1. Introduction: Intellectual ethos of the World War I marked
the end of the progressivism of the century of optimism and set the stage for
the underlying current of pessimism characteristic of the ensuing years. The
theology of optimism that pervaded the nineteenth century was signaled by the
publication of a commentary on the book of Romans written by the pastor
residing in an obscure, small town in Switzerland. Karl Barth. The reaction to
the prevailing liberalism that Barth set in motion itself came to dominate the
theological scene well past the midpoint of the twentieth century. Although
thinkers in the wake of his pioneering work would chart their own individual
courses, the Swiss theologian did indeed father a new movement in theology.
This new direction is generally termed “Neo-orthodoxy” The neo-orthodox
movement was characterized by the attempt of theologians to rediscover the
significance for the modern world of certain of the doctrines that had been
central to the older Christian orthodoxy. Consequently, its proponents stood in
a complex relationship to the liberalism that preceded the newer thinking. On the
one hand, neo-orthodox theologians followed the older liberalism in viewing the
Enlightenment as a given, and as a result with their liberal forebears they
accepted biblical criticism. On the other hand, the younger thinkers rejected
what they saw as the culture Christianity of liberalism, which arose out of the
emphasis on natural theology. They were gravely concerned that Protestant
liberalism had been so intent on making the Christian faith relevant to the
modern mindset that it had lost the gospel. The Word of God, the voice of the
Transcendent One no longer thundered the good news of reconciliation to
humankind lost in sin. Neo-orthodoxy sought to reassert these forgotten themes
to a world that once again needed to hear God speak from beyond.
2. Karl Barth
Karl
Barth was born in 1886 in basel switzerland. His father was a lecturer at a
college for preacher and identified with the fairly conservative group within
the reform church of Switzerland. he wrote “massive Church Dogmatic-unfinished
at about six million words by his death in 1968. In 1921, Barth accepted a call
to teach theology at Gottingen. His
book, Commentary on Romans (1919), was the best among all of his publications.[1]
Barth emphasised the distinction between human them and divine reality and that
while humans may attempt to understand it, divine, our concepts of the divine
are never precisely aligned to the dim reality itself, although God reveals his
reality in part through human language and culture. Barth strenuously disavowed
being a philosopher; he considered himself a dogmatician of the Church and a
preacher. Kan Barth was the most significant theologian of the twentieth
century. His multi volume Church Dogmatics constitutes the weightiest contribution
to Protestant theology.[2] Knowledge
of God in terms of his account of the knowledge of God, Barth’s confidence
in the self-evidence of the object of theology leads him into a fideism, which
refuses to offer any sort of bridges between the knowledge of revelation and
knowledge of the human world. Barth sees God as utterly transcendent. He is not
to be identified directly with anything in the World, not even with the words
of Scripture. Revelation comes to men in the same way as a vertical line
intersects a horizontal plane, or as a tangent touches a circle. For Barth, the
knowledge of God is not something separate from the gospel of Jesus Christ. It
is not something that men can arrive at just as he wishes by following certain subtle
philosophical arguments. Knowledge of God is the result of encounter with God,
which in times the result of encounter with Christ, for Christ is the revealing
Word of God to man.
Many
factors have led Karl Barth to break away with the liberal theology, but two
outstands. first, he found that liberal theology was useless in his weekly task
of preaching the gospel in the church ministry. And so he started to study the
scripture carefully and kindly, and discovered the strange new world within the
Bible. Barth found out the relevant message for the parishioner in the
transcendent world in scripture and not in the philosophical theology of the
liberal school of neo-Protestantism, and stated that the word of God “it is not
the right human thoughts about God which form the content of the Bible, but the
right divine thoughts about men”[3]
Secondly,
factor that led Barth turn away from the liberal theology was an event in
August 1914 he read a published statement by ninety-three German intellectual
supporting Kaiser Wilhelm’s war policy and amongst them were is theological
teachers whom he honored. But their support to the war policy led Barth to
question about the liberal theology. Barth concluded disagreeing and
disappointed, that something was wrong with the liberal theology. Barth
criticized the liberal theology for turning the gospel into a religious message
that tell human of their own divinity instead of recognizing it as the word of
God, a message that human are incapable of anticipating or comprehending
because it come from a God utterly distinct from them.
2.1. Dialectical Theology
From
1921 to 1930, he taught in Gottingen and Munster, played a leading role in the
so-called 'dialectical theology’ and “theology of crisis” movement and wrote
prolifically He also wrote an abortive prolegomena volume entitled, Christian!
Dogmatics.“ Dialectical Theology certainly had something. it brought with it a
vivid awareness of God and of man’s inadequacy. But in the1925 and 1933, Barth
came to realize that it was not the whole story. Knowledge of God arises
out of encounter with God. It is mediated by the Son. But according to the New
Testament, there can be no knowledge of God without the illuminating work of
the Holy Spirit.[4]
Moreover, to make progress in the knowledge of God, it is not a matter
“intellectual acuteness. The knowledge of God operates, as it were, on ‘different
plane. Faith, love, humility and prayer matter the most.[5]
2.3.Revelation
In the case of theology, encounter with God through revelation of the Word is primary. And in this sense, Barth argues, theology is a science. (a) Like all other so-called sciences, it is a human effort after a definite of knowledge. (b) Like all other sciences, it follows a definite, self-consistent path of knowledge. (c) Like all other sciences, it is in the position of being accountable for this path to itself and to everyone. Reality is not shaped by our private likes and dislikes. Any philosophy worthy of the name must take into account things as they in fact are and not things as tie private individual may like them, to be. Barth became increasingly dismayed with the resource of his liberal theological education, and his gradual rediscovery of scripture as revelation eventually led to his explosive commentary on Romans.
In the case of theology, encounter with God through revelation of the Word is primary. And in this sense, Barth argues, theology is a science. (a) Like all other so-called sciences, it is a human effort after a definite of knowledge. (b) Like all other sciences, it follows a definite, self-consistent path of knowledge. (c) Like all other sciences, it is in the position of being accountable for this path to itself and to everyone. Reality is not shaped by our private likes and dislikes. Any philosophy worthy of the name must take into account things as they in fact are and not things as tie private individual may like them, to be. Barth became increasingly dismayed with the resource of his liberal theological education, and his gradual rediscovery of scripture as revelation eventually led to his explosive commentary on Romans.
In
response to the questions on how do we know God and what objective proof do we
have, Barth replies that in the very nature of the case, there can be no
’objective’ proof in the sense of external evidence from outside our encounter
with the Word of God. The old-fashioned proofs of God’s existence do not really
lead to the living God. Natural theology is a futile enterprise. It is like trying
to 'cook' a theorem in geometry by digging up proofs that do not really work.
Encounter with kind brings its own proof. Dismayed with the moral weakness
of liberal theology, Barth plunged into a study of the Bible, especially Paul’s
Epistle ' the Romans, to see what insights it could offer. it rocked the
theological community. Liberal theologians gasped in horror and attacked Barth
furiously, for in this and later works, he assaulted their easy optimism. In response
to their amiable view of humankind, Barth wrote. ”Men have never been good,
they are not good, they will never be good.” His theology me to be known as
’dialectical theology,’ or ’the theology of crisis'; it is a school of theology
known as neo-orthodoxy.[6]
Karl Barth is the most significant Protestant
theologian since Schleiermacher, whom
he sought to overcome and to whom he nevertheless remains indebted in
many “ways. Barth’s personal and literary influence profoundly changed the
shape of Christian theology across confessional boundaries, significantly
altered the direction of the Protestant Church, and also left an unmistakable
imprint on the politics and cultural life of the twentieth century.
3. Emil Brunner
3.1. Brunner’s Life and Career: Emil Brunner was born 23rd Dec. 1889,
in Zurich, Switzerland He was raised and educated in the Reformed
tradition of Zwingli and Calvin, and earned a doctorate in theology from the
University of Zurich in 1913. Major part of his life he spent teaching theology
in that same university. He taught at Princeton University in the United States
for one year (1938-1939) and at the Christian University of Tokyo from 1953 to
1955. He preached frequently in the great cathedral of Zurich, where Ulrich
Zwingli had thundered during the Reformation, and he welcomed international
students, many from America, to his classes as well as to his home. A
significant number of American evangelical theologians came to Zurich, and
through them his influence on American theology continued into the 19608 and
1970s. Brunner died in his home city of Zurich in April 1966. After long
illness that had seriously affected his ability to work beyond retirement.[7]
3.2. Theological Concerns:
Almost every theologian is influenced by a concern about the
wrong directions in which that person sees theology is moving. Clearly Brunner’s
main concern was to counter the drift of nineteenth and early twentieth-century
theology into the type of immanence that, in the words of Paul jewett, “regards
man and God as metaphysically, epistemological and ethically continuous, so
that man may arrive at the true knowledge of God within the framework of his
own innate possibilities. Such a theology of immanence was epitomized in the
various branches of Hegelian thought and was implicit in the entire theological
methodology of classical Protestant liberalism at the turn of the century.[8]
“If God is what . . . philosophical Theism says He is,
then He is not the God of the Biblical revelation, the sovereign Lord and
Creator, Holy and Merciful. But if He is the God of revelation, then He is not
the God of philosophical Theism.” Where he differs with Barth[9].
3.4. Biblical Personalism:
Martin Buber a Jewish theologian and philosopher had
influenced Brunner in his "discovery" of the biblical concept of
truth as divine human encounter. Buber also developed this insight most fully
in his book “I and Thou” and Brunner explicated its significance for a Christian
doctrine of revelation in Truth and Encounter.[10] In
order to grasp the nature of divine revelation, Brunner, following Buber,
argued that one must first distinguish between two kinds of truth and
knowledge. “it-truth” and “Thou-truth.” The former is appropriate to knowledge
of the world of objects. Whereas the latter speaks to the world of persons. A
fundamental difference exists between persons and objects, failure to recognize
this difference and carry through its consequences in all areas of life lies at
the foundation of the errors of philosophy.[11]
Consequently, building on Ebner and Buber,
Brunner asserted that, the very essence of Christianity lies in the
eventfulness of encounter between God and humanity. Knowledge of God is
personal in the sense that it transcends the plane of objects and the subject-object
dualism inherent in knowledge of objects, calling instead for
personal decision, response and commitment:
Truth as encounter is not truth about
something, not even truth about something mental, about ideas. Rather is
it that truth which breaks in pieces the impersonal concept of truth and
mind, truth that can be adequately expressed only in the I-Thou form. All use of impersonal terms to describe it, the
divine, the transcendent, the absolute, is indeed the inadequate way
invented by the thinking-of the solitary self to speak of it-or, more
correctly, of Him.[12]
According to Brunner, because God is personal,
truth about God and knowledge of God must be the kind that is appropriate to
the “Thou." Consequently, Christian truth must be truth as encounter,
truth that happens in the crisis of the meeting between God and the human
person in which God speaks and the person responds. Only such truth does
justice to the freedom and responsibility of persons; only such truth preserves
the heart of the gospel, namely, the personal relationship with God: “This
truth comes to man as a personal summons; it is not a truth which is the fruit
of reflection; hence it is truth which, from the very outset, makes me directly
responsible." Building from his concept of revelation as l-Thou encounter,
Brunner's entire approach to theology has been designated “biblical personalism."
He did indeed elevate this insight, and his attempt to center everything around
it stands as his greatest contribution to modern theology.[13]
4. Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr never saw himself as a theologian. Above all
he was in the words of his wife, a preacher and a pastor, he was likewise
a social ethicist an apologist and a “circuit rider” among the nation‘s
colleges and universities. Because his education was interrupted by family
needs following the death of his father and by his “boredom with epistemology,
Niebuhr never gained the usual academic theological credentials. The
highest degree he completed was the M.A. from Yale. Nevertheless in terms
of impact, he has been hailed as the most influential American theologian
of the first half of the twentieth century. His influence was felt beyond
the Christian community, for his activities and writings carried impact in the
entire nation. As D. R. Davies noted, one of his greatest achievements is that
he has made theology a science of secular urgency and significance. He is one
of the very few theologians to whom secular and humanist thinkers pay
attention, as much as they pay to their own publicists. This is a most rare
achievement, of which few theologians can boast.[14]
His shadow was especially felt in the social-political realm. Over a decade
after his death, Paul Jersild concluded, “It is difficult to find a theologian
in the twentieth century who has exerted more influence on a nation's political
life than has Reinhold Niebuhr.[15]
4.1. Practical Christianity: Throughout his writings three interrelated
themes predominate, all of which fall under Niebuhr's basic central task. First
he was intensely interested in the practical implications of Christian faith.
His fundamental goal was that of setting forth the insights of the Christian
tradition within the modern situation and in living out in his own life the
convictions that his faith inculcated in him. His goal was always, to establish
the relevance of the Christian faith to contemporary problems. As an Insult, he
refused to limit his endeavors to abstract theological discussions, but became
an activist, seeking to apply theological insights to realms as diverse as
politics, international affairs, human rights and economic systems. In each, however,
he consistently sought to act as a prophetic preacher, encountering
contemporary social life with the critique provided by Christian faith. In so
doing, he functioned as a type of apologist, for he sought to show the
significance and value of Christian faith in a society that had largely
selected the gospel or in his words, he was interested “in the defense and
justification of the Christian faith in a secular society.” But his apologetic
employed an approach far different from the classical appeal to the
intellectual reasonableness of Christianity. Niebuhr attempted to set forth the
Christian faith as providing the meaning of life, but he maintained that, no
ultimate sense of the meaning of life is rationally compelling. In fact, the
two central propositions of Christianity, that God Is person and that God has
taken historical action to overcome the alienation between humankind and God, are
absurd from a strictly ontological standpoint.[16]
Whereas the reigning liberal theology of his day had sought to reduce the
absurdity of the faith by reducing the biblical message to a set of “eternal
principles” of ethics or ontology, Niebuhr advocated an apologetic that would
make clear the ontologically ambiguous status of the concepts of personality
and history. In the midst of such ambiguities, we must leave room for the
non rational, so that the message of God‘s relationship to creation as
evidenced in the symbols of the Bible can be spoken.[17]
4.2. Proximate justice: It comes throughout his writings “proximate
justice.” Niebuhr set forth a prophetic declaration concerning the reality of
the human situation in the world. Regardless of our good intentions, we can
hope to find in human society only a partial experience of justice, he said. Perfection
is an impossible goal, “the impossible possibility” that nevertheless confronts
us in the present. According to Niebuhr, this situation is rooted in the
unalterable reality of the human situation itself. As humans we always stand
under infinite possibilities and are potentially related to the totality of
existence; but we are nevertheless always creatures of finiteness.[18]
Thus, we ought not to believe naively that the solutions we propose to social
ills or our fervent efforts to alter society will inaugurate the perfect human
order. Our attempts to redress evils in society will breed other injustices.
The best we can hope for is a more just situation today than was present yesterday.
In theological terms, the kingdom of God is an unachievable goal, a standard we
can never reach but that continually stands as judge over human society. It
does not come within history, that is, by human action, but is God’s gift from
beyond.[19]
4.3. Christian Anthropology:
Niebuhr‘s
writings continually explore the human situation lying behind the impossibility
not only of creating a fully just society but also of attaining the ideal in
any form in the realm of the real. His quest to understand this impossibility
led Niebuhr to classical Christian theology, specifically anthropology, the
doctrine of the nature of the human person. In fact not only did anthropology
he at the center of his magnum opus, The
Nature and Destiny of Man, his understanding of the human predicament is a
constant thread present in and tying together virtually all of his writings.
The constant presence of anthropology in Niebuhr’s writings led one commentator
to conclude:
Niebuhr’s most significant contribution to the restatement of
Christian theology in our generation is his exposition of the doctrine of man.
Unlike systematicians like Aquinas or Barth who cover the whole corpus of
Christian truth by the method of a Summa, Niebuhr makes one doctrine brilliantly
plumbed to its depths, the basis of his whole thought.[20]
Although this comment was
considered as an overstatement, it does underscore the centrality of
anthropology to Niebuhr‘s thinking. Niebuhr was drawn to the doctrine of
humanity because he discovered a profundity in the classical Christian
understanding lacking in liberalism. Actually it was in his view, the rejection
of the biblical anthropological themes by the reigning liberal tradition, which
replaced them with the false doctrines of the perfectibility of humankind and
the idea of progress that was responsible for the central problems of the day.
He affirmed the high stature of humanity as created in the image of God as well
as the biblical theme of universal human sinfulness.[21]
4.4. Modified Neo-orthodoxy:
Niebuhr’s interests as a
theologian-ethicist-preacher, centers in Anthropology. At the same time, his
understanding of the human reality was embedded in a broader theological
context that incorporated certain themes articulated by European neo- orthodox
luminaries such as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, while at the same time
evidencing important differences from them. The central difference lay in the
degree of rejection of liberalism. Concerning American neo-orthodoxy, of which
Niebuhr is often cited as the most significant voice, Edward Carnell declared,
“its own retreat from liberal immanence is less ambitious.[22]
Niebuhr was less severe in his rejection of liberalism than Barth and others,
because he proposed a less restricted understanding of the relation of God to
the world. On this central issue he agreed with the main emphases of Continental
neo-orthodoxy without being as thorough going in the focus on the disjunction
between God and the world as were the theological giants of Europe. He saw in
the Bible an emphasis on the transcendence of God, but one that is balanced
with an emphasis on God’s intimate relation to the world.[23]
Therefore Niebuhr affirmed a twofold revelation
from God. Private (or “general”) revelation is “the testimony in the
consciousness of every person” that one’s life touches transcendent reality
beyond the system of nature in which each person exists. This private
revelation in turn gives credence to the second dimension of revelation, namely,
public, historical ("special”) revelation.[24]'
Thus, whereas Barth found no point of contact between God and the human person, Niebuhr found whole areas of contact while agreeing that humans are sinners, he nevertheless saw the human potential, even the potential to see oneself as a sinner. While emphasizing divine transcendence, he did not remove God so far as to eliminate the possibility of knowing God. He agreed that revelation was an offense to reason, but not so as to make human recognition of truth impossible. Nor was natural theology fully erroneous so as to make eternity irrelevant to history. Rather, the wisdom of God discerned by faith is never in complete contradiction to human experience, and as a result the truth of the gospel can be confirmed by experience, even though it is not derived from experience.[25]
Thus, whereas Barth found no point of contact between God and the human person, Niebuhr found whole areas of contact while agreeing that humans are sinners, he nevertheless saw the human potential, even the potential to see oneself as a sinner. While emphasizing divine transcendence, he did not remove God so far as to eliminate the possibility of knowing God. He agreed that revelation was an offense to reason, but not so as to make human recognition of truth impossible. Nor was natural theology fully erroneous so as to make eternity irrelevant to history. Rather, the wisdom of God discerned by faith is never in complete contradiction to human experience, and as a result the truth of the gospel can be confirmed by experience, even though it is not derived from experience.[25]
5. Conclusion: the challenge of the twentieth-century
theologians was not an easy task, and with uncertainty of whether it is even
possible to balance the transcendence and immanent theologians had tried to
make theology relevant to the modern world. And here in the above we have tried
to see how the neo-orthodox theologians had tried to recover the importance of
the transcendence. In the midst of the challenges of questions like, how do we
understand “Word” “God” and “Heaven”, in what sense does God’s voice collide
with the world? Who is this God, who addresses us in this manner? And from
where does God speak? From the above we and know that neo-orthodoxy had of
course sounded the theme of the word of God coming to our world from beyond. But in addition, this
movement also served a chastening function. It reminded us of the classical
Christian doctrine of sin, which should give theologians pause, lest we become
overwhelmed by the hubris of the modern age and believe we are able to capture
ultimate truth by our rational constructs. Barth may have overstated his case
for a categorical rejection of natural theology. Yet the somber note he,
together with other neo-orthodox thinkers, struck in response to the apparently
unbridled optimism of classical liberalism is of lasting value. Our fallenness
does preclude our solving the human predicament by the employment of innate
human capabilities. We stand in need of resources that transcend our world.
Contra Barth there may indeed be a point of contact between the in-breaking
Word and the human receptacle; yet in the final analysis the resource that
invades our world is of a categorically different order. And so the
challenge of making theology relevant to our world goes on.
[1] Bouvert
Regulas, Christian Philosophy (Delhi: ISPCK, 2013), 208.
[2]
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary
of Theology (England: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 76.
[3] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 124.
[5]
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary
of Theology (England: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 77.
[7] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 77-78.
[9] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age
(Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 78-79.
[10] Sinclair
B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary of
Theology (England: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 87.
[11] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age
(Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 80.
[12] Sinclair
B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary of Theology (England: Intervarsity Press,
1988), 88.
[13] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 82.
[15] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age
(Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 99.
[16] Sinclair
B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary of Theology (England: Intervarsity Press,
1988), 91.
[18] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 102.
[19] Hans Schwarz. Theology in a Global Context
The Last Two Hundred Years (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans publishing company,
2005), 36.
[20] Hans
Schwarz. Theology in a Global Context The Last Two Hundred Years (Cambridge:
William B. Eerdmans publishing company, 2005), 36-40.
[21] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 103.
[22] Hans Schwarz. Theology in a Global Context
The Last Two Hundred Years (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans publishing company,
2005), 41.
[23] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 105.
[24] Sinclair
B. Ferguson, Ed., New dictionary of Theology (England: Intervarsity Press,
1988), 95.
[25] Stanley
J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century theology: God and the world in a Transitional Age (Hyderabad:
Authentic, 2004), 105.
No comments:
Post a Comment