1 24 7 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2308a79f451e0b7b398aae5a37b33baf.pdf 759320894839a494b0e424d7e7761f03 PDF Text Text The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism By David Tracy (The Crossroads Publishing Company, 1998) Review By Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Publication of Review Unknown In the Preface to his study David Tracy states the task he sets out for himself: The need is to form a new and inevitably complex theological strategy that will avoid privatism by articulating the genuine claims of religions to truth (p. xi). He claims that theology, by its very nature, asks fundamental existential questions because theology reflects on the reality of God, but it must develop public, not private, criteria and discourse. Recognizing theology addresses three publics: society, academy and church, each of which demands public criteria and discourse, Tracy’s main focus is on Systematic Theology, which he understands as fundamentally a hermeneutical enterprise and his development of that understanding is to claim, The issue of both the meaning and truth of religion is related to the analogous issue of the meaning and truth of art. The central claim advanced is a claim to both meaning and truth in our common human experience of any classic. (p. xii). Tracy recognizes the contemporary emergence of a sociological imagination which he sees as analogous to the earlier rise of historical consciousness and it is in such a social reality that the theologian must work. In such a context the theologian makes his claim. What is that claim? A claim to public response bearing meaning and truth on the most serious and difficult questions, both personal and communal, that any human being or society must face: Has existence any ultimate meaning? Is a fundamental trust to be found amidst the fears, anxieties and terror of existence? Is there some reality, some force, even some one, who speaks a word of truth that can be recognized and trusted? Religions ask and respond to such fundamental questions of the meaning and truth © Grand Valley State University   �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2 of 20 of our existence as human beings in solitude, and in society, history and the cosmos. Theologians, by definition, risk an intellectual life on the wager that religious traditions can be studied as authentic responses to just such questions. The nature of these fundamental questions cuts across the spectrum of publics. Lurking beneath the surface of our everyday lives, exploding into explicitness in the limit-situations inevitable in any life, are questions which logically must be and historically are called religious questions. To formulate such questions honestly and well, to respond to them with passion and rigor, is the work of all theology. (p. 4) With such a vision of theology’s work, Tracy sets out to create a space in human endeavor for such an undertaking. Claiming the common human experience of encountering a classic in the spectrum of human culture, Tracy points specifically to the classic in art which is universally recognized. He then claims the same holds true for the religious experience; there have been religious expressions that can rightfully be designated classic. As cited above, The issue of both the meaning and truth of religion is related to the analogous issue of the meaning and truth of art. For Tracy, a Christian theologian, the classic religious expression is the event of Jesus Christ. In Part I Tracy will develop his claim that a religious classic can be portrayed through reasoning that is publicly recognized – there can be no appeal to an external norm or private vision. This section he entitles “Publicness in Systematic Theology.” From there he will go on to apply what he has claimed to the event of Jesus Christ. Section Two he entitles, “Interpreting the Christian Classic.” The Preface announces the major question of Tracy’s The Analogical Imagination: “In a culture of pluralism must each religious tradition finally either dissolve into some lowest common denominator or accept a marginal existence as one interesting but purely private option?” Tracy is not willing to accept either option. A theological strategy must be found that can articulate the genuine claims of religion to truth. This is the task he sets for himself: a responsible affirmation of pluralism through the discovery of public criteria by which truth can be affirmed. Theology must develop public criteria of truth and discourse because it deals with the fundamental questions of existence and because it speaks of God. Recognizing that the theologian addresses three arenas, society, academy and church, Tracy insists that the criteria of publicness applies in all three areas. Theology is the generic name for three disciplines: fundamental, systematic and practical theologies. Publicness is demanded of each. The primary focus of fundamental theology is the academy, of systemic theology, the church and of © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3 of 20 practical theology, society. They differ not only in their primary reference group, but also in terms of their modes of argument, ethical stance, religious stance and in terms of expressing claims to meaning and truth. On the way to a responsible pluralism all conversation partners must agree to certain basic rules for the discussion. Two constants are present: the interpretation of a religious tradition and the interpretation of the religious dimension of the contemporary situation from which and to which the theologian speaks. In regard to the first, it is incumbent upon the theologian to make explicit his or her general method of interpretation, to develop “criteria of appropriateness” whereby specific interpretations of the tradition may be judged by the wider theological community. In regard to the interpretation of the contemporary situation, there must be an analysis of the “religious” questions, the question of the meaning of human existence in the present situation. There are major differences as well. Tracy addresses the question as to what constitutes a public claim to truth in the three sub-disciplines of theology. Fundamental theology’s defining characteristic is “a reasoned insistence on employing the approach and methods of some established academic discipline to explicate and adjudicate the truth claims of the interpreted religious tradition and the truth claims of the contemporary situation.” (p. 62) Various models are available but whichever model is chosen fundamental questions and answers are articulated in such a way that any attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible person can understand and judge them in keeping with fully public criteria for argument. Personal faith may not enter the argument for the truth claims in fundamental theology. The systematic theologian’s major task is the reinterpretation of the tradition for the present situation. Where the fundamental theologian will relate the reality of God to our fundamental trust in existence (our common faith), the confessional systematic theologian will relate that reality to their arguments for a distinctively Christian understanding of faith. (p. 65) Christian theology…consists in explicating in public terms and in accordance with the demands of it own primary confessions, the full meaning and truth of the original “illuminating event”…which occasioned and continues to inform its understanding of all reality. (p. 66) Thus the task of the systematic theologian is an hermeneutical task. The “illuminating event” Tracy calls a religious classic. As in a classic work of art, the religious classic contains the possibility of ever new “disclosures.” Classics Tracy defines as texts, events, images, persons, rituals and symbols which are assumed to disclose permanent possibilities of meaning and truth. The hermeneutical theologian seeks to articulate the truth – disclosure of the reality of God embedded in the tradition for the contemporary situation. © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 4 of 20 There is today a strong case being made by many theologians for the necessity of any theological theory or argument yielding to the demand of praxis. Praxis…must be related to theory, not as theory’s application or even goal as in all conscious and unconscious mechanical notions of practice or technique. Rather praxis is theory’s own originating and self-correcting foundation, since all theory is dependent, minimally, on the authentic praxis of the theorist’s personally appropriated value of intellectual integrity and self-transcending commitment to the imperatives of critical rationality. (p. 69) Tracy states his response to the theologians of praxis as follows: The very notion of praxis is grounded in a distinction, not a separation; truth as transformation always also involves truth as disclosure; speaking the truth is never separable but is distinguishable from doing the truth; cognitive claims are not simply validated through authentic praxes any more than causes are validated through the presence of martyrs; the crises of cognitive claims does not simply dissipate when the shift of emphasis to the social-ethical crisis of a global humanity comes more clearly into central focus…. (p. 79) In sum: fundamental theology seeks metaphysical and existential adequacy to experience; systematic theology seeks the disclosure of the original “illuminating event” in the present situation; practical theology emphasizes the necessity of truth as transformative. Tracy hopes for the possibility of collaboration between these sub-disciplines and the communal recognition of the real need for all three. Tracy moves the focus now to systematic theology asking from the perspective of fundamental theology what one can argue on obviously public grounds for the public status of all good systematic theology. The question is simply, “Is systematic theology public discourse?” It is Tracy’s contention that systematic theology is hermeneutical. This means that systematic theology’s task is to interpret, mediate and translate the meaning and truth of the tradition. Where this is not the case, where the notion of authority shifts from a truth disclosed to mind and heart to an external norm for the obedient will, theologians can no longer interpret and translate the tradition but “only repeat the shop-worn conclusions of the tradition.” (p. 99) Eventually, the central, classical symbols and doctrines of the tradition become mere “fundamentals” to be externally accepted and endlessly repeated. (p. 99) Tracy points to the contrast of an hermeneutical theology: © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 5 of 20 The heart of any hermeneutical position is the recognition that all interpretation is a mediation of past and present, a translation carried on within the effective history of a tradition to retrieve its sometimes strange, sometimes familiar meanings. (p. 99) How is this done? Recognizing that one begins within a tradition which has shaped one, that one is socialized, acculturated and thus without the possibility of finding some position “above” one’s own historicity, …the route to liberation from the negative realities of a tradition is not to declare the existence of an autonomy that is literally unreal but to enter into a disciplined and responsive conversation with the subject matter – the responses and, above all, the fundamental questions – of the tradition. (p. 100) Tracy refers to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s model of conversation as a model for understanding the dialogue with the tradition. Real conversation occurs only when the participants allow the question, the subject matter, to assume primacy. It occurs only when our usual fears about our own self-image die….That fear dies only because we are carried along, and sometimes away, by the subject matter itself into the rare event or happening named “thinking” and “understanding.” For understanding happens; it occurs not as the pure result of personal achievement but in the back-and-forth movement of the conversation itself. (p. 101) …The word “hermeneutical” best describes this realized experience of understanding in conversation. For every event of understanding, in order to produce a new interpretation, mediates between our past experience and the understanding embodied in our linguistic tradition and the present event of understanding occasioned by a fidelity to the logic of the question in the back-and-forth movement of the conversation. (p. 101) Using the model of conversation Tracy shows how one enters into the history of the illuminating event. When interpreting a classic one recognizes its “excess of meaning” demands constant interpretation and is at the same time timeless – “a certain kind of timelessness –namely the timeliness of a classic expression radically rooted in its own historical time and calling to my own historicity. That is, the classical text is not in some timeless moment which needs mere repetition. Rather its kind of timelessness as permanent timeliness is the only one proper to any expression of the finite, temporal, historical beings we are….The classic text’s fate is that only its constant reinterpretation by later finite, historical, temporal beings who will risk asking its questions and listening, critically and tactfully, to its responses can actualize the event of understanding beyond its present fixation in a text. (p. 102) © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 6 of 20 To be understood a classic cannot be repeated; it must be interpreted. Thus Tracy claims All contemporary systematic theology can be understood as fundamentally hermeneutical. This position implies that systematic theologians, by definition, will understand themselves as radically finite and historical thinkers who have risked a trust in a particular religious tradition – They seek, therefore, to retrieve, interpret, translate, mediate the resources – …of the classic events of understanding of those fundamental religious questions embedded in the classic events, images, persons, rituals, texts and symbols of the tradition. (p. 104) Tracy moves on to the normative role of the classics. He begins with the assertion “classics exist.” It is true of all cultures. He claims, We all find ourselves compelled both to recognize and on occasion to articulate our reasons for recognition that certain expressions of the human spirit so disclose a compelling truth about our lives that we cannot deny them some kind of normative status. (p. 108) Such expressions we call “classic.” Tracy defines the classic thus: My thesis is that which we mean in naming certain texts, events, images, rituals, symbols and persons “classics” is that here we recognize nothing less than the disclosure of a reality we cannot but name truth….some disclosure of reality in a moment that must be called one of “recognition” which surprises, provokes, challenges, shocks and eventually transforms us; an experience that upsets conventional opinion and expands the sense of the possible; indeed a realized experience of that which is essential, that which endures. (p. 108) The experience of a classic work of art is used as an illustration of Tracy’s point. Citing Gadamer, he writes, The actual experience of the work of art can be called a realized experience of an event of truth ....when I experience any classic work of art, I do not experience myself as an autonomous subject aesthetically appreciating the good qualities of an aesthetic object set over against me. Indeed, when I reflect after the experience upon the experience itself, shorn of prior theories of "aesthetics," I find that my subjectivity is never in control of the experience, nor is the work of art actually experienced as an object with certain qualities over against me. Rather the work of art encounters me with the surprise, impact, even shock of reality itself. In experiencing art, I recognize a truth I somehow know but know I did not really know except through the experience of recognition of the essential compelled by the work of art. (p. 111F) © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 7 of 20 I am transformed by the truth which I encounter. I experience self-transcendence not as an achievement; rather it happens, it occurs. I am caught up in the disclosure of the work. Gadamer uses the phenomenon of the "game" to describe this encounter. In playing a game I lose myself in the play moving into the "rules" of the game. The game becomes not an object over against a self-conscious subject but an experienced relational and releasing mode of being in the world distinct from the ordinary, nonplayful one. In every game, I enter the world where I play so fully that finally the game plays me. (p. 114) This is what happens when one encounters a genuine work of art. One finds oneself in the grip of an event, a happening, a disclosure, a claim to truth which cannot be denied. Tracy notes the process of encountering the text. The first movement is the reception of the text. Secondly, if the text is a classic it will carry a force that will claim attention. The third step of interpretation involves the "game" spoken of above. The dialogue will demand that the interpreter enter into the back-andforth movement of that disclosure in the dialectics of a self-transcending freedom released by the text upon a finite, historical, dialogical reader and received by the text from a now dialoguing reader. (p. 120) The fourth step involves the larger conversation of the entire community of inquirers. To illustrate our claim that an encounter with a classic work of art demands our attention and discloses truth which we cannot but recognize as an encounter with reality, Tracy describes the production of a classic. The discussion of that creative artistic process leads him to conclude: In the paradigmatic expressions of the human spirit - in those texts, events, persons, actions, images, rituals, symbols which bear within them a classic as authoritative status, we find in our experienced recognition of their claim to attention the presence of what we cannot but name "truth." ... That truth is at once a disclosure and a concealment of what, at our best and most self-transcending in interpreting the classics, we cannot but name "reality." (p. 130) Tracy therefore argues for his contention that the systematic theologian is the interpreter of religious classics. Systematic theology intends to provide an interpretation, a retrieval (including a retrieval through critique and suspicion) and always, © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 8 of 20 therefore, a new application of a particular religious tradition’s selfunderstanding for the current horizon of the community. (p. 131) Applying this understanding of systematic theology’s task to the specific task of the Christian thinker, Tracy declares, In Christian systematics, that self-understanding is itself further grounded in the particular events and persons of Jewish and Christian history: decisively grounded, for the Christian, in God’s own self-manifestation as my God in this classic event and person, Jesus Christ. (p. 131) But now the crux of the matter is reached: how does the systematic theologian address the wider public with discussion characterized by “publicness” thus stopping the retreat of Christian faith into the sphere of privateness and yet remain faithful to the radical particularity of the relationship of my gift’s disclosure to the particular events of God’s action in ancient Israel, in Jesus of Nazareth, in the history of the Christian church? (p. 132) Acknowledging the dilemma, Tracy believes it can be overcome. The means of overcoming the dilemma is the recognition of the public nature of the classic: grounded in some realized experience of a claim to attention, unfolding as cognitive disclosures of both meaning and truth and ethically transformative of personal, social and historical life. (p. 132) Tracy therefore contends, Whenever any systematic theologian produces a classic interpretation of a particular classic religious tradition (as both Barth and Rahner have), then that new expression should be accorded a public status in the culture…. (p. 132F) Every classic…is a text, event, image, person or symbol which unites particularity of origin and expression with a disclosure of meaning and truth available, in principle, to all human beings. (p. 133) And again: Any person’s intensification of particularity via a struggle with the fundamental questions of existence in a particular tradition, if that struggle is somehow united to the logos of appropriate expression, will yield a form of aesthetically sharable public discourse. (p. 134) Chapter four deals with the interpretation of the religious classics. The classic, Tracy claims, has these two marks: permanence and excess of meaning. They © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 9 of 20 demand interpretation, never mere repetition nor simplistic rejection. The interpreter must plunge in, get caught up in the subject matter of the classic. Engaging a major classic or being engaged by it is to be engaged by the questions of the truth of existence. This is the task of the systematic theologian – to interpret the religious classics of a culture. While many in contemporary culture relegate religious questions to a primitive state of the race’s development, Tracy raises the question, Yet what if the authority of religion is not the authoritarianism in our impacted memories of “religion” but the authority of those authentic, indeed inevitable fundamental questions about the meaning of the whole codified in the questions and responses of classical religious texts, events, images, symbols, rituals and persons? (p. 155) To be sure, the religions have been purveyors not only of authentic truth but demonic destructive power. There is a great deal of conflict of interpretations on the meaning of religion and in the modern period the claims of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud that describe religion as “projection” and “illusion” must be faced. Arriving at one definition for the essence of religion is not possible. Yet Tracy will not back off; he claims, The questions which religion addresses are the fundamental existential questions of the meaning and truth of individual, communal and historical existence as related to, indeed as both participating in and distanced from, what is sensed as the whole of reality. (p. 157F) Religion, Tracy argues, is not just another cultural perspective alongside morality, art, science, commerce and politics. In its own self-understanding, a religious perspective claims to speak not of a part but of the whole. (p. 159) In a very technical philosophical argument Tracy maintains An ability to partly state – more exactly, to metaphysically state – the abstract, general, universal and necessary features of the reality of God as the one necessary existent which can account for the reality of a limit-of, ground-to, horizon-to the whole disclosed in earlier phenomenological accounts. (p. 161) Religion has essential characteristics even apart from a single definition of its essence and chief among them, Tracy claims, is "a limit-character." There is both a "limit-to" dimension: a dimension present in the "limit-questions" of scientific inquiry and moral striving, and in those experiences (either negative, like anxiety as © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 10 of 20 distinct from fear, or positive, like fundamental trust, wonder and loyalty as distinct from trust in and fidelity to a particular cause), disclosive of the "limit-situation" which is the human situation. (p. 160) and a "limit of" dimension: The philosophical analyses of fundamental theology, therefore, free the inquirer to study the possible meanings of such recognized "situational" limit-experiences as finitude, contingency, mortality, alienation or oppression and thereby to explicate, indeed to state, the character of that reality as a limit-to our existence. In that explicit stating of a limit-to, the inquirer may also be able to disclose or show the existence of a reality here named a "limit-of" (alternatively horizon-to our ground-of). In its metaphysical or transcendental form, the analysis can also partly state the character of that reality of the limit-of. This is the case, in the Western tradition, when the metaphysical reality of God as the one necessary existent grounding all reality is explicated as the referent of just such limit-experiences of a religious dimension to our lives", (p. 160) Tracy uses Karl Rahner's work to illustrate how this philosophical analysis of fundamental theology relates to the Christian conviction of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. For Rahner, the philosopher of religion can provide persuasive philosophical arguments for the necessary existence of an absolute mystery as ultimate horizon to all thinking and living. If that argument holds, then Rahner is correct to insist that the human being, now understood as always already within that horizon of ultimate mystery, can be redescribed, in his now famous phrase, as a hearer of a possible revelation from this horizon, i.e., a self-manifestation by the power of ultimate mystery itself. In the actual experience of that self-manifestation of God in Jesus Christ, the Christian believer now, according to Rahner, recognizes that the concrete revelation is a pure gift or grace from the incomprehensible God of Love. Then the believer "recognizes" that all reality is graced by that gift: that all reality partakes in a "transcendental" revelation disclosed in the categorical revelation of God's own self-manifestation in Jesus Christ; that revelation, as "transcendental," is always already present in this concretely graced world; that revelation as "categorized" is present in the gratuity of God's self-manifestation in the events of "salvation history," decisively present, for Rahner, in the event of the manifestation of who God is and who we are in Jesus Christ. (p. 162) Thus we are hearers of a possible revelation or self-manifestation of the absolute mystery and for the Christian believer that manifestation has taken concrete shape in Jesus Christ. In these terms the religious classic © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 11 of 20 may be viewed as an event of disclosure, expressive of the "limit-of," "horizon-to," "ground-to" side of "religion." ... religious classic expressions will involve a claim to truth as the event of a disclosure – concealment of the whole of reality by the power of the whole – as, in some sense, a radical and finally gracious mystery. (p. 163) An experience of such a classic religious expression will carry an authority which will give to the religious person the conviction that their values, their style of life, their ethos are in fact grounded in the inherent structure of reality itself. (p. 163) Tracy summarizes his contention in this discussion of the interpretation of the religious classic as follows: First, a defining characteristic of the situational "religious dimension of common experience and language" is the "limit-to" character of the experience itself, whatever its particular existential focus. Second, a defining characteristic of any explicit religion – more exactly any classic religious expression – is a “limit-of” character bearing the status of eventgift-manifestation of and from the whole, and experienced as giving the respondent wholeness. (p. 165) His approach in pursuing this line of argument – that the religious classic exists, claims our attention and discloses truth which we cannot but name reality – presumes an appropriate preunderstanding for the interpretation of religion. He argues: If one is guided by a sense for those fundamental questions, if guided as well by that great modern tradition of interpretation of the sui generis character of religion ... The interpreter is likely to find relative adequacy in the kind of interpretations of the appropriate responses to the religious classics described in different, sometimes conflicting ways by these great modern phenomenologists of the sui generis character of religion. (p. 168) ... The kind of claim to attention that a religious classic, as religious, provokes is a claim that discloses to the interpreter some realized experience bearing some sense of recognition into the objectively awesome reality of the otherness of the whole as radical mystery. The genuinely religious person (James' "mystics" and "saints"), it seems, do experience that reality of mystery as the reality of the holy bearing overwhelming and life-transformative force, (p. 168F) The religious person speaks of revelation, the self-manifestation of an undeniable power not one's own or at one's disposal. They cannot but acknowledge the eruption of a power manifesting itself – a power of the whole revealing the whole. © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 12 of 20 For the whole experienced as radical mystery is experienced as giving itself in the religious response. The whole, in manifesting itself, is also experienced as freeing the real self of the respondent to its true freedom; a freedom where the self's new ethos is experienced as grounded in reality itself – a reality both disclosed and concealed as the whole by the power of the whole. (p. 175) Again Tracy explains the experience thus: The same sense of radical giftedness both fascinates and frightens as it shocks and transforms the self to believe what one dare not otherwise believe: that reality is finally gracious, that the deepest longings of our minds and hearts for wholeness in ourselves, with others, with history and nature, is the case – the case granted as gift by the whole; the case expressed with relative adequacy determined by the intrinsic inadequacy of every classic religious expression. (p. 177) We approach now the heart of Tracy’s argument as he discusses the religious classic under the sub-divisions of manifestation and proclamation. Here he makes a creative and passionate appeal for a genuinely ecumenically Christian witness which brings together the strengths of the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions rather than the more narrow focus of any single tradition. Tracy's argument rests on his contention that truth becomes a realized experience through the encounter with a religious classic. A classic expression encountered frees oneself from the ordinary attempts to distance the self from any claims that cannot be controlled as objects over against its own subjectivity. ... The interpreter of religious classics may admit that this classic testimony bears a claim to truth. That claim is, more exactly, a nonviolent appeal to the instinct of the human spirit for some relationship to the whole. (p. 194) The truth experienced in the classic has the character of event. When technical rationality reigns, no recognition of the event-character of truth can occur. Any interpreter of the religious classic must early decide whether to impose some standards of technical rationality upon all classical expressions or risk exposing oneself to another mode of rationality; a mode proper to the thing itself as it discloses itself to consciousness. We cannot, in fact, verify or disprove the claims of classical religious expressions through empiricist methods….truth here becomes a manifestation that lets whatever shows itself to be in its showing and its hiddenness. (p. 195) Neither the Enlightenment model of rationality nor traditionalist models of heteronomy are capable of dealing thus with truth as event, occurrence. They © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 13 of 20 both interpret all claims to truth through the restrictive lenses of techniques developed by autonomous and heteronomous interpreters. Just as one approaches a classic in any field, so in religion one must be open to being caught up in the "conversation," the "game," open to being transformed by the truth of the whole which finds expression or which discloses itself through the concrete religious expression. Fundamental theology warrants the claims to truth of the religious dimension to existence on ordinary public grounds; systematic theology as interpretation warrants the claims to truth of a concrete religion on those kinds of authentically public grounds appropriate to the kind of disclosive publicness expressed in all classics. This is the case, moreover, for radically experiential reasons: the realized experience of the truth-character of the religious classic is an experience of its purely given character, its status as an event, a happening manifested to my experience, neither determined by nor produced by my subjectivity. (p. 198) Tracy describes the structural similarity between the encounter with religious classics and other classics. Any classic will produce its meaning through the related strategies of intensification of particularity and intensification of distanciation in expression. The first journey of intensification into one's own particularity will ordinarily free the person (or community) from the limitations of selfconsciousness into a sense of a real participation in, a belonging to, a wider and deeper reality than the self or the community. That experience of intensification, like all experience must involve some understanding and some expression. When the struggle for expression – the second, selfdistancing journey of intensification – finds its appropriate genre, style and form, then the self is positively distanced from the original experience in order to express the meaning of that experience. Then a person can communicate the disclosive meaning to others who may not now share it, but can share its meaning through experiencing the now-rendered expression. (p. 199F) There is a difference between religious classics and other classics, however. It has to do with intensity. The religious classic is an expression of the whole itself by the power of the whole. ... The authentically religious impetus is one where the intensification process is itself abandoned into a letting go of one's own efforts at intensity. One lets go because one has experienced some disclosure of the whole which cannot be denied as from the whole. (p. 201) © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 14 of 20 Finally one experiences a sense of resting in the radical and gracious mystery at the heart of human existence. Such an experience demands expression: a demand to express that experience and its meaning and truth in a form – a text, an image, a gesture, above all, a style of life. The demand to express, to render, to communicate sets in motion the distanciation process whereby the self distances itself from its own self-consciousness and finds the proper genre for some expression of that meaning and truth. (p. 201) Summarizing the process, Tracy claims, Both the expression and the experience of a religious "limit-of" disclosure and concealment of and by the whole remains, therefore, intrinsically dialectical throughout the entire process. The demands of the journey of intensification into the fundamental questions of the meaning of existence imply their opposite: a letting-go, a being-caught-up-in, a radical belonging-to some disclosure of the whole by the whole. And the very radicality of that belonging-to the whole posits itself by implying its opposite: I as a self recognize that I am absolutely dependent upon the whole, recognize myself as in actuality profoundly ambiguous in all my experience, my understanding, my ability and willingness to live by and in the radical mystery which envelops and empowers me. As the dialectic intensifies, this recognition of the disclosure of radical mystery posits itself as disclosure by implying its opposite: The mystery is also concealed from me by and in its disclosure as mystery. The revelation is also a revelation of hiddenness; the flooding, white light of its comprehensibility frees me to recognize the dark impenetrable incomprehensibility of both the whole and myself in the whole. (p. 202) Then comes the command to communicate by incarnating that reality in a word, a symbol, an image, a ritual, a gesture, a life. Tracy moves now to discuss the classical forms of religious expression: manifestation and proclamation. The dialectical process just described, an existential intensification of particularity, expressing itself through distanciation in a sharable form – will operate dialectically at every moment in the process. (p. 203) But now Tracy makes another proposal regarding religious expression. When the dialectic of intensification of particularity releasing itself to a radical sense of participation predominates, the religious expression will be named "manifestation;" when the dialectic of intensification of particularity releasing itself to a sense of radical nonparticipation dominates, the religious expression will be named "proclamation." (p. 203) © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 15 of 20 The words "sacrament" and "word" are usually used to make this distinction, the former being the predominate expression of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, while the latter has been characteristic of Protestantism. The difference is also pointed out by the terms "mystical-priestly-metaphysicalaesthetic" and "prophetic-ethical-historical." Both types are found in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Christian tradition. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam contain both expressions although from the East they may appear more in the proclamatory mode. Likewise, although the Eastern religions are thought of as mainly in the mode of manifestation, they too must be understood in the dialectic of manifestation or proclamation. Tracy moves away from the common theological designation of the difference – word and sacrament – and uses instead the terminology of Paul Ricoeur – manifestation and proclamation – in order to see more clearly how the religious live in this dialectic and cannot be placed on one side or the other, although, of course, they lean to one pole or the other. He contends that the manifestation-proclamation dialectic is fruitful for understanding the complexity and the conflicts in Christian self-understanding, which is the focus of Tracy's work. This distinction provides the main rubric for the thought experiment Tracy is setting forth. Tracy argues that the very positing of manifestation or proclamation implies the other; each needs the other. He begins his examination of these poles with a discussion of manifestation. He uses the work of Mircea Eliade as the clearest example of religious expression as manifestation. ... Eliade' s classic achievement ... paradoxically serves a prophetic religious role to challenge the dominant prophetic, ethical, historical trajectory of Western religion in favor of its grounds in the power of manifestation.... The "archaic" ontology articulated by Eliade becomes the focal meaning for understanding religion as an eruption of power of some manifestation of the whole now experienced as the sacred cosmos. … By entering the ritual, by retelling the myth, even by creatively reinterpreting the symbol, we escape from the "nightmare" of history and even the "terror" of ordinary time. We finally enter true time, the time of the repetition of the actions of the whole at origin of the cosmos. In illo tempore, the power from the whole was first disclosed as sacred. ... only by entering into the originally nonlinguistic manifestations of power of the sacred in the ritual, the symbol, the festival, the myth, can we participate in, belong to, a realm disclosed in the other side of the ordinary: a realm which has manifested itself as sacred, which exposes the ordinary as profane, a realm which at the same time chooses any ordinary reality – this rock, this tree, this city, this mountain, this rite – as the medium for the saturated power of the sacred – the "center of the world." ... (p. 205F) © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 16 of 20 Thus the realm of the sacred can be experienced by being willing to enter the purely given, that sheer event of manifestation. Tracy maintains that Eliade has effectively challenged the Western Augustinian assumptions through his retrieval of the genius of Eastern Christianity: a theology oriented to and from, not history and ethos, but the cosmos and aesthetics; a style of religious practice oriented not so much by the word of scripture as by the manifestations of the sacred in image, icon, ritual, logos and cosmological theologies; a way of being Christian that both demands a radical separation from the ordinary via the rituals and myths of the repetition of the origins of the cosmos and allows real participation in the manifestations of the sacred available to our "divinized" humanity. (p. 208) But there is another pole; the pole of proclamation: Those religious expressions where the power of a word of proclamation from God in an address to an ambiguous self occurs as the paradigmatic disclosure of religious reality. (p. 208) The pole of manifestation brings to expression the sense of participation in the whole. Yet the very sense of identity in the moment of manifestation implies the non-identity of the individual, finite self. Therefore the estranged self may be addressed by a word of proclamation: A word of defamiliarizing proclamation now experienced by the self as the transcendent, unnamable Other which has now disclosed itself in word as like a who: the self of God. ... This God speaks a word of proclamation whereby and wherein the whole discloses itself in a new manifestation by the presence of a personal, gracious, acting, judging, proclaiming God. This God acts in the word-events of ordinary history and time. (p. 209) This word shatters our sense of participation, disconfirming any complacency in participation. To shatter any illusions that this culture, this priesthood, this land, this ritual is enough, to defamiliarize us with ourselves and with nature, to decode our encoded myths, to inflict its passionate negations upon all our pretensions, to suspect even our nostalgic longings for the sacred cosmos, to expose all idols of the self as projections of our selves and our mad ambitions, to expose all culture as contingent, even arbitrary. …To make us recognize that Judaism and Christianity disclose a radical worldaffirmation only because they have first undergone a radical, decentering experience of world-negation in the kerygmatic, proclamatory word of address of prophetic religion. (p. 209) … © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 17 of 20 The self finds that the response to that proclamation by the self and the people to whom the self belongs is that radical paradigmatic response of trust and obedience called faith. (p. 209) The proclaimed word will be expressed in the realm of the secular which was formerly thought of as profane but now is recognized as the arena in which the power of the word must be heard. ... The very power of the proclaimed word – a word addressed by God to both a community and a self, a word of address shattering their security and their idols – demands that the major expression of one's religious experience now be found in fidelity through word and deed in this time and this history to the God who gives that word as enabling command. (p. 210) The paradigm of proclamation does not eliminate the religious expressions of manifestation. Without them there is no place for the word to be heard and do its work. Yet the focus has definitely shifted. The language of radical participation in the religions of manifestation will now seem extravagant, sometimes even idolatrous. The rejection of the ordinary as the separated profane will now, in the proclamation of the word about the extraordinariness of the ordinary as the central expression of God's word and action, will now itself be rejected in favor of a classical, paradigmatic religious ethic of the secular. (p. 211) The affirmation of the secular in contemporary Jewish and Christian theology, therefore, is not properly understood as some collapse of Christianity and Judaism in the face of contemporary secularism. Rather a secular Christianity and a secular Judaism are, in fact, faithful to the paradigmatic eruption of a proclaimed and addressing word-event which founds these traditions and drives them on as their religious focal meaning. Some desacralization of the claims of participation via manifestation must occur whenever this kind of world-shattering and world-affirming paradigmatic religious experience of proclamation happens. For the very proclamation which affirms time and history and demands expression in and for ordinary time and history frees Jews and Christians in and for the world. When the paradigmatic religious power of that word has become a nostalgic echo, a presupposition that is no longer an impulse, then the great danger of a merely secularist Judaism, a merely secularist Christianity, a finally secularist culture emerges. (p. 211F) But where the proclaimed word is remembered, the word of world-negation and world-affirmation, the Jew and the Christian are freed for the world. This was the case in the Reformation according to Tracy. He calls it a classic religious event. The Reformation was a response to the graced freedom of the Christian before God's Word in Jesus Christ. © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 18 of 20 Where the paradigmatic power of that word saturates the religious consciousness with its power, then the negation of all over-claims to participation, the religious negation of the focus of "magic," "superstition," "legalism," and "ritualism" will burst upon any complacent resting in any religion of manifestation, any non-dialectical solace in a too easy humanism or any hardened priestcraft. (p. 212) The word exposes the world's real ambiguity, its possibilities for both good and evil and it points to a new time, a time of genuine newness, not just the repetition of the origins of the cosmos. If liberal Christianity loses its sense of the word of proclamation it loses its religious vitality. It loses its religious dialectic of the world and the secular and becomes another decent, ethical vision living in, by and for a world which sets its agenda and writes the words for its decent, ethical, but ultimately irreligious tunes. The liberal churches are always in danger of losing their paradigmatic religious dialectic and becoming only psychological counseling centers or resources for societal causes. And yet the fidelity of the liberal churches to the world empowered by their listening to the Christian word of proclamation compels them, as it must, to aid all authentic causes of personal wholeness and societal justice. (p. 212) Tracy points to Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as leading examples of the ministry of the paradigmatic word which shatters the idols of culture. Barth so feared any claim to participation in the transcendent reality that he wanted to admit of no point of contact; such a view sees a word-centered Christianity devoid of all manifestation apart from the erupting power of the Word. Commenting on the two poles, manifestation and proclamation in their recent exponants referred to here, Eliade, Barth and Bonhoeffer, Tracy declares, With the same kind of radicality as Eliade, Barth and Bonhoeffer will also insist, "Only the paradigmatic is the real." Yet their paradigm of the proclaimed word will drive them into a direct confrontation with the equally radical "only" of Eliade through its dialectic in and for the world, in and for time and history. For Eliade, manifestation discloses not an entry into the secular but an escape from the terror, the nightmare, the banality, the latent nihilism of ordinary time and history. Not the profane, not the secular will save us; only an entry into the religion of manifestation, the worlds of sacred space and the repetitions of sacred time can do that. Eliade's work serves in the contemporary period as a classic expression of the power of religion as manifestation releasing its dialectic of the sacred and the profane and its passionately religious sense of radical participation in the cosmos through the saturating repetitions of myth, ritual and symbol. His is recognizably iconic consciousness. In an analogous manner Barth and Bonhoeffer, with their distinct and sometimes conflicting positions, represent two contemporary classic expressions of Christian © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 19 of 20 faith as a faith living by the power of the proclaimed word releasing its dialectic of the word and the secular and its suspicion of "religious participation" and repetition. (p. 213F) It is Tracy's contention that we must not be forced to choose one pole or the other. Christianity does not live by the "only" of Eliade or Barth. It is his purpose to push beyond these oppositions to find a place where both can be embraced. Both manifestation and proclamation are necessary to Christian religion. The dialectic of the Christian religion is one in which the word does negate any claim to a mode of participation which logically approaches identity or existentially relaxes into complacency – a dialectic which, in fidelity to the word, must radically negate all idolatries, yet a dialectic which implies, includes and demands genuine manifestation. ... Christianity embraces nature in and through its doctrines of creation – transformed, to be sure, in the light of the doctrines of redemption and future eschatology. Indeed Christianity celebrates nature in and through its doctrine of incarnation as theophanous manifestation – understood, to be sure, only in the light of a shattering, defamiliarizing cross and a transformative resurrection. (p. 214) Tracy contends that a Christianity of word without real manifestation stands in peril of becoming either fanatical or arid and cerebral and abstract. Barth understood this dealing at length with the doctrine of creation. Manifestation, Tracy argues, is always the enveloping presupposition of the erupting word of proclamation. Manifestation envelops every word from beginning to end, even as it allows itself to be transformed by the shattering paradigmatic power of the proclaimed word. But manifestation returns, thus transformed, to reunite even the secular, the historical, the temporal, the self with the whole disclosed in nature and the cosmos. A Christianity without a sense of radical participation in the whole – that sense which Schleiermacher named the "feeling of absolute dependence," which others name a fundamental trust in the very worthwhileness of existence – is a Christianity that has lost its roots in the human experience of God's manifesting and revealing presence in all creation, in body, in nature, in spirit, not only in history. (p. 215) The powerful, eruptive word of proclamation that defamiliarizes us from the world is yet itself rooted in the enveloping cosmos. To speak Christian eschatological language is to speak a language where the religious power of the whole has entered time and history in the decisive proclamation of this particular word and event, where that power has freed the "profane" to become the "secular" and has liberated the present and the future from the exclusive hold of the sacred time of past © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 20 of 20 origin by empowering history and ethical action with religious power. (p. 216) Tracy points to the sacramental view of Catholic Christianity: Nature and the secular become sacrament in their transformationsublation by the word, the "prime sacrament" and decisive manifestation or representation named Jesus Christ. There can be no negation of the cosmos or nature. Indeed a sacrament is nothing other than a decisive representation of both the events of proclaimed history and the manifestations of the sacred cosmos. (p. 216) If the kerygmatic power of the word in the sacrament is lost, the sacrament becomes magic. But if the paradigmatic power of real manifestation is lost, the word alone will not meet the deepest needs and satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. Christianity then becomes a righteous rigorism of duty and obligation. How can we hold on to both poles and not lose the necessary experience of either manifestation or proclamation? Tracy believes it can be accomplished but only a radically ecumenical Christianity can accomplish it. By themselves, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity seem trapped in historically hardened emphases: unable alone to restore the power of both proclamation and manifestation in a manner that does not seem some uneasy compromise. ... This demand for both manifestation and proclamation is incumbent upon all Christians who recognize the reality of Jesus Christ as the Christian classic, i.e., as the decisive representation in both word and manifestation of our God and our humanity. Thus will Christocentric Christians recognize that the paradigmatic Christ event discloses the religious power of both manifestation and proclamation ... both Christian manifestation and proclamation are ultimately rooted in that God whose radical otherness in freedom posits itself to us as the radical immanence of an all-pervasive, defamiliarizing, shattering, enveloping love in cosmos, in history, in the self. (p. 218) Part II: Interpreting the Christian Classic Tracy applies the methodological argument of Part I to a distinctively Christian systematic theology in Part II. He has argued that there is a distinctly religious classic among the other classics generally recognized and he contends that that classic status means that the religious classic too has public status. Such religious classics are “expressions from a particular tradition that have found the right mode of expression to become public for all intelligent, reasonable and responsible persons.” (p. 233). He asks then what are the classic texts, events, symbols, images and persons in a tradition. While in the Christian tradition there © Grand Valley State University �David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 21 of 20 are several candidates for classic status, there is one which is the norm of all others and which provides the focus for understanding God, self, others, society, history, nature and the whole from a Christian perspective: the event and person of Jesus Christ. Tracy claims, One need not be a believer in Christianity to accord it (and thereby its central, paradigmatic, classic event) authentically religious status: a manifestation from the whole by the power of the whole. (p. 234) Christology is the attempt to respond through some interpretation to the event of Jesus Christ in one’s own situation. …The Christian interpretation of this classic event recognizes in some present experience of the event – more precisely, in the claim disclosed in that event (paradigmatically in experiencing that event in manifestation and proclamation) as an event from God and by God’s power. To speak religiously and theologically of the Christ event is ultimately to speak of an event from God. )p. 234) The Jesus remembered by the tradition is experienced in the present mediated through the word, sacrament and action. Jesus remembered as the Christ is the experience of the presence of God’s own self. The expression “The event of Jesus Christ” means for the Christian tradition…that we recognize Jesus in the Christ event as the person in whom God’s own self is decisively re-presented as the gift and command of love. The always already reality of a graced world is made present again decisively, paradigmatically, classically as event in Jesus Christ. The event, as re-presentative of reality always already present to us as human beings, is present again as the decisive that it happens. The event as command is also present as the not-yet-actualized reality internal for each person and for all history responding to that one decisive event of God. (p. 234) Tracy will now examine this position to see if it is a relatively adequate interpretation of the event and, secondly, to understand how this interpretation differs from alternative interpretations. The key for the interpretation of the event of Jesus Christ must be the claim exerted in the present by that event as the claim that it happens now. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, 1998 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19980101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-01-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1998 entitled "The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism ", on the book The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism , written by David Tracy. Tags: Theology, Pluralism, Truth, Meaning, Sacred, Religious Tradition, Nature of God, Nature of Religion, Ecumenical, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mircea Eliade, David Tracy. Scripture references: David Tracy. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, 1998. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf David Tracy Dietrich Bonhoeffer Ecumenical Karl Barth Meaning Mircea Eliade Nature of God Nature of Religion Pluralism Religious Tradition Sacred Theology Truth https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2e77299cfd9d97c25c0133fb43b0b169.pdf fb2dd89eada85e918d593461a9395bdd PDF Text Text   Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility By Paul F. Knitter (Orbis Books, 1996) Review By Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Publication of Review Unknown In his foreword to Jesus and the Other Names, Harvey Cox speaks of “two urgent movements” in Christian theology which “shook him to his roots”, requiring him to completely rethink his theology. The first, impacting him in the 60’s, was liberation theology. The second, a decade later, was the persistent question of a Christian response to other faiths. For too long he felt that those two movements were like two separate conversations. Those interested in the one concern, had little interest in the other. Paul Knitter, he suggests, has found a way to blend the two conversations – conversations concerning the religious other and the suffering other. Jesus and the Other Names focuses Christian theology on the issue of “globally responsible, correlational dialogue among religions”. His discussion bears the hall marks of the classic liberal persuasion, as do the discussions of John Hick in The Metaphor of God Incarnate and S. Wesley Ariarajah in The Bible and People of Other Faiths. And like them, he draws heavily upon his own human experience. This I believe has always been the strength of the liberal position. Paul Knitter knows the discussion of Christian mission in a pluralistic society from both ends of a spectrum. In the late 50’s after four years of Catholic seminary high school, he officially joined the ranks of the Divine Word Missionaries (“SVD” or Societas Vergi Divini). Those were the years of missionary “adaptation” and “accommodation” in Catholic circles. Missionaries on furlough were often invited to speak to the novitiates. Knitter was struck by the time spent in speaking appreciatively of the other faiths and other ways encountered on the mission field. Such appreciation and accommodation disturbed the ardent young Knitter. Yet by the time of his college graduation in 1962 it was becoming clearer, “that the old exclusivist model of Christianity as light and other religions as darkness didn’t fit the facts” (p. 5). What to do with that dawning realization became clearer to Knitter at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He arrived just two weeks before the opening of © Grand Valley State University   �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2   the Second Vatican Council. There Knitter took a course from Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, who was a visiting professor at the time. He was deeply impressed by Rahner’s concept that even those individuals who did not know or profess Christ, even those followers of another religious persuasion, were nonetheless saved by Christ’s sacrificial death. Thus they were, without at times even being aware of it, “anonymous Christians”. Knitter chose to write his doctorate under Rahner on the theme of Catholic attitudes towards other religions. A year and a half later, to his “devastating surprise” he discovered that someone else had not only chosen the same dissertation topic, but had published it that year in Rome. It was this which prompted Knitter to apply to Marburg University (and was the first Roman Catholic ever admitted to the Protestant Marburg), in order to pursue the topic of a Protestant theology or religions. Though he must admit to a biased Rahnerian Catholic perspective, Knitter does not deny the validity of his conclusion: In their efforts to recognize the value of other religions, Protestant theologians, I claimed, were stymied by the Reformational insistence on “faith alone” through “Christ alone” (see Knitter 1975). Protestants such as Paul Althaus, Emil Brunner, and even Wolhart Pannenberg, could recognize “revelation” in other faiths, but never “salvation.” This was, I concluded, to go only halfway in their efforts to reach out to other religious believers (p. 7). This move towards an “inclusive” understanding would ultimately be but a bridge to “the other side” - where lay a more pluralistic understanding of world religions. To move across this bridge he found he must sublate a christocentric approach with one that was theocentric. Thus in his book No Other Name (1985) he would claim “the possibility (and nothing more) that other religions may have their own valid views of and responses to” (p. 9) the Divine Mystery we call Theos or God. Now in Jesus and the Other Names he attempts to correct some of his earlier conclusions (seeing a need to emphasize the soteriological issues rather than theocentric), as he continues to move in the direction of pluralism. In the midst of his wrestling with “the religious other”, Knitter, like Cox, was impacted by the issues of “the suffering other”. Becoming involved with the Sanctuary Movement, he entered into discussion with those for whom suffering takes precedence over doctrinal disputes. He found himself increasingly aware, along with friend and colleague Hans Küng, that as religious persons we bear responsibility for a global ethic. Inter-religious dialogue becomes not simply a question of how to discern God, but even more urgently the question of how to bring about God’s reign. ...the avalanche of dangers forming on the slopes of economic injustice, environmental devastation, and military build-up will not be stayed unless the nations of the world come together to formulate and endorse some kind of shared ethical convictions and guidelines. But such a task will not © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3   be accomplished unless the religions of the world, in dialogue, make their contribution. In other words, inter religious conversations must make their most pressing agenda the ethical issues behind the mounting suffering of humans and Earth (p. 12). Having described the autobiographical journey which led him to a pluralistic (he prefers the word correlational to pluralistic) perspective, Knitter turns to the theological underpinnings which support such a view. He suggests that all of our theological understandings must be defined and shaped both by human experience and Christian tradition. Human experience has some common aspects Knitter believes, at least in Western cultures. Whether interacting with co-workers, gathered socially around a dinner table, attending our children’s school programs, or sharing a marriage bed, we are becoming more intimately and acutely aware that there are others for whom another faith persuasion has enriched and transformed their lives. To suggest that ours is the only possibility for grasping religious truth is no longer possible. Pluralism, whether we advocate it or not, is a cognitive reality for most of the Western world. Thus awareness of “others” is one aspect of our human experience. A second is a historical consciousness that recognizes the limitations of knowledge. Says Knitter, “There is no such thing, we know today, as factual knowledge; it is always interpreted knowledge” (p. 29). He quotes Langdon Gilkey: ...in order to preserve their integrity, they must accept theologically what they have long accepted culturally. Given the context-conditioned, “theory-laden”, socially constructed interpretative limitations of every grasp and statement of truth, and given also the ever-changing, always confining flow of history, Christians (and all religious persons) have to admit honestly that, within our human condition, there can be no final word, no one way of knowing truth that is valid for all times and all peoples (pp. 29-30). George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine, 1984) and David Tracy (The Analogical Imagination, 1981 and Plurality and Ambiguity, 1987) are also cited: (They) remind their fellow Christians that to think that they have a fixed source of truth, an unchanging criterion they can apply in all cultural situations in order to decide what is true or good, a foundation that transcends the process and pluralism of history, is to fly in the face of reality, to lust after the unreal. There is no fixed place of truth outside the fray of historical process and continuous dialogue...which means that Christianity is one of the many, limited religions of the world (p. 30). © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 4   A third component which supports a pluralistic or correlational theology is the moral imperative. Knitter insists that we cannot know our own truth except in dialogue with others. To know only one religion is to risk that it will tend toward a “barbarous or self-indulgent abuse of our own truth” (p. 32). Humorously, Knitter suggests that, just as we need someone to tell us when we have bad breath (!), we need the dialogue partner, the other perspective, to open our eyes - to enable us to see not only how others see our “truth” and also how it affects them, which is perhaps even more important. And finally, human experience recognizes our responsibility for the welfare of the world. Knitter believes that we have a moral obligation, bequeathed to us by God, to participate in the coming of the reign of God. We are God’s physical hands and heart in this world and thus are obligated to aide in the Divine work of Shalom. Aspects of the Christian tradition which support a correlational dialogue are again four in Knitters listing. First, says Knitter, the traditional understanding of the nature of God requires such a pluralistic posture. God is beyond our comprehension. Hence, to say that we have a final or exclusive understanding of the Mystery that is Theos is idolatrous. Moreover, Knitter contends that our understanding of God as Trinitarian implies plurality. Christian ethical incentives provide a basis as well, he claims. Here he relies almost exclusively on the commandment which calls us to love our neighbor as God loves us. To exclude our neighbor from salvation seems to Knitter the epitome of inhospitableness and lack of love. Whenever we hold up a truth or a revelation and insist that according to the will of God it is the only or the absolutely final norm in which all others have to be included, then we cannot treat them as our brothers and sisters in God. Such a norm does enable us to confront them, as love sometimes requires, but it does not allow us to be confronted by them, as love also requires. Whenever we are not disposed to learn as much from our neighbors as they can from us, we cannot love them. We may help them, we may build hospitals and schools for them, we may lift them from their poverty - but we are not loving them (p. 39). Pastoral concerns must be honored in conjunction with supports of the Christian tradition. We do a disservice to those who struggle with these questions if we simply cite doctrine and creed as final answers. We must wrestle along with them in order to give satisfaction to their “cry from the heart”. And then there are the scriptural incentives for correlational dialogue. Along with Krister Stendhal and John Hick, Knitter suggests that we must understand much of the biblical language as metaphor. The grand and divine appellations are really “love talk” (Stendahl). And while he wants to honor and respect texts such as Acts 4:12 – “There is no other name given to human kind by which we can be saved than the name of Jesus Christ”, he begs we remember the context (these © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 5   words for example are spoken in connection with a specific healing), as well as the polemic nature of other passages such as “I am the way the truth and the life...”. We must always distinguish between the universal and the particular, says Knitter, citing Schubert Ogden’s understanding that we must locate “the particularity of Jesus within the universality of God’s self-revelation, rather than locating God’s universality within the particularity of the historical Jesus”(p. 42). It is that understanding of universality that drives us towards correlational dialogue. Why the term “correlational”? Here Knitter honestly admits that inter-faith dialogue is not easy. He takes issue with those who suggest that we come together easily around issues of “common essence” or “common experience”. Such suggestions are “gossamer theories spun out by academicians who most likely have never felt the hard, obstructing reality of otherness” (p. 13). And yet, his actual inter-faith dialogue experience has convinced him that, despite what are often chasms of perspective, there remains a relatedness. This, he trusts, is a sign from God to persistently pursue areas of “correlation”, and those ways in which we can go forward together in the global work of peace and justice. In the face of his critics’ real and valid concerns ( 1 - that the ambiguity of pluralism jeopardizes a firm foundation of meaning and purpose, 2 - the difficulties of prophetically resisting evil in Christ’s name, 3 - the corrosion and possible destruction of missionary outreach), Knitter maintains that he is still able to conceive of Jesus as unique for Christians and for the world. Stressing ortho-praxis (doing as he did) rather than orthodoxy, Knitter claims that Jesus is truly & fully all that the Newer Testament witnesses profess that he was. Yet this does not require that he was the only one, who solely embodied the selfrevelation of God. Whatever it is that brings a person to be a Christian and follower of Jesus, by its very nature it must enable the person to say that Jesus is truly and effectively the vehicle of the Divine Presence in his or her life. For this person Jesus is truly the Son of God, the savior, mediator, word of God, messiah, the living one. Without the feeling - without an experiential awareness - that inspires the “truly,” one cannot be, one would not want to be, a Christian. But I don’t think that is true of “solely.” When one knows that Jesus is truly savior, one does not know that he is the only savior. One’s experience is limited and has not been able to take in the experiences and messages of all other so-called saviors or religious figures. But if Christians do not or cannot know that Jesus is the only savior neither do they have to know this in order to be committed to this Jesus. The experience of Jesus that has enabled them to say “truly” enables them © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 6   to keep following him. That there may be others is not an impediment to faithful following. Discipleship requires “truly”; it does not seem to require “solely” (p. 73). With similar logic he concludes that Jesus need be neither fully definitive nor unsurpassable. Rather he proposes that Jesus is universal (not limited to one people), decisive (in that he challenges us) and indispensable (which flows naturally from acceptance that he is universal and decisive). Christians bring to the table the uniqueness of Jesus’ interest in inclusivity and relationship. In representing that Christ-like uniqueness they will share with others the Christian value of contemplatives in action, says Knitter. Prompted by love of neighbor (which is, according to the first commandment, the manifestation of their love for God), Christians believe in the value of “historical involvement”. Believing that the God whom Jesus served has a preference for the poor and oppressed, Christians are concerned for those who suffer due to injustice, engaging in work to alleviate that injustice as they are able. And to the dialogue Christians bring a deep and abiding hope, a hope that enables them to believe that the world can be saved. Says Knitter, a “distinguishing mark of the disciples of Jesus and co-workers in God’s reign is that they don’t give up” (p. 97). To enter into dialogue with other faiths does not require that we abandon our understanding of Jesus’ uniqueness, or abandon a conviction that his way is an ethically important way. Insofar as Christians proclaim the “pure, unbounded love of God” at work in the world and therefore do not insist that Jesus is God’s full, final, or unsurpassable Word, they expect that for the most part their relationships with sincere believers of other paths will indeed be complementary. But insofar as Christians also experience God’s presence in Jesus to include universal, decisive, and indispensable claims, they will also be ready to take strong stands, sometimes in opposition, to the claims of others. (p. 82). But what of missions? This is perhaps the most critical issue for those who fear the goals of correlational or pluralistic dialogue. Throughout the centuries the Christian church has been motivated and animated by a sense of having been “sent” with good news of salvation. It believed it had a necessary role to play in God’s unfolding drama. But if the content of that good news is not for all people in all times, then is the missionary focus of the church still necessary or vital? Knitter claims that it is. And he contends that a pluralistic or correlational posture is still able to beckon disciples who will be sent out to speak good news that they believe is for everyone. It will however require a revision of the missionary mandate. © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 7   Knitter contends that pluralistic missionary disciples will still continue to affirm Jesus’ divinity. But by this he means (along with Karl Rahner, Paul Tillich, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng and Monika Hellwig) that To feel and proclaim that Jesus is divine is to encounter him as God’s sacrament, as the embodiment, the historical reality, the symbol, the story that makes God real and effective for me (p. 105). The message of salvation that they bring will encourage others to join in bringing about God’s reign (as opposed to desiring that they join the Christian church). The wellbeing of all creatures must be the mission’s foremost goal. More than Christological missiology, they will be concerned with pneumatological missiology which, Knitter believes, allows one to grasp the universality of God’s saving purpose, without dissolving the distinctive uniqueness of Jesus for Christians. Pneumatology allows for the moving of God’s spirit into realms and through mediums that doctrinal Christology disallows. Though it is a revisioned understanding of missions, Knitter believes that his missionary passion is as ardent today as it was in his earliest years of missionary work. The urgency of its goals can indeed beckon future generations to bear witness to the way of salvation and the good news that God is still engaged with us in saving work, albeit through a multiplicity of religious mediums. Missions as dialogue then, is Knitter’s image of missiology into the third millennium. Perhaps Knitter’s most intriguing and practical suggestion is his call for a dialogical model of theological education. Seminary students need opportunities to learn about traditions other than their own. In as much as dialogue with those of other faiths will become more and more the norm, there should be required courses in Islam, Asian religions and indigenous spiritualities. These courses should be taught not in an abstract informational way, but by professors and guest speakers who can present material experientially. Students must be called to enter “the other’s world of experience” (p. 162). There should be personal encounters fostered by “experimenting with the truth of - or at least observing the spiritual practices of other religions” (p. 162). Another way of engaging the “other’s” voice might be to engage certain issues from a variety of faith perspectives - “Courses on ‘Religions and Peace’ or ‘Buddhism, Christianity and Ecology’, or ‘Feminist Voices in Muslim- Christian Dialogue’ (p. 163). Such perspectives should be mainlined into all courses of Christian history, doctrinal, ethical and social issues. By this, Knitter means...that in teaching a standard course on evil or redemption or church or the question of God, teachers will inject into the discussions what other religious perspectives hold, how they sometimes radically differ, and how they provoke Christian tradition to further reflection. Naturally, given the expertise and general background of most theological faculties, such dreams of mainlining an interreligious conversation into the general curriculum cannot be realized overnight. But they will never be realized at all unless the ideal is affirmed (p. 163). © Grand Valley State University �Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 8   To this end, he would propose that all seminaries should include one or more faculty members trained in a non-Christian tradition. And students should be encouraged or required to sub-specialize in the “history, beliefs, and spirituality of another non- Christian religious path” (pp. 163-164). Paul Knitter envisions a new world of missions, one where the ultimate goal is no longer salvation through Christ to eternal life. Rather, the focus is on the reign of God emerging in our here and now. “The Kingdom of God is among you,” Jesus is purported to have said. Paul Knitter is eager, as a Christian, to join hands with those of other faiths in order to realize that very possibility. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, 1996 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19960101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-01-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Jesus and the Other Names, Christian Mission and Global Responsibility Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1996 entitled "Jesus and the Other Names, Christian Mission and Global Responsibility", on the book Jesus and the Other Names, Christian Mission and Global Responsibility, written by Paul F. Knitter. Tags: Theology, Interfaith, Pluralism, Non-exclusive, Love, . Scripture references: Paul Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names, 1996. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Interfaith Love Non-exclusive Pluralism Theology https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b56bb743eeb61d9017935a4878af8e18.pdf f2bfaaa9858c2328042028b9e4c47f25 PDF Text Text   Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith By Hendrikus Berkhof (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., revised edition, 1987) 1987 Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Publication of Review Unknown With the appearance of this revised edition of Hendrikus Berkhof’s Christian Faith, we are given not only a serious and thorough articulation of the faith from a Reformed perspective in light of the contemporary world, but we also have a model of how the systematic theologian must continue to be in dialogue with the ongoing developments in the historical arena so that new questions that are raised may elicit new understanding of the faith and the faith may bring new understanding to the present horizon. First published in Dutch in 1973, the work has proved highly popular, with a fifth Dutch edition published in 1985. At that time a significant revision was made. The original English translation based on the fourth Dutch edition appeared in 1979 and is now replaced by the revised edition based on the fifth Dutch edition. In a “Preface to the Revised Edition,” Berkhof tells us how he came to write a systematic theology in the first place. In May of 1969, amid the student revolutions that were common throughout the Western world, Berkhof - always a sensitive listener -heard the cry for greater freedom, equality and brotherhood in society. His response - intuitive at the time - was to determine to write a systematic theology. In retrospect he realizes that his response arose out of his deeply held conviction that what was being demanded in the student revolts could be gained only by going back “to what is firm and unchangeable, to God who makes history with his covenant and wants to involve our history in his covenant.” Thus he wrote this introduction to the study of the faith “against the backdrop of secularization and polarization.” Berkhof’s treatment of the faith lives and breathes because it arises out of a masterly grasp of the biblical material, the history of the interpretation of the faith, and a passionate engagement with life. An encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter is obvious; one is confident the most difficult questions have been engaged, questions raised by the explosion of knowledge in the modern world; various options are sympathetically offered demonstrating the genuine openness of the author to a variety of voices and then, simply and straightforwardly, the author’s own position is stated. © Grand Valley State University   �Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2   This is theology written for the serious inquirer. Aimed in the large print sections at a broad audience willing to think seriously about the faith, Berkhof adds small print sections for more detailed and technical treatment of the subjects under discussion with bibliographical references for further study. This is theology written for the person who would both understand the faith from a Reformed perspective but within a larger ecumenical context in light of modern knowledge and be able to interpret the faith in the contemporary situation. Berkhof digs deeply into the biblical tradition in order to transmit that tradition in new translation. He summarizes his motives in writing, ... as concern for a world which is losing its cohesive power, which is pluralistically and permissively falling apart, and which is losing its sense of meaning, purpose and direction. That is a serious diagnosis. Yet, Berkhof maintains, and those who know him well confirm, that he is no “prophet of doom.” If it is true that God watches over his world, the counterforces are also bound to be there. We see these forces in a widespread quest for the meaning of life. Precisely in our culture this is a question which consciously or unconsciously occupies the minds of many. This is hopeful theology; the author is unequivocally committed to the biblical faith, sensitively aware of his own context and the broader world scene and confident in the redemptive purposes of the God of the covenant. Sensitivity to contextuality marks this revision. Berkhof notes that, about the time the first Dutch edition appeared in 1973, “contextuality” came into vogue. Berkhof recognizes the importance of being aware of one’s own context, but insists each context has its own questions and every context is a proper place to do theology - not only, for example, a context characterized by poverty or oppression. He calls for “a mutual awareness of the limiting significance of our stances” and the necessity of going “beyond the boundaries this imposes upon us ... striving for greater universality and catholicity.” Berkhof welcomed the opportunity for major revision because “dogmatics does not stand still.” But, he maintains, That is not the same as “making progress.” But it does mean that new angles regularly present themselves beside the earlier ones, or even dislodge them. In his preface to the new edition, Berkhof indicates the areas of major revision which is very helpful in tracing his own ongoing understanding and interpretation of the faith and the moving context of our times. © Grand Valley State University �Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3   One new paragraph is added: “Revelation and Experience,” paragraph 10. Here he deals with the concern with the experience which precedes the revelational encounter and leads up to it. The last two decades have seen a return to concern with such experience after the sharp reaction against any such consideration in the wake of Karl Barth. In typically balanced fashion, Berkhof presents the subject under three perspectives: a. Revelation is directed to people in the world of their concrete experiences. b. This approach always both determines and delimits at the same time. c. Experience itself can never bridge the gap between the person and revelation. The contemporary Christological discussion is given lucid and concise treatment in the small print section on pages 291-297. Within the compass of these pages one is brought up to date on where the discussion has come with pages 294-297 rewritten for the revision. Berkhof suggests that the new nuances of the revision will further be sensed by reference to the subject index, to such subjects as Auschwitz, liberation theology, experience, feminist theology and Pneuma-Christology. For all the value of the work of revision, the great contribution of Christian Faith remains its contemporary statement of the meaning of the faith. For readers not yet familiar with Berkhof’s work, we must point to the remarkable discussion of the attributes of God under the headings “Holy Love,” “The Defenseless Superior Power,” and “The Changeable Faithfulness.” The headings themselves should be enough to demand examination and the examination will not disappoint. Another great strength of this work is its focus on the history of the covenant. The history of Israel is taken seriously and the Old Testament is allowed to speak for itself before it is understood from the perspective of Jesus Christ. In contrast to the all too typical dogmatic treatment where, as in the Apostles’ Creed, the exposition jumps from the Creator to Christ with a treatment of the fact of sin interspersed, giving the impression that Jesus drops out of heaven, Berkhof follows the redemptive drama historically. There are ... not only vertical incursions from eternity, but there is also a horizontal course of God with us through time. Therefore following his treatment of “Revelation” and “God,” Berkhof discussed “Creation,” “Israel,” “Jesus the Son,” and “The New Community.” The latter discussion of the Church is creative and innovative, challenging the static descriptions of the older dogmatics. In the paragraph on “The Church as Institute,” for example, Berkhof departs from the usual institutionalized means of © Grand Valley State University �Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 4   transmitting the grace of God - the marks of the Church. He suggests rather nine elements: instruction, baptism, sermon, discussion, Lord’s Supper, diaconate, worship service, office and church order. His final paragraph on the Church moves the focus outward, the orientation to the world, as he discusses “The People of God as the Firstfruits.” The final three sections treat “The Renewal of Man,” “The Renewal of the World,” and “All Things New,” handling aspects of the faith that especially address the question of meaning which Berkhof senses as at the heart of the Western context. Christian Faith is theology at its best: biblically rooted, aware of the transmission of the tradition, written in dialogue with the ultimate concern of the present context. It is up to date but not trendy; it is sensitive to the spirit of the age, but transcending that spirit. It is written out of faith for faith. It is the best available textbook for students of theology. Preachers will find it “preaches” well and congregations who receive it via the sermon will be stimulated, challenged and inspired. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, 1987 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19870101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-01-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1987 entitled "Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith", on the book Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, written by Hendrikus Berkhof, it appeared in Pespectives, January, 1988, pp. 14-15. Tags: Meaning, Scriptures, Faith, Theology. Scripture references: Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, 1987. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Faith Meaning Scriptures Theology https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c1f6246e5641efc935677d34dc98c262.pdf b36fcca1b2b21c674c86307eb53569c9 PDF Text Text Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Article by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Published in Perspectives A Journal of Reformed Thought May 1986, pp. 9-11 Karl Barth is the Twentieth Century's towering theological figure. His name calls to mind the massive Church Dogmatics, theological movements from the early dialectical theology to the later theology of the Word. We think of the great European universities, Gottingen, Bonn and Basle, where he taught. Yet, Karl Barth was at heart a preacher of the Word and the great theological renewal of which he was the primary catalyst and which reversed the tide of Nineteenth Century Liberalism had its roots in the local parish, in the pulpit, in the demanding task of preaching. Not while he was a Professor of Theology but while he was a village pastor in Safenwil in his native Switzerland did he ignite the fire that would sweep the continent and dominate the theological discussion of the West for decades to come. Indeed, when he had become a professor and published his first volume of dogmatics under the title Christian Dogmatics, he changed the title and began anew under the title Church Dogmatics, a significant sign of his recognition that theological reflection arises out of the Church and must be in the service of the proclamation of the Church. An early collection of addresses, The Word of God and the Word of Man, gives eloquent testimony to the fact that it was the setting of worship of the local congregation and the desperate need of the preacher for a word to speak that sent Karl Barth to Paul's letter to the Romans to wrestle anew with the Christian message. In 1922 Barth was invited to address a ministers’ meeting to give an introduction into an understanding of his theology. He was embarrassed to hear of his theology being spoken of so seriously. He said, ... I must frankly confess to you that what I might conceivably call "my theology" becomes, when I look at it closely, a single point, and that not, as one might demand, as the least qualification of a true theology, a © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 2 standpoint, but rather a mathematical point upon which one cannot stand - a viewpoint merely.”1 Barth claimed to have not yet even gotten to theology proper even though his commentary on Romans had sent shock waves through the theological world. He denied that he or his friends had any desire or intention of starting a new school of theology. Yet if a new movement was in formation, Barth insisted, ... that it did not come into being as a result of any desire of ours to form a school or to devise a system; it arose simply out of what we felt to be the "need and promises of Christian Preaching... " 2 Then Barth shared his own spiritual pilgrimage as a pastor. He had received the finest of European University training in theology. Yet he writes, ... Once in the ministry, I found myself growing away from these theological habits of thought and being forced back at every point more and more upon the specific minister's problem, the sermon. I sought to find my way between the problem of human life, on the one hand, and the content of the Bible on the other. As a minister I wanted to speak to the people in the infinite contradiction of their life, but to speak the no less infinite message of the Bible, which was as much of a riddle as life. Continuing in this autobiographical vein, Barth said, ... But it simply came about that the familiar situation of the minister on Saturday at his desk and on Sunday in his pulpit crystallized in my case into a marginal note to all theology, which finally assumed the voluminous form of a complete commentary upon the Epistle to the Romans. 4 The reception of that volume amazed him. As an obscure village pastor it was difficult to get the work published at all. A small firm in Bern risked the venture, publishing 1,000 copies of Der Romerbrief in 1919. So, contrary to the current climate of opinion, it was received with dismay in his own country, but the shattering experience of the World War in Germany caused its strange message to find resonance. In retrospect, Barth wrote of the stir he caused, As I look back upon my course, I seem to myself as one who, ascending the dark staircase of a church tower and trying to steady himself, reached for the bannister, but got hold of the bell rope instead. To his horror, he had then to listen to what the great bell had sounded over him and not over him alone. 5 But that was looking back. As he spoke to the pastor's conference in 1922, he was still in the early phase of his theological development in which ten years of pastoral ministry had engaged him. Barth declared that the critical situation created by the necessity of having to preach became to him an explanation of the character of all theology. He raises the question as to whether it would not be for © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 3 theology's good if it attempted to be nothing more than this knowledge of the quest and questioning of the Christian preacher, full of need and full of promise. ... Must not everything else result from this knowledge? 6 Stating simply where he was coming from, Barth said, ... I do not really come to you armed with a new and astonishing theology, but I want to make my place among you with a theology ... which consists simply in an understanding of and sympathy for the situation which every minister faces. ... If then I have not only a viewpoint, but something also of a standpoint, it is simply the familiar standpoint of the man in the pulpit. Before him lies the Bible, full of mystery; and before him are seated his more or less numerous hearers, also full of mystery....What now? asks the minister. If I could succeed in bringing acutely to your minds the whole content of that, "What now?," I should have won you not only to my standpoint, which indeed you occupy already, but also to my viewpoint, no matter what you might think of my theology. 7 The whole gigantic enterprise of Barth's long and fruitful career was the outworking of the standpoint of the pulpit. It is in the act of preaching that the Word of God encounters people where they live, where the Word engages the world. If the engagement is to prove fruitful, then the preacher must know both the Word and the world. In Barth's colorful expression, the preacher must preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Only then will the sermon "speak." Only then will the deeper longing of the people be met and the unspoken question of their lives be addressed. THE PRESENT HORIZON TO WHICH THE WORD IS SPOKEN It is in the congregation that the two constants of theological formulation come together: the message and the present horizon which is represented in the lives of the people. That present horizon must be understood by the preacher. It provides the approach, the access to the questions of the people. Barth speaks of the strange situation of Sunday morning. The strange building with its strange appointments, its ancient traditions, singing, praying to God! And then - "here is daring" he says, the preaching. Pervading the whole strange Sunday morning episode is a sense of expectancy because everything seems to point to the conviction that God is present. Yet the people come with expectancy not only, but also with the haunting question, "Is it true?" ... And so they reach, not knowing what they do, toward the unprecedented possibility of praying, of reading the Bible, of speaking, hearing, and singing of God. So they come to us, entering into the whole grotesque situation of Sunday morning which is only the expression of this possibility raised to a high power. 8 "Is it true?" That is the question beneath the surface that animates the people as they come to church. They may or may not be consciously cognizant of their © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 4 question and certainly they will not let on the seriousness of their quest even if they recognize it. People naturally do not shout it out, and least of all into the ears of us ministers. But let us not be deceived by their silence. Blood and tears, deepest despairs and highest hope, a passionate longing to lay hold of that which, or rather of him who overcomes the world because he is its Creator and Redeemer, its beginning and ending and Lord, a passionate longing to have the word spoken, the word which promises grace in judgment, life in death, and the beyond in the here and now, God's word... They expect us to understand them better than they understand themselves, and to take them more seriously than they take themselves. 9 It is with that profound sense of the longing of the people, of the deep question of their life that the preacher must approach the pulpit. The serious meaning of the situation in our churches is that the people want to hear the word, that is, the answer to the question by which, whether they know it or not, they are actually animated, Is it true? The situation on Sunday morning is related in the most literal sense to the end of history; it is eschatological, even from the viewpoint of the people, quite apart from the Bible. That is to say, when this situation arises, history, further history, is done with, and the ultimate desire of man, the desire for an ultimate event, now becomes authoritative. 10 Then Barth continues with words that must burn in the consciousness of every person on whom the call to preach is laid: ... If we do not understand this ultimate desire, if we do not take the people seriously (I repeat it, more seriously than they take themselves!) at the point of their life perplexity, we need not wonder if a majority of them, without becoming enemies of the Church, gradually learn to leave the Church to itself and us to the kind-hearted and timid. 11 Thus Karl Barth well understood that sensitivity to people, to their concrete existence lived out in the real world provides the present horizon which must be addressed - addressed not with a word of speculative philosophy or human cleverness of whatever sort but addressed by the Word of God. THE WORD Before the preacher on Sunday morning is the open Bible, the second pole, the other side of the equation. If it is imperative that the preacher have a great sensitivity to his people, it is equally necessary to grasp the message of the Word of God in order that that message may be translated into the idiom of the contemporary world. The Word of God must sound forth again. The preacher's task is to communicate the Everlasting Gospel so that the message comes through. That message is in the Bible but the message will be released only when that which occurred in concrete history and thus received a concrete shape and © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 5 sound is translated into the shape and sound that will "say" the same thing in a new historical situation. Barth had a profound confidence in the Word of God. The movement that he effected has been labeled the theology of the Word. With the open Bible before him, the preacher becomes the servant of the Word. We can never abandon the Bible ... because it has a somewhat uncanny way of bringing into the church situation its own new and tense and mighty (mightier!) expectancy. If the congregation brings to the Church the great question of human life and seeks an answer for it, the Bible contrariwise brings an answer, and seeks the question corresponding to this answer: it seeks questioning people who are eager to find and able to understand that its seeking of them is the very answer to their question. The thoughts of the Bible touch just those points where the negative factors in life preponderate, casting doubt over life's possibilities - the very points, that is, where on the human side we have the question arising, Is it true? ... where that last perplexed craving has seized him and leads him, let us say, to church. 12 And what happens when the perplexed person full of longing makes his way to church and is encountered by the Word? Barth answers: The Bible responds without ado to the man who has awakened to a consciousness of his condition and to whom certainty has everywhere begun to waver; and its way of answering him is to ask with him, in its own way - think of the forty-second Psalm, think of Job - Is it true? Is it true that there is in all things a meaning, a goal, and a God?13 The Bible takes the question of our life which drives us to church and gives it depth; shows us that the question beneath all the questions of our life is a question about God. And further Barth declares, ... as the Bible takes these questions, translating them into the inescapable question about God, one simply cannot ask or hear the "question" without hearing the answer. The person who says that the Bible leads us to where finally we hear only a great NO or see a great void, proves only that he has not yet been led thither. This NO is really YES. This judgment is grace. This condemnation is forgiveness. This death is life. This hell is heaven. This fearful God is a loving Father Who takes the prodigal in his arms. The crucified is the one risen from the dead. And the explanation of the cross as such is eternal life ... The question is the answer.14 When the question of our life is understood to be the question of God, then the question has become the answer; then the reality of a great grace fills the yearning void and stills the restless fear. But we are not yet finished. Every Christian sermon finds rootage in the Bible, the Bible that has the uncanny power, as Barth says, to bring the answer to the question which animates the human quest. But something critical must happen © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 6 in the process by which the words of the text become the Word which is heard in the words of proclamation. THE WORD PROCLAIMED IN THE SERMON The Word of God - what is it? Essentially it is the message of His redemptive grace through which He effects His purposes of salvation. Where do we find it? We find it in the Bible. The Bible is not God's Word in some static sense whereby we can say between these leather covers we have God’s Word. God's Word is always active, living, dynamic because it is God speaking. But the Bible is God's Word in the sense that for us, God speaks through and by means of this word written. The written words of the Bible are the reverberations of the Word of God which is the message of God's redemptive grace; or could I use the word "residue?" - the written words of Scripture are the residue of the "happening Word," and the connection between the Word and the words is the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit of God that illumined the Prophet's mind and heart. The Truth exploded in the person of the Prophet - who spoke the Truth to God's people and wrote the message so that the message could be communicated further. That Word, which "happened" to the Prophet and was then put into words, now becomes the occasion for the Word to happen again. Every message from a Christian pulpit is tied to a written word. Every message is an attempt to set free the Word that is in the words. At times we read the Bible and, closing it, realize that we know nothing of what we have read. But at other times we read a verse or chapter and feel its truth penetrate to our soul. What is the difference? Same book. Perhaps the same words. But when the Word happens, the words become the vehicle of the Spirit Who looses its meaning on us; the Word happens again. Sermons are that way. In fact, Karl Barth distinguished the Word written and the Word proclaimed as two forms of the Word. Again, sometimes the message strikes no fire, sets no cord of the heart vibrating. Sometimes in a message the Word happens. Having distinguished two forms of the Word, Barth added a third - the Word made flesh - Jesus, the Word incarnate. We read in the opening verses of Isaiah 61 how the prophet connects the agency of the Spirit with "the word of proclamation. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the humble, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to those in prison; ... The passage goes on; it is a message of grace and redemption - a beautiful, hopeful message; it is God's Word proclaimed in words by the prophet anointed by the Spirit - that is, authorized and authenticated by the Spirit - by God. © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 7 The words are familiar because they are the words Jesus selected to use as his text when he returned to his home synagogue in Nazareth. (See Luke 4:18-19). That was a tremendous claim that Jesus made and the hometown folks did not receive it kindly. They drove him out of town. Jesus was claiming the Spirit of God as His authentication and authorization and he was saying - in me today in your presence the salvation of God is present. Jesus used the words of the Bible to point to himself as the incarnation of the Word of God - the one Truth, the message of redemption and freedom. The Word of God is the message of a redeeming grace and a saving purpose. It finds expression through the power of the Spirit of God: –when the Spirit created Jesus ("conceived by the Holy Spirit"); –when the Spirit enlivens the written words of the Bible so that the Word happens; –when the words of Scripture find expression in the proclaimed word of the sermon and the Spirit drives home the Word behind the sermon and the written word from which it arises. Such is the Word of God. Behind the word preached, behind the word written, behind the word made flesh, is God, the God of grace and salvation. That powerful conception of the Living Word of God we owe to Barth and that dynamic and promising view of preaching we owe to him, as well. It was the task of preaching that drove Karl Barth to the Bible and it was out of that encounter that the theological renewal of our century arose. It was in the service of the Church that proclaims Jesus Christ that Karl Barth labored fruitfully throughout his life. His great legacy to the Church is the recognition that all theological reflection must arise from and be directed to need and promise of preaching. To the end of his life he preached. He was a regular preacher at the Basle jail. Asked why he went there when he could command the great pulpits of the world, he replied that if he preached in a cathedral people would come to hear Karl Barth; at the Basle jail they came to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. On New Year's Eve, 1962, he preached at the jail on the text, "My grace is enough." In beautiful simplicity he declared: My grace - that is myself: I for you, I as your Saviour in your place - I who set you free from sin, guilt, misery and death, all of which I have taken on myself and so away from you - I who show you the father and open up the path to him - I who let you hear the great Yes which he has spoken to you too, to you personally, from all eternity ... That is my grace. And this grace of mine is enough. It is what you really and truly need, and what you, moreover, may and must have. You can hold on to it, you can live by it. You can also die with it. It is enough for you just now, it will also be enough for you to all eternity. © Grand Valley State University �Karl Barth: Preaching and Theological Renewal Richard A. Rhem Page 8 ... But say it to him! He hears it and is glad to hear it from you. He expects nothing more from you and from me than that we should say it to him as "the echo of what he says to us: "Yes, your grace is enough." Amen.15 ENDNOTES 1 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbook Edition, 1957), p. 97F. 2 Ibid., p. 100. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., p. 101 5 Karl Barth, Forward to Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes: Prolegomena zur Christlicken Dogmatik. (Munohen, Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1927). p. IX. 6 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man., p. 102. 7 Ibid., p. 103F. 8 Ibid., p. 108. 9 Ibid., p. 108F. 10 Ibid., p. 110. 11 Ibid., p. 110F. 12 Ibid., p. 116. 13 Ibid., p. 117. 14 Ibid., p. 120. 15 Karl Barth, Call For God. "New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 83F. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Barth, Karl, The Word of God and the Word of Man. New York: Harper and Row, 1957. Barth, Karl, Forward to Die Lejhr vom Worte Gottes: Prolegomena zur Christlicken Dogmatik. Mundien, Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1927. Barth, Karl, Call For God. New York: Harper and Row, 1967. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References Karl Barth. The Word of God and the Word of Man, 1957, Call For God, 1967, Forward to Die Lehr vom Worte Gottes: Prolegomena zur Christlicken Dogmatik, 1927. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19860501 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Preaching and Theological Renewal Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 1, 1986 entitled "Preaching and Theological Renewal", on the book Preaching and Theological Renewal, written by Karl Barth, it appeared in Perspectives, May, 1986, pp. 9-11. Tags: Preaching, Word of God, Theology, Meaning, Church, Grace. Scripture references: Karl Barth. The Word of God and the Word of Man, 1957, Call For God, 1967, Forward to Die Lehr vom Worte Gottes: Prolegomena zur Christlicken Dogmatik, 1927.. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Church Grace Meaning Preaching Theology Word of God https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/40dadfb171bd4075b2533a4b00a5f8c4.pdf f74cf4b03a952e00e205e19b06941d2d PDF Text Text The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem Book Review Self-Esteem: The New Reformation By Robert H. Schuller, (Word Books, 1983) Reviewed by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Published in Perspectives A Journal of Reformed Thought March 1986, pp. 10-13 The way of Jesus in this world led to crucifixion. God raised him up. Thus we have a gospel to proclaim, but only Jesus stands beyond the cross; our history is lived out under the shadow of the cross; those who follow Jesus are called to costly discipleship. An authentic biblical theology must embrace the cross and bring to expression the dying to self and denial of self, symbolized in the cross of Jesus and the cross Jesus calls us to bear. Does the theology of self-esteem outlined by Robert H. Schuller in his book, SelfEsteem: The New Reformation, meet the above criterion? Is there place for the cross in a theology of Self-Esteem? Schuller sketched the appearance of Christian theology, viewed from the perspective of self-esteem, which he contends is the deepest need of the human person. The whole spectrum of biblical truth is seen in light of this need. The traditional content of Reformed theology, which is Schuller’s heritage, is not changed, but the perspective of fundamental human need as a starting point does put that traditional content in a new light. That new light changes dramatically the appropriate approach to people. This is not surprising since this is theological understanding which arises from the pulpit, from the heart of an evangelist, and the passion of an apologist for the faith. Schuller’s conviction that the deepest need of the human person is the need for self-esteem or a sense of self-worth is coupled with an equally critical conviction — the dignity of the human person. The content of the gospel addresses the © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2 person’s deepest need; the approach to the person is determined by the infinite value of the human person created in the image of God. Robert Schuller has called for a daring and creative rethinking of biblical faith; indeed, for a new reformation. He has written a call to action, drawing a first, tentative outline of what a theology of self-esteem would look like. He invites the church to think with him and to go beyond him. He is convinced that it is possible to move beyond our Reformation theology, characterized by reaction, into a new age characterized by expanded mission. His own ministry of over thirty years has gained him a worldwide hearing. His credentials are established. Now he has moved beyond concrete demonstration into the area of theological reflection. He invites us to join him on the journey. To do so we must be certain that the gospel of Jesus Christ centered in the crucifixion and resurrection comes to full expression. Let us seek to discover from his own writing whether this is the case. The Human Person Central to Schuller’s understanding of both the content and approach of the gospel is the dignity of the human person. He claims: Historically, the Church does not have a commendable success record in its effort to purge sinful pride out of Christ’s followers without insulting, demeaning, and bringing dishonor to God’s beautiful children. The theological task to which Schuller calls the church is to discover a full-orbed theological system beginning with and based on a solid central core of religious truth—the dignity of man. And let us start with a theology of salvation that addresses itself at the outset to man’s deepest need, the “will to self worth.” He is insistent at this point: No theology of salvation, no theology of the Church, no theology of Christ, no theology of sin and repentance and regeneration and sanctification and discipleship, can be regarded as authentically Christian if it does not begin with and continue to keep its focus on the right of every person to be treated with honor, dignity, and respect. At the same time, any creed, any biblical interpretation, and any systematic theology that assaults and offends the self-esteem of persons is heretically failing to be truly Christian.... Such forceful affirmations raise questions about Schuller’s view of human nature and the human condition. Is he naive about the demonic potential of the human © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3 person? Is he not aware of the record of human history written in blood, laced with violence? Is his a Pollyanna view of the human situation, a refusal to see the darkness? That is scarcely the case; he does, however, make a critical distinction between the nature of the human person and the actual human condition. Human nature is marked by wonder and dignity, a reflection of the image of God in which the person was created. The human condition is marked by a reactive behavior which is not reflective of human nature but by a denial of that nature. The rebellious actions of a person are reactions, not the expression of a person’s true nature: By nature we are fearful, not bad. Original sin is not a mean streak; it is a non-trusting inclination. Label it a “negative self-image,” but do not say that the central core of the human soul is wickedness. If this were so, then truly, the human being is totally depraved. But positive Christianity does not hold to human depravity, but to human inability. I am humanly unable to correct my negative self-image until I encounter a life-changing experience with nonjudgmental love bestowed upon me by a Person whom I admire so much that to be unconditionally accepted by him is to be born again. Schuller uses the illustration of the golf ball. The outside dimpled surface gives little hint of what is really inside. Rebellion is our surface appearance. Why the rebellion? At the center of the golf ball is a hard rubber core. Around that core is a maze of stretched rubber wrappings. The core represents a negative self-image or an intrinsic lack of trust or simply fear. The stretched rubber wrappings are the reactions of that fear-filled core—all the anxieties and fearful reactions of negative emotions which surface as the rebellious exterior—angry, mean, violent. To use Schuller’s analogy, emanating from the core of the person constituted of fear, feelings of inferiority, and doubt are all forms of demonic behavior—enough to create hell on earth, presenting to the world an angry face. What is wrong with humankind is the ego run amuck, an ego threatened, insecure, desperately trying to establish itself, prove itself, justify itself, make something of itself. The consequence is sin and misery. One can hardly accuse Schuller of naiveté in regard to the darkness of the human situation. He is not content, however, simply to explain it in terms of wicked human nature. He asks why the human person reacts as he does. He finds the biblical picture of human sinfulness corroborated and explained by insights from the behavioral sciences. He sees the ego with its destructive potential reacting negatively because instead of trust which liberates for love, there is at the core a lack of trust which issues in fear, love’s opposite. What is needful? To be born again—changed from a negative to a positive selfimage through an experience of grace in an encounter with Jesus Christ. © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 4 Beginning with a strong conviction that every person must be treated with respect and accorded the dignity that is his because he is created in the image of God, Schuller has probed beneath the surface of human sin and rebellion to understand that one acts, not according to his nature, but reacts out of an intrinsic fear and lack of trust. That being the case, the approach to people is all important, and it is here that he is critical of the traditional approach of much of the church. One reason many Christians have behaved so badly in the past two thousand years is because we have been taught from infancy to adulthood “how sinful” and “how worthless” we are. The self-image will always incarnate itself in action. A negative diagnosis will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The most difficult task for the Church to learn is how to deal honestly with the subject of “negativity,” “sin,” and “evil” without doing the cause of redemption more harm than good. The Place of the Cross The cross of Jesus Christ plays a central role in the theology of self-esteem, and self-esteem is the perspective from which the cross is discussed. Therefore it may appear that Schuller reinterprets the meaning of the atonement, but that simply is not the case. He claims, “The Cross is the central force in the kingdom of God.” He discusses this claim under the double aspect of the cross of Christ and the cross of the Christian. Christ’s death for us witnesses to the infinite value we have in God’s sight. Such a realization changes one inside. The core of fear and lack of trust, which is the generating center of all negativity and rebellion, is transformed into trust and security—a positive sense of worth, liberating one in turn to extend love and forgiveness to others. Were this all Schuller had to say about the cross, his critics would be right in seeing in this interpretation the effect of the cross as “moral influence,” Jesus’ sacrifice inspiring us to emulate his example of self-giving love. To claim this as the heart of Schuller’s understanding of the atonement, however, is simply without warrant if we listen to his own statement. References to the atonement are to be found throughout the text and it is always the substitutionary atonement that comes to expression. For example: It is not until we meet Jesus Christ, who is perfect and he offers to share his robe of righteousness with us and his garment of grace is draped across our shoulders that we can then walk with him into the presence of God. He specifically discusses the crucifixion in another context. There he lists three ways in which we can say we are saved “by the blood of Christ.” © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 5 1. The Cross of Christ brings vitality to my dignity...I know the value of my life when I see the price God paid on the Cross to save my soul.... 2. The Cross of Christ makes atonement from guilt possible because it adds integrity to the positive Gospel...In the Cross of Christ we see the harsh reality of “negativity,” “demonic human behavior,” “collectivized social evil in institutions....” 3. The Cross of Christ adds morality to divine forgiveness. ...Negativity must pay its dues. Evil must be punished. So Christ has taken the rap “for our irresponsible negative behavior.” He experienced hell—on the cross...His suffering is credited to my personal account....So God is morally able and obligated to offer forgiveness to any person who claims the credit card of Calvary’s Cross to cover the guilt of his sinful behavior. As stated above, Schuller will always speak of the cross, and any other doctrinal truth for that matter, from the perspective of his central motif, self-esteem, because he is convinced that self-esteem affords an effective key for interpreting the gospel for our day. To say, however, that the atoning death of Jesus Christ for the sin of the world is not at the heart of that gospel in his understanding is simply not true. The second aspect in which the cross is “the central force in the Kingdom of God” he discusses as “the cross of the Christian.” This is the cross the person graced by God through Jesus Christ voluntarily assumes as his response to that grace. What does it mean to bear one’s cross? It means to respond positively to the dream God puts in the heart of the redeemed. Faithful to his Reformed heritage, Schuller is careful to stress that he is now speaking of the response of a grateful heart for a salvation freely given, a salvation fully accomplished and graciously applied. To experience grace is to respond out of gratitude, and that response involves commitment. Its price is self-denial—”The voluntary vicarious assumption of the Cross.” When God’s dream is accepted, we must be prepared to pay a high price. The dream that comes from God calls us to fulfill his will by taking an active part in his kingdom. The price? A cross. The reward? A feeling of having done something beautiful for God. It is the cross we voluntarily accept and willingly bear that distinguishes a dangerous egotism from healthy self-esteem. To pursue the dream and thereby to commit oneself to the fulfilling of God’s will as God reveals it to one is to bear the cross. There can be no success without a cross, but even here success must not be understood as “always winning and never losing.” Rather, success is to be defined as the gift of self- esteem that God gives us as a reward for our sacrificial service in building self-esteem in others. Win © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 6 or lose: If we follow God’s plan as faithfully as we can, we will feel good about ourselves. That is success! We will then be able to live with ourselves with dignity when we know deep down in our hearts that we did what God wanted us to do. Cross bearing is no minor theme for Schuller. Self- esteem restored in a person through the encounter with Jesus Christ and the experience of God’s grace becomes the dynamic of a fruitful life lived to the glory of God. If one has truly been overwhelmed by grace, redeemed by Jesus Christ, then one knows with Paul that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. For Schuller this is what it means to be a possibility thinker. To be saved is to know that Christ forgives me and I now dare to believe that I am somebody and I can do something for Cod and for my fellow human beings. Schuller contends that forgiveness is not simply the negation of our guilt but “a positive injection of saving and soaring faith!” Repentance follows the experience of grace. Our thinking is turned around; a whole new world presents itself and we are called to “caring, risky trust which promises the hope of glory...through noble, human need-filling achievements.” Cross bearing is costly. In many and various ways this fact comes to expression: There is no crown without a cross. There is no success without sacrifice. There is no resurrection without death...no accomplishment without commitment, and no commitment without conflict. For there is no commitment without involvement; there is no involvement without selfdenial; and there is no self-denial without personal sacrifice. So what is the real Christ-call to self-denial? It is a willingness to be involved in the spiritual and social solutions in society. Self-denial is the daring commitment of your name, your reputation, your integrity, your ego on the altar of God’s call to service. Mark this; it is important: The greatest Cross any person can carry is to risk sacrificing his or her ego by risking the embarrassment of a public failure in the pursuit of some noble, honorable, God-inspired dream. That is positive self-denial. It is denying your ego the selfish protection from a possible humiliating failure that might occur if you tried to carryout the divine idea. No one familiar with the ministry of Robert Schuller can doubt that he speaks here out of his own experience. Jesus followed a dream to do the Father’s will and he was crucified. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and he was assassinated. Robert Schuller has followed a dream, and only the naive would judge the personal cost in terms of the grandeur of the Crystal Cathedral. © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 7 Cross-bearing in Schuller’s understanding is a call “to do something creative and constructive.” He rejects the “crusader complex.” While recognizing that sometimes a situation calls for frontal attack, confrontation, he is also aware that such an approach is a dangerous style and should be the exception, not the rule, because violence breeds violence. The difference between a positive, constructive approach to society’s problems and the confrontational approach is the difference between generating a social climate of polarization versus creating a community where creative and mutually respectful dialogue can happen. Finally, cross-bearing will move the Christian person into the whole spectrum of human society and its concerns. Schuller will not choose between a gospel of personal salvation or a social gospel. He proclaims a whole gospel that brings personal salvation to individuals and addresses the larger societal issues as well. It is Schuller’s conviction that the idea of self-esteem provides an integrating factor which can show how the personal and social dimensions of theology can be interconnected. Schuller thus sees the applicability of the gospel to the full spectrum of human existence, personal and social. He sees the theology of the Reformation as reactionary and the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries as the “reactionary age.” With the conviction regarding the dignity of the human person and the realization that the deepest human need and longing is for self-esteem, he is convinced a Christian theology will be able to address the whole person and the whole of society with its healing gospel ushering in a new age, the age of mission. As we reflect on our walk with Jesus Christ through another Lenten pilgrimage we raise the question of the human condition and what address this time of selfdenial makes to it. In a critique of the idea that low self-esteem is at the heart of the human dilemma, David G. Myers cites recent data from psychological research which seems to indicate that there is rather a “self-serving bias” that characterizes the human person. Myers contends, It seems true that the most common error in people’s self-images is not unrealistically low self-esteem, but rather a self-serving bias; not an inferiority complex, but a superiority complex. In any satisfactory theory or theology of self-esteem, these two truths must somehow coexist [The Christian Century, December 1, 1982, pp. 1226-1230). If Myers is correct, it would not be the first time that truth proved dialectical. We ought not immediately be forced to choose between Schuller and Myers. Rather, it would seem that each has hold of an important and critical insight. In all of the recent research data referred to by Myers we are dealing with the human person in action—acting man or woman in concrete, existential situations. In our analysis of Schuller’s position on the human person we saw that there is no dark shadow, no demonic dimension of human behavior that he denies. His © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 8 contention regarding the fundamental need of every person for self-esteem says nothing about concrete human behavior. What he does insist is that that behavior is a manifestation, not of human nature as human nature, but rather of human nature as distorted, wrenched loose from its native soil of resting in God. Once that separation of the person from God occurs, all hell breaks loose, literally, but it is reaction, not simple action as a reflection of nature. Thus the recent research data only confirms what we in the church have always known from Scripture about ourselves: our lives are marked by rebellion, pride, and self-love in the sense of selfishness. It is precisely here that Schuller—the pastor and communicator of the gospel — has so much to teach us. The diagnosis of the situation is dismal; will we be content simply to declare that dark truth? Can we be content to reinforce what our hearers already really know but which, if thrown in their faces, will only reinforce them in their already entrenched rebellion by which they are trying to deny the truth? Schuller points us to an alternative which is both theologically and psychologically sound. There is no need to recite the darkness of the person’s reactive behavior of which he or she is quite aware; what is needful is to show that through the creative action and intention of God, he or she is something quite other than the behavior would seem to indicate. Through an appeal to what he is, not what he does, one may just succeed in breaking through to the person because the approach will have been motivated by love, executed with grace, and grounded in truth. Defenses tumble; the cornered is known, feels no need to rush to justify himself, senses acceptance, and learns of the reality of forgiveness. Then it is that deep repentance occurs. It is not a prelude to salvation but a fruit of the experience of grace. It is in the presence of Jesus Christ in whose face is seen the good and gracious God that one knows unconditional love and acceptance; therefore it is in that presence that one dares see oneself deeply and that one “dies” to those old patterns of reactive behavior that bound him in chains of selfish existence and created havoc in his human relationships and, most seriously, alienated him from God. If the church would really hear Robert Schuller, there would be renewal and revitalization of major proportions. One of my most respected teachers, Professor D. Ivan Dykstra, wrote in personal correspondence about Schuller’s basic premise regarding the dignity of the human person and the basic need for self-worth. Commenting on Schuller’s book, Self-Esteem:... he judges it was Bob Schuller in search of a theology, or, better, in search of a Bible. And this is exactly the right order and the only proper order, despite our wish and our pretense that we find our Bibles first and then go on from there. All reformations, vitalizations of the faith, happen by our first responding to an instinct of authenticity and then going on to re-read our © Grand Valley State University �Schuller, The Cross & the Theology of Self-Esteem, review by Richard A. Rhem Page 9 Bibles accordingly or creating our theologies....The great prophets did it that way, Jesus did, Luther, and so on down the line. Dykstra then goes on to reflect on his own philosophical work which led him to an examination of Christian beliefs through use of linguistic analysis. He raises the question, are our Christian beliefs Christian? His conclusion is That religious terms, including Christian ones, begin always in the form of some great, situationally defined, instinctive authenticities. After the first flush of excitement...there is a time of intellectual and institutional structuring of the belief. There is a virtually complete discontinuity of meaning between the universe of discourse of the original intuition and the institutionalized universe of discourse into which we move the original terms. In the process the whole original meaning is simply buried. In Christian contexts, the over-all name for that structuring is “ecclesiasticizing.” And everything, every dominating concept in the ecclesiastico-theological structure, loses the authentic Biblical meaning: faith, sin, Jesus, inspiration, scripture, resurrection have no longer any discernible connection with the initial biblical intent. Until some courageous soul, (like Luther, as one example) has, and has the courage to act on, a new authentic instinct. To attack the ecclesiastical inauthenticities one does not need to attack the Bible on which they base themselves; one needs only to “out-Bible” the bibliolaters. To read the Bible via the instincts is not to invent a new Bible; it is to recover it. Dykstra suggests that Schuller’s authentic instinctual grasp of a deep biblical truth has ramifications for the whole theological system; that perhaps Schuller’s unquestioned Reformed orthodoxy is itself too confined a vehicle to contain the ferment of his own insight. Such is certainly the case, but Schuller did not write this slender volume as the complete and final word. He writes a first word pleading with others to join the question for a more adequate way to bring to expression his own authentic insight confirmed by the worldwide hearing he has gained. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References Robert H. Schuller. Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, 1983. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19860302 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-03-02 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem a review of Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 2, 1986 entitled "The Cross and the Theology of Self-Esteem a review of", on the book Self-Esteem, written by Robert H. Schuller, it appeared in Perspectives, March, 1986, pp. 10-13. Tags: Way of Jesus, Theology, Unconditional Love, Human Nature, Christian, Self-Esteem, Forgiveness. Scripture references: Robert H. Schuller. Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, 1983. . Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Christian Forgiveness Human Nature Self-Esteem Theology Unconditional Love Way of Jesus https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4fa6a435f09e1814c4fa10de5a650117.pdf 0ee6ec047ba31a3f574ca1b011efdd5f PDF Text Text Theological Method: The Search For a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age 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 Spring, 1986 Leafing through a manila folder labeled “Theological Methodology” was an exercise in nostalgia. A few of us requested a reading course with Dr. Osterhaven in which we would examine various models of theological method and write a paper for presentation to the group. Perhaps it was there that my interest in theological method was stimulated or, perhaps, the desire to study the subject with Dr. Osterhaven arose from a distinction made by one of his esteemed teachers, Dr. Albertus Pieters, whose Facts and Mysteries of the Christian Faith fascinated me as a youth. Dr. Pieters distinguished systematic and biblical theology and gave clear preference to the latter. It was a moment of awakening; I was faced with the fact that the systematician's logical formulations might not always faithfully reflect the biblical witness; indeed, at times they might actually distort biblical truth. No task places one in the tension between the richness and diversity of the biblical witness and the systematization of the faith more than the task of preaching each Lord's Day. Thus I have continued to be challenged with the need to do theology in such a way that what comes to expression in the sermon is a faithful witness to biblical faith evidencing sensitivity to the contemporary situation. The sermon is the end product of the significant encounter of the Word and the world in the mind and heart of the preacher, and the theological task must be pursued to that end that the truth may find expression within the present horizon. It will be my purpose here to reflect on the substratum on which the sermon rests in the conviction that preaching with integrity demands not only theological understanding, but also self-consciousness of one's theological method. © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 2 It is a great privilege to offer the following discussion of theological method in honor of a highly esteemed teacher in whose person the authenticity and integrity of the Christian thinker is modeled out. A NEW BASIC MODEL OF THEOLOGY? In May of 1983, seventy professors of theology from around the world gathered at the University of Tubingen in Germany. The international ecumenical symposium was organized by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago, the International Magazine for Theology, Concilium, and the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Tubingen. The leading spirit in organizing the event was Professor Dr. Hans Küng, head of the Tubingen Institute. The key question was, “Is a base consensus in Christian theology possible today despite all differences?” In his introductory remarks, Hans Küng set the stage for the discussion. He said, The natural sciences, humanities, democratic plural societies and freedom movements of all kinds all have radical consequences, specifically also for theology, whose outgrowths have not yet even been conceptualized, much less dealt with. But is theology dependent on such multifaceted tensions, such divergent systems, or even fads? Or is a new, changed basic model of theology recognizable? Is there, then, a new “paradigm of theology,” which might adequately react to the present changed experience? Are there universal constants despite all the differing theories, methods, and structures in such a “new paradigm” which every Christian theology must advance because, scientifically, they are held accountable by the Christian faith? The key word in understanding the task of this symposium is “paradigm” which was introduced into this theological discussion from a discussion in the natural sciences by Thomas Kuhn whose book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, became the catalyst for reflection on the history of theological development. Kuhn defined paradigm as, an entire constellation of beliefs, values, technics, and so on shared by the members of a given community.1 On the basis of that understanding of paradigm, Hans Küng charted the history of theology, attempting to locate those points of significant ferment in the Church which led to the evolving of a new model or paradigm. He set forth a tentative periodization beginning with the primitive Christian theology that was shaped by apocalypticism followed by the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Patristic period, the East-West schism of the Eleventh Century, the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, including the Counter-Reformation of the Roman Church, the development of modern philosophy and the natural sciences of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, including the Enlightenment, the French and © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 3 American Revolutions and the Twentieth Century theological movements beginning with Barth's Dialectical Theology and including Existentialist, Hermeneutical and the various Liberation Theologies of the present. From these major shifts in the history of the Church and in theological posture, Küng finds five models or paradigms operational in the present whose roots lie in the major shifts of the past. Stemming from the Ancient Church is the model of Eastern Orthodoxy; from the Medieval period there remains a Roman Catholic traditionalism; from the Reformation era there developed a Protestant orthodoxy which is still embraced; from the Enlightenment classical Liberalism developed and in strong reaction to that Nineteenth Century Liberalism, the revolution whose catalyst was Karl Barth in the early decades of this Century, Dialectical Theology with several variants in the present. His schematization gives credence to the contention that eruptive events in Church and society often result in new insights, new angles of vision which are the catalyst for the conception of a new paradigm, a new model of theology. The Symposium held at Tübingen in 1983 had as its purpose the endeavor to find a new paradigm that could gather the best insights of the biblical studies of the modern period along with the understanding of the world, history and human existence available to us through all of the academic disciplines. Such a paradigm, Kiting contends, must be truthful, not conformist or opportunist; free, not authoritarian; critical, not fundamentalist or traditionalist; ecumenical, not denominationalist or confessionalist. A theology in the horizon of the present world of experience and critically rooted in the biblical tradition would be a theology at the same time both Catholic and evangelical, both traditional and contemporary, both Christocentric and universalist, both theoretical-scholarly and practical-pastoral. In sum: the quest is for a critical, ecumenical theology. In a paper read to the Symposium, Küng discussed the process by which these major shifts took place in the history of the Christian tradition. As indicated above, the study by the historian of science, Thomas Kuhn, was the catalyst for surveying shifts in theological understanding. Kuhn's book was a major challenge to the traditional self-understanding of natural science. According to Kuhn, progress in the natural sciences has not come through an orderly acquisition of knowledge which has cumulatively issued in our present body of scientific data. Much rather, progress has come in spurts, through major breakthroughs in understanding which have forced the replacement of a former model of understanding with a new model or paradigm. Küng writes, Kuhn's heretical main thesis is that radically new theories arise neither by verification nor by falsification but by the replacement - in individual cases, highly complex and protracted - of a hitherto accepted explanatory model (paradigm) by a new one. 2 © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 4 As an example of this process, Küng cites the shift from a Ptolemaic astronomy to the Copernican view. ... The more the movements of the stars were studied and corrected in the light of the Ptolemaic system, the more material was produced to refute that system. And the same thing happened not only with the Copernican revolution but also with the Newtonian, the chemical and the Einsteinian revolutions. ... The process may be tedious, protracted and complex. And these are transitional periods in which at first only the stereotypes of the old model begin to break up. But the critical state of the traditional theory increasingly comes to light. A period of pronounced insecurity generally precedes the emergence of new theories, which in the end leads to the destruction of the paradigm. In a word, crisis is the usual condition for the rejection of a hitherto accepted paradigm. 3 Scientific progress according to Kuhn comes not through an evolutionary, cumulative process, but through scientific revolution. Confirming and developing the thesis of Thomas Kuhn in regard to systemological analysis is Stephen Toulmin, who in the preface to his basic work entitled, Human Understanding, states his central thesis as follows: ... in science and philosophy alike, an exclusive preoccupation with logical systematicity has been destructive of both historical understanding and rational criticism. Men demonstrate their rationality, not by ordering their concepts and beliefs in tidy formal structures, but by their preparedness to respond to novel situations with open minds - acknowledging the shortcomings of their formal procedures and moving beyond them.4 From Kuhn’s work in the history of science and Toulmin's study of human understanding we come to the surprising recognition that the respective scientific disciplines and philosophical movements do their model building and systematization in the wake of new insight - some breakthrough in understanding or some intuitive grasp of truth which shatters the prevailing model or paradigm, forcing upon the community (academic or social or ecclesiastical) a new way of looking at Reality. This development has been especially fruitful in the theological discussions being carried on by the Universities of Tubingen and Chicago, highlighted at the Symposium to which I referred above. Hans Küng's attempt at a periodization of theological development is an attempt to demonstrate that there are fascinating parallels between that development and development in the natural sciences. He lists five parallels: © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 5 A. As in natural sciences, so also in the theological community, there is a “normal science” with its classical authors, textbooks and teachers, which is characterized by a cumulative growth of knowledge, by a solution of remaining problems (“puzzles”) and by resistance to everything that might result in a changing as replacement of the established paradigm. B. As in natural science, so also in the theological community, awareness of a growing crisis is the starting position for the advent of a drastic change in certain hitherto prevailing basic assumptions and eventually causes the breakthrough of a new paradigm or model of understanding. When the available rules and methods break down, they lead to a search for new ones. C. As in natural science, so also in the theological community, an older paradigm or model of understanding is replaced when a new one is available, D. As in natural science, so too in the theological community, in the acceptance or rejection of a new paradigm, not only scientific, but also extra-scientific factors are involved, so that the transition to a new model cannot be purely rationally extorted, but may be described as a conversion. E. In the theological community as in natural science, it can be predicted only with difficulty, in the midst of great controversies, whether a new paradigm is absorbed into the old, replaces the old or is shelved for a long period. But if it is accepted, innovation is consolidated as tradition. 5 Küng adds a word from Albert Einstein at this point, who said on one occasion, “Smashing prejudices is more difficult than smashing atoms.” But Küng adds, “Once they are smashed, they release forces that can perhaps move mountains.” These theses set forth by Küng he calls only provisional. They are offered for discussion and he is well aware where the critical question arises. After stating these parallels, he continues, And yet the question is thrust upon us: Does not theology, even Christian truth itself, faced by nothing but paradigm changes and new conceptions, become a victim of historical relativism which makes it impossible any longer to perceive the Christian reality and makes every paradigm equally true, equally valid? Perhaps the natural scientist is not very much concerned with this problem, but it is of the greatest consequence for the Christian theologian ... Let us therefore pose the question: Does a paradigm change involve a total break? 6 Küng's conviction is that in both science and theology there is preserved a continuity when there is a shift in paradigm. In theology he insists, We have to avoid the choice not only between an absolutist and a relativist view, but also between a radical continuity and a radical discontinuity. © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 6 Every paradigm change shows at the same time continuity and discontinuity, rationality and irrationality, conceptual stability and conceptual change, evolutionary and revolutionary elements. 7 Further, in theology and the historical sciences much more than in the basically un-historical natural sciences, “ ... it is therefore not a question of a new invention of a tradition. It is a question of a new formulation of tradition, admittedly in the light of a new paradigm.” The problem of continuity is a more serious problem for theology because theology deals with “truth.” Kuhn as a scientist must leave alone the ultimate questions of the “whence” and the “whither” of the world process and the human drama. Theology addresses those very ultimate questions. Thus there are not only parallels between the development of natural science and theology but there are also some significant differences. Christian theology lives out of the primordial event which is its source, its norm and to which it must continually return - the event of Israel and of Jesus Christ as set forth in the Scriptures. This primordial event which has found its preeminent expression in Jesus and is attested to in Scripture is not simply a past datum to be analyzed and interpreted but is a dynamic living force which time and again breaks out - for example, in the personal crisis of a Martin Luther. As Küng expresses it, The gospel itself then - obviously always in connection with a particular development in contemporary world history - appears here as a direct cause of the theological crisis, as ground of discontinuity in theology, as impetus to the new paradigm. 8 Further, because theology is anchored to a past historical event, a new paradigm may emerge and theological upheaval may occur, but there can never be the total replacement or total suppression of the old paradigm. Thus Küng declares a revolution in Christian theology can never take place except on the basis of and ultimately because of the gospel, and never against the gospel. 9 Another difference from a paradigm shift in the natural sciences is that in theology, because of the existential nature of the “decision of faith,” the academic decision for one paradigm or another is not always distinguished from the “decision of faith;” the person for whom the Christian reality comes to clear expression in a new paradigm causing him to abandon the old paradigm may be seen as choosing against the gospel itself of which the paradigms are but structures for understanding. © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 7 Finally, and closely connected to the foregoing observation, is the fact that when the Church and theological community reject a paradigm, ... rejection easily leads to condemnation, discussion to excommunication; gospel and theology, content of faith and outward form of faith, are identified.10 Because this is such a powerful tendency in the Christian community, when a new model of understanding is accepted, it is soon turned into tradition and tradition in turn becomes a new traditionalism. With the discussion of how knowledge has advanced in the history of science as the catalyst, Küng has thus surveyed the development of theological understanding to the present, observing both parallels and differences between the history of science and the history of theology. But his purpose is not simply information but, rather, the study is being engaged in in order to determine if there is a base consensus in Christian theology today. Are all the elements of ferment at work today in the Church pointing to a new paradigm in theology and, if so, what would such a paradigm look like? We have noted some of the essential characteristics that must be reflected in a new basic model for theology in our day. Beyond the characteristics listed, the parameters of any new paradigm must be set by two constants which provide the two poles in reference to which the Christian message must come to expression: The first constant: The present world as horizon. The second constant: The Christian message as standard. The “horizon” within which theological reflection must happen and theological formulation must occur is “our own present world of human experience.” Küng asserts: One thing should now be clear: that the reality of world, humanity, myself, is revealed in depth in its obvious ambivalence, its radical contingency and its continual change: an ongoing history of success and suffering, justice and injustice, happiness and unhappiness, salvation and disaster, sense and nonsense. Nor does this mean making the world evil, so that theologians can more easily get their God involved; it means taking stock without prejudice of what is. Theology does not create any reality, but interprets it. 11 The second constant has already been noted in our discussion of the differences between theology and the natural sciences. Küng describes it this way: If ecumenical theology wants to be Christian theology, its other pole must be the Judeo-Christian tradition and its primary norm cannot be anything except the Christian message on which this tradition is constructed as on © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 8 its ultimate ground. That is to say, the Christian primordial and basic testimony, the gospel itself in the sense of the good news in its entirety, as recorded in the Old and New Testament Scriptures, is the basic norm of ecumenical theology. 12 These two poles or constants then form the context within which theological formulation must come to expression. If we observe the history of theology after the great awakening of the Sixteenth Century, we see how in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions there was a hardening of theological positions. The Seventeenth Century saw the development of an orthodoxy shaped by Rationalism, which froze the new insights of the Reformers into carefully defined doctrinal positions with little regard for the present horizon. In the wake of the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century there was an attempt to come to terms with the new understanding of both human reality and the natural world. The classic Liberalism of the Nineteenth Century was an effort to proclaim the gospel within the confines of a weltanschaung - that had no room for transcendent Reality; the gospel, the second constant, was dissolved into the first, into the horizon of this world. In sharp reaction, Karl Barth reversed the whole tide of Nineteenth Century Liberalism, loudly proclaiming a theology of the Word, pointing to the God Who is the “Wholly Other.” Because he was in a posture of such sharp reaction, the early Barth nearly obliterated the present horizon, the first constant, although he was too deeply imbued with the culture of his day wholly to lose sight of it. The present discussion comes at a time when we are able with historical distance to gain some objectivity as we face the task before us. The theology of the future must never again lose sight of either constant. Our task is to find an expression of the Gospel which is faithful to the Word and honest with the world. If such an understanding of theology's task meets with anything like a consensus, then we may be poised for a fruitful period of theological activity. SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN A PLURALISTIC AGE Under the auspices of the Program for Studies in Religion at the University of Michigan, Hans Küng led a seminar during the Fall Term of 1983 on the subject of “Paradigm Change in Theology.” It was a cross-discipline seminar including students and professors from the schools of the arts and literature, law, and medicine. One of the papers studied was written by Professor David Tracy of the university of Chicago Divinity School, a Catholic scholar who has been a major participant in the discussion of paradigm shift in the symposium discussed above. Tracy has grappled with the matter of theological methodology. In his first book Blessed Rage for Order, published in 1979, he identified five theological models: Orthodox, Liberal, Neo-Orthodox, Radical, and a Revisionist model. These five © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page 9 models are the result of a different schematization than that followed by Küng, cited above, but there is great similarity of view as to the models operative in the present period. Tracy's Revisionist model, which he will endeavor to build, is his attempt at finding a new paradigm. It is his contention that a Revisionist model must be constructed which will enable the ecumenical Church to proclaim a message that will make the claim of truth recognizable in a pluralistic age. The Revisionist model is a critical correlation of the two principle sources for theology, the two constants mentioned above, cited by Küng: Christian texts and common human experience and language. Tracy sets forth the following theses: The Principle Method of Investigation of the Source, “Common Human Experience and Language,” Can Be Described as a Phenomenology of the “Religious Dimension” Present in Everyday and Scientific Experience and Language.” 13 The Principle Method of Investigation of the Source “The Christian Tradition” Can Be Described as a Historical and Hermeneutical Investigation of Classical Christian Texts. 14 Having set the agenda for his endeavor, Tracy moved on in his next work, The Analogical Imagination, to set forth the method and execute it in terms of his own commitment to the Catholic Christian Tradition. The Preface announces, “In a culture of pluralism must each religious tradition finally either dissolve into some lowest common denominator or accept a marginal existence as one interesting but purely private option?” Tracy is not willing to accept either option. A theological strategy must be found that can articulate the genuine claims of religion to truth. This is the task he sets for himself: a responsible affirmation of pluralism through the discovery of public criteria by which truth can be affirmed. Theology must develop public criteria of truth and discourse because it deals with the fundamental questions of existence and because it speaks of God. Recognizing that the theologian addresses three arenas, Society, Academy and Church, Tracy insists that the criteria of publicness applies in all three areas. Theology is the generic name for three disciplines: fundamental, systematic and practical theologies. Publicness is demanded of each. The primary focus of fundamental theology is the Academy, of systematic theology, the Church and of practical theology, Society. They differ not only in their primary reference group, but also in terms of their modes of argument, ethical stance, religious stance and in terms of expressing claims to meaning and truth. On the way to a responsible pluralism all conversation partners must agree to certain basic rules for the discussion. Two constants are present: the interpretation of a religious tradition and the interpretation of the religious dimension of the contemporary situation from which and to which the theologian speaks. In regard to the first, it is incumbent upon the theologian to make explicit her/his general method of interpretation, to develop “criteria of appropriateness” © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page10 whereby specific interpretations of the tradition may be judged by the wider theological community. In regard to the interpretation of the contemporary situation there must be an analysis of the “religious” questions, the question of the meaning of human existence in the present situation. There are major differences as well. Tracy addresses the question as to what constitutes a public claim to truth in the three sub-disciplines of theology. Fundamental theology's defining characteristic is ... a reasoned insistence on employing the approach and methods of some established academic discipline to explicate and adjudicate the truth claims of the interpreted religious tradition and the truth claims of the contemporary situation. 15 Various models are available, but whichever model is chosen fundamental questions and answers are articulated in such a way that any attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible person can understand and judge them in keeping with fully public criteria for argument. Personal faith may not enter the argument for the truth claims in fundamental theology. SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AS A HERMENEUTICAL TASK The systematic theologian's major task is the reinterpretation of the tradition for the present situation. Where the fundamental theologian will relate the reality of God to our fundamental trust in existence (our common faith), the confessional systematic theologian will relate that reality to their arguments for a distinctively Christian understanding of faith. Christian theology ... consists in explicating in public terms and in accordance with the demands of its own primary confessions, the full meaning and truth of the original “illuminating event” ... which occasioned and continues to inform its understanding of all reality. 16 Thus the task of the systematic theologian is a hermeneutical task. The “illuminating event” Tracy calls a religious classic. As in a classic work of art, the religious classic contains the possibility of ever-new “disclosures.” Classics Tracy defines as texts, events, images, persons, rituals and symbols that are assumed to disclose permanent possibilities of meaning and truth. The hermeneutical theologian seeks to articulate the truth-disclosure of the reality of God embedded in the tradition for the contemporary situation. If the systematic theologian speaks out of a particular tradition, is systematic theology public discourse? Can the claim of Truth be made for theological © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page11 statements arising out of a particular tradition? Tracy believes it can if systematic theology is understood as a hermeneutical task. It is Tracy's contention that systematic theology is hermeneutical. This means that systematic theology's task is to interpret, mediate and translate the meaning and truth of the tradition. Where this is not the case, where the notion of authority shifts from a truth disclosed to mind and heart to an external norm for the obedient will, theologians can no longer interpret and translate the tradition but “only repeat the shop-worn conclusions of the tradition.” Eventually, the central, classical symbols and doctrines of the tradition become mere “fundamentals” to be externally accepted and endlessly repeated.17 Tracy points to the contrast of a hermeneutical theology: The heart of any hermeneutical position is the recognition that all interpretation is a mediation of past and present, a translation carried on within the effective history of a tradition to retrieve its sometimes strange, sometimes familiar meanings. 18 How is this done? Recognizing that one begins within a tradition which has shaped one, that one is socialized, acculturated and thus without the possibility of finding some position “above” one's own historicity, ... the route to liberation from the negative realities of a tradition is not to declare the existence of an autonomy that is literally unreal but to enter into a disciplined and responsive conversation with the subject matter the responses and, above all, the fundamental questions, of the traditions.19 Tracy refers to Hans-Georg Gadamer's model of conversation as a model for understanding the dialogue with the tradition. Real conversation occurs only when the participants allow the question, the subject matter, to assume primacy. It occurs only when our usual fears about our own self-image die. ... That fear (dies only because we are carried along, and sometimes away, by the subject matter itself into the rare event or happening named “thinking” and “understanding.” For understanding happens; it occurs not as the pure result of personal achievement but in the back-and-forth movement of the conversation itself. The word “hermeneutical” best describes this realized experience of understanding in conversation. For every event of understanding, in order to produce a new interpretation, mediates between our past experience © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page12 and the understanding embodied in our linguistic tradition and the present event of understanding occasioned by a fidelity to the logic of the question in the back-and-forth movement of the conversation.20 Using the model of conversation Tracy shows how one enters into the history of the illuminating event. When interpreting a classic one recognizes its “excess of meaning” demands constant interpretation and is at the same time timeless – ... a certain kind of timelessness - namely the timeliness of a classic expression radically rooted in its own historical time and calling to my own historicity. That is, the classical text is not in some timeless moment which needs mere repetition. Rather its kind of timelessness as permanent timeliness is the only one proper to any expression of the finite, temporal, historical beings we are. ... The classic text's fate is that only its constant reinterpretation by later finite, historical, temporal beings who will risk asking its questions and listening, critically and tactfully, to its responses can actualize the event of understanding beyond its present fixation in a text.21 To be understood, a classic cannot be repeated; it must be interpreted. Thus Tracy claims, All contemporary systematic theology can be understood as fundamentally hermeneutical. This position implies that systematic theologians, by definition, will understand themselves as radically finite and historical thinkers who have risked a trust in a particular religious tradition. They seek, therefore, to retrieve, interpret, translate, mediate the resources ... of the classic events of understanding of those fundamental religious questions embedded in the classic events, images, persons, rituals, texts and symbols of a tradition.22 At the heart of Tracy's argument is the conviction that “classics exist;” they exist in all domains of human endeavor. He does not merely assert that they exist but builds a carefully argued case for their existence and specifically for the existence of the religious classic. The task of the systematic theologian is to interpret religious classics. Systematic theology intends to provide an interpretation, a retrieval (including a retrieval through critique and suspicion) and always, therefore, a new application of a particular religious tradition's selfunderstanding for the current horizon of the community. 23 Applying this understanding of systematic theology's task to the specific task of the Christian thinker, Tracy declares, In Christian systematics, that self-understanding is itself further © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page13 grounded in the particular events and persons of Jewish and Christian history: decisively grounded, for the Christian, in God's own self-manifestation as my God in this classic event and person, Jesus Christ. 24 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AS PUBLIC DISCOURSE But now the crux of the matter is reached: how does the systematic theologian address the wider public with discussion characterized by “publicness” thus stopping the retreat of Christian faith into the sphere of privateness and yet remain faithful to ... the radical particularity of the relationship of that gift's disclosure to the particular events of God's action in ancient Israel, in Jesus of Nazareth, in the history of the Christian Church? 25 Acknowledging the dilemma, Tracy believes it can be overcome. The means of overcoming the dilemma is the recognition of the public nature of the classic: ... grounded in some realized experience of a claim to attention, unfolding as cognitively disclosive of both meaning and truth and ethically transformative of personal, social and historical life. 26 Tracy therefore contends, Whenever any systematic theologian produces a classic interpretation of a particular classic religious tradition (as both Barth and Rahner have,) then that new expression should be accorded a public status in the culture. Every classic ... is a text, event, image, person or symbol which unites particularity of origin and expression with a disclosure of meaning and truth available, in principle, to all human beings. 27 And again, Any person's intensification of particularity via a struggle with the fundamental questions of existence in a particular tradition, if that struggle is somehow united to the logos of appropriate expression, will yield a form of authentically sharable public discourse. 28 Thus Tracy argues, classics exist, religious classics exist, and classic status in any field including the religious accords a text, work of art, symbol or other form of expression public status. Religious classics are © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page14 ... expressions from a particular tradition that have found the right mode of expression to become public for all intelligent, reasonable and responsible persons. 29 At the heart of the Christian tradition the classic expression is found in the event of God's self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. Tracy claims, One need not be a believer in Christianity to accord it (and thereby its central, paradigmatic, classic event) authentically religious status: a manifestation from the whole by the power of the whole. 30 Christology is the attempt to respond through some interpretation to the event of Jesus Christ in one's own situation. ... The Christian interpreter of this classic event recognizes in some present experience of the event - more precisely, in the claim disclosed in that event (paradigmatically in experiencing that event in manifestation and proclamation) as an event from God and by God's power. To speak religiously and theologically of the Christ event is ultimately to speak of an event from God. 31 The Jesus remembered by the tradition is experienced in the present mediated through the word of proclamation and sacramental action. Jesus remembered as the Christ is the experience of the presence of God's own self. The second part of Tracy's work entails the actual execution of the method here described. His is the attempt of a systematic theologian engaging in the hermeneutical task of mediating past and present so that the event of Jesus Christ remembered in the tradition comes to expression again in the present in a manner that affords the possibility of public discussion with all persons of good will who will engage in reasonable conversation. In Tracy's Revisionist model we find the essential characteristics set forth by Küng for a new paradigm in theology determined by a critical correlation of the present horizon and the biblical texts. Herein lies the present challenge to Reformed theology. Through the impact of biblical studies and the explosion of knowledge across the whole spectrum of human inquiry we have been alerted to the danger of confessionalism and the imperative to take seriously the horizon of contemporary experience. The opportunity is ours to realize the ideal of the Reformation. The Church of the Sixteenth Century was re-formed according to the Word of God and at its best it recognized that it must always be being re-formed. The Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation expressed itself in many Confessional statements and refused to reduce them all to one credal formulation. The Lutheran branch sought to bring the various strands of its confessional position into a unifying © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page15 statement with the Formula of Concord which then served as the norm of right doctrine. The Reformed churches feared that such a statement of unity might impede the continuing efforts to confess the faith in each new historical situation and thus determined to continue to confess its faith in ever-new credal formulations as the times demanded. It goes without saying that the ideal was soon abandoned. The high Calvinism of the Seventeenth Century with its rationalism and careful scholastic definitions was a complete break with the best insights of the early Reformers. Not only in the Reformed tradition but Protestantism generally has been plagued with the fossilizing of doctrinal formulation, the absolutizing of historically conditioned creeds and a defensive posture which has ill prepared it to meet the explosion of knowledge in the sciences, natural and social. Failing to act on its own best insight that the Church needs constant reformation of its understanding of the Faith, Reformed Orthodoxy has been severely threatened by the rise of historical thinking which is so characteristic of the modern period. Of course, the Church can continue to close its mind to the knowledge and insight that streams forth in a mighty torrent as we continue to unlock the secrets of the cosmos and, with a mindset of an earlier Century and a defensive posture, it can ward off the demands for reformation. In so doing it will lock the faithful into a system of ideas and structure of belief that become increasingly out of touch with their experience of the world, and it will continue to offend its brightest and most sensitive spirits who will finally be forced out when they can no longer deny the compelling truth that calls for a new understanding of the Faith. This is not a new problem for the Church. It is new only in the rapidity of breakthroughs on all frontiers of knowledge and in the rapid spread of that knowledge that is now possible in the Electronic Age which is creating the “Information Society.” But a Church confident of the Truth as it has come to expression in Jesus Christ will find the present day an exciting day in which to identify the questions and find the appropriate mode in which to witness to the self-disclosure of the God in the face of Jesus Christ. ENDNOTES 1 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 175. 2 Hans Küng, Does God Exist? (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1980), p. 107. 3 Ibid., p. 108. 4 Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. vii. 5 Hans Küng, “Paradigm Change in Theology,” unpublished paper read at the Symposium. 6 Ibid., p. 17. © Grand Valley State University �Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Richard A. Rhem Page16 7 Ibid., p. 17. p. 20. 9 Ibid., p. 21. 10Ibid., p. 21. 11 Ibid., p. 25. 12 Ibid., p. 26. 13 David Tracy, Blessed Rage For Order. (New York: Seabury Press, 1979),p. 47. 14 Ibid., p. 49. 15 David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination. (New York, New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 62. 16Ibid., p. 65, 66. 17Ibid., p. 99. 18Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 100. 20Ibid., p. 101. 21Ibid., p. 102. 22Ibid., p. 104. 23 Ibid., p. 131. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p. 132. 26 Ibid. 27Ibid., p. 132F, 133. 28Ibid.,p. 134. 29Ibid.,p. 233. 30Ibid.,p. 234. 31Ibid. 8Ibid., SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Küng, Hans, Does God Exist?. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1980. Küng, Hans, “Paradigm Change in Theology,” unpublished paper at Symposium, University of Michigan, 1983. Toulmin, Stephen, Human Understanding. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972. Tracy, David, Blessed Rage For Order. New York: Seabury Press, 1979, Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination. New York, New York: Crossroad, 1981. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. References Hans Küng. Does God Exist?, 1980, "Paradigm Change in Theology,", 1983, David Tracy. Blessed Rage for Order, 1979, The Analogical Imagination, 1981. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19860301 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-03-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource Theological Method: The Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The The Reformed Review a journal of the seminaries of the Reformed Church in America Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 1, 1986 entitled "Theological Method: The Search for a New Paradigm in a Pluralistic Age", it appeared in The Reformed Review, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 242-254. Tags: Preaching, Theology, History of Christian Tradition, Pluralism, Ecumenical, Historical Thinking. Scripture references: Hans Küng. Does God Exist?, 1980, "Paradigm Change in Theology,", 1983, David Tracy. Blessed Rage for Order, 1979, The Analogical Imagination, 1981. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Ecumenical Historical Thinking History of Christian Tradition Pluralism Preaching Theology https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a25b4beabe4a88ee7abdaa83888a8030.pdf 621082e18e9ee27ce2c90176e9f901cb PDF Text Text   The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development, By M. Eugene Osterhaven (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982) Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry Christ Community Church Spring Lake, Michigan Publication of Review Unknown With the publication of The Faith of the Church, Professor M. Eugene Osterhaven has given the Church and a generation of his students to whom he dedicates the work a lucid and concise manual of Christian theology in which he has immersed himself and which he has taught in a long and fruitful teaching ministry. His students will not fail to recognize their professor in the discussion of the Faith as it is here presented in its historical development from a Reformed perspective. Osterhaven defines theology as “the deliberate and careful consideration of the Christian faith.” Convinced of the necessity of theological reflection on the Faith of the Church, Osterhaven finds the norm of theology in the Scripture and its method in listening to the record of God's self-disclosure found therein. Systematizing is a necessary activity of the human mind which “seeks to relate whatever material is given it into an intelligible pattern” (p. 6), but theological reflection must not be understood as barren intellectualism, for the faith of the Church “comes out of the experience of God's people struggling to hear his Word in the context of life.” (p. 7) Following a discussion of method and approach, Professor Osterhaven deals with Christian doctrines in the order of their historical development beginning with “the Faith of Israel.” He deals with the doctrines of God, Jesus Christ, Scripture, Man, Sin and Grace, Hope and History, and Atonement. Then, reflecting his method of treating doctrine in its historical development, Osterhaven deals with the Reformation (“The Recovery of the Gospel”) and goes on to treat Justification by Faith, the Church and the Sacraments, giving an excellent treatment of the thinking of Luther and Calvin on these subjects. Chapters 13, 14 and 15 constitute an interesting and helpful discussion, which is not common to manuals of Christian doctrine. Osterhaven discusses Luther’s conception of “The Freedom of a Christian;” what he maintains is the key to Calvin's theology, “Order and the Holy Spirit;” and, “Experiential Christianity,” a © Grand Valley State University   �Eugene Osterhaven, Faith of the Church, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 2   discussion of religious experience as it grew out of the Reformation and found expression in both the mysticism and activism of Dutch Pietism and Puritanism. Chapter 16 deals with “Eschatology: The Kingdom, The Spirit, and The End.” Osterhaven touched Eschatology earlier (Chapter 7) when discussing the thought of Augustine but he takes it up here again to acknowledge the theological development of the twentieth century in the face of the crisis of meaning brought on by the cataclysms of history which have been a part of our experience. Brief reference is made to Barth, Cullmann, and a more extended discussion of VanRuler and Pannenberg concerning the place of history in the design of God. Professor Osterhaven concludes this study with a chapter on “The Relevance of The Faith,” “to focus on the relevance in such a world of Christian theology and the faith of the Church” (p. 213). The author’s personal conviction is clear. There is only one remedy for this world’s ills: God himself in the person of Christ, God-become-flesh, who has effected redemption and opened the way to reconciliation and blessing. That faith, the message of salvation proclaimed by the apostles, and the theology which studies and articulates it are as relevant today as ever. (p. 213) Stressing the need for Christian foundations and understanding well theology's critical function – “...reflection on anything and everything from the point of view of the biblical revelation” (p. 217) – as well as theology’s universal nature, Professor Osterhaven calls the Church to its task so to articulate the Faith that it will “make possible the development of a true humanism.” (221f) Citing Pascal, Osterhaven closes with the strong conviction that the true humanism is “a view of man which sees him, though full of contradictions, as a creature made by and meant for God.” (p. 223) In being guided through the historical developments of the Faith of the Church, one is immediately impressed with the author's thorough knowledge and understanding of the material presented. This is no superficial survey of Christian doctrine, but rather a concise summary of the main lines of the faith made possible only by a life-long acquaintance with the material as well as a serious commitment to the truth of the Faith confirmed in deep Christian experience. The Christian Faith here portrayed is the classic Reformed understanding. If any criticism is to be offered, it is not for what is presented but for what is not acknowledged; there is little cognizance taken of the seriousness of the criticism of the Faith from within the Church through the sifting of the foundations by the critical biblical studies of the last two hundred years and from without the Church through the development of Post-Enlightenment thought, both philosophical and theological, and the growth of secularism. © Grand Valley State University �Eugene Osterhaven, Faith of the Church, Book Review by Richard A. Rhem Page 3   The author calls us to the critique of modern culture and declares the relevance of the Faith for our contemporary situation. The Faith here presented provides the foundation for the task. One misses the wrenching that is involved in testing the faith by the fires of modern criticism whose seriousness does not come to expression. It remains for us to take the Christian foundations here so lucidly set forth and translate them into the language of contemporary culture that the ancient answers may continue to sound forth, demonstrating the relevance of which the author has no doubt. This is an excellent study which will be useful to the whole Church. It is a fitting capstone to a long and effective teaching career and the strongest confirmation of its truth is the life of the author, the life of a Christian man, deeply loved and deeply respected by all who have had the privilege of sitting at his feet and being shaped by his faith and life. © Grand Valley State University � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource 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. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA-4-19820101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Title A name given to the resource The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Church School Herald Journal Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Description An account of the resource Book Review created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 1, 1982 entitled "The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development", on the book The Faith of the Church: A Reformed Perspective on Its Historical Development, written by Eugene Osterhaven, it appeared in Church Herald. Tags: Faith, Church, Reformed, Theology. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Church Faith Reformed Theology