A History of Christian Thought: From its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism
by
Paul Tillich,
Carl E. Braaten (Editor)
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Previously published in two separate volumes entitled
Paperback, 550 pages
Published November 15th 1972 by Touchstone
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URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
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CHAPTER
VI The
Development of Protestant Theology
WE shall now give a
survey of the rhythm in the development of Protestant theology in the last
centuries. This development is important not only from the historical point of
view, but also because elements created during this period are profoundly embedded
in our minds and souls and bodies. Although we cannot present a history of
Protestant theology, we can show the various tides in its development.
A. THE PERIOD OF ORTHODOXY
The immediate wave which
followed the Reformation is the period of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is greater and
more serious than what is called fundamentalism in America. Fundamentalism is
the product of a reaction in the nineteenth century, and is a primitivized form
of classical Orthodoxy. Classical Orthodoxy had a great theology. We could also
call it Protestant scholasticism, with all the refinements and methods which
the word "scholastic" includes. Thus, when I speak of
Orthodoxy, I refer to the way in which the Reformation established
itself as an ecclesiastical form of life and thought after the dynamic movement
of the Reformation came to an end. It is the systematization and consolidation
of the ideas of the Reformation, and developed in contrast to the
Counter-Reformation.
Orthodox
theology was and still is the solid basis of all later developments, whether
these developments—as was usually the case—were directed against Orthodoxy, or
were attempts at restoration of it. Liberal theology to the present time has
been dependent on the Orthodoxy against which it has fought. Pietism
The Development of Protestant
Theology 277
was dependent on the
Orthodoxy which it wanted to transform into subjectivism. Past and present
restoration movements try to recapture what was once alive in the period of
Orthodoxy. Hence, we should deal with this period in a much more serious way
than is usually done in America. In Germany, and generally in European
theological faculties—France, Switzerland, Sweden, etc—every student of
theology was supposed to learn by heart the doctrines of at least one classical
theologian of the post-Reformation period of Orthodoxy, be it Lutheran or
Calvinist, and in Latin at that. Even if we should forget about the Latin
today, we should know these doctrines, because they form the classical system
of Protestant thought. It is an unheard-of state of things when Protestant
churches of today do not even know the classical expression of their own
foundations in the dogmatics of Orthodoxy. This means that you cannot even
understand people like Schleiermacher or Ritschl, American liberalism or the
Social Gospel theology, because you do not know that against which they were
directed or on what they were dependent. All theology of today is dependent in
some way on the classical systems of Orthodoxy.
Orthodox
theology also had a political significance, because of the need to define the
status of religion in the political atmosphere of the post-Reformation period.
It was a period which prepared the Thirty Years' War. Under the German emperor
every territory had to define exactly where it stood, and this was the basis of
its legal acknowledgment within the unity of the Holy Roman Empire. The
theology, furthermore, was a theology of the territorial princes. They wanted
to know from their theological faculties exactly what a minister was supposed
to teach. They had to know it because they were the official lords of the
church, the highest bishops, summi episcopi. All of the theological
problems at this time involved a legal problem. When in regard to the Augsburg
Confession you read about the Variata or Invariata, you might
think, "What nonsense!" Not only the unity of Protestantism was
threatened, but also people were killed when the Variata (the Altered
Augsburg Confession) was introduced in place of the Invariata (the
Unaltered Augsburg Confession) without the permission of the princes. It was
more than just nonsense. It was the difference between Gnesio-Lutheranism and
Philippism. Gnesio-Lutheranism means genuine or original Lutheranism, and was
278 A History of Christian Thought
represented by Flacius,
who was also the greatest church historian of Protestantism. Flacius had a
point of view similar to the Barthian school today, stressing the total
depravity of man. In scholastic terminology Flacius said that the substance of
human nature is original sin. This idea, however, was not accepted by
Orthodoxy.
Philippism,
on the other side, represented the tendency of Philip Melanchthon. It was very
similar to Reformed ideas, so that it is even difficult today to find out how
much in Philippism is Reformed and how much is Melanchthonian. This group was
nearer to what today we would call a moderate liberal theology, against the
Gnesio-Lutherans. The result of these struggles at the end of the sixteenth
century was the Formula of Concord (1580). Many of the territorial
churches believed that it contained the pure interpretation of the Augsburg
Confession in its unaltered form. The implication of all this is that the
doctrinal element becomes much more important in Orthodoxy than in the Reformation,
where the spiritual element was more decisive than the fixed doctrines. Luther
did not fix doctrines, although he himself could be very tenacious.
1. Reason and Revelation
We
must deal now with the principles of orthodox thought. One of the first was the
relationship to philosophy, a very old issue in Protestantism. Luther, it
seems, was disinclined to accept anything from reason, but in reality this is
not true. It is true that he made many angry statements against the
philosophers, by whom he usually had in mind the scholastics and their teacher,
Aristotle. But in his famous words at the Diet of Worms Luther himself said
that unless he were refuted either by Holy Scripture or by reason, he would not
recant. Luther was not an irrationalist. What he fought against was that the
categories of reason should transform the substance of faith. Reason is not
able to save but must be saved itself.
It
became immediately clear that theology cannot be taught without philosophy,
that philosophical categories must be used, consciously or unconsciously, in
teaching anything whatsoever. For this reason Luther did not prevent
Melanchthon from introducing Aristotle again, and with Aristotle many
humanistic
The Development of Protestant
Theology 279
elements. However, there
were always some who attacked philosophy, humanism, and Aristotle. There was a man,
Daniel Hoffmann, who said: "The philosophers are the patriarchs of
heresy." This is what some theologians say even today. But when they
develop their own theologies, you can easily show from which "patriarchs
of heresy", that is, from which philosophers, they have taken their
categories. They have said: What is philosophically true is theologically
wrong; the philosophers are unregenerated insofar as they are philosophers.
This is a very interesting statement because it means that there is a realm of
life which in itself cannot be regenerated. This contradicts, however, the
emphasis on secularism in Protestantism. "Philosophers", said
Hoffmann, "try to be like God because they develop a philosophy which is
not theologically given." Hoffmann was not able to carry through this
idea, but he produced a continual suspicion against the philosophers in the
churches and in theology, a much greater suspicion against philosophy than
exists in the Roman Church. And this suspicion is very much alive again in the
present-day theological situation.
The
final victory of philosophy within theology was the presupposition of all the
theological systems in Orthodoxy. Johann Gerhard was the one who developed the
classical system in Lutheran theology. He was a great philosopher and
theologian, in some ways comparable to Thomas Aquinas for Roman Catholics. He
represents the latest flowering of Protestant scholasticism. He distinguished
articles which are pure from those which are mixed. Those which are solely
revealed are pure; those which are rationally possible as well as revealed are
mixed. He believed, with Thomas Aquinas, that the existence of God can be
proved rationally. But he was also aware that this rational proof does not give
us certainty. "Although the proof is correct, we believe it because of
revelation." In this way we have two structures: the substructure of
reason, and the superstructure of revelation. The biblical doctrines form the
superstructure. What actually happened later—and this is a preview of the centuries
which followed—was that the mixed articles became unmixed rationally, and that
the substructure of rational theology dispossessed the superstructure of
revelation, drawing it into itself and taking away its meaning. When this
happens, we are in the realm of rationalism or Enlightenment.
280 A History of Christian Thought
2. The Formal and Material
Principles
Protestantism
in Orthodoxy developed two principles of theology, a formal and a material
principle. So far as I know, however, these are nineteenth-century terms. The
formal principle is the Bible; the material principle is the doctrine of
justification. They are interdependent, according to Luther. What presents the
message of justification in the Bible is that which deals with Christ, and this
is what is authentic. On the other hand, this doctrine is taken from the Bible
and is, therefore, dependent on it. This interdependence of Bible and
justification was maintained in Luther's thought in a free, creative, and
living way. The attitude of Orthodoxy became different. The two principles
were placed beside each other. The result was that the Bible became the real
principle in the realm of authority.
What
was the doctrine of the Bible in Orthodoxy? The Bible is attested in a
threefold way: (1) by external criteria, such as age, miracles, prophecy,
martyrs, etc.; (2) by internal criteria, such as style, sublime ideas,
moral sanctity; (3) by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. This testimony,
however, gets another meaning. No longer does it have the Pauline meaning that
we are the children of God ("The Spirit himself beareth witness with our
spirit that we are children of God." Romans 8:16). Instead, it
became the testimony that the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures are true and
inspired by the Spirit. In place of the immediacy of the Spirit in the
relationship of God and man, the Spirit witnesses to the authenticity of the
Bible insofar as it is a document of the divine Spirit. The difference is that
if the Spirit tells you that you are children of God, this is an immediate
experience, and there is no law involved in it at all. But if the Spirit
testifies that the Bible contains true doctrines, the whole thing is brought
out of the person-to-person relationship into an objective legal relationship.
This is exactly what Orthodoxy did.
A
very interesting discussion about the theologia irregenitorum followed
from this, the theology of those who are not converted, the unregenerated. If
the Bible is the law of Protestantism, it should be possible for all who can
read the Bible and interpret it objectively to write a systematic theology,
even though they do not participate in the Christian faith. All they have to do
is to
The Development of Protestant
Theology 281
understand the meaning
of the words and sentences of the Bible. This was absolutely denied by the
pietists, who said that there can be only a theologia regenitorum, a
theology of those who are regenerated. If we look at this discussion in modern
terms, we can say that Orthodoxy believed in the possibility of a systematic
theology which is not existential, while the pietists believed that it is
necessary for theology to be existential.
There
is something difficult in both positions. The unregener-ated man is able to
know that what the Church or the Bible says is essential for salvation, but he
is unable to apply this to the present situation. The function of the orthodox
theologian is independent of his religious quality. He may be completely
outside. On the other hand, the pietist theologian can say of himself, and
others can say of him, that he is converted, regenerated, and a real Christian.
But he has to state this with certainty. Is there anyone who can do this, who
can say: "I am a real Christian"? The moment he does it, he ceases to
be a real Christian, since he is looking to himself for certainty in his
relation to God. This is most certainly impossible. This problem still exists
today in all Protestant churches. In my Systematic Theology I have
solved the problem in the following way. Only he who experiences the Christian
message as his ultimate concern is able to be a theologian, but nothing more
than this can be demanded. It may be that one who is in doubt about every
particular doctrine is a better theologian than many others, as long as this
doubt about doctrine involves his ultimate concern. So one does not need to be
"converted" to be a theologian—whatever that term may mean. You are
not asked to test whether or not you are a good Christian, so that you can say:
"Now since I am a good Christian, I can be a theologian." The pietist
would tell you: "You must first be converted before you can really be a
theologian.' Then you should answer him: "The only thing which is 'first'
is that the ultimate concern coming from God has grasped me, so that I am
concerned about him and his message, but I cannot say more than this. And
sometimes I am not even able to express it in these terms, because even the
term 'God' disappears sometimes. In any case, I cannot use it as the basis for
believing that I am a good Christian and thus possibly a theologian."
The
orthodox doctrine of inspiration took some of Calvin's ideas and made them more
radical and primitive. The authors of Scrip‑
282 A History of Christian Thought
ture were the hands of
Christ, the notaries of the Holy Spirit, the "pens" by which the
Spirit wrote the Bible. The words, and even the pointings in the Hebrew text,
are inspired. Hence, an orthodox theologian, Buxtehof, contested the fact that
the consonants of the Hebrew text received their vowel pointings in the seventh
to ninth centuries A.D.; instead, they must have originated with the Old
Testament itself. The prophets must have invented the system of pointing,
which was actually invented fifteen hundred years later. This is the
consequence of a consistent doctrine of inspiration; otherwise, what would the
divine Spirit do with the Hebrew text, for without the vowels, the Hebrew words
are ambiguous in many places. Then there is the problem with Luther's and the
King James' translations, and with other new translations. One is driven to
actual absurdities with this doctrine of inspiration. To maintain it one has to
make artificial harmoniza-tions, for there are innumerable contradictions in
the Bible on historical as well as on other matters. Such contradictions are
made out to be only apparent, and one is forced to be ingenious in inventing
ways to harmonize them.
Another
deeper principle was the analogia scripturae sanctae, the analogy of
sacred Scripture, which means that one part must be interpreted in terms of
another. By this means creeds could be established on the basis of Holy
Scripture. These were the formulae which everybody was supposed to find in the
Bible. This was another inescapable consequence of the doctrine of inspiration.
There
was another help for people who had to swallow the doctrine of verbal
inspiration. The question was: What about the many doctrines we find in the
Bible? Are they all necessary for salvation? The Catholic Church had a very
good answer. You do not need to know any of them; you have only to believe what
the church believes. Only the ministers and educated people need to know the
special doctrines. The Catholic layman believes what the church believes,
without knowing what that is in many respects. Protestantism could not do this.
Since personal faith means everything in Protestantism, the distinction between
fides implicita and explicita (implicit and explicit faith) is
impossible for it. But then an impossible task arose: How can every ordinary
farmer, shoemaker, and proletarian in the city and the country understand all
these many doctrines found in the Bible, which are
The Development of Protestant
Theology 283
too numerous
even for an educated man to know in his theological examinations? The answer
was given by distinguishing between fundamental and non-fundamental articles.
Such a distinction is popular even today. In principle this distinction should
not be made, because if the divine Spirit reveals something, to what extent can
we say it is non-fundamental? In any case, non-fundamentals proved later on to
be very fundamental, when certain consequences were drawn from non-fundamental
deviations.
Although this was a dangerous thing, it had to be done for educational
reasons. Most people are just not able to understand all the implications of
the doctrines of the church. Two interests were in conflict with each other. On
the one hand, the interest of the systematic theologian is to increase the
fundamentals as much as possible; everything is important, not only because he
is writing about it, but because it is in the Bible. On the other hand,
the interest of the educator contradicts this interest of the systematic
theologian. The educator wants to maintain as little as possible, so that what
he teaches becomes understandable. He would like to leave out all doctrines of
secondary importance. In the end the educator prevails. What we find in the
rationalism of the Enlightenment is largely a reduction of the fundamentals to
the level of popular reasonableness. Education was partly responsible for the
coming of the Enlightenment; it was a central concern of all the great
philosophers of that period. Even today the departments of education are
usually more inclined toward a theology based on the Enlightenment than the
other departments of theology are. The reason for this is that the educational
needs bring about a limitation of content, whereas the theological needs call
for an enlargement of content.
B. PIETISM
Orthodoxy had
one doctrine which was a transition to the next great movement—Pietism. In its
doctrine of the ordo salutis, the order of salvation, the last step was
the unio mystica, the mystical union with God. For Luther this is the
beginning of the faith in justification. The moment that Orthodoxy accepted
from the ecclesiastical tradition the unio mystica as a definite state
which must be reached, the concept of faith became intellectualized. In Luther
both are kept together; in Orthodoxy they fall asunder.
284 A History of Christian Thought
Faith becomes the
intellectual acceptance of true doctrine, and communion with God becomes a
matter of mystical experience. This splits Luther's thought—especially of the
younger Luther—into two pieces; the mystical and the intellectual aspects are
placed beside each other.
What
is Pietism? The term is much less respectable in America than in Europe. There
the words "pious" and "pietist" can be used of people, but
hardly in America, because here they carry the connotations of hypocrisy and
moralism. Pietism does not necessarily have these connotations. It is the
reaction of the subjective side of religion against the objective side. Of
course, the subjective side in the order of salvation was dealt with in
Orthodoxy, but it did not mean very much. Actually Orthodoxy lived in the
objectivity of theological and ecclesiastical organization. Yet, this should
not be overemphasized. As the hymns of Paul Gerhardt show—he lived during the
highest development of this period—there was always a personal religious
relationship to God. But for the masses of people it was the license to become
licentious; the state of morality was miserably low, especially in the Lutheran
countries, where the doctrinal element was decisive and discipline did not
exist.
The
pietists, and especially the greatest of them, Philip Jacob Spener, wrote in
continual reference to Luther. He showed that all the elements of Pietism were
present in the early Luther, and that Orthodoxy had removed them in favor of
the objective contents of doctrine. Spener tried to show that Orthodoxy had
grasped only one side of Luther. Pietism was justified in this respect. Pietism
also had a great influence on culture as a whole. It was the first to act in
terms of social ethics. The pietists in Halle founded the first orphanage and started
the first missionary enterprises. Orthodoxy held that the non-Christian nations
are lost, because they had already received the apostolic preaching immediately
after the founding of the church, and rejected it. St. Thomas, for instance,
had gone to Asia. So it is not necessary to renew the missionary enterprise.
The pietists felt altogether differently about it. Human souls, wherever they
may be, can be saved through conversion. So they began their missions to
foreign lands, and this gave them world-historical perspectives. A man like
Zinzendorf, together with Wesley, looked to America, while Orthodoxy restricted
itself to its own territorial churches.
The Development of Protestant Theology 285
The
liturgical realm was also changed a great deal. One of the most important
changes was the reintroduction of confirmation as a confirming of the sacrament
of baptism.
Pietism
is important for theology in three respects. It tried to reform theology, the
church, and morals. According to Pietism, theology is a practical discipline.
In order to know, one must first believe—an old demand of Christian theology.
This demand entails, at the same time, the central importance of exegesis. Old
and New Testament theology become decisive, not systematic theology. Wherever
biblical theology prevails over systematic theology, that is almost always due
to the influence of Pietism. Before the theologian is able to edify others, he
must first be educated himself.
The
church is not only a body of people which exists to listen to the Word. Not
only ministers but also laymen are the bearers of the church. Laymen are to
have an active part in the priestly function in different places—sometimes in
the church, but mostly in their homes, and in special conventicles of piety, collegia
pietatis, where they came together to cultivate piety. They spent hours in
the interpretation of the Bible, and they emphasized the need for conversion.
They emphasized the idea of an ecciesiola in ecciesia, a small
church within the large church.
Pietism
also influenced the morals in the Protestant world. At the end of the
seventeenth century the moral situation was disastrous in Europe. The Thirty
Years' War brought about dissolution and chaos. The form of life became
extremely brutal, unrefined, and uneducated. The orthodox theologians did not
do much about it. The pietists, however, tried to gather individual Christians
who would accept the burden and the liberation of the Christian life. Its main
idea was sanctification, a common emphasis in Christian sectarian movements.
Individual sanctification includes, first of all, a negation of the love of the
world. The question of the ethical adiaphora became important in the discussion
with orthodox theology. (Adiaphoron means that which makes no
difference, having no ethical relevance.) The question was whether there are
some human actions of no ethical relevance, which can be done or left undone
with equal right. Orthodoxy said there is a whole realm of such adiaphora; Pietism
denied it, calling it love of the world. As it often happens with such things,
Spener was mild in his condemnation, then Francke
286 A History of Christian Thought
and the Halle pietists
became very radical. They fought against dancing, the theater, games, beautiful
dresses, banquets, shallow talk in daily life, and in general resembled the
Puritan attitude. In this connection, however, I would like to say that it was
not so much the Puritans who produced this system of vital repression so common
in America; it was more the pietistic evangelical movements of the
mid-nineteenth century which were responsible for this condemnation of smoking,
drinking, movies, etc.
The
orthodox theologians strongly reacted against the attack of the pietists. One
of them wrote a book with the title Malum Pietisticum, "The
Pietistic Evil". They fought against each other on many points, but in the
end the pietistic movement was superior because it was allied with the trends
of the time, away from the strict objectivism and authoritarianism of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the principles of autonomy which
appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
It
is entirely wrong to place the rationalism of the Enlightenment in
contradiction to pietistic mysticism. It is popular nonsense that reason and
mysticism are the two great opposites. Historically, Pietism and the
Enlightenment both fought against Orthodoxy. The subjectivity of Pietism, or
the doctrine of the "inner light" in Quakerism and other ecstatic
movements, has the character of immediacy or autonomy against the authority of
the church. To put it more sharply, modern rational autonomy is a child of the
mystical autonomy of the doctrine of the inner light. The doctrine of the inner
light is very old; we have it in the Franciscan theology of the Middle Ages, in
some of the radical sects (especially the later Franciscans), in many sects of
the Reformation period, in the transition from spiritualism to rationalism,
from the belief in the Spirit as the autonomous guide of every individual to
the rational guidance which everybody has by his autonomous reason. From
another historical perspective, the third stage of Joachim of Floris, the stage
of the Holy Spirit, is behind the idea among the bourgeoisie of the
Enlightenment that they have reached the third stage, the age of reason, in
which every individual is taught directly. They go back to the prophecy of
Joel, in which every maid or servant is taught directly by the Holy Spirit, and
no one is dependent on anybody else for the Spirit.
Thus we can say that
rationalism is not opposed to mysticism,
The Development of Protestant
Theology 287
if by mysticism we mean
the presence of the Spirit in the depths of the human soul. Rationalism is the
child of mysticism, and both of them are opposed to authoritarian Orthodoxy.
C. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Socinianism is one of
the sources of the Enlightenment. It was a movement started by Faustus Socinus,
who fled from Italy to Poland where he found a haven of security against the
Counter-Reformation and the persecutions of some of the Reformation churches.
He and his followers wrote the book called Racovian Catechism, which
presents a predominantly rationalistic Protestant theology. Harnack says in
his history of Dogma that Socinian-ism was the end of the history of
Christian dogma. Protestantism had preserved some dogmas, at least the early
dogmas of the church. Socinianism dissolved all the Christian dogmas with the
help of the rationalism and humanism of the Renaissance. This movement is more
important than either the repetition of it in English deism, where it was
radicalized, or in modern liberal theology, including Harnack himself, where it
was carried through.
(1)The Socinians accepted the
authority of the Bible, but declared that in non-essential things it may be in
error. i'urtherrnore, historical criticism is necessary. Its criterion is that
nothing can be a revelation of God in the Bible that is against reason and
common sense. And nothing that is morally useless can be the revelation of God
in the Bible. Socinus spoke of religio rationalis, rational religion,
which is given in the Bible and is the criterion for the authority of the
Bible.
(2)In the doctrine of Cod Socinus
criticized mainly the dogma of the trinity. The Socinians are the predecessors
of the later Unitarian movements. He said—and in this he is historically right
—that the arguments for the trinitarian dogma do not exist in the Bible as they
were later presented in Orthodoxy. The Bible does not contain the dogma of the
trinity, although there are some trinitarian formulations. The Greek concepts,
he said, anticipating the Ritschlian criticism of the dogma on which we are all
dependent today, are inadequate for understanding the meaning of the gospel
and are, moreover, contradictory in themselves.
(3)God created the world out of the
given chaos (tohu wabohu
288 A History
of Christian Thought
in the creation story in
Genesis) which the pagan religions and also Greek philosophy presuppose. Man is
the image of God because of his reason, which makes him superior to the
animals. Adam was not a perfect man, but was primitive and by nature mortal. He
had neither original immortality nor original perfection. J believe this is
closer to the biblical text in both respects than the later glorification of
Adam which makes his fall absolutely impossible to understand. The Socinians
derive the fall of Adam from the strength of his sensual impressions and on the
basis of his freedom. This
freedom is still in man.
(4)Hence, the idea of original or
hereditary sin is a contradictory concept. Socinus says that there is no sin
without guilt. If we are guilty by birth, then we must have sinned before we
were born, or at least at the very beginning of our life, which is a
meaningless statement. What is really the truth is that we are historically
depraved and that our freedom is weakened. This makes it necessary for God to
give us a new revelation beyond natural revelation. Christ has a true human
nature, but not a divine nature. On the other hand, he is not just an ordinary
man. He is a higher type of man, a "superman", so to speak, in the
Nietzschean, not the comic-book, sense. For this reason he can be an object of
adoration.
(5)The priestly office of Christ is
denied. He is prophet and king. The ideas about a substitutionary sacrifice or
punishment or satisfaction for sin are meaningless and self-contradictory, because
guilt is always a personal thing and must be attributed to individuals. On the
other hand, Christ is king and sits at the right hand of God and is really
ruling and judging.
(6)Justification is dissolved into a
moralistic terminology. In order to be justified, we must keep the
commandments. With respect to the state, he favored passive resistance against
the power forms of the state.
(7)Eschatology is dissolved; it is a
fantastic myth. What remains and is most important is immortality. This must be preserved by all means.
Many
of these ideas anticipate the theology of the Enlightenment and modern
liberalism. What really survives from Socinianism are the three theological
ideas of the Enlightenment: God, freedom, and immortality. I like to quote from
Immanuel Kant's What is Enlightenment?: "Enlightenment is
man's release
The Development of Protestant
Theology 289
from his self-incurred
tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without
direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not
in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without
direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own
reason!'—that is the motto of enlightenment." Kant goes on to show how
much more comfortable it is to have guardians and authorities but he says this
comfort has to be given up. Man must stand upon himself; it is his nature to be
autonomous.
Rationalism
and Enlightenment emphasize human autonomy. "Autonomy" is not used in
the sense of arbitrariness, of man making himself or deciding about himself in
terms, of his individual desires and arbitrary willfulness. Autonomy is
derived from autos and nomos (self-law) in Greek. It does not say
that "I am a law unto myself", but that the universal law of reason,
which is the structure of reality, is within me. This concept of autonomy is
often falsified by theologians who say this is the misery of man, that he wants
to be autonomous rather than dependent on God. This is poor theology and poor
philosophy. Autonomy is the natural law given by God, present in the human mind
and in the structure of the world. Natural law usually means in classical
philosophy and theology the law of reason, and this is the divine law. Autonomy
is following this law as we find it in ourselves. It is always connected with a
strong obedience to the law of reason, stronger than any religious idea that
seems to be arbitrary. The adherents of autonomy in the Enlightenment were
opposed to anything so arbitrary as divine grace. They wanted to emphasize
man's obedience to the law of his own nature and the nature of the world.
The
opposite of autonomy is the concept of heteronomy. Hetero-nomy is precisely
arbitrariness. Arbitrariness shows up as soon as fear or desire determine our
actions, whether this fear be produced by God or society or our own weakness.
For Kant the authoritarian attitude of the churches, or even of God if he is
seen in a heteronomous light, is arbitrariness. Arbitrariness is subjection to
authority, if this authority is not confirmed by reason itself, for otherwise
one is subjecting oneself on the basis of fear, anxiety, or desire. The
Enlightenment is the attempt to build a world on this autonomous reason.
Just
as autonomy is not willfulness, reason is not calculation.
290 A History of Christian Thought
Reason is the awareness
of the principles of truth and justice. In the name of this reason, the
Enlightenment fought against the demonic authorities of the ancien régime in
eighteenth-century France and in Europe generally. This reason is the awareness
of the principles of truth and goodness, not the calculating and controlling
reason of business. The eighteenth century had some heroic elements in it;
reason is always seen fighting against the distortions of humanity under the
regime of the French kings and the Roman popes and all who cooperated with them
for the suppression of humanity. We should not have contempt for the
rationalism of the eighteenth century, if we know what it did for us. It is due
to the Enlightenment that we have no more witch trials. It was Cartesian
philosophy applied to concrete problems which made such a superstition
impossible. The general education we all enjoy in the West is a creation of
the eighteenth century. And our democratic ideology had its origin in the same
century.
Harmony
is a third principle of the Enlightenment, following from the principles of
autonomy and reason. If we find the principles of truth and justice in the
depths of our being, and if each individual has different interests, how are a
common knowledge and common symbols of democracy and economy possible? If
autonomous reason in each individual is the ultimate arbiter, is not that the
end of a coherent society? The principle of harmony is the answer to this
question. This principle does not mean that there is nice harmony between
everyone. The eighteenth century knew how terrible life really was. Rather,
harmony means that if everyone follows his rational, or even irrational
tendencies, there is nevertheless a law behind the backs of everyone which has
the effect of making everything come out most adequately. This is the meaning
of the Manchester school of economics, the meaning of the pursuit of happiness
in the American Constitution and of belief in democracy. In spite of the fact
that each one decides for himself about the government, a common will, a volonté
genérale, will somehow result from all of this. This is the belief in
ethics and education, that a community spirit will be the result of everyone's
becoming educated as a personality. This is the principle of Protestantism,
that if every individual in his own way encounters the biblical message, a
conformism of Protestant character will be the outcome.
The miracle is that this
happened, that actually the prophecy
The Development of Protestant Theology 291
under the principle of
harmony was really verified in all these realms. The greatest development in
economy happened. A Protestant conformism arose, in spite of the numerous
denominations. And democracy has worked and is still working, in spite of the
disruptive tendencies that are visible today in America. The modern belief in
progress is rooted in this principle of harmony, in spite of any lack of
authority.
Tolerance
is another concept we must keep in mind when dealing with the Enlightenment.
One of the main historical reasons for tolerance is that if intolerance had
continued, all Europe would have been destroyed by the religious wars. It could
be saved only by a tolerant state which is indifferent toward the various
confessional groups fighting against each other. However, when John Locke
wrote his letters on tolerance, he was well aware that tolerance can never be
an absolute principle. So he limited it in an interesting way. Although a
leader of the development toward the Enlightenment, he nevertheless said that
there are two groups which cannot be tolerated. They are the Catholics and the
atheists. Catholics cannot be tolerated because they are by definition
intolerant; they aim to subjugate every nation they can by force to the
authority of the Roman Church. Atheists are not intolerant, but they threaten
the very foundation of Western society, which is based on the idea of Cod. The
greatest witness to John Locke's point is Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that
because "God is dead", the transformation of the whole society is at
hand. This is what John Locke wanted to preclude in the name of reason.
English
Deism is another movement of great importance for modern theology. The deists
used philosophy in a practical way to solve theological problems. Deism was a
movement of the intelligentsia, and not so much a real philosophy. They wrote
attacks against traditional Orthodoxy. They criticized, as the Socinians had
done, the problems of biblical religion. All elements of criticism can be found
in them which we now associate with liberal theology. The problems of biblical
history, the authority of Jesus, the problem of miracles, the question of
special revelation, the history of religion, which shows that Christianity is
not something so different, the category of myth, which was invented by the
deists two hundred and fifty years before Buitmanu's essay on
demythologization—these are the problems with which Continental theology has
had to deal ever since. The great movement
292 A History of Christian Thought
of historical criticism
began around 1750. Lessing, who was the greatest personality of the Enlightenment,
a poet and a philosopher, was the leader in the fight against a stupid
Orthodoxy which stuck to the traditional terms. The great critical line of
development in theology, running from D. F. Strauss, Schleiermacher, etc. to
Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer, and Bultmann, had its origin back there in
the middle of the eighteenth century, which itself was carrying through the
ideas of the Socinians and others.
It
may seem as if there were one all-embracing development in theology, an ocean
which flooded over the continents. But this is not true. There were reactions
in all these periods. There were high and low tides. There were the reactions
of Methodism and Pietism; there was the reaction of Romanticism at the end of
the eighteenth century; there were the revivalistic movements in the
mid-nineteenth century, and finally there is the reaction of Neo-Orthodoxy at
the beginning of the twentieth century. in all of these movements, one question
is predominant: What about the compatibility of the modem mind with the
Christian message? There was always an oscillation between an attempt at
synthesis, in the Hegelian and Platonic sense, which means a creative unity of
different elements of reality. In this sense the two men with the greatest
theological influence in the nineteenth century were Hegel and Schleiermacher.
Together they produced what I can the great synthesis. They took into
themselves all the impulses of the modern mind, all the results of the
autonomous development. Beyond this they tried to show that the true Christian
message can be maintained only on this basis, and not in terms of either
Orthodoxy or the Enlightenment. They rejected both and tried to find a way
beyond them, Schleiermacher more from the mystical tradition of his pietistic
background (he was a Moravian), and Hegel more in philosophical terms out of
the Neo-Platonic tradition. By 1840 both of these forms of synthesis were
considered to have broken down completely, and an extreme naturalism and
materialism developed. At this time, then, another theological school tried to
save what it could. This was the Ritschlian school, the leaders of which,
beside Ritschl himself, were Wilhelm Herrmann and Adolph von Harnack, who is
the teacher of all of us in many respects. This was a new synthesis on a more
modest level, on the level of Kant's division of the world of knowledge from
the world of values.
The Development of Protestant Theology 293
The
Ritschlian synthesis broke down at the turn of the century, partly under the
impact of inner theological developments. Here I can mention Ernst Troeltsch,
my great teacher, and Martin Kähler, my other great teacher, who came from the
pietistic and revivalistic tradition of Halle. Primarily, however, it broke
down from the impact of the events of world history, the World Wars, which
spelled the end of centuries of European life. Again the diastasis against the
synthesis of Christianity and the modern mind became real under Karl Barth. My
own answer is that synthesis can never be avoided, because man is always man,
and at the same time under God. He can never be under God in such a way that he
ceases to be human. In order to find a new way beyond the former ways of
synthesis, I use the method of correlation. I try to show that the Christian message
is the answer to all the problems involved in self-criticizing humanism; today
we call this existentialism; it is a self-analyzing humanism. This is neither
synthesis nor diastasis, neither identification nor separation; it is
correlation. And I believe the whole story of Christian thought points in this
direction.
