rational faculties to
comprehend the revelation of God. Whether that revelation takes the form of
spoken word or historical event is to be determined subsequently. The primary
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division of opinion will occur on the anthropological or epistemological question
as to whether man as man can perceive the revelation of God. This point is
illustrated by the fact that, for example, Bultmann and Cullmann represent two
radically different positions in regard to the question of where God reveals
himself, in word or event. However, in spite of their differences on the mode of
revelation, they both agree in their own way that man comes into the possession
of knowledge of God through an illuminating act of the Holy Spirit and not
through the exercise of his reason over against the “proclaimed word”
(Bultmann) or the “acts of God” (Cullmann). On this question Kerygmatic
Theology and Heilsgeschichtliche Theology are in agreement.
With regard to the first question as to how God reveals himself, whether through
word or event or in combination of the two, we have an inter-theological debate.
With regard to the second question, as to how man perceives the revelation of
God, we are dealing with a matter that has wide-ranging implications for the
whole sphere of human knowledge, depending on how we answer the question. If
we answer it as do Barth, Bultmann, or Cullmann, to name only three
representative figures, holding that man as man, by the exercise of his rational
faculties can never achieve a knowledge of God apart from a supplementary
illuminating act of the Holy Spirit, then, to employ Kantian terms, we remove
theology as an independent science, into the realm of practical reason; or, in
Ritschl's terms, we make theological statements as value-judgments; or, in Existentialist terms, we make theological truth equivalent to the truth of expression of
the existing individual. If, on the contrary, we hold that although man by his own
creative reason could never discover the knowledge of God, yet, given the fact
that God has revealed himself and that man as man can achieve the knowledge of
God so revealed, then we place theology squarely in the center of human
knowledge wherein it will be obliged to demonstrate the revelation of God before
the court of human judgment in terms of the generally accepted canons of
rationality. For if the theologian is convinced that God is and that he has
disclosed himself, and, further, that that revelation is available to rational
reflection, he will not be content simply to affirm his conviction, nor will he be
able to appeal to some sort of esoteric experience wherein his knowledge was
ascertained, but he will find it incumbent upon himself to support the truth of his
knowledge of God through rational argumentation.
The case as stated here is intentionally stated in the sharpest possible contrasts in
order most clearly to isolate the central problem we wish to discuss in our
critique. It is our conviction that only in such a posing of the problem does the
real significance and urgent importance of Pannenberg’s theology become
evident. We have sketched in brief outline the crisis which developed in
evangelical theology with the loss of the authority of Scripture. We have seen that
that authority was undermined through the rise of historical thinking although,
paradoxically, historical thinking itself and consequent secularism are in part
fruits of the Christian tradition. Protestant theology over the last century and a
half can best be understood as an attempt to come to terms with historical
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Richard A. Rhem
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thinking, but to the present no satisfactory solution has been found. We
concentrated particularly on the attempt of Dialectical Theology as formulated
respectively by Barth and Bultmann to disengage the revelation of God from the
sphere of history thus removing theology from the lordship of historical thinking.
More and more, however, it has become clear that the creation of a special
sphere of theological truth inaccessible to the judgment of reason is selfdefeating, leaving theology in the position of affirming an existential truth
(Bultmann) or a revelational truth (Barth) neither of which can claim generally
binding power. Theological truth is reduced to private truth.
We have attempted in our exposition of Barth and Bultmann not only to
understand what they were saying, but why they were saying it. If we come to
conclusions differing from theirs this is not because we have seen the problem
more clearly than they saw it, but rather because we view it in a changed climate
of opinion, changed at least in part through the genius of their labors. We are
convinced that it is possible today in a climate of opinion radically different than
that which prevailed in the opening decades of our century, to affirm the
universality of theology. We are further convinced that in the systematic theology
of Pannenberg we have the most adequate and most comprehensive attempt yet
made to integrate the true insights of post-Enlightenment or modern thought
into a theological understanding of reality. In the theology of Pannenberg we
have the revolutionary truth of historical thinking, which is the hallmark of
modern thought, incorporated into a conception of the Christian tradition which
at the same time maintains the essence of the latter.
We have seen both in our introductory discussion of the rise of historical thinking
and in our exposition of Pannenberg’s theology that western thought shows
widespread agreement on the fact that the whole of reality must be conceived as
history, as dynamic process in contrast to the cosmological thinking of Greek
philosophy which conceived Being as static. It was the greatness of Ernst
Troeltsch that he recognized the fundamental revolution in human thinking
which historical thinking occasioned. He was convinced that historical thinking
was incommensurable with the Christian theological tradition because that
tradition was formulated in terms of Greek metaphysical conceptually which had
been undercut by post-Enlightenment thought. He was so certain that historical
thinking was irreversible that he felt compelled to re-formulate the Christian faith
in accommodation to it. In so doing he gave up the idea of a final, definitive
revelation of God in the course of history, specifically in the history of Jesus.
Troeltsch’s conception of the nature of history and his formulation of
historiographical principles was so much the consummate expression of the
prevaling intellectual climate that for a considerable period they were viewed as
axiomatic. This was the climate of opinion when the young theologians who were
to be grouped together as constituting the dialectical movement came on the
scene. They were not prepared to challenge Troeltsch’s conception of the nature
of history nor his formulation of the principle of the historical-critical method. Of
one thing, however, they were certain: in such a view of history and
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historiography there was no room for the definitive revelation of God in Jesus
Christ. Therefore, being convinced that they must speak of God in his deity, his
sovereignty, and his freedom in his revelation, they removed that revelation from
the history whose nature Troeltsch described and from the access of the
historical-critical method whose principles Troeltsch formulated.
We noted above the self-defeating consequence of the removal of revelation from
history. Theology pursued as an independent science becomes a matter of private
truth. The widespread questioning, particularly of the position of Bultmann by
his own eminent students, is an indication of the dissatisfaction felt with his
handling of the problem of revelation and history, and, while Barth has indeed
moved the occurrence of revelation back into the sphere of history, his existence,
the subjectivity of truth, the openness and contingency of the historical process,
reality itself as historical process—into a theological conception of history which
finds in Jesus the definitive revelation of God, that we have contended that
Pannenberg’s theology is the most adequate formulation of the truth of historical
thinking and the Christian tradition yet attempted. His theological conception of
history is not simply a rejection of and reaction against the prevailing dialectical
theology as that theology had been over against the nineteenth century Protestant
Liberalism and the historicism of Troeltsch. While Pannenberg rejects the
authoritarianism and revelational positivism of dialectical theology, he
nevertheless is concerned to preserve the essence of what that theology was
saying, namely, that God in his sovereign freedom has disclosed himself in Jesus
Christ. He recognizes the justification of dialectical theology’s reaction against
Troeltsch’s historicism and he too is critical of Troeltsch. However he is equally
aware that Troeltsch had a grasp of something which theology simply cannot bypass, the recognition of the revolutionary nature of historical thinking whose
truth must be incorporated into the Christian tradition. In Pannenberg’s
theological conception of history there is a meeting of the best insights of
Troeltsch with the best insights of the theology of the Word, and the result is a
significant advance, a breakthrough in theological understanding.
IV. Dogmatic Theses Drawn From Pannenberg’s Thinking
Thesis I: Utilizing the best insights of twentieth century historical science,
Pannenberg has presented a valid critique of both Troeltsch’s understanding of
the nature of history and his formulation of the principles of historiography
thus creating the possibility of a theological conception of history and asserting
once again theology’s universal function.
It is characteristic of Pannenberg’s theology that he speaks of God in relation to
the whole of reality. In so doing he seeks to integrate the best insights of the
respective disciplines into a theonomous conception of reality. It is equally
characteristic of his procedure, however, that he claims no privileged perspective
as a Christian theologian when discussing, for instance, the anthropological
structure of human existence or the nature of history. When discussing historical-
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critical thinking he does not begin with some theological requirement to be
forced on the historian, but rather listens to how the historians themselves
understand their subject. How do they understand the nature of history? How do
they conceive of the task of the historian? How do they justify the
historiographical principles with which they carry out their investigation? His
own critique of the science of history is then an immanent critique. Given an
understanding of history as advocated by Collingwood, for example, principles of
historiography as formulated under the impact of positivism must be modified.
This is but one illustration of his method throughout. Only after he has
determined what the leading thinkers in the various disciplines themselves have
to say about the nature of their subject and their methodological principles does
Pannenberg begin his theological reflection on that subject matter. He claims that
if he is seriously to speak of God, which as a theologian he must do, then he
cannot allow the historian’s truth to stand in isolation as simply the truth about
history. Rather, if God is God then the historian’s truth which he has discovered
by means of investigation and reflection must be relatable to the one unifying
ground of truth, namely, God. What he does argue in this dialogue with the
various disciplines of science is that, given their own self-understanding, the
reality with which they have to do is more adequately explained on the
presupposition of God than without him. To use history again as an example,
Pannenberg cites several leading historians of the past and present to the effect
that concrete historical research of a limited historical period always presupposes
a wider context which ultimately presupposes some sort of universal-historical
conception. But, he argues, such a conception of the total course of events is
unavailable, as the historians too are vividly aware. Any universal-historical
scheme which denies the contingency of events and the openness of the future
contradicts our understanding of history. This was the fatal weakness of Hegel’s
scheme, and since Hegel historians have eschewed every all-encompassing
system. However, Pannnberg points out, the contemporary historian is in a
dilemma: on the basis of his understanding of his work, universal history must be
thought, but on the basis of his understanding of the nature of history such a
conception cannot be thought. In other words, by means of this immanent
critique of historical science Pannenberg points to an inner contradiction. Then,
taking a cue from Collingwood, he asks what are the prerequisites for a model of
history if its unity as well as its contingency must both find place? He concludes
that such a conception is possible only if we conceive of a ground of history which
is both the source of the contingency of its events as well the basis of its unity.
Can such a ground be found within history itself? Pannenberg attempts to
discover such, but concludes that there is no possible ground within history
which can meet the requirements of the model. Therefore, he concludes, on the
basis of the requirements of historical research and the nature of history, both as
understood by the historian, a transcendent ground which bears the whole of
reality as history must be presupposed.
But, the objection may be raised, did not Hegel presuppose just such a ground,
the Absolute, and did not his system fall in ruins before the recognition of the
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openness of the future? Quite true, Pannenberg responds, and the objection to
Hegel was completely justified. However, in rejecting Hegel’s grounding of the
historical process on a transcendent Power, subsequent philosophy of history lost
the only possibility of establishing the unity of history required for historical
science. Hegel was not wrong in establishing history on a transcendent ground,
but only in his conception of that Absolute coming to self-realization in his own
philosophy. What is required is a transcendent ground, which not only
establishes the unity of history but also is its future, its End. But how can such a
Power be conceived, for the End has not yet arrived? We are back at the same
point apparently. Now, however, Pannenberg offers a model which meets the
requirements: the proleptic appearance of the End of history in the midst of
history. If the End has already appeared, albeit provisionally, then the whole of
history can be anticipated. Yet if the End has appeared proleptically, then
obviously the process of history is still under way and the future is still open.
Where did Pannenberg come up with such a model? Not out of the blue, of
course. It is a model suggested by the eschatological character of the Christ-event.
The model itself proves nothing. It can only be verified by determining if it
explains the facts and, indeed, it must be subjected to a double test: is it an
adequate explanation of the Christ-event and is it an adequate explanation of
reality as history. In the case of the first test we are in the area of biblical
theology; in the case of the second we are still dealing with history as the
historian understands it. We limit ourselves here only to the latter case. The
question is: does the model of history as process moving toward a still
outstanding End within which, however, the End has already provisionally
occurred meet the requirements of the historian’s conception both of his work
and his subject matter? It would seem to meet these requirements. The next step
would be to pursue concrete historical investigation in the framework of this
model. Only then can it be determined if the model is, in fact, a true conception of
reality as history. Here there are two criteria: positively, the model will be verified
if it is able to effect the most adequate explanation of the data encountered in
historical research; negatively, the model will be confirmed if known data
remains unexplainable without the model.
This verification process will be carried out by the historian using the best
scientific techniques at his disposal. The phenomena presented to him are not
perceived with any sort of “eye of faith,” nor must he operate with some sort of
supernatural conception of God. In short, no special pleading is involved in his
phenomenological research.
Is this model the only possible model? Not necessarily. At least that cannot be
presupposed. Anyone is free to propose a model as long as it fits the requirements
of historical science’s own self-understanding. Should such a “competitive” model
be presupposed, then it in turn must be judged on the basis of the criteria cited
above. The conception of models can be various but they must all be subjected to
the criterion of truth, that is, they must be tested as to their adequacy in
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explaining available data and the impossibility of explaining data without them.
In such a process of testing the model which corresponds to reality as presently
comprehended will emerge. Only through such a procedure is it still possible to
speak of truth. Further, should the model constructed in the light of the eschatological understanding of the Christ-event prove true, it would, at the same time,
be a verification of the Christian conception of reality.
The point we must make here is that Pannenberg has proposed a theological
conception of reality not because, being a theologian, he automatically begins at
this point. Whether he does or not is not the point. We may even grant that the
model he constructs is suggested by his own orientation in the Christian
tradition. This still does not detract from the general validity of his procedure.
His theological perspective imposed on the historian neither his historiographical
principles nor his conception of the nature of history. He allowed the historian
himself to dictate the terms. Given those terms, he argued that those terms
require some such model as he proposed. Still he makes no extrinsic demand on
the historian. He simply asks him to test the model, working as a historian.
Whether this model meets the criteria of truth or not is not in any sense
dependent on a position of faith or theological position. The results are submitted
to the bar of generally valid canons of rationality.
But, someone objects, does this not subject the truth of the Christian faith to the
judgment of human rationality? The answer is yes. There can be no sidestepping
that test. There is no sheltered cove within which the Christian tradition can
practice its faith. Either it is true and commends itself as such to human
rationality or it must give up its claim to truth and be content to exercise itself as
a private affair. This is not to say that man comprehends the depths of the
mystery of the Deity or the secrets of the whole of reality. It does mean to affirm,
however, that if God has revealed himself to man in the midst of history, then
that revelation must be comprehensible to man. If God only makes himself
known “vertically from above,” by miracle, through some supernatural
illumination of the Holy Spirit, by means of some esoteric gnosis, why bother
about a revelation in history. If revelation is punctilear, why the horizontal line or
point on the plane of history? If revelation occurs only here and now, then why
does it need a “dass” in history? As an anchor to guard it from myth? But why not
myth? Because the Christian faith claims to be historical, not mythical? But why
be concerned about the Christian faith unless it is true? And if it is true then
revelation has occurred in history, so why all the strenuous efforts to deny that it
is “there?”
Bultmann admitted that he must come to terms with modern thought and so
when he operates with a conception of history as defined by the positivist and
then goes on to carve out a place for the Christian faith in the realm of existence
we must admit that he is at least consistent. But what shall we say of Barth? He
faults Bultmann for allowing modern thought to dominate. Barth rejects the idea.
But what has he done? The very same thing! Barth’s whole amazing theological
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endeavor can well be understood as an affirmation of the truth of the Christian
faith in the face of positivistic thinking in which there was no room for it. But the
paradox of the matter is that the very Achilles’ heel of his whole position is his
contradictory statements about the historicity of revelation and the inaccessibility
of that revelation to historical-critical research. The charge of revelational
positivism is not unjustified. Is it not that he who denied the sovereignty of
modern thought constructed his own theology as if positivistic historiography
were indeed sovereign? Not exactly. Barth’s theology shatters all positivistic
historiography as far as the whole of reality is concerned. But he left it intact as
far as the historical process is concerned. He allowed Troeltsch the final word as
far as historical science was concerned, thus conceiving the historical process as a
self-contained entity set over against God. Historical science is competent to deal
with the one-dimensional reality of history but theology speaks of the One who
encounters the man who lives in that one-dimensional reality, and consequently
historical science is not competent to deal with the intercourse of man and God.
Pannenberg’s superiority must be recognized in two directions. Over against
Troeltsch he says that the historical-critical method, to be sure, has an
anthropocentric element inherent within it, but to that anthropocentric
methodological element you have wedded an anthropocentric worldview, which
not only is not intrinsic to the method but even hinders its effectiveness. Your
anthropocentric worldview precludes any consideration of a transcendent reality
and consequently contradicts the very requirements of historical research itself.
Furthermore your conception of the principle of analogy which is a valuable tool
for gaining knowledge is posited on the postulate of the universal similarity of all
historical phenomena, thus again denying the insight of history itself that events
are contingent and that history is the place of the arrival of the new, the unique,
the unforeseen. The principle of analogy is not wrong but the application is.
Rather than using it to determine the similarities of the respective phenomena,
use it to delineate their differences, their uniqueness.
Furthermore your principle of development denies the contingency of events and
the genuine openness of the future. Your model of history as a self-contained,
unfolding entity beyond which hovers the absolute, known only relatively within
the course of development is an inadequate model in the light of historical
science itself.
At this point Pannenberg addresses Barth and argues that it is not Barth’s
conception of history as encounter that is wrong but only his submission to
positivistic historiography as being the legitimate conception of historical science.
By his divorce of historical science from revelational history, Barth has
introduced an unendurable contradiction into his theological enterprise. Such a
contradiction has been responsible for the feeling as expressed by James Barr:
“Though I still feel that it is Barth’s God whom I seek to worship, the intellectual
framework of Barth’s theology has in my consciousness to a very great extent
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collapsed in ruins.”10 Barth, Pannenberg would affirm, has begun to speak as a
Christian before he has justified his speaking as a theologian, in fact, without
recognizing the legitimacy of such a procedure, or even denying its possibility.
Barth, in one sense, can be recognized as nothing if not bold. It is a question
however if he was bold enough. In a world, a cultural situation, that is largely
determined in its intellectual milieu by atheistic thinking, can the theologian
speak seriously of God unless he has at least created the “room” for such talk by
an immanent critique of atheistic thought itself? If the existence of God cannot be
demonstrated, at least the acids of atheistic thought can be neutralized and a
theological conception of reality can be demonstrated to be rationally as
justifiable as an atheistic conception. Indeed, in Pannenberg’s thought we would
even claim that the theological conception is shown to be more rational. However
that may be, to think the matter through to its limits so that one is placed before
the alternatives is no little gain. Human rationality reaches its limits but that is
true not only for theological thought, but for atheistic as well. A rational choice is
not necessarily a choice in which every piece of data is explained, every mystery
disclosed. It is rather a choice in the face of all possible evidence. It is a choice
made in the light of the widest possible understanding of reality. In this respect it
can be maintained that the commitment of oneself to the God revealed in Jesus
Christ is grounded upon a rational decision—a decision made in the light of all
possible evidence.
In this way theology stands in the middle of the sciences seeking to unify all truth
through its relation to the God who is source, ground, and goal of truth. The
universal function of theology is once again asserted and the world of fragmentary experience, specialized knowledge unrelated to the whole of reality, is
brought into relation to him who is the Truth.
The theologian claims no quarter. He demands no “eye of faith,” no special
inspiration. He proposes his model, a model constructed out of the requirements
of the respective sciences themselves. He then submits his model to impartial
testing by the phenomena dealt with in the individual sciences. He brings the
results before the bar of rational judgment. Should a competing and
contradictory model prove more adequate, he has no recourse. But should his
model pass the test, then he has demonstrated that a theological conception of
reality is in fact rationally defensible. Is the risk too great? No, not if, when he
speaks of God, he is speaking of the Creator of the whole of reality who will bring
all things to consummation. Then the model will be verified. And if it is not? Then
he must cease to be a theologian, for then there will be no theology.
Is not the task too arduous? Certainly it is arduous, but have not the most
profound thought and the most profound thinkers arisen out of the Christian
tradition over the course of the centuries? The magnitude of the challenge is no
deterrent. Much rather, if in the modern period the church has alienated the best
minds, it is not because she demanded too much but too little. A call to serious
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intellectual pursuit of truth will not offend but the lack of it certainly will— and
has.
Thesis II. Dogmatic theology must rethink the entire theological spectrum of
truth from the perspective of historical thinking.
Harnack’s criticism of the Hellenization of the gospel has a validity which can
hardly be denied. Rather than judging this “translation” negatively as he did, we
can understand today that the Greek metaphysical conceptuality was the most
effective means at hand for expressing the central truth of the Christ-event, “God
with us.” In the history of the transmission of traditions this was a necessary and
effective new stage. It entailed nonetheless grave difficulties because an event
actualized in a tradition that for centuries had been nurtured on the idea of the
dynamic relationship of God and man in the historical process which was moving
toward consummation had to be translated into meaningful terms for a culture
that had been fully indoctrinated with the metaphysical categories of Plato and
Aristotle and their successors. In such a setting, that which formed the
culminating point of God’s self-disclosure in Jesus—his resurrection from the
dead— there was formed an untranslatable conception which could only be
announced, proclaimed, but scarcely comprehended. In such an environment the
emphasis soon shifted to the coming of the Son of God, the idea of Incarnation.
Such a conception did allow the message of God’s presence with man in Jesus to
be expressed, but as the Christological controversy vividly demonstrates, it
brought in its wake insoluble problems which plague us to the present.11 The
church lived for centuries undisturbed by the irreconcilable contradictions of
Chalcedon because Christian theology has been conceptualized by means of
Greek metaphysical categories and thus the central idea of Incarnation
communicated the Christian message.
The crisis of theology today is not in the first instance a crisis of Christian belief
but a crisis of Christian theological formulation which could not help but collapse
when the Greek metaphysics in terms of which it was framed was undermined.
This occurred through the rise of modern thought becoming particularly
damaging to traditional theology through the rise of historical thinking which
undercut the unquestioned authority of Scripture. The reaction of Christian
theology to the crisis created by modern thought has often been defensive,
evidencing an underlying insecurity. At other times it has sought so desperately
to accommodate itself to modern thinking that it has given up its own central
affirmation of God’s presence in Jesus, thus robbing the world of its one source of
hope in the God of the future. These two extreme reactions can be found again
and again over the past two centuries. On the one hand there has been a jealous
guarding of traditional conceptuality: incarnation—true God—true man; three in
one—coequal and co-eternal; inspired, infallible Scripture, etc., under the
mistaken notion that God and his truth were cradled in the respective
stammering human attempts to express it. On the other hand, there was an
uncritical acceptance of modern thought, positivistically orientated, which from
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the beginning practically shut out the possibility of a transcendent reality, let
alone a God present in the causal nexus that defined reality.
Where lies a solution? Is it not significant that western thinking, believing itself
now to be free from the archaic metaphysical bondage of theology, has discovered
reality as history? And furthermore it has been shown, for example, by Lowith
that the conception of reality as history moving toward an End “is rooted in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition. Is it not possible that we are in a position today to
rethink such basic conceptions as the Trinity, the natures of Christ, and the
Consummation and come to more fruitful results than has perhaps been the case
in the long tradition of Christian thinking ?
Thesis III. All Christological statements must be made from the perspective of
the resurrection.
Barth begins with the given of the Incarnation, Jesus, truly God and truly man.
The question, how do you know this?, is simply out of place. If we know it we
need not ask, and if we do not know it, it is futile to ask. The life of Jesus plays
itself out between the twin miracles of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, both
wholly the work of God, neither accessible to human judgment, examination or
confirmation. From this everything follows. Prior to this there can be no
discussion.
Bultmann starts with the kerygma. In response to the proclamation you either
say “yes” or “no” but you may not ask “Why should I?” or “Is it true?” Either
question is already proof that revelation has not occurred.
Even the Post-Bultmannians who feel uneasy with this approach are looking
everywhere for a basis for the kerygma except in the one place that Bultmann and
almost all New Testament scholars agree it is located, namely, in the resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Ebeling and Fuchs are retreading the paths of Herrmann,
Bornkamm speaks of Jesus’ authority, Kasemann of his message, but none of
them seriously considers the one place in which every kerygmatic utterance is
rooted.
It is here that Pannenberg makes a most significant contribution. He has dared to
assert once again that you cannot ground New Testament Christology anywhere
but where the New Testament itself grounds it. In so doing he has made progress
possible in several areas where thought had reached an impasse. Perhaps the
most crucial area is that of the natures of Christ. The long and bitter
Christological struggles need not be recounted here. It is sufficient to say that
Chalcedonian Christology is not a solution but represents an impasse, a
compromise between conceptions which are logically irreconciliable. We
understand the problem and we comprehend the intention, but what person
would ever suggest that Chalcedon represents an intelligible and satisfying
conclusion?
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We would suggest that perhaps the problem lies in the inability of Greek
conceptuality to express a phenomenon which was essentially historical. In the
intellectual milieu of the Greek world the appearance of the Servant of God, the
Messiah, was proclaimed in conceptuality which culminated in incarnational
Christology and with incarnational Christology the whole problem of the divine
and human presented itself but with no possibility of solution.
We would ask, in terms of the Old Testament, in terms of the Messianic
expectation, why must Jesus be God? In fact, is the Messiah as God really true to
the Old Testament tradition? Chalcedonian Christology has such a long and
impressive tradition that we often never question what biblical imperative there
is for the divinity of the Messiah. The answer, of course, is not to reject
Chalcedon, as does Bultmann because he is so determined by positivistic thinking
that he cannot conceive of Jesus as anything more than a man, let alone his
resurrection. If we must choose between Barth or Bultmann, we must choose
Barth, for between the signs of the Virgin Birth and Resurrection God is present
in history, but Barth can assert this only as an assertion and is utterly unable to
say more about how we can understand incarnation.
It is the incarnation as a starting point that is wrong. To start there is to be cut off
immediately from all rational reflection. Revelational positivism is inevitable.
Incarnation is a valid idea if it is recognized to be a step in the interpretive
tradition leading from Jesus, an interpretation of an historical phenomenon that
occurred in a Jewish apocalyptic setting rooted in the Old Testament tradition.
Pannenberg has argued powerfully that Jesus must be understood in his own
context and that in that context the resurrection “spoke.” One of his great
contributions is his calling in question of the fact, meaning bifurcation. The fact
in its historical context bears its own meaning. In the tradition expecting the
final intervention of God at the End raising the dead, the resurrection of one
who had been dead and buried meant the End had arrived.
He has also quite rightly seen that resurrection did not carry that meaning in
another context. Consequently translation was necessary. This brings us to the
one point where we feel Pannenberg has not completely followed through on his
own insights. He has recognized that an End-expectation and coming judgment
are necessary presuppositions for a meaningful belief in resurrection and that
consequently Paul stressed these matters to the Gentiles. He has further
discussed how in our day resurrection can be meaningful as a more adequate
conception of the immortality of the soul. The one thing he has been unable to do
is to show how resurrection was translated meaningfully in the first century. The
fact is that it was not. Is not Paul’s Athenian experience evidence of an
indissolvable offense that adhered to the Christian message as heard by the
Greek? Resurrection was the key and resurrection was untranslatable into the
conceptuality of Greek metaphysics.
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Is not this the reason that the focus shifted from resurrection to incarnation in
terms of which God’s intervention into human history was powerfully expressed?
God’s intervention, yes, but then the Messiah must have been God. Is not this
why Jesus must be God? Thinking which utilizes Greek metaphysical
conceptuality can only conceive of God’s presence in history in terms of
incarnation. However, such was not the case with Hebrew thought. God would
bring future deliverance through his Servant—David’s Son! God did not have to
“enter” history for the Israelites. History was his domain—no self-contained,
independent entity set over against him. In his holiness he ever dwelt in the
midst of his people.
Why the modern crisis of theology? Is it not rather the crisis of metaphysics? And
why the crisis of metaphysics? Is it not occasioned by the rise of historical
thinking? What is the answer then? It must be obvious. We ought to recognize
incarnational Christology as no longer a meaningful interpretation of the
historical self-disclosure of God in his servant Jesus, the Messiah. Paradoxically
Greek metaphysical thinking in terms of which the Christian tradition has
formulated its faith has fallen into disrepute making it possible once again to
understand Jesus and his resurrection historically, as was the case for Peter and
Paul.
But this raises another question regarding Pannenberg. He has thought through
the matter of natural law and has sought to show that the resurrection is not
really a “break” in nature. Here we are uneasy. That in its context it had meaning
we grant. But was it not also a “break” in historical continuity even for a Paul? To
be sure, all historical phenomena are unique and history is the place of the new, it
is irruptive. But still the resurrection cannot be leveled down to being an event
next to others. Now if, as the apocalyptic tradition expected, with the resurrection
of Jesus the End of history was in fact arrived at, then the historical process
would have unfolded with no “break” in its continuity. Or if, as Bultmann holds,
there was no resurrection, then the historical process still continues with no
“break.” But if it happened, as Pannenberg claims it happened—and we think he
is right—namely, that what Paul thought was the beginning of a fast-approaching
End, was really—as we know 2000 years later— an isolated, proleptic occurrence
of a still future End, then there has occurred in the midst of the historical
continuum a radical, indissolvable “break,” an act of God which is unique, in a
sense “more unique” than the uniqueness of historical phenomena in general.
Pannenberg has acknowledged the problem of identifying the resurrection of one
man with the expectation of the resurrection of all men. That is just the point.
The expectation of the resurrection of all men was indeed the presupposition for
finding meaning in Jesus’ resurrection. But, the resurrection of Jesus
nevertheless shattered apocalyptic preconceptions also. It was to Jew and Greek
alike an unforeseen, unforseeable self-disclosure of the God who remains free
and sovereign even in his historical self-revelation.
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Why has Barth been able to speak so powerfully the truth of the Christian faith to
his generation? Because he said what the gospel wants to say: “God with us.” Why
does such a powerful witness engender such sharp reaction? Is it not because
while saying what the gospel wants to say, he has utilized a metaphysical
conceptuality which no longer commands respect?
We come back to our question why Jesus must be God. If God anointed his
Servant, the Messiah, to proclaim his Kingdom and announce the new age and
then raised him from the dead as a confirmation of that message and of his
Servant, what does it add to the matter if Jesus were divine? If Jesus were God
then resurrection is not quite so amazing. But if Jesus is my brother because a
man like me and if God raised him from the dead, then something truly amazing
has occurred. The New Age has dawned in the midst of the Old. Then while still
struggling in the old aeon, I have a real basis for Hope. Then I live in anticipation.
That is, I live by faith.
If this is the case then I can understand the Apostle who wrote: On the human
level he was born of David’s stock, but on the level of the Spirit—The Holy
Spirit—he was declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead.
. . Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. l: 3b-4, NEB).
1Karl
Barth, The Humanity of God, Richmond, 1960, p. 19.
2Ernst
Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Gescbichtlichkeit fesu fur dem Glauben,
Tubingen,1911, p. 11.
3Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 Edinburgh, 1960, p. 284.
4Rudolph
Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, London, 1953, pp. 13ff.
5“Die
Krise des Schriftprinzips,” Grundfragen Systematischer Theologie,
Gottingen, 1967, p. 11.
6Ibid.
7“Die
Aufnahme des philosophisches Gottesbegriffs,” Grundfragen .... pp. 308f.
8Ibid.,
9”Die
p. 297.
Krise des Schriftprinzips,” Grundfragen …, p. 20.
10James
Baar, Old and New in Interpretation, SCM, 1966, p. 12.
11Cf.
H. Berkhof, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Richmond, 1964, for his daring
challenge to traditional Trinitarian conceptuality.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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A Theological Conception of Reality as History - Some Aspects of the Thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg
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The Reformed Review; a journal of the seminaries of the Reformed Church in America
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Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 1, 1972 entitled "A Theological Conception of Reality as History - Some Aspects of the Thinking of Wolfhart Pannenberg", it appeared in Reformed Review, pp. 178-188. Tags: History of Theology, Historical Thinking, Truth, Eschatology, Revelation.
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Eschatology
Historical Thinking
History of Theology
Revelation
Truth
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7343baf68ec2d1edecdc8126ef3e9296.pdf
c1acdd19689a14c2f35f52c77378d5aa
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Text
Two Hundred Years of Theology, Report of a Personal Journey
by Hendrikus Berkhof
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, translation by John Vriend of
200 Jahre Theologie: Ein Reisebericht, 1985)
1990 Book Review
“A Personal Perspective on a Personal Journey”
By
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Publication of Review Unknown
On Christmas, 1990, I spoke with Hendrikus Berkhof. His voice was strong, his mind
clear; over the telephone one would not have known but that it was the same “Henk,”
full of questions, intensely interested in all that was happening in the world and in the
church – and, as always, there was his genuine interest in all that concerned me, my
family and church. It was good to hear him thus, but even so I knew he was home for
only a few hours from the nursing home where he now makes his home.
On May 26 Hendrikus Berkhof was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage that left him
unconscious for two weeks and hospitalized into September. I flew over to see him and
his dear wife Corry the first week in July. During those days I could see him make a
turn. He recognized me immediately and immediately spoke to me in English, although
in very weak voice. With his one good arm he reached out to touch my face, a kind of
blessing, realizing I had come to be with him. Paralyzed on his left side, he cannot yet
walk and how much progress remains to be made cannot be predicted at this point. My
Christmas conversation, however, convinced me that he will keep up the struggle; that
great mind and heart will not be muted.
Perhaps the most moving aspect of our conversation was his expression of deep
gratitude to God whose grace has been experienced richly as Henk and Corry have
traversed this valley. In September they celebrated their golden anniversary. With his
four children and their families gathered around him he spoke of the goodness and
grace of God and God’s faithfulness in the present adversity. That this should be the case
is no surprise to me; rather, it is precisely what I should have expected from this
Christian gentleman, theologian, preacher, churchman and, for me, mentor and dear
friend.
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 2 of 41
One of the highest privileges of my life has been the opportunity to study under
Hendrikus Berkhof for four years in Leiden and then subsequently to know the richness
of intimate friendship with him and Corry. In 1989 we spent ten days together in
Scotland, studying together and touring the Highlands. He spoke of our special
relationship and denied that it could any longer be termed that of mentor/student. But
of course I know better. He will always be my teacher. More than any other he has
shaped me as a theologian and pastor.
It was thus with great pleasure that I accepted the assignment of reviewing Two
Hundred Years of Theology, with the request that I do more than review the book but
also give a personal portrait of the author.
I received this work almost as a personal gift from my teacher. The two hundred years
he surveys from his own personal perspective is precisely the course of theological
development I studied with him from 1967 -1970. His Christian Faith, which, after five
reprintings, was revised in 1986, will obviously stand as his statement of the Christian
faith as it comes to expression within the Reformed tradition in the last quarter of the
twentieth century. But Two Hundred Years of Theology reveals the man in the passion
of his life – to bring to expression the Gospel in such a fashion that it engages the minds
and hearts of the contemporary generation.
Obviously, to survey two hundred years of theology is to reflect on that endeavor to
bring the Gospel to expression over many generations. But the sharp focus of the study
consists precisely in the manner in which that task was executed in the several
generations surveyed. There was much that transpired during the two-hundred-year
period that receives no attention or is mentioned only in passing. Berkhof makes no
claim to give a full review of theological inquiry for the period. His intention, clearly
stated, is to trace the respective attempts to bridge the Gospel proclamation and modern
thought.
Ever and again and with increasing intensity I asked myself how, speaking
generally, these two can coexist.... (p. xi)
Modern thought, set in opposition to the Gospel, is the thought that arose in the epoch
of the Enlightenment. (Berkhof uses the term “post-Enlightenment” to designate the
two hundred years under review. That should not be confused with the designation of
our present time as the Post-Enlightenment period in the sense of moving beyond the
assumptions of the Enlightenment). Berkhof’s focus is theological thought in face of the
assumptions of the Enlightenment.
In the eighteenth century...modern thought assumed the position of leadership in
European culture. Since then, as “self-evident” truth in cultured circles, it
stripped from the Christian worldview its halo of self-evident truth which it had
held in Europe for almost a thousand years. (p. xii)
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 3 of 41
Berkhof was nurtured in the Reformed tradition as it came to expression in the
Calvinism of the Netherlands. At the close of a long and fruitful career in the church and
the university, preaching and teaching Christian faith, Berkhof surveys the dialogue of
Christian theology and modern thought over the past two hundred years to satisfy his
own curiosity first of all, for he recognizes that his whole ministry has been the
articulation of the faith in the face of modern thought in the wake of the Enlightenment
which overthrew all authoritarian structures in state and church and declared the
autonomy of the human person. Berkhof’s strength and great gift to the Reformed
tradition and the whole church is the articulation of the faith in face of modern thought,
having earned his right to address the contemporary scene because of the seriousness
with which he has grappled with modern thought, doing so with sensitivity, genuinely
seeking to hear and understand; doing so with openness and humility, seeking insight
on the way to a deeper grasp of truth; doing so with appreciation for the positive aspects
of the broader culture.
In his effort to understand and in his honest appreciation for the modern world of
Western civilization he never lost sight of the fundamental contradiction of the
sovereign and gracious Creator and the creaturely claim to autonomy – the
discontinuity between God and humankind, the impossible gulf that separates the two, a
gulf that can be bridged only from the side of God as an act of pure grace, a gulf that has
been bridged in Jesus Christ.
For me, coming under the tutelage of a person of such breadth of scholarship who
evidenced at the same time a deeply personal Christian experience and commitment to
the faith in its Reformed perspective, but with the enrichment of broad ecumenical
appreciation, it was a whole new world. I was amazed at the gap in my own theological
education: thorough through the sixteenth century but almost totally lacking in the
whole development of modern thought, the thought patterns that have shaped the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thought patterns that must be engaged in any
responsible proclamation of the Gospel in the contemporary world.
I may have been at fault, not being ready or willing to hear the claims of philosophical
thinking in the wake of the Enlightenment. What I missed completely, for whatever
reason, was the factor that changes everything – the rise of historical consciousness that
developed on the continent in the eighteenth century and led to what is now taken for
granted in our culture, namely, that all biblical, theological, philosophical and
ideological statements are conditioned by the historical context in which they arise.
Fortunately, when the force of this revolution in human understanding took hold of me,
I was under the careful and caring guidance of one whose whole life has been a
passionate pursuit of bringing to expression the grace of God as it has been manifested
in the ambiguity of the historical situation. Two things became strikingly evident to me:
my own orthodox Reformed faith understanding was not a timeless expression of
eternal truth but a timely confession of Christian faith shaped in the tumultuous
context of sixteenth-century Europe. Secondly, the whole development of modern
theology which I had viewed negatively, as threat, was an attempt to translate the
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 4 of 41
gospel into terms that took cognizance of the Copernican turn in human
understanding effected by critical analyses of the knowing process and by the rise of
historical consciousness. In other words, it was an attempt to do what the church is
always called to do – to articulate the gospel in every generation and in the context of
every historical epoch.
From Hendrikus Berkhof I learned to listen with appreciation and openness to the
broad spectrum of expressions of the Christian faith in the respective periods in which
they were articulated. I learned, to borrow Clarence Becker’s phrase, that “the climate of
opinion” in any given period is so powerful and controlling that often an honest attempt
to bring the gospel to expression will end poorly with only a truncated message coming
through. But even so I learned to value the effort and to learn, both from those efforts
that were somewhat successful, and from those that lost the message in a maze of
human reasoning.
Hendrikus Berkhof is a gifted scholar. To read Two Hundred Years of Theology, one
recognizes immediately that one is reading an author who has a thorough grasp of the
subject matter, who has fully digested the thought of the persons about whom he writes
and that, with an encyclopedic grasp of the thought development, he is not content
simply to render a survey but rather goes on to critique, to question and finally to put his
own feet down over against that which he has set forth. His own account of the faith
which one finds in his Christian Faith is thus his own; arising out of a thorough grasp of
the tradition out of which he speaks, the whole development of dogma in the history of
the church, and a broad engagement with modern thought.
The thinkers whom he treats in Two Hundred Years,
…tried, more or less deliberately, to build a bridge between the gospel and their
secularized cultural environment, but did they succeed? Were they able to
translate the gospel into modern language such that it could again be heard and
understood in intellectual circles and elicit a genuine yes or no? But who is able
to judge whether they achieved this goal? We probably cannot say more than this:
from where we stand now, this or that attempt seems to us successful or
unsuccessful. Such assessment is important, for we are in the same situation and
can learn, both in a positive and in a negative way, from preceding generations.
(p. xiii)
Berkhof invites us to join him in his personal journey through two hundred years.
Beginning with Kant, Berkhof recognizes that the dialogue of theology and modern
thought is a dialogue between theology and philosophy. The great German philosophical
tradition was carried on by those who had genuine theological interest and involvement.
From the development of philosophy, theologians gained knowledge of the modern
person’s understanding of life. Throughout the study Berkhof will again and again point
to the Lebensgefühl, life understanding, sense of life, that was influential in shaping
theological expression. His survey will highlight those persons who acknowledged the
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 5 of 41
new situation for theology after the critical analysis of the knowing process by
Immanuel Kant and insight in the milieu of modern thought to proclaim the gospel.
Before we can fully appreciate the seismic shift in philosophical and theological thought
effected by Kant’s critical analysis of the knowing process we need some sense of the
pre-modern world.
With the overwhelming influence of Aristotelian philosophy brought to the west by
Averroës in the twelfth century, the Church was faced with the necessity of proclaiming
its message in some sort of accommodation with Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas provided
the synthesis which made room for Christian theology in an Aristotelian intellectual
climate. This was a major accomplishment but the synthesis exacted a price: reality was
now split into two realities, nature and supernature. A virtual metaphysical dualism was
constructed separating the heavenly sphere from the earthly. For the latter, reason
reigned supreme; the former was accessible to faith. Thus a bifurcation of reality
resulted in a bifurcation of the knowing process. This split in reality would bear bitter
fruit but it did forestall the onset of atheistic thought which became a dominant stream
of modern thought in the period surveyed by Berkhof.
Berkhof begins his personal journey with the critical analysis of epistemology by
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). His Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is broadly
acknowledged as the foundational work of German philosophy and, Berkhof contends, it
must also be valued “as a radical new beginning for evangelical theology.”
As a result of its appearance, orthodox scholasticism, rationalism, and
supernaturalism found that, at a single stroke, the road forward had been
blocked. In addition, the appearance of Kant’s Critique meant...the birth of the
new theology, or rather: the modern way of posing questions, and modern
methodology, in theology. (p. 1f)
The pre-modern worldview had achieved a harmony between nature and grace, reason
and faith, Aquinas offering the consummate articulation of that harmony. As James
Miller writes:
By the eve of the birth of modern culture, the relation between Aristotelian
science (including a geocentric cosmological model developed by the secondcentury astronomer Ptolemy) and Christian theology had become so integral that
it was virtually impossible to determine where one stopped and the other began.
As a consequence, it was difficult to see how a philosophical or cosmological
challenge to the system of Aristotelian natural philosophy could be anything less
than a challenge to theological orthodoxy as well. Thus, the stage was set for the
Copernican-Galilean controversy out of which modern culture emerged and in
which natural science as a discipline became independent of the intellectual or
theological authority of the Christian church. (Postmodern Theology, p. 2)
Separating Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic harmonization of the natural and the
supernatural and Immanuel Kant are four centuries which saw the Renaissance turning
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 6 of 41
to the human subject, the Reformation which could only have happened in a culture
already permeated by Renaissance influence but which some would contend was a
detour, a conservative reaction rather than a development of the ferment of the fifteenth
century, and the birth of modern philosophy in the work of Descartes. The linkage
between the pre-modern culture described above and Kant’s critical philosophy,
however, should not be missed.
The Enlightenment was the flowering of the Renaissance turning to the human subject.
The bold declaration was the autonomy of the human person no longer under the
tutelage of authoritarian structures, be they ecclesiastical (church or Scripture) or sociopolitical. The early representatives of philosophy had never at the onset of the modern
period remained faithful to the church and lived in two houses: their critical analysis of
thought and scientific experimentation was carried on in the autonomy of human
reason; their spiritual existence was the appropriation of God’s grace, mediated through
the church – this tidy possibility provided by Thomas’ dual structure of reality. It was
not long however before the modern thinker found the supernatural realm optional; the
autonomous human person found that critical rationality was quite sufficient to deal
with “the real world;” the church remained a spiritual home for those who needed it.
Enter Immanuel Kant. This is the beginning point of Berkhof’s journey because Kant’s
analysis of the human knowing process changed everything. In his Critique of Pure
Reason he destroyed the traditional proofs for the existence of God and struck terror in
the hearts of conservative theologians. Actually his purpose was positive. He himself
wrote, “I therefore had to abolish knowledge in order to make room for belief.” For him
faith and knowledge were complementary. They were separate but connected and both
were necessary. It is Berkhof’s contention that it was “Kant’s purpose to save religion as
well as the Enlightenment: in this double objective, we think, lay his deepest passion as
a thinker.” (p. 5)
Dividing the realm of knowledge into two fundamentally separate domains, he posited
the world of phenomena and the world of the noumena. The former was accessible to
human reason – empirical knowledge which was not a direct mirror of the natural world
but the product of the interaction of the knowing mind and the data of the senses. This
he called the knowledge of the phenomenal world.
The noumenal world consisted of things in themselves – the world apart from the
activity of the knowing subject – that which simply was not available to empirical
verification because no sensory experience was possible. For example, the universe as a
causal whole, the human self as a free agent, and God. Yet precisely these three realities
must exist, must be true. To cite James Miller again:
Therefore, though knowledge of the world as a whole, of the self, and of God were
denied by Kant, faith in them, he argued, was absolutely necessary for practical
reasons.
(Postmodern Theology, p. 5)
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 7 of 41
This assertion was set forth in his second critical work, The Critique of Practical
Reason. It is this fundamental dualism that has characterized modern culture; it is the
inheritance of the Enlightenment and it is the “climate of opinion” that has dominated
the modern period, the milieu in which two hundred years of theology has been
executed.
How did the Gospel come to expression in light of the limits of human knowing in a
world where the authority of tradition and Scripture was no longer self-evident? This is
Berkhof’s focus. He deals with the development of the German philosophical tradition
because German philosophers were so theologically self-conscious and aware: Fichte
and the beginning of the Romantic movement which included the great Schleiermacher
who remained a theologian and pastor and sought to articulate the Gospel to its
“cultured despisers,” many of whom made up his own circle of friends; and, of course,
Hegel in whom German Idealism reached its fullest expression. Berkhof is comfortably
at home in this philosophical dimension and is able to lift the philosophical threads that
shaped the theological tapestry of the nineteenth century. Without some degree of
philosophical orientation one can hardly begin to understand the theological thinking
that came to expression in this 200-year period – or in any period for that matter.
How can we understand Schleiermacher, regarded as the father of modern Protestant
theology, except in the background of Kant? If Kant successfully blocked the road to the
knowledge of God through rational enquiry, through metaphysical speculation, then
what road remains open and on what basis can knowledge of God be grounded?
Schleiermacher turned to the interior life of the individual – to “the feeling of absolute
dependence,” an experience he claimed was common to all humankind at some time or
other. As Berkhof is careful to point out, Schleiermacher was not claiming that
Christianity arose from the feeling of dependence; rather, this feeling is the human precondition for it. He was pointing to the place into which revelation enters.
Was he successful in bringing Christian faith to expression amidst its cultured
despisers? Berkhof observes,
One can hardly say that history proved him right. What he took such pains to
formulate as the method of theology after the Enlightenment has become,
consciously or unconsciously, the common property of the greater proportion of
theologians. But there were, and are, only very few “Schleiermachians.” The
actual execution of his design has prompted many to admire but few to imitate
him. For some it was too radical; for others too traditional; and, of course, both
possibilities were inherent in this method. (p. 46)
Berkhof entitled the chapter “Schleiermacher’s Direction” because he understands
Schleiermacher as having had a distinct base and goal.
The base was the modernity which he totally affirmed. The goal was redemption
in Christ, a subject which in his own time he wanted to express in all its fullness.
Throughout his lifetime he was on his way from that base to this goal. (p. 48)
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 8 of 41
Berkhof’s sense is that he was so caught up with the base that it is questionable whether
he really reached his goal. Barth wrestled with Schleiermacher throughout his
remarkable career. Strong rejection alternates with obvious admiration as Barth deals
with this one who so strongly shaped the nineteenth century, which Barth had so
strongly rejected in his own radical turn from his inherited liberalism to the theology of
the Word. Berkhof, observing the whole movement from Schleiermacher to Barth,
renders the opinion that
They were both in motion from the same base (Woher) to the same goal
(Wohin)... (p. 49).
Only viewed thus in their commonality of concern, Berkhof contends, can the great
difference between them come to light. The delight and profit of accompanying Berkhof
on his journey is to learn from him the relationships and inter-connections that
constitute the theological landscape of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He
concludes the chapter on Schleiermacher with this paragraph:
It is no accident that suddenly we have moved from Schleiermacher to our own
time. As the first to think through so deeply the problems of modern theology,
he is just as up-to-date and relevant for us as he was for his contemporaries.
Perhaps we have to say: more relevant. For in his day most theologians had as
yet no inkling of what the problems were and could therefore lightheartedly
shrug off Schleiermacher’s answers. The bigger the blueprint, the longer the
time before it takes effect. (p.49)
We will go on to deal with Ritschl and the line of German theological development, but
we must note here another alternative to Kant’s destruction of a reasoned proof of the
existence of God. Schleiermacher moved to the interior life of the human subject; the
Danish Lutheran theologian, Sören Kierkegaard, in strong reaction against Hegel’s
idealism, pointed to the concretely existing individual who is confronted by the
revelation of Jesus Christ and is called to conversion, to the leap of faith in the moment
of decision.
Sketching Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, Berkhof writes,
Only in the paradox of the God-man can one lay hold of the unity of the eternal
and the historical; and this paradox is only acknowledged in faith. This faith has
nothing to do with one’s intelligence or will. It is itself as much a paradox as the
paradox with which it enters into a positive and happy relationship. Faith,
therefore, is purely a gift received in the “moment” in which the eternal appears
in time and by which the learner becomes “contemporaneous” with the teacher.
In this contemporaneity, this leap from sinful alienation from God into existence,
the historical distance from Jesus, who is now contemporaneous, falls away. (p.
74)
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 9 of 41
Kierkegaard reacted strongly against Hegel not only, but also against confessional
orthodoxy of his day, for there too, he claimed, the individual was pushed aside just as
much by universal and objective truths.
Berkhof sees Kierkegaard as an important figure in the relationship between culture and
gospel:
He brought the Christian faith into conflict with the Zeitgeist, doing this,
however, in the concepts of that time. Having in his language become an idealist
to the idealists, he proclaimed to them the faith in a new way so that it no longer
appeared to them as something antiquated but as a stumbling block and folly. He
did not do this by way of a fresh interpretation of dogma and tradition.... The new
and contemporary dimension consisted in the fact that he focused the whole of
revelation on the goal of subjectivity and by that means placed it in a new light.
(p. 76)
Was Kierkegaard the “most thoroughly reflective completion of pietism”? Berkhof raises
the question but notes this critical difference:
Whereas pietism presupposed and maintained the orthodox system of doctrine,
Kierkegaard made its content existential.
Kierkegaard failed to impact his own time and subsequent decades took little note of
him, but the alternative he posed to both the liberalism flowing from Hegel’s idealism
and confessional orthodoxy came to flower in the twentieth century in the early Barth
and in the theology of Rudolf Bultmann.
Following a discussion of Hegel and the Hegelian left, those thinkers that moved from
Hegel’s system to atheism, Berkhof discusses “the after-effects of idealism in theology,”
portraying the two streams that issued in confessionalism and liberalism. Berkhof
points out:
Two theological points of view were dominant here...: One could either, in
company with Hegel, look in Christianity for the truth of universal reason (and
run the risk of subordinating the gospel to the spirit of culture (Kulturgeist), or
one could join Schleiermacher in proceeding from the independent source and
nature of the gospel (and run the danger of isolating the gospel from the culture).
This contrast led to two distinct theological schools. (p. 62)
The first school, the liberal wing, Berkhof designates as the “Hegelian school” but he
does not deal with this line because it lies outside his sharp focus. The second school,
“the confessional group, the theology of mediation, gets major treatment because
precisely here the bridge between gospel and culture was the center. The roots of this
theology lie in Schleiermacher but there was little of the brilliance of Schleiermacher
and the effectiveness of the movement was slight in terms of negotiating a dialogue with
© Grand Valley State University
�Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Review by Richard A. Rhem
Page 10 of 41
culture. It did serve to strengthen the church – it was, in Berkhof’s words “an
ecclesiastical modality;” it had “a saving influence internally.”
Both the liberal and mediating theological groups declined abruptly with the rise of
Ritschl’s influence in the 1870’s. This causes Berkhof to raise questions directly related
to his own special interest.
Both schools wanted to translate Christian truth into the idiom of modern
consciousness (Lebensgefühl). And for both, this Lebensgefühl was
unquestionably the atmosphere created by German idealistic philosophy. In that
regard, however, both were fundamentally wrong. Already when those schools
arose, idealism was close to its demise. (p. 68)
The important insight here is that theologians that valued being up-to-date – related to
the climate of opinion of the day – failed to sense that their cultural context was moving
beyond them. Here is Berkhof’s statement:
The worlds of Feuerbach and Comte, of Marx and Engels, the achievements of
science, technology, and industry, the struggle of the working class, the “signs of
the times” of 1848, and later the German translation of Darwin’s main work
(1863) – all these events and influences occurred out of the hearing range of
theological studies and lecture halls.... The theologians could not find a point of
contact in the new empiricistic, naturalistic, and atheistic culture of Europe, as
they had found it in the world of idealism. (p. 68)
Berkhof does not fault theologians alone for this failure to sense where modern thought
was going. Even “enlightened” members of the educated class shrank back from the
forward movement of Enlightenment thought. Idealism as far back as the Hellenistic
beginnings of the church, seemed the gospel’s native air; with this new intellectual
climate there seemed no possibility of establishing a relationship.
Albrecht Ritschl, according to Berkhof, was the first “to fling a plausible bridge in
German theology to the Lebensgefühl of realism.” In the decade of the 1870’s Ritschl’s
work had a major impact because, Berkhof contends, “what many scholars had felt
unconsciously came suddenly to the surface: liberal and mediating theology had
attempted to relate the gospel to a world that was no longer there.” What these
theologians in both camps failed to recognize was that to make the gospel audible in the
modern world requires the change of conceptual apparatus and theological language
with the changing cultural climate and this means as well that any such theological
construction will, given time, become obsolete.
Berkhof gives a sympathetic treatment of Ritschl, acknowledging his considerable
shortcomings, but valuing him for his serious effort to give voice to the gospel in a
shifting cultural scene.
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The cultural mood in Germany turned more and more to the world of experience
and the natural laws governing it. The reality of space and time gained much
more weight and a much clearer autonomy than an idealistically disposed mind
could handle. Still, this reality was not experienced in a deterministic fashion.
The experience of the mechanisms of nature went hand in hand with a strong
sense of progress, of human freedom and power. Humanity is clearly not a
product and plaything of the powers of nature but superior to them as their ruler.
By utilizing the predictable laws of nature humanity can establish a realm of
progress that becomes ever more free. (p. 115f)
This was the cultural mood into which Ritschl addressed his theological understanding.
He moved from Hegelian idealism to open-minded research utilizing the historicalcritical method. He was serious, disciplined, wanting to be “heart and soul, a believing
Christian, and at the same time belonging with the entire fabric of his life to his own
culture and time.”
Turning from Hegelian idealism to Kant’s critical idealism, he fluctuated in his
relationship to Kant but seemed finally convinced that metaphysics and natural theology
were no longer options. He held that the knowledge of God is realized only in the act of
faith – faith directed toward the saving activity of Christ. Religious knowledge he
claimed consists in value judgments, a term by which he is best known and most
misunderstood. Berkhof cites him thus: “It is the duty of theology to conserve the special
characteristics of the conception of God, namely, that it can only be represented in
value-judgments.” Berkhof observes:
He intends to maintain the uniqueness of the Christian faith as a way of access to
the “conception of God” through trust in Jesus Christ – apart from any ground
other than that given in the unity of revelation and faith. In that context he
utilized Kant to the extent Kant is useful... (p. 121)
Berkhof defends Ritschl against a common misunderstanding that with the concept of
value judgment he delivered the Christian faith to pure subjectivism. But, Berkhof
counters, the word value was much in vogue at the time and it intended to represent the
autonomy of the world of the mind vis-a-vis the mechanism of nature. Berkhof cites two
significant statements in which Ritschl explains his use of the word:
Religious knowledge moves in independent value-judgments, which relate to
man’s attitude to the world, and call forth feelings of pleasure or pain, in which
man either enjoys the dominion over the world vouchsafed him by God, or feels
grievously the lack of God’s help to that end. (Justification and Reconciliation, p.
205, cited in Berkhof, p. 122).
In Christianity, religious knowledge consists in independent value judgments,
inasmuch as it deals with the relation between the blessedness which is assured
by God and sought by man, and the whole of the world which God has created
and rules in harmony with His final end. (p. 207)
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Ritschl is striving to explain the relationship between divine providence and human
dominion over the world. He also used the concept in dealing with the divinity of Christ
and religious knowledge. Berkhof sets forth Ritschl’s intent sympathetically but
acknowledges that
the word value judgment...is misleading; it creates the impression that it is solely
grounded in subjective human appreciation, as a postulate or projection, without
having an objective context. Ritschl’s line of thought was not at all intended
anthropocentrically but relationally and functionally... : in the face of the saving
encounter with the Christ of revelation a person finds himself forced to make this
judgment. (p. 123)
Ritschl was welcomed by many who “in the age of Emperor Wilhelm II understood and
welcomed this presentation of the gospel as moral power.” Others saw it as “a betrayal of
the gospel to the spirit of bourgeoisie” and Berkhof observes that this is the fate of every
theology that seek to articulate the gospel for its own time and culture. In any case he
“let the voice of the gospel and the voices of the Reformation speak again.”
One of his students who was to become the philosopher of religion of the religioushistorical school, Ernst Troeltsch, described Ritschl’s position thus, according to
Berkhof:
In his relation to history Ritschl remained stuck halfway. In this respect he seems
to identify with the historical consciousness which marks the modern mind,
though at bottom he is not modern at all but still supernaturalistic. One cannot
simultaneously recognize the limited individuality and many-sided dependence
of all historical figures on the one hand, and on the other, infer from the
historical process the absoluteness of Christianity and its founders.... (p. 129)
That was Troeltsch’s conclusion and he turned away from Ritschl developing to the full
the implications of historical consciousness which he faulted his teacher for failing to do.
Berkhof’s journey continues with a discussion of the alternative positions of Troeltsch
and Wilhelm Herrmann who was deeply impacted by Ritschl and developed the line of
thought he found in Ritschl in his own impressive work.
We begin with Herrmann because he developed the intention of Ritschl’s theology.
What impressed him about Ritschl, Berkhof notes, was his fundamental theme: “The
calling of people to relate and conduct themselves as free personalities within a
determined world.” Like Ritschl he found the highest of religion and morality united in
the figure of Jesus.
Faith and knowledge were held distinct as was true in Ritschl following Kant’s critical
philosophy. This separation of faith and knowledge was evidenced in “his persistent
struggle against any form of confusion between a personal faith in Christ and faith in the
authority of Scripture, dogma, or creed:
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They cannot bring about a saving personal encounter; they appeal to our thinking
only as law. Religion is a totally independent world, though closely bound up with
morality, because it relates us to divine revelation and must be the answer to the
misery of our moral condition. (p. 144)
Herrmann was more concerned for the solidity of his philosophical base than was
Ritschl. Kant loomed large, “whose mighty thoughts emerge increasingly in almost all
domains of human learning as the silent governor of all true research.” Herrmann
valued Kant “because in every connection he has placed the value of faith, its
independence from science, in the clearest light.”
Berkhof offers an illuminating image by which to understand Herrmann in relation to
the question of Berkhof’s quest – how in modern thought and culture the gospel was
brought to expression.
When I read Herrmann what emerges in my mind is the image of a rock in the
midst of a rising flood. In Ritschl the rock of moral autonomy still had a broad
surface. Now, however, with the waves of the flood rising higher and higher, it
became much narrower. The parts that are closer to the sea – like corporeality,
psychological development, history, social relationships, and the authority of
Scripture and Christian tradition – have clearly been inundated. Herrmann now
withdrew to the narrow center, to individual (though conceived as interpersonal)
inwardness where the individual is in communion with God through “the inner
life of Jesus.” With a splendid sort of consistency, he devoted his intellectual
powers to the defense of the peak of that rock. (p. 146)
The rise of the historical-critical method of biblical research led Herrmann to realize
that the certainty of faith could not rest on the probable results of historical criticism.
Faith does take shape in history but its basis is above history and beyond the reach of
historical research. “The inner life of Jesus” which comes to expression in the narratives
about him, legendary as well as historical, bring our personhood into contact with the
reality of Jesus’ personal life. Berkhof dates Herrmann’s complete divorce between
revelation and history around 1910, the period of the heated debates about the
historicity of Jesus. The Ritschlian school attacked Kähler’s distinction between the
historische Jesus and the geschichtliche Christ. This distinction which, as Berkhof notes,
can only be made in German, became very influential.
It gained broad acceptance because it promised a separate but peaceful
relationship between the gospel and modern historicism which could serve as a
bomb-proof bunker for faith in Christ. (p. 147)
In his Ethik Herrmann entered into dialogue with the intellectual Umwelt and thus
Berkhof focuses on that work first because in it “a bridge was built between the gospel
and the modern world.” In human encounters in which trust relationships grow we
recognize an “unconditional demand” and a longing to achieve “a different life than
nature can furnish us.”
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In religion man is referred to the “inner situation of human individualism” in
which “he is faced before a power before which all resistance is excluded because
he knows himself to be totally dependent on it in free surrender.” (p. 147f)
Herrmann’s other major work Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott describes how the
encounter with the superior personal life of Jesus proceeds and effects inner human
renewal. How does the saving experience of the grace of God come about? Herrmann’s
stress is on inward transformation – concrete human experience.
A fact of redemption, for a person who wants to escape the bondage of his own
powerlessness, can only be that which transforms him inwardly. That, however, is
effected only by his own experience, not by that which he is merely told about.
Hence we call a ‘fact of redemption’ the inner life of Jesus which became known
to us in contact with the tradition. (p. 148)
How does the process of becoming known actually occur?
The personal mystery of Jesus is mediated to us through the transmission of his
image. In that context we discover that “the Christ of the New Testament displays
a firmness of religious conviction, a clarity of moral judgment, a purity and power
of will, as they occur together in no other figure of history. (p. 148)
Sounding like Luther, Herrmann writes,
God takes our self-esteem and creates for us an unbreakable spirit; he destroys
our joy in life and makes us blessed; he kills and makes us alive. (Der Verkehr, p.
94, cited in Berkhof, p. 149)
Berkhof points out the difference with Luther being that for Luther it is the power of the
law that kills while for Herrmann it is a natural human experience, an experience
common to Christians and non-Christians. This was the Lebensgefühl of Herrmann’s
Europe. The Gospel meets this need reflected in the common human experience.
Berkhof puts the critical question to Herrmann’s formulation: “Is the God who is
complementarily related to our needs still really God? Or is he perhaps only the
projected reflection of human ideals and human misery? Berkhof notes, as we shall see
later, that in the year Herrmann died (1922), the revised edition of Barth’s The Epistle to
the Romans appeared. In it Barth, Herrmann’s admiring student, concluded that indeed
Herrmann’s God was a human projection, not the “wholly other” of biblical revelation.
Two alternatives flowed from Ritschl: Herrmann’s development of Ritschl’s intention
and, from Ritschl’s student Ernst Troeltsch, a rejection of the attempt to ground faith in
inner experience, thereby finding an absolute ground in history. With Herrmann,
Troeltsch was recognized as the leader of German Liberal theology. But Troeltsch took
another path. Recalling the image referred to above, Berkhof writes,
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He [Troeltsch] also saw that the rock of ethical freedom and, connected with it, of
the gospel was inundated by the deterministic-historical way of thinking in
vogue. But he did not believe that he could occupy and hold a small peak as a last
resort. He left this tight spot and plunged into the stream. To him an absolute
moment in history was a contradiction in terms. For that reason he had to
disagree with Ritschl and Herrmann, who sought to lift Jesus out of history with
its laws of analogy and correlation. It is true everywhere and for everyone: history
is an ever-moving stream in which the movement of each drop is determined by
the mass of water that proceeds it, and each drop shares in determining the
direction of what follows. That is the fundamental view of “historicism,” another
term for determinism applied to historical reality. (p. 150)
In that paragraph, Berkhof pictures vividly the climate of opinion created by the rise of
historical consciousness and the rise of historical consciousness has marked all
subsequent modern thought as indelibly as has Kant’s analysis of the human knowing
process.
Troeltsch admired Herrmann’s work but concluded that Herrmann had failed to ground
faith in an historically unconditional place; rather, his orientation to “the inner life of
Jesus” was “time conditional,” thoroughly enmeshed in the stream of history.
Troeltsch endeavored to rescue Christian faith and ethics from the historical relativism
which appeared all-encompassing. For him the historical as such can have only relative
significance. However, utilizing metaphysical psychology, he developed his “philosophy
of values.”
Whereas the natural sciences look for causality and universality, the science of
history looks for the individuality which expresses itself in the realization of
transindividual values in history. (p. 152)
With this theory of the transhistorical values realized in history in the individual,
Troeltsch believed he had overcome relativism. History has not a limitless number of
competing values; “such values are exceedingly few in number” and “disclosures of
really new goals for the human spirit are rare indeed.” By what criterion are such
disclosures to be judged? Berkhof cites the following statements from Troeltsch:
We may likewise understand the criterion of evaluation as something that
emerges within the movement of life as a result of a universal perspective on the
one hand, and involvement in the movement on the other.
The converging lines evident in these basic features suggest, however, a
normative, universally valid goal toward which the whole is directed.
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It is the concept rather, of a common, orienting goal that may from time to time
manifest itself in history in clear and distinct preparatory forms but always
remains a goal “out in front.”
At this point, Berkhof indicates, Troeltsch moves from the historically empirical to
metaphysics. Berkhof cites Troeltsch further:
This idea [namely, of an absolute goal] requires a turn to the metaphysical, a
retracing of all man’s goals and orientations to a transcendent force that activates
our deepest stirrings and is connected with the creative core of reality. The
various eruptions, breakthroughs, and manifestations of the higher spiritual life
are rooted in the goal-oriented character of this force. It stands over against what
is merely given in nature and turns up at different points – ...till it has found
concentrated expression, from that point on pressing forward to goals that exceed
all knowledge and imagination. This is the permanent element in the concept of
evolutionary development, which in this case signifies not only a postulate that
accompanies all faith in the spiritual life but also a fact of experience that has
been manifested with some degree of clarity. (p. 152f)
From this position Troeltsch went on to claim for Christianity the highest level of the
apprehension of truth. Berkhof comments,
It would seem that, with this “absoluteness of Christianity,” an “absoluteness”
based on historical development (because “absolute truth belongs to the future
and will appear in the judgment of God and the cessation of earthly history.”)
Troeltsch came very close to a kind of Hegelian pantheism and immanentism.
Over against this, however, there is a strong personalism, because for Troeltsch
as a modern person it is precisely the personalistic legacy of Christianity which
constitutes a connection of culture, individual life, and progress. (p. 153)
Herrmann and Troeltsch carried on a dialogue about the place of history in Christian
experience. Troeltsch rejected Herrmann’s appeal to the personality of Jesus while
claiming that although mediated by history, what came to expression of the inner life of
Jesus was above history and beyond the reach of historical-critical research. Herrmann
found it impossible to accept Troeltsch’s idea of development which brought with it the
possibility that Jesus might in the future be superseded by a greater revelatory
concretion in event or person. In the final analysis they were not so far apart except that
Troeltsch appealed to the socio-psychological reality of the Christian community.
In Troeltsch’s essay “The Significance of the Historical Existence of Jesus for Faith,” he
dealt with the question whether the Christian church can have a future apart from its
being grounded in the historicity of Jesus. Berkhof points out,
He denies it on grounds of social psychology; without a fellowship, a cult, and a
historical personality to ground it, only an individualistic spirituality remains. As
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such a historically based cult community, Christianity can well maintain itself,
even by historical-critical norms. (p. 155)
Thus he is close to Ritschl and Herrmann. However, the difference between them lies
in the fact that for Troeltsch, his claim is grounded in social-psychology; it is not for him
a dogmatic pronouncement. But Troeltsch wearied of the struggle to claim absolute
value out of history and historical development. A concluding sentence of his significant
The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches reads, “The Truth is – and this is the
conclusion of the whole matter – the Kingdom of God is within us.” World War I dealt
his view that European culture was the highest stage of ethical-cultural development a
blow.
Universal history, which was once his starting point, now became a question to
him. He began to see that even his central idea of “personality” lacked universal
historical validity but was typical for one culture – namely Western culture. Even
the basis of his historicism became historicized. Against a boundless relativism he
sought shelter in a pantheistic metaphysic....(p. 157)
Berkhof concludes the discussion of these two giants of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries under the heading “Convergence and Contrast.” They illustrate two
ways in which, “while affirming the contemporary deterministic-empirical culture, one
can still speak of ‘the absoluteness’ of Jesus or of Christianity.” Both sought to save faith
and modern culture. But Berkhof claims,
In their attempts at reconciliation neither Herrmann nor Troeltsch could in the
end avoid returning to the supernaturalism they despised. In the case of
Herrmann, Jesus – with his unique inner life – remained the big exception and
the great miracle in the midst of history. Troeltsch radically exposed himself to
the temptation of contemporary culture. But for him, too, Jesus remained the
hitherto unsurpassed high point in the great movement of the Spirit. For the sake
of redemption of the human personality neither was able to abandon faith in the
personhood of God. For the salvation of human beings both men reached for a
Beyond – Herrmann for the inner life of Jesus beyond observable history,
Troeltsch for the kingdom of redeemed spirits, also beyond history. (p. 160)
Concentrating on his own focus in this survey, Berkhof reflects on the contrasts and the
convergence of the alternatives followed by Herrmann and Troeltsch. He contends that
in the effort to reconcile the gospel and modern culture, one can begin at either pole.
The gospel cries out for concentration on the one thing necessary; culture ventures into
the full spectrum of life in the world. Beginning with either pole it is difficult to do
justice to the other. Finally both Herrmann and Troeltsch experienced and expressed
Christian faith entirely within the framework of the cultural presuppositions of their
time. After the crisis of World War I both thinkers’ influence waned; yet, the significant
intellectual and spiritual effort of both has gained a new hearing. Berkhof claims we
have still not been able to free ourselves from the choice between the two and the
struggle in which they engaged continues to challenge us into the present.
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We move now to the next generation, to students of Herrmann, who appeared for a brief
time to be one in their development and radicalization of Herrmann’s effort to find a
secure place for faith to rest beyond the relativities of history and the acids of historical
research. Karl Barth’s Romerbrief, first edition, sent shock waves through the world of
academic theology and philosophy and his salvo was affirmed by Rudolf Bultmann.
Under the title of “The Split in the Herrmann School” Berkhof discusses these two
formidable theologians and their followers. The word “split” indicates that the time of
apparent agreement was brief; in Bultmann and Barth alternative answers were given to
questions of faith and history.
Understandably, Berkhof can do little justice to the gigantic theological enterprises of
Bultmann and Barth in two chapters comprising about 45 pages. Yet the treatment is
helpful because of his sharp focus – the deeply felt chasm between the cultural
assumption of their sitz-im-leben and the gospel.
Bultmann followed his revered teacher, Herrmann, who thoroughly mistrusted
historically ascertainable facts as vehicles of revelation. Bultmann’s mistrust was even
greater – closer to Troeltsch at that point, although repeating Troeltsch’s attempt to find
some absolute point amidst history’s relativities. In Bultmann, “the Christian experience
of faith is not in the conventional sense ‘grounded’; it implies a radical release from
empirical certitude.”
Berkhof suggests that Troeltsch’s influence may have caused Bultmann to radicalize
Herrmann’s position.
The Achilles’ heel of Herrmann was, certainly, that for his faith in Jesus he
needed a little segment of history, namely, “the inner life of Jesus” or the “secret
of his Person,” however nonvisual it might be. Troeltsch did not believe in this
rock as a place of refuge to which one could go in the midst of the flood of
historical determinism. And Bultmann...had to concur here with the opponent of
his teacher. However, unlike Troeltsch he did not plunge into the sea, but
believed he could find revelation concerning the sea above the inundated rock, in
a higher atmosphere which the flood could not reach, in the free air of human
existence addressed by God, on a level of reality which can only be reached by a
radical detachment from the world. (p. 164f)
Here we hear the echoes of Kant’s distinction between pure and practical reason; the
historical Jesus belongs to the first, the preaching of the crucified Jesus to the second.
Bultmann was concerned only with the “that” of the life of Jesus; nothing beyond the
“that” of his historical existence is relevant for faith. Even Herrmann’s “inner life of
Jesus” was surrendered to the relativization of historical criticism. As Berkhof explains,
Bultmann wanted to sever the last remaining connection between Historie and
Geschichte in order to protect the faith from any and every critical assault on the
part of science. (p. 165)
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Barth’s Romans impressed Bultmann. Here he heard an undergirding and development
of Herrmann’s theology. Bultmann, a trained New Testament scholar did object to
Barth’s interpretation of Paul and he criticized Barth’s understanding of the relationship
between revelation and history, an understanding similar to Herrmann’s, falling short of
the radical disjunction of faith and history which Bultmann advocated. Berkhof feels
that from the beginning Bultmann was more interested in Barth’s statements about the
human self than he was in Barth’s primary concern to point to the goodness of God and
the objectivity of the Word of God.
Berkhof points to the center of Bultmann’s concern in his analysis of human existence
which he gained from the early Heidegger, who for a time was his colleague at Marburg.
Heidegger’s philosophy of existence presented Bultmann with an understanding of the
human condtion into which the gospel is proclaimed. Berkhof cites Bultmann’s
statement:
For the existential interpretation of human existence says precisely that the
human subject (or human being, I might also say) is not without his world, nor
even without God insofar as the philosopher regards it as legitimate to speak
about God, so that self-understanding is also understanding of (God and) the
world. (p. 168f)
Is this “natural theology” or a Christianized Heidegger? Berkhof contends the two
converge in Bultmann and offers as evidence Bultmann’s statements in his essay “The
New Testament and My Theology:”
...according to Heidegger the “mundaneness” of the world “causes people to be
satisfied with an illusory existence; as a result they miss out on “the reality of
existence.” This condition of lostness is what the New Testament calls “sin.”
According to Heidegger people must now lay hold of existence on their own:
Become what you are! (p. 169)
Philosophy believes it is enough that one be shown one’s true nature but Bultmann
denies philosophy’s self-confidence.
People must first be liberated from themselves. This happens through the
message of Christ, through the forgiveness of sin, by which alone people receive
the “freedom for obedience,” surrender to the love of God, and therewith the
authenticity of their existence. (p. 169)
During the fifties Bultmann’s influence was powerful and pervasive. His existential
analysis of the human person who is addressed by the Word of God, the proclamation of
the Christ of faith apart from any rooting in history beyond the “that” of Jesus’
existence, enabled him to deliver the gospel safe from the relativities of historical
research, research in which he himself was a master. But with the advent of the next
decade the pendulum began to swing back and the climate of opinion was shifting. The
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Bultmannian school was beginning to fall apart. First the work of Ernst Kassemann who
actually stepped outside the Bultmann circle with its existentialist interpretation of the
gospel, but then by Bultmann’s students Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling who
remained with the existentialist understanding but who sensed a need for a broader
place to stand in concrete history, there was a return to interest in the historical Jesus,
to something more than the “that” of his existence.
Berkhof views this move on the part of the Neo-Bultmannians as a shift from idealism to
empiricism which was similar to the shift that had occurred in the previous century.
A theological generation grew up for whom the language of the great
predecessors was no longer intelligible. However diverse Barth, Brunner,
Bultmann, Niebuhr, and Tillich were, their basic concepts like “revelation,”
“Word of God,” “absolute and infinite Being,” even the vocable “God,” all
belonged to a conceptual Uberwelt which was not open to empirical
verification....I see no indication that the Neo-Bultmannians consciously involved
themselves in this shift toward empiricism. But since 1950 it was in the air,
expanded rapidly, and manifested itself in many areas. The “shift” from “Christ”
to “Jesus” belongs entirely to this new climate. For many during these years it
made the gospel credible again to have it anchored in the historical Jesus. (p.
175f)
Berkhof points out that this was really a return to Herrmann who also had to proclaim
the gospel to a generation under the strong influence of empiricism. He never gave up
the connection to empirical history. Bultmann argued with his students who moved
back to the concern with the historical reality of Jesus and Berkhof comments:
In my opinion, the conflict between Bultmann and his disciples has not been
resolved. His disciples were stronger in their accentuation of the essential
continuity between Jesus and Christ...Bultmann’s second objection against his
disciple-critics is one they could not, in my judgment, invalidate: the post-Easter
kerygma is not identical with the message of Jesus and does not (very often – I
would prefer to say) refer back to the message and conduct of the earthly Jesus.
(p. 177)
As the debate came to sharp focus the questions that were clearly at issue were:
Is the historical necessary to the explanation of the kerygma (Bultmann,
Marxen)? And: is this minimal history sufficient for the explanation of the
kerygma (Künneth)? By answering the first question in the negative one remains
strictly within the existentialist framework. By answering the second question in
the negative one breaks out of this framework in favor of an ontological mode of
thought. (p. 178)
The climate of opinion permeated with a move to the empirical opened up a return to
concentration on the historical ground of faith especially in the work of a circle of young
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scholars around Pannenberg. Berkhof explains this move as reflective of the way
Troeltsch posed the issue.
The gospel must not be positioned as far from history as possible but be
understood altogether as historical power and as answer to the quest for truth in
history. It seemed the path of theological development had curved back to where
it was in 1910. The alternatives were still the same. (p. 178)
But with our move to the Post-Bultmann School we have moved too fast, for we must
backtrack and pick up the other student of Herrmann, generally acknowledged as the
greatest theological thinker of the twentieth century, Karl Barth. Berkhof knew him
personally and respected him deeply. While maintaining his own independence, he
nevertheless himself was significantly impacted by this great man.
Berkhof opens the chapter with the interesting development of Barth, biographical
information so necessary to understanding him and the revolution he ignited. He cites
the following statement of Barth from the preface to the second edition of his Romans:
If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the
“infinite qualitative distinction” between time and eternity, and to my regarding
this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: “God is in heaven, and
thou art on earth.” The relation between such a God and such a man, and the
relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and
the essence of philosophy. Philosophers name this krisis of human perception –
the Prime Cause; the Bible beholds at the same cross-roads – the figure of Jesus
Christ. (p. 194f)
These are weighty sentences, Berkhof writes. He locates the respective emphases in
Barth’s development. The Romans work came out of Barth’s turn to the interpretation of
the Bible. With his friend Thurneysen he was disillusioned with involvement in the
Social Democracy movement which failed to mobilize resistance to the war and together
they were looking for a place to stand – a “crisis” brought about by the need to preach
weekly. The first edition of Romans (1919) was the eruption of all that was stirring in the
young Barth as he moved away from the nineteenth century with its classic liberalism,
struggled with the Bible and the darkness that enveloped the continent torn apart with
war.
The first edition of Römerbrief was not a product of a finished theological position.
Berkhof speaks of “The Detour of the First Edition of Römerbrief.” Berkhof cites Busch,
Barth’s biographer:
In Barth, the question of according God a place of central importance was
becoming more and more fundamental. And since he had met Blumhardt, it was
very closely connected with the eschatological question of the Christian hope.
(Busch, Karl Barth, pp. 87, 89, cited in Berkhof, p. 186)
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Berkhof points out that Barth wrestled with the question of how the Kingdom of God
manifested itself tangibly in a world hostile to God.
In the grip of this question Barth had read Romans with the excitement of a
discoverer. For him it became primarily the great witness to the absolute priority
of God, visible in the work of Christ and the working of the Spirit, the Spirit who
in an organic process, on the basis of Christ, transformed creation into the glory
of Christ. This working of the Spirit is the inner side – perceptible to the eye of
faith – of our secular exterior side. Ontology, objectivity, realism, and
universalism – these are the categories which here determine Barth’s exposition
of Paul. Paul helped him to proclaim the superior power of God in an alienated
world and even to make it visible for those to whom this is given. (p. 186f)
The publication of Romans sent shock waves through the philosophical and theological
centers of the continent. Educated in the finest tradition of German culture, Barth’s
move was incomprehensible to his teachers. It appeared that he had joined the side of
orthodoxy. But, Berkhof contends, he was still far from the Reformation tradition and
had no real appreciation for the classic teaching of justification. In the years following
the publication (1919-1922), Barth continued to grope and feel his way. Berkhof, tracing
the various ideas and persons that influenced Barth, concludes,
I doubt that it was philosophical influence which helped Barth negotiate the great
switch-in-subject which initiated in the 1916 lecture about “The Righteousness of
God” and following the detour via the theology of Württenberg (The first edition
of Römerbrief), provisionally found its “final” form in the second edition of
Romans. According to Barth’s own sense of the matter, he owed the sudden shift
in direction from the first to the second edition of Romans to an “inspiration”
which at first even frightened himself.... If one nevertheless thinks here of extra
theological influences, it makes more sense to look for them in the realm of the
negative, in the disillusionments he suffered, especially after the war, from the
liberal theology of experience on the one hand, and from social democracy on the
other. These disillusionments drove him past all the relativities of human life to
God – as the origin, the judge(crisis), and the hope of all that is known. In
contemplation of the absolute God the merely human was condemned and
redeemed to the status of relativity and so made bearable. In the first edition of
Römerbrief Barth still viewed the relationship between God and the world as
harmonious, organic, more or less perceptible. In the second edition of Romans
discontinuity and imperceptibility predominate. God is no less present than
before but his presence had fundamentally become “imperceptible,” “lightninglike.” (p. 197)
Berkhof raises the question how in the space of four years Barth could read the same
Pauline letter so differently. He is convinced the answer lies not in the domain of
intellect but “in the depths of his Lebensgefühl (sense of life).” Educated in the
Ritschlian theological school, the advancing secularization ate away at the ground on
which faith rested. In Herrmann there was a thin ridge still rising above the flood; for
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Troeltsch even that was gone, although he still sought the absolute in history’s relativity.
For Barth, Berkhof contends, the “base” is totally gone.
“History” is completely secularized and the event of the world of God is now
“verticalized.” God’s work in the world has lost its final vestiges of perceptibility.
The retreat has become a clean break...the second edition of Romans is also a
document of that cultural epoch and the Lebensgefühl which was part of it.... A
new, intensely painful experience of the godless world and, on the basis of that
experience, a new quest for the God of the Bible – these two factors determined
Barth’s groping progression during these years. (p. 198)
Though he revered Herrmann, Barth nevertheless had to take leave of him. Bultmann
had not noticed the “switch-in-subject” in the second edition of Romans and interpreted
Barth in line with Herrmann. And there was structural similarity between Barth and
Herrmann, as Moltmann points out:
The “defenseless non-groundability of religious experience” in Barth becomes, in
theologically consistent form, the “transcendental subjectivity” of the selfrevealing God, a process in which the “self” retains all the attributes, all the
relations and distinctions in which it had been formulated by Herrmann. (p. 199,
quoting Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 54)
In a lecture in 1924 Barth pointed out where he separated from Herrmann. It was not a
repudiation but rather a radicalization of Herrmann.
Herrmann tried to ground his theology on “experience,” on “the facts we
ourselves experience,” but in the section cited by Barth he continues: “But its
beginning and its end is nonetheless man’s humbling of himself before the
unsearchable.” Therefore, if experience lives from that which transcends
experience, and if this is its beginning even, then “the unabrogable subjectivity of
God” has become the starting point of our thinking, and it “becomes obligatory to
ask whether dogmatics does not have to begin where Herrmann ends.” (p. 199)
Surveying the whole of Barth’s theological enterprise, Berkhof holds that the
relationship between Barth and his teacher must be characterized as “ambivalence”
rather than a “break.” Barth’s strong stress on “the unabrogable subjectivity of God” led
to differences: no point of contact in ethics; stress on the Word event; more space for
salvation-historical facts, especially the cross and resurrection; a wider use of scriptural
witness, including the Old Testament; and emphasis on the priority and superordination
of justification over sanctification and of faith as acknowledgment over trust; also, a
higher valuation of the church, its office, and its confession. But there were similarities
as well:
The twin pillars of his mature thought as it comes to expression in his Church
Dogmatics are thus Christocentrism and, as its counterpart, the radical
repudiation of natural theology. With these positions Barth was not in opposition
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to the nineteenth century but to the Ritschl–Herrmann line of thought within
that century. But when secularization advanced still more, Barth withdrew
revelation even further from the world. It was not the “diastasis” which
distinguished him from these predecessors but the degree of radicalism with
which it was applied. Herrmann found final support in “the inner life of Jesus.”
Barth also gives that up and then severs the connection between Geschichte and
Historie. But is that a possibility if one wants to proceed on the basis of Jesus
Christ, inclusive of his “historical” appearance? ( p. 200)
Berkhof claims Barth could not do it even in the second edition of Romans. He quotes
from Romans:
In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the
flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And,
precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier – as the new
world. The Resurrection is therefore an occurrence in history, which took place
outside the gates of Jerusalem in the year A.D. 30, inasmuch as it there “came to
pass,” was discovered and recognized. But inasmuch as the occurrence was
conditioned by the Resurrection, in so far, that is, as it was not the “coming to
pass,” or the discovery, or the recognition, which conditioned its necessity and
appearance and revelation, the Resurrection is not an event in history at all. (p.
201 from Romans, p. 30)
Later, in Church Dogmatics, Berkhof writes, Barth attempted to bring Geschichte and
Historie closer together but even there “failed to reach clarity on this decisive issue in
modern theology.”
Berkhof moves to Barth’s relationship to Schleiermacher which, in his early years, was
unambiguous; he set himself over against Schleiermacher’s anthropological starting
point, the grounding of religious reality in the “feeling of absolute dependence.”
Despite his great admiration for Schleiermacher’s magnificent achievement, in
general he found himself rejecting Schleiermacher’s theology. This rejection went
so far that he closed with the question, “How can the idea [the idea that
Schleiermacher has brought us to a dead end] be squared with the providence of
God which rules over his church?” and with the observation: “What remains is
clearly – and I do not see how it can be avoided – the possibility of a theological
revolution [Barth’s italics], a fundamental NO! to the entire body of
Schleiermacher’s teaching concerning religion and Christianity.” (p. 202)
A bit later Barth treated Schleiermacher’s thought again, concluding that he “allowed
himself to be forced into the fundamentally unworthy position of an apologist” because
at bottom he was interested in Christianity “only for the sake of culture.” Yet Barth was
never through with Schleiermacher. In 1968 he wrote,
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I am certain of my course and of my point of view. I am, however, not so certain
of them that I can confidently say that my “yes” necessarily implies a “no” to
Schleiermacher’s point of view. For have I indeed understood him correctly? (p.
203)
He ends, Berkhof writes, with the same ambivalence we saw above over against
Herrmann. It is interesting to note here that in his revision of Christian Faith, Berkhof
himself added a section on Schleiermacher’s appeal to experience.
In the mid-1920’s, Barth seemed to have found his place to stand and he wrote Die
Christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf. But after discovering the theological method of
Anselm of Canterbury, he wrote a book on Anselm’s method and started over with his
own dogmatics, this time calling it Church Dogmatics.
The title Church Dogmatics brings out, for Barth, the binding force of the faith
which underlies all dogmatic thought. Connected with this in Anselm’s thought is
that reality precedes possibility, not vice versa. “I believe in order that I may
understand” (Credo ut intelligam). The content of faith does not permit itself to
be grounded by the human intellect but only to be unfolded by reflection. (p. 206)
Berkhof concludes the chapter on Barth by raising the critical question which will be
taken up in his next chapter, an interesting debate about Barth’s method that took place
in the Netherlands.
For us it is decisive to see how Barth gave up the goals of liberal theology and left
its path behind him in order now to fall into line with classic theology as it was
given its shape by Athanasius and Anselm, by Luther and Calvin. After the
Enlightenment and after Schleiermacher, one can still do this with impunity? At
no time in his life did Barth take this question lightly, but after intense struggle
he nevertheless answered it in the affirmative. His students adopted his answer
as self-evident and repressed the question. However, the question must make
itself heard again, despite or precisely because of Barth.
In the post-Barthian period Berkhof points out that question again became the central
problem of theology.
Barth’s influence was dominant from 1930-1960. His power of thought and consistently
thought through position was cogent but not without its detractors. Brunner’s position
was mediating in regard to the question of the “place” in the human person where
revelation is received. Paul Tillich opposed Barth’s “Kerygmatic” theology with his own
apologetic approach, a theology of correlation which finds the human question
answered in God’s revelation.
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who expressed for many the weakness of Barth’s approach.
Berkhof writes of Bonhoeffer’s critique of Barth in his Letters From Prison:
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Bonhoeffer is at his most genial when in these letters he treated the system which
imprisoned him essentially as part of the past and concentrated totally on the rise
of the new, “mature,” radically secularized “religionless” man. When the Letters
were published this secularized sense of life (Lebensgefühl) was fully on the
march, and people even spoke of a second Enlightenment ( Aufklårung). (p.
209)
Bonhoeffer had become a disciple of Barth and they maintained a close personal bond
but his prison experience moved him away from Barth’s theology. He characterized
Barth’s position as a “positivism of revelation” (“take or leave it”) – a poignant criticism,
and Barth was stung by it. Bonhoeffer ushered in the post-Barthian era. Berkhof
observes,
It arose directly from his analysis of the new cultural epoch. In the
anthropocentric age in which Barth had sought his way as a theologian, his
starting with God as the subject of faith and theology was a liberating new
beginning. In Bonhoeffer’s time this point had already become self-evident in
theology. But in the period which he foresaw, such a starting point would be
completely unintelligible. For the people for whom the wording hypothesis “God”
would be a total redundancy, “the authority of the Word of God” would only
constitute a double enigma: first, because they would accept nothing on authority
any more and, second, because they could not handle the idea of a “speaking
God.” (p. 209f)
Berkhof sees Barth’s starting point heavily influenced by the collapse of German cultural
assumptions in the aftermath of World War I. There was a felt need for “a basic foothold
in a higher, supramundane reality.” But in the post-World War II days the pendulum
swung back. For different reasons, neither Barth nor Bultmann were ever able to ground
the Word in history, within this-worldly existence.
Technology in the after-math of the war also had a transforming effect on society. Life
was understood as being shaped “from below.” Berkhof chooses the work of H.M.
Kuitert of the Free University in Amsterdam as the representative of those who sought
to come to terms with the new Lebensgefühl. Kuitert came under Barth’s influence
through his teacher, G. C. Berkhouwer. Berkhof indicates that his understanding of
Barth and subsequent departure from Barth center in Barth’s phrase “the unabrogable
subjectivity of God.” Berkhof quotes Kuitert:
For Barth revelation is an immediate occurrence; it is the speaking God
himself….that is the figure of the transcendental subjectivity in optima forma to
which Barth adhered throughout his entire life. (p. 213)
Kuitert sees the line back to Herrmann and Kant here and claims that thereby Barth
freed himself from any attempt to ground the knowledge of God either in history or in
religious experience. But, Kuitert objects, Barth thus identified his faith concept with
the subjectivity of God. Berkhof explains,
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Barth claims an exceptional position for his own theological approach. He bases
this on the subjectivity of faith granted us and realizing itself within us. Thus he
excused himself from all discussion and from the necessity of giving an account of
his thoughts. To the legitimate question: How do you know? He has no answer.
(p. 213)
Barth did later appeal to the biblical witness and the tradition of the church but the
relationship between Scripture and the immediacy of the knowledge of God remains
unclear. Barth also came to view the role of history more positively but even so God’s
acts in history are alien to history itself. Kuitert insists that the alternatives cannot be
avoided.
Either the vocable God remains empty, or it receives an arbitrary content from
within subjectivity, or it receives its content [i.e., we predicate] from within
[historical] experience. (p. 214)
Barth operates in a closed circle. Another Dutch theologian, Sperna Weiland, describes
Barth’s theology as “a house without doors.” Berkhof explains,
With its unreasoned appeal to revelation it withdraws from communication with
the outside world and culture in general. (p. 214)
Kuitert’s challenge to Barth’s approach engendered a lively debate within the
Netherlands, young Barthians coming to the master’s defense. Our interest here,
however, is in Kuitert’s alternative. In a new cultural milieu Kuitert felt the need to deal
with prologomena in the traditional sense. As Berkhof points out,
We must start with “man,” on an “anthropological floor” which believers and
unbelievers have in common. Thus Kuitert again picks up the theme of the
“apologetic” theology which Tillich opposed to the “kerygmatic” theology of
Barth. (p. 220)
Kuitert insisted that theology can claim to be a science only if it is willing to do more
than simply bear witness, even though it cannot provide “verification” in the sense of the
natural sciences. Theology must be descriptive in character:
It examines religion and religions, and thus makes also God an object of its
intellectual striving. (p. 220)
The phenomenon of faith, Kuitert contends, can be described on three levels:
anthropological, historical and institutional. On the first level, Kuitert deals with primal
faith or basic trust. One trusts oneself to what one cannot as yet perceive. This basic
trust has Christian-theological relevance. It does not turn theology into anthropology
but humankind is bound to this “anthropological floor” in speaking about God.
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On the historical level Kuitert turns to the phenomenology of religion. Basic trust comes
shaped in the form of a concrete religion. Berkhof points out,
All religions have “God” as their point of reference. This does not mean, however,
that the differences between them are immaterial. It is often certain very distinct
experiences which press people to pronounce the name “God”: as an expression
of meaning. Such experiences are only possible within certain frameworks of
interpretation. (p. 221)
Herein lies the possibility for testing plausibility. Built into faith, Kuitert insists, is an
argument which makes an appeal to experience. Berkhof cites Kuitert:
The grounds of faith therefore consist in that which religious people sense as the
footprints of God in our world of experience. (p. 221f)
When those footprints are no longer discernible, religious faith dies a slow death.
Kuitert uses as an example the death of the fertility religion in the ancient Near East.
When trade and industry, and finally artificial fertilizer, undermined the decisive
role of the fertility of the earth, it turned out that what people took to be the
footprints of God were not that at all. (p. 222)
Kuitert also speaks of a religious conviction which is turned into a “search hypothesis”
which guides one in the search for God. Without some such hypothesis, he claims, we
perceive nothing of God in the world and whatever is perceived of God is dependent
upon the search-hypothesis with which one begins. Such a hypothesis is not an end in
itself; rather, the end is the personal experience of God and the experience of salvation.
Kuitert’s third level is the institutional. The Christian search-hypothesis takes the form
of Christian doctrine.
Berkhof gives his own appraisal of the debate between Kuitert and the post-Barthians.
He puts the issue in sharp focus:
The question I have to answer is: For the interpretation of the gospel in today’s
world, does Kuitert offer a better starting point than Barth? The weakness of
Barth’s position is well known: since he starts with God, he does not seem to
reach real people. Kuitert starts “from below;” can he, from this direction, arrive
at the God of the gospel, the father of Jesus Christ? …The Christian faith orients
itself to the footprints of God in the way and work of Jesus. His footprints can
never be surpassed. How can one arrive at an assertion about them if even this
faith ever has to be confirmed in history as it unfolds? (p. 226)
Berkhof points out that Kuitert’s reference to the historicity of God and the claim that
God is love are Christian assertions with no plausibility granted by outsiders. We are
dealing with assumptions of the western Christian tradition and, Berkhof writes, we are
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thus revolving within a cultural circle facing the same problem that Troeltsch faced –
trying to find an absolute point within the history of religion. In contrast to Troeltsch,
Kuitert is not looking for an absolute point but “for that which in history has proven
itself tenable.” He is looking for certain presuppositons that will make dialogue with
outsiders possible. But, Berkhof concludes, that
…what emerges is that we are led, also from below, into a closed circle in a way
similar to that of which Barth was accused with his starting point “from above.” It
is of no help that this closed circle is presented as a concentration of experiences.
For the people who have had no such experiences themselves, these experiences
are transformed into authorities. (p. 227)
And so, Berkhof asks, “Does Kuitert essentially understand Christian faith differently
from Barth?” He takes Kuitert’s own statements that the knowledge of God is the fruit of
God’s self-revelation and that a God humans can account for can never be the true God.
Thus Berkhof contends,
These statements, as also the theory of plural search-constructs, negate the
capacity of the anthropological floor to support an accounting for the faith in
dialogue with outsiders. In one’s belief one clearly has to do with a closed circle.
(p. 227)
Berkhof holds that Barth’s contention that only by starting with God does one come to
God is confirmed by Kuitert by his own affirmation and, negatively, by the failure to
ground an alternative approach. Barth’s weakness remains. Berkhof concludes,
Both Barthians and post-Barthians live from the questions their counterparts do
not answer. (p. 228)
Berkhof concludes his journey with chapters on “Immanent Transcendentality: The
Catholic Bridge,” “North America: From Social Gospel to Neo-Orthodoxy,” and “Paul
Tillich: The Bridge of Correlation.” The chapters are interesting and well-done giving the
survey a broad ecumenical and geographical spectrum, an important inclusion because
the central question of the book comes into focus from new angles as was the case
earlier in a chapter on Anglican theology and a chapter on Conservative theology which
treated the work of Martin Kåhler.
The treatment of Catholic theology deals most extensively with Karl Rahner as might be
expected, but Berkhof also lifts up the thinking of Maurice Blondel and Henri de Lubac
who made valuable contributions to the effort to bridge the gulf between gospel and
culture. Berkhof notes the advantages with which Catholic theology begins over against
Reformed theology, beginning as it does with the assumption of harmony between
nature and grace, thanks to the synthesis worked out by Aquinas, whereas Reformed
theology begins with the contrast between sin and grace. Aquinas, responding to the
dominant influence of Aristotle brought to the west by Averrhoes, was carving out a
place for the gospel in a world being shaped by the Aristotelian philosophy of nature.
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Berkhof says that one might have hoped that once again such an effort might have been
made over against modern thought in the wake of the Enlightenment but, he claims,
such an expectation has not been realized largely because of the suspicion with which
the dominant curial theology in Rome has viewed such attempts:
Fundamentally, the Roman hierarchy has continually sought, right into modern
times, to rescue the validity of Thomistic thought, whereas thinkers it mistrusted
wanted to make Thomas’ intent and motive operational again under changed
conditions and with new, hence with non-Aristotelian, categories. (p. 229f)
Having to fight their own hierarchy, Catholic theologians have been paralyzed in their
struggle to engage modern thought, and the intramural battle has again and again been
settled unilaterally in an authoritarian fashion. Nonetheless, Berkhof points to
impressive achievements in Catholic theology.
Preceding his treatment of Rahner, Berkhof summarizes the significant efforts of
Blondel and de Lubac to do again what Thomas did: that is, to hold together in a greater
unity the duality of nature and grace. In their work one sees the advantage of Catholic
theology with its assumption of harmony between nature and grace. These thinkers
recognized that in the modern world Thomas’ nature-grace continuum had resulted in a
divorce of the two realms, leaving the whole development of nature to the secular sphere
and thus to human autonomy. Writing at the time of Vatican II, de Lubac warned
against “The dualist or, perhaps better, the separatist thesis:”
While wishing to protect the supernatural from any contamination, people had in
fact exiled it altogether – both from intellectual and from social life – leaving the
field free to be taken over by secularism. Today that secularism, following its
course, is beginning to enter the minds even of Christians. They too seek to find a
harmony with all things based upon an idea of nature which might be acceptable
to a deist or an atheist: everything that comes from Christ, everything that should
lead to him, is pushed so far into the background as to look like disappearing for
good. The last word in Christian progress and the entry into adulthood would
thus appear to consist in a total secularization which would expel God not merely
from the life of society, but from culture and even from personal relationships.
(cited from The Mystery of the Supernatural, pp. xi-xii on p. 239f)
The Catholic theologian that receives the fullest treatment by Berkhof is Karl Rahner
who made the principle of transcendentality the basis of his theology, applying it across
the full spectrum of dogmatics. Berkhof defines the approach thus:
The principle of subjectivity has for its counterpart that of transcendentality
because “this subject is fundamentally and by its very nature pure openness for
absolutely everything, for being as such.” This experience is called transcendental
experience because it belongs to the necessary and inalienable structures of the
knowing subject itself, and because it consists precisely in the transcendence
beyond any particular group of possible objects or of categories. Transcendental
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experience is the experience of transcendence, in which experience the structure
of the subject and therefore also the ultimate structure of every conceivable
object of knowledge are present together and as identity. (Berkhof, p. 242 cites
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of
Christianity, p. 20)
Transcendence as “experience,” Berkhof indicates, derives not from Kant’s analysis of
the knowing process, but from the phenomenology and the analysis of existence.
Another citation from Foundations is helpful:
Whenever man in his transcendence experiences himself as questioning, as
disquieted by the appearance of being, as open to something ineffable, he cannot
understand himself as subject in the sense of an absolute subject, but only in the
sense of one who receives being, ultimately only in the sense of grace. In this
context “grace” means the freedom of the ground of being which gives being to
man, a freedom which man experiences in his finiteness and contingency, and
means as well what we call “grace” in a more strictly theological sense. (Rahner,
Ibid, p. 34)
Has Rahner, in attempting to avoid the new-scholastic dualism of nature and grace, let
nature pass into the realm of supernatural grace? This is Berkhof’s question. He finds
Rahner denying that. Rather, he advocates “a sort of supernaturalization of what we call
‘nature’.”
For him creation and created human nature must be understood solely as the
infrastructure of the grace-conditioned unity of the Creator and the created in the
incarnation of God, and in the final goal of the beatific vision of God based on it.
(p. 244)
Rahner denies the existence of “pure nature,” and the possibility of human existence as
autonomous. Rahner contends:
Our actual nature is never ‘pure’ nature. It is a nature installed in a supernatural
order which man can never leave, even as a sinner and unbeliever….And these
‘existentials’ of man’s concrete, ‘historical’ nature are not purely states of being
beyond consciousness. They make themselves felt in the experience of man. By
simple reflection on himself, in the light of natural reason, he cannot simply and
clearly distinguish them from the natural spiritual activity which is the
manifestation of his nature. (from “Nature and Grace” in Theological
Investigations, Vol. 4, p. 183, cited on p. 245)
Berkhof’s discussion of Rahner’s complex thought continues but this is perhaps enough
to enable us to hear Berkhof’s critique. He points to the continuing dichotomy of nature
and grace that shines through the more modern existential language, a different
dichotomy than one finds in Reformation theology, the dichotomy of sin and grace. Still,
Berkhof notes, the liberal and mediating theologies of post-Enlightenment
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Protestantism in their engagement with modern thought struggled to express the
nature-grace relationship and came very close to the manner of Thomas Aquinas as he
sought to express the gospel in a thought-world dominated by Aristotle. Berkhof writes,
Nature – in other words, the created structure of human existence – is for all of
them the infrastructure which persists despite and in sin, an infrastructure on
which the grace of revelation builds and without which it would be unintelligible.
(p. 253)
For Berkhof Rahner’s grand theological enterprise fails because he has subordinated the
sin-and-grace dichotomy to the nature-and-grace dichotomy and the nature-and-grace
relationship is, in Berkhof’s view, all too harmoniously construed. He concludes,
As a result this grand theological project seems to overshoot the goal of a
confrontation between the gospel and the modern world. For the (restricted)
application of the notion of transcendentality we should – presumably – not go
beyond the boundaries set by Blondel. (p. 255)
Berkhof concludes his journey with a visit to the American scene beginning with the
theology of Jonathan Edwards and Horace Bushnell, then the Social Gospel movement
and the work of Walter Rauschenbusch, and finally a treatment of the Niebuhrs,
thinkers for whom he has high regard. He reserves a chapter for a treatment of Paul
Tillich.
Tillich’s method of correlation, the gospel as the answer to the human question, is
precisely the focus that Berkhof has kept through his journey of 200 years. Tillich’s life
and vocation began in Germany. His war experiences destroyed the idealistic foundation
of his thought. A man of great giftedness and broad interest, he was engaged with the
full spectrum of cultural experience. Fleeing the Nazi plague, he came to this country to
continue his long and fruitful career. Berkhof notes that, as a thinker and a Christian,
Tillich had always lived and thought in the context of the polarity between question and
answer. This formed the foundation of his mature theology and, consequently, he
became for many “the bridge builder between their personal problems and the gospel.”
His method was correlation. Tillich described it thus:
The method used in the theological system and described in the methodological
introduction of the first volume is called the “method of correlation,” namely, the
correlation between existential questions and theological answers. “Correlation,”
a word with several meanings in scientific language, is understood as
“interdependence of two independent factors.” It is not understood in the logical
sense of quantitative or qualitative coordination of elements without causal
relation, but it is understood as a unity of the dependence and independence of
two factors. (Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, American edition, p. 13, cited in
Berkhof, p. 289)
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Berkhof raises the question whether then God in self-revelation is dependent on the
human subject. He gives Tillich’s response that in God’s self-manifestation God is
dependent on the way the human person receives that manifestation. As Brunner
declared the divine-human encounter means something for both sides. For theology this
means:
Theology formulates the question implied in human existence, and theology
formulates the answers implied in the divine self-manifestation under the
guidance of the questions implied in human existence. (Ibid, Vol. 1, p.61, cited in
Berkhof, p. 290)
Berkhof discusses the method explaining Tillich’s contention that to raise the question
belongs to the essence of human existence. Tillich favors the word “quest” rather than
question. The quest is present whether or not it comes to expression; it is fundamentally
singular and it rises out of the depths expressing one’s “ultimate concern.” Out of the
human depths, the quest arises out of the human predicament, the experience of selfalienation, dread, brokenness, despair. It represents a search for integration, harmony,
reunion with the true self. It is philosophy’s task to take account of all of this and to
render a right analysis of human existence. Every human being, Christian or not, must
be able to fathom life’s final questions and, doing so, will be confronted with the gap in
human existence, a gap which cannot be bridged. One discovers a question without an
answer.
The description of Tillich’s thought sounds like a re-run of Heidegger’s Existentialist
analysis of the human situation but, as Berkhof indicates, what distinguishes Tillich is
the ontological framework of his thought – a shift also apparent in the later Heidegger.
Tillich’s interest in the human quest is its theological value. He acknowledges that his
analysis of the human situation derives from his historical context; the quest will differ
according to the epoch. For the Church Fathers it was the quest for immortality; for the
Reformation it was the quest for the justification of the sinner. Whatever the historical
period and the quest, Tillich contends however that all the ultimate questions circle
around the opposition between “finite” and “infinite,” “human existence” and “absolute
being.” This is the quest that comes to expression in modern existentialism. The
respective epochs of human history will have variously shaped quests but they will all be
fundamentally oriented to the relationship between existence and essence.
The answer does not lie within the question; it comes from without. The human subject
is the question; God in self-manifestation is the answer, an answer not at human
disposal.
The two poles, question and answer, form an ellipse, the image of Tillich’s system.
Philosophy, in an attitude of objectivity, is concerned with the question; theology is
existentially involved in the answer.
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The center of Tillich’s theology is the paradox that universal being manifests itself in a
historical person. The unity of the absolute and the finite, foolishness to philosophy, is
the great miracle in which light we live and think.
Berkhof notes that Tillich presented his doctrine of faith as “answering theology” in
contrast to Barth’s “theology of proclamation.” He also spoke of his work as “apologetic”
theology as against Barth’s “kerygmatic” theology – helpful contrasts by which to gain a
feel for these two giants. And Berkhof points to Tillich’s popularity in the fifties and
sixties in a theological world sighing under “the burden of Barth’s rigorous theology of
the Word.” The alternative Tillich offers appears simple and convincing. But on closer
scrutiny questions arise.
Did Tillich correctly understand man’s existential quest (if we may speak of it in
such general terms)? Is not giving answers as essential to human beings as asking
questions? (p. 295)
Berkhof doubts if human self-understanding can be captured in the word quest. Tillich
struggles to give logical explanations of his correlation scheme but, Berkhof points out,
he operates within a circle and intentionally so.
Immediately at the outset of his prolegomena he introduced the concept of the
theological circle. Like all humanities, theology is based on “mystical experience”
and rests therefore on a “mystical a priori.” Besides, it works with the norm of
the Christian message, and so its circle is narrower than that of the philosophy of
religion. (p. 296)
Tillich sought to narrow the gap between philosophy and theology, having admitted the
circle, by claiming that modern philosophy bears a Christian stamp. Berkhof quotes him
accordingly:
In this sense [in the sense of a philosophy ‘whose existential base is historical
Christianity’] all modern philosophy is Christian, even if it is humanistic,
atheistic, and intentionally anti-Christian. (1:27)
And again:
The modern vision of reality and its philosophical analysis is different from that
of pre-Christian times, whether one is or is not existentially determined by the
God of Mount Zion and the Christ of Mount Golgotha. (1:27, cited in Berkhof, p.
296)
The marks of the Christian tradition simply cannot be erased from the face of modern
thought. Berkhof renders his conclusion regarding Tillich’s system thus:
…in Tillich the answer shapes the question – as a rule by selection from given
materials. Only the person who already knows the answer knows wherein the
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true question consists: the question from within his anxiety, estrangement, and
guilt (fundamentally Tillich’s anthropology is reformationally pessimistic) is for
healing, salvation, and reconciliation and therein for the meaning of life and the
courage to be. But can one view this question as a universally human question
(since after all modern existentialism is a post-Christian phenomenon)? (p. 296)
Tillich himself realized that the claim to universal validity could be called in question as
he himself reflected on modern culture and Asiatic religions. But Tillich concluded that
…nevertheless we must hold before all these groups the “mirror” of human
misery, show them “the structures of anxiety, of conflict, of guilt,” because these
structures mirror what we are, and if we are right, they are in other people also,
and they will concur with our analysis.
Whether we are successful is in question; we take the risk. In this regard Tillich turns to
pedagogy:
There are two principles we should follow in the religious education of our
children. The first is that the questions which are really in the hearts of the
children should be answered and the children should be shown that biblical
symbols and the Christian message are an answer to just these questions. And
secondly, we ought to seek to shape their existence in the direction of the
questions which we believe are the more universal ones. This would be similar to
what we do with primitive people in the mission field. We seek to answer their
questions and in doing so we, at the same time, slowly transform their existence
so that they come to ask the questions to which the Christian message gives the
answer. (Theology of Culture, pp. 202-3, 205-6, cited on p. 297)
Has Tillich offered an alternative to Kerygmatic theology? This is the question Berkhof’s
interest raises. Whatever one may say, Berkhof argues, the gap between Tillich and
Barth is much narrower than either suspected at the time. Referring back to
Schleiermacher, Berkhof writes,
As in Schleiermacher, so in Tillich, human self-understanding is not identical
with the question to which revelation gives an answer; it is only the “place”
(Schleiermacher) at which man finds himself and at which the gospel "calls” him.
Nevertheless, like Schleiermacher and differently than Barth, Tillich avoids – as
long as possible – presenting the transition to faith in the God-given answer-andquestion as a break with the presupposed human understanding of existence.
God is at work everywhere, and hence there is a “latent Christianity” everywhere,
which can, however, only be discovered in the light of Christ. Barth also asserts
that the creation is “the external ground of the covenant” and that there are
therefore many “lights of the world”; indeed, Jesus Christ, precisely in his
exclusiveness, is universally inclusive. While Tillich would say that the right
question is selected from the given situation in the light of the gospel, Barth
would say that the gospel itself first creates in man the question appropriate to it.
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In Tillich the classic doctrine of “common grace” regains the place it had lost in
Barth. (p. 297f)
Berkhof’s critical question put to Tillich’s method is whether the answer of the gospel
does not remain in the grip of a non-evangelical formulation of the question and
therefore suffer distortion. Berkhof must conclude that it is impossible to view Tillich’s
theology as a genuine bridge between the gospel and modernity, but this conclusion, he
maintains, does not diminish the significance of this great theologian.
Berkhof’s journey is concluded but he pauses to take a backward glance over the way he
traveled. He begins his review with the question “What really happened?” He
acknowledges that the reader may have experienced confusion; yet, one need not
despair for, contrary to what many theologians – and the evangelical church tradition –
generally maintain, theology is not a heavenly enterprise but a form of human scholarly
quest involving trial and error. Theology is not like the natural sciences where progress
is possible, one generation building on another (although Thomas Kuhn has called that
in question even in the physical sciences). Rather, in theology and the humanities in
general, there is not progress; rather,
Here one …moves continuously in a circle around one’s object, ever and again
viewing it from a different angle – and the angle changes with the experiences
and predicaments of every given cultural epoch…. We are talking about a search,
a questioning, an encounter, an interaction. Here neither subjectivism nor
objectivism but inter-subjectivity is, in many cases, the highest obtainable
measure of objectivity. (p. 299f)
For theological method, this means that systematic-theological conceptions are the ways
in which the Christian community gives an account of the gospel as its source and norm.
The Western world out of which Berkhof speaks and in which his journey was taken is a
culture estranged from the gospel and that is the challenge to the church – to bring the
gospel to expression in such a fashion that it might again become a vital option.
Theology serves an intermediary function interrogating the gospel from within its
experiences within the culture. The theologian stands not outside, but within the
culture, sharing consciously or unconsciously its experiences and presuppositions. The
theologian stands between the gospel as a normative word and concrete human
experience. He or she is in an encounter situation, more existential than in the other
humanities because of the ultimacy of the issues involved.
The best theologian is not the person who knows how to escape the dangers
inherent in this process of encounter, for such people do not exist; the best
theologian is the person who is most aware of these dangers and hence practices
modesty and caution in what he says. (p. 300)
Commenting on the modern culture, Berkhof holds that the presuppositions given with
the Enlightenment have remained essentially intact: the autonomy of the human
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person, the objectivizing and manipulating of nature, and the marginalizing of God. But
experience has been varied:
Great technical achievements, wars, revolutions, environmental exhaustion, etc.,
can change people’s views and conduct and force them to modify (not, however,
to abandon) the presuppositions. The theologian will sense all this and in his
feedback situation and mediating activity question the gospel from changing
points of view. (p. 301)
As Berkhof has indicated throughout the journey, this has been the case: Schleiermacher
within the perspective of German idealism; Ritschl in the light of the realism of the
technical-industrial world; Barth in the collapsing German culture after World War I.
The situation in which theological formulation comes to expression is dynamic, calling
forth different nuances and emphases at different times – not surrendering the gospel
to the spirit of the times – but speaking in timely fashion the judgment and grace that
the gospel offers.
Theology appears chaotic and many theologians have given it a bad name by
condemning the thinkers of the preceding generation for interpreting the gospel falsely.
But, queries Berkhof,
…was the interpretation of the previous generation really false? And did the
succeeding generation then do it right? Against their better knowledge many
theologians still seem to proceed from a static, unhistorical, freely available
“truth” and to believe that it is most safe within their keeping….In contrast my
journey has taught me that the basic concerns and aims of the several schools,
modalities, and generations have much more in common than concentration on
the larger and smaller differences…would ever lead one to suspect….For me as an
observer the journey has been an exercise in tolerance. (p. 301)
So that’s what happened. Was it legitimate? That is Berkhof’s next question. The great
degree of commonality discovered among the respective theological schools does not
lead Berkhof to a kind of relativistic mix without distinctions. There is room for mutual
criticism and correction – a function he himself has executed with brilliance. The most
fundamental question to be raised is the question with which he opened this study: Is an
understanding possible between the gospel and the presuppositions of our modern
culture? Modern culture’s presuppositions are described in the Old and New Testaments
as sinful. Is the effort to relate these two worlds a hopeless enterprise?
No. Central to both worlds is the human person and salvation. Human revolt is not a
modern phenomenon; it is recorded as early as Genesis 3 and finds expression
throughout the biblical story.
Now the man who breaks his ties with God because he respects his salvation is
there when God is not is nevertheless not abandoned by God,….God pursues this
wayward human being with his judgment and grace. And judgment stands in the
service of grace. Though man wants to live without God, God does not want to
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live without man, and therefore man is never God-less….Whatever may have
motivated the theologian not to take the godlessness of modern man with total
seriousness – in the light of the gospel this attitude must at least in part be
regarded as legitimate. (p. 302)
The task, to be legitimate however, must involve both dialogue and dispute. The gap
may not be patched over; rather it must be uncovered in order that it may be bridged.
Berkhof points to Paul as a model of one who was in solidarity with his culture because
of a greater solidarity with the gospel: “I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may
share in its blessing.” In I Corinthians 9:19-23 solidarity with Paul’s world is stressed. In
I Corinthians 1:18-31 however, the break with his culture comes to expression. The
message is a stumbling block and foolishness but is nonetheless proclaimed as God’s
power of salvation. Paul in Athens, Berkhof contends, was right on, illustrating “the
double solidarity, the mutual contradiction, and the conflict.”
From this evidence one can infer that the relationship between the gospel and the
world is dialectical, ever swinging back and forth between yes and no. The
question concerning legitimacy can thus be answered with the observation that
everyone is justified in his theological methodology provided that when he says
yes or no he bears in mind the counterpart and brings it to his audience in one
way or another. (p. 304)
Berkhof explicates the key word dialectic by continuing with Paul. In Philippians 3:4b14, the autobiographical paragraph relating Paul’s movement from his Jewish
experience to his experience of Christ, Berkhof points out a perspective not often
appreciated. Paul, the Jew, was on the way. He was not pointing to that experience as a
time of darkness and despair. Rather he speaks of his experience of Christ as so much
more. The encounter with Christ brought him into crisis. He then moved from the crisis
into Christian existence. There was continuity and break.
Speaking of the theologians he has surveyed in this journey of two hundred years,
Berkhof says, they were determined from the beginning to be Christian, but they wanted
also to be modern people.
On that basis they want to start their intellectual journey, traveling in the
direction of the gospel. What unites the beginning and the end of the journey is
the time of man and his salvation. In the course of that journey it has to become
apparent sooner or later, however, that the road is not at all as innocuous as it
seemed in the beginning. The wandered is thrown off course. He experiences the
transvaluation of his values. Gain becomes loss and what he prided himself on
turn to “refuse.” But the crisis does not mean the end of the road. After the crisis
there awaits him a road that does not end within our world and time, one on
which large differences of opinion can and do arise among travel companions, on
which all sorts of lapses and aberrations are possible. (p. 305f)
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That says Berkhof is the journey that has been going on now for nearly two thousand
years. On the journey everyone must travel by himself. This road is itself the Truth.
One does not “stand” in the Truth but “walks” in it on the way toward the goal
that is not attainable this side of eternity. (p. 306)
Berkhof does not want to be understood in an individualistic fashion. There is a broad
community with intensive interchange. There is the swing of the pendulum as the way
develops.
…The Spirit finds theological reflection where it is initially at home, however
“carnal” that home may be. The Spirit then leads us toward a crisis in our
thinking. After the crisis our thought has to and is allowed to proceed under the
guidance of the motto “I believe in order that I may understand.” However, just as
our thinking before the crisis is threatened by an uncritical modernity, so after the
crisis there is the danger of scholastic sterility. The gospel is the great non-selfevident factum which is ever threatened by betrayal on our theological journey. (p.
306f)
Berkhof then relates the question of legitimacy to the key word “dialectical.”
I now venture to say: the measure of legitimacy belonging to a given theological
method or system corresponds to the measure in which it is involved in the
double movement toward crisis an away from crisis. (p. 307)
Over the two hundred years, Berkhof observes, we have seen liberal theologians who in
their movement toward the gospel stopped short of the crisis and we have seen, too,
orthodox theologians who detached the gospel from the arena of struggle, thinking
mistakenly they could begin the process of thinking beyond the crisis. The greatest
theologian is one who consistently “plumbed and pondered the double movement: the
one toward the crisis and the one following the crisis.” Paul remains for Berkhof the
model. In the last two hundred years Berkhof points to Schleiermacher and Barth. Both
were one-sided on opposite sides; yet the crisis was evident in both. Berkhof raises the
question whether a person can ever think on some level beyond such one-sidedness.
That for him is a major question. What one gains in comprehensiveness one loses in
power.
A third question in this backward glance is “Did it mean anything?” Berkhof uses
“mean” in the sense of succeed – was the goal achieved? His answer is in the negative.
With certain exceptions “secularized culture manifested polite indifference if not
outright intolerance.” Orthodox theologians have been no more successful. Being
regarded as they were, outsiders, some were respected for that but considered even less
credible than their liberal colleagues.
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But Berkhof qualifies his negative response. Outside not much impact was made, but
within the churches the work done has been crucial, enabling many brought up within
the church to remain within it or to return to it.
They have been useful, if not for the penetration of the light of the gospel, then
for the presence of the gospel in the intellectual world. (p. 309)
The efforts of theologians have thus been more successful in conserving the faith than
recruiting people from outside.
Berkhof concludes this retrospective with a final question: “Now what?” Today, Berkhof
claims, theology on a world scale appears more confusing than ever. But actually this
has a positive side because there is a broad and diverse interest in theological reflection.
Everywhere large groups are joyfully discovering that they themselves, each in
their own uniqueness, are known and called of God. In all these new theologies
the word experience serves as a point of entry…. In the 1970s one often had the
feeling that in the multiplicity of experiences and the demand of “contextuality”
arising from them, the oneness of the object, the universal cause of the gospel,
threatened to disappear from sight and that only a tower of Babel was left. (p.
310)
Such was not the case, however, Berkhof contends, for even academic theology in the
West operates out of its own sitz im Leben.
The real difference lies in the cultural, social, and political climate from within
which people are trying to discover the gospel and to which people want to
communicate it.
The recent plurality of theologies can be explained by younger theologians beginning
their journey from within their own experiences (blacks, women, liberation theologians,
etc.). But Berkhof argues,
…they must sooner or later push their own experiences toward the crisis of the
gospel and walk a road on which they do not harden into an ideology but let their
experiences be criticized, corrected, deepened by the crucified and risen Lord,
and placed in his context. (p. 311)
Does two hundred years of theology in the West, which coincides with the heyday of
Western bourgeois culture, constitute an epoch on its last legs? Berkhof thinks not. The
issues of struggle for this post-Enlightenment period are to be found in the biblical
record as well and non-Western theologies display the same experience-revelation
tension that has characterized Western theology. However, Western theology will lose
its predominance; it will die in its Western-ness in order to rise again in globalism and
pluralism will be more extensive.
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The process is ongoing – taking the road that leads into crisis of revelation and
emerging from the crisis able to incorporate our experiences into a new experience.
We must again and again start within our respective contextualities in order then
to fuse our context increasingly with the context of the gospel, in a way such that
the message gains superiority over all that which emerges from our situational
analyses…. Everyone who spends so much time in the praeambula fidei, be it of a
sociological, linguistic, philosophical, or political nature, is in danger of losing the
chance to enrich his Umwelt with the great and new experience of the Word of
God. (p. 312)
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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References
Hendrikus Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, 1989
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RA-4-19900702
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1990-07-02
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Two Hundred Years of Theology, Report of a Personal Journey
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 2, 1990 entitled "Two Hundred Years of Theology, Report of a Personal Journey", on the book Two Hundred Years of Theology, Report of a Personal Journey, written by Hendrikus Berkhof. Tags: Hendrikus Berkhof, Reformed Theology, History of Theology, Modernity, Ecumenical, Historical Thinking, Enlightenment, Faith
Journey. Scripture references: Hendrikus Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, 1989.
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application/pdf
Ecumenical
Enlightenment
Faith
Journey
Hendrikus Berkhof
Historical Thinking
History of Theology
Modernity
Reformed Theology