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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PART II Introduction.' Problem
and Method
Our task is to cover in this series of lectures the tremendously large
subject of Protestant theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.' We
can do this only because this course has a definite purpose and particular
limits.
The primary purpose of
this course is to understand our own problems by seeing their background in
the past. I do not intend that you should learn merely a lot of facts which
have no meaning for you. Instead I want to show you how we have arrived at the
present situation. In view of this purpose it will be possible to draw from a
great amount of material.
I hope you will discover that the past can be interesting even in
itself, and not merely because it is our past, the past from
which we come as religious people and theological thinkers. Perhaps the eros, the word for love in
Platonic Creek, will be aroused to interest you in some of the events in the
past. This would be a beautiful by-product, but I do not know to what extent I
will succeed in evoking that erOs.
In any case, there
always exists this twofold purpose of a course in history, and especially of a
course in the history of thought. The main purpose is to understand ourselves;
yet there is the other purpose of
1 Editor's Note: These lectures were delivered at the Divinity School of
the University of Chicago during the spring quarter of 1963. They were offered
under the course title "Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries." The class met eighteen times for sessions lasting an
hour and a half. All material in the footnotes has been supplied by the present
editor.
298 A History of
Christian Thought
responding to a
fascination for things which have happened in the past. This latter purpose
might even be the more important for some of you now; as a rule, however, it is
not the main reason for historical research.
This double purpose,
especially the primary and basic one of trying to understand ourselves, leads
us to emphasize the trends of thought more than the individual personalities
who shaped them. We will see how these trends lead into our present situation.
Of course, individual theologians will be discussed because they are the
bearers of the development, but only those will be discussed more fully who
happen to represent the great turning points in the course of events leading
to us.
The orientation of this
course makes it impossible to limit ourselves to a discussion of theologians.
We must relate ourselves also to philoso-phers.
hilosophers. In some cases they are more important than the theologians
of their time because their philosophy of religion made decisive inroads into
the history of Christian thought. In other cases the scientists will be more
significant than the philosophers; also literature and even music—to allude to
Karl Barth—will form an important part of the historical development.
I was very much interested and surprised when I read how Karl Barth
dealt predominantly with the history of philosophy, and even music, in his
beautiful book on the history of nineteenth-century theology.2 And
if Karl Barth does this, considering his attitude toward philosophy, then I
certainly feel justified in doing the same thing. I recommend Barth's book as
an illustration of the greatest convergence between his thinking and my own.
Therefore, we will have to trespass the limits of the theological circle by
dealing with philosophers, men of science and literature.
There is another kind of limit that we must trespass in order to
understand the problems of the nineteenth century. We will have to go back into
the eighteenth century, and occasionally even before that, because the
principles of the modem mind were formulated in the centuries preceding the
nineteenth. You can find these principles
2 Die protestantische Theologie ins 19. Jahrhundert (Zurich:
Evangelischer Ver-lag, 1952). The English translation is entitled Protestant
Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl (New York: Harper & Row, 1959).
Unfortunately, only eleven chap-ten, less than one half, of the German edition
are included in the English version.
Introduction: Problem
and Method 299
implicit in
all the great thinkers of the Renaissance, and certainly in the great
scientific systems of the seventeenth century. But it was only during the
eighteenth century that these principles became fully formulated as criticisms
of theology. Every university and college worthy of their names are dependent
on the thinkers of the eighteenth century and on their fundamental criticisms
of the traditions of Orthodoxy and Pietism. And if you should come from Europe
to America as I did thirty years ago, you would be astonished at how much more
Americans are dependent on the eighteenth century than Europeans. The reason is
very simple. America experienced every little of the romanticist reaction
against the eighteenth century. Therefore, there is a very strong relationship
here to the eighteenth century; thus I will be speaking very much to your
situation when I go back to the principles out of which the criticism of
orthodox and pietistic theology came.
We must also go beyond the nineteenth century into the twentieth because
certain fundamental theological events have taken place in the last sixty
years. I will now mention only a few of them in passing: the end of liberalism
represented classically by Adolf von Harnack; the great all-embracing victory
of the existentialist point of view; then the resurgence of what is called
neo-orthodoxy in America and the theology of crisis in Europe. It is
unfortunate that the latter is also called dialectical theology, because it is
really more antidialectical than dialectical. Finally, there has been an
appearance in recent years of what one could call neoliberalism. Now, these
four movements have appeared in the twentieth century, and if we did not
include them, this course would have no existential conclusion for our
situation.
Now, I repeat, this is a large program for a single quarter, but it can
be carried out if we select and interpret the material from a particular point
of view, or better, from an overarching point of view. This means that we do
not simply say that there was Mr. X and he said this, and a little later Mr. Y
came along and he said that, and so with all the Xs and the 'l's we reach the
present time. That is a nonsensical way of dealing with history, even though it
might be claimed to be the most "factual." Actually, it has nothing
to do with real facts. Of course, there are factual elements in an
interpretation of history, otherwise the interpretation becomes a
misinterpretation of the course of history. History has an
300 A History of Christian Thought
inner telos.
Telos means "end," the "end" toward which something
runs. Every period has an inner telos, and a given period must be
interpreted historically in the light of its "end." Everything in
this period receives its significance for us from its relation to the telos.
In every moment innumerable things happen. In one hour like this more
things are happening than all the books in the world could describe if we were
to enter into the microcosmic elements in ourselves, in our brains and minds.
Therefore, the interpretation of history must be selective; everything depends
on the point of view from which we select and on the principle used in
establishing what is important. For example, what is most important in church
history? The answer is, of course, the Christian Church and its theological
work. This also includes Western culture and the relationship of cultural
activities to religion. In any case, a point of view in the interpretation of
history must be found.
There is a point of
view which I want to use, namely, the continuous series of attempts to unite
the diverging elements of the modern mind. The most important of these attempts
will seek to unite the orthodox and the humanist traditions. If the word
"orthodox" seems too narrow for you, then we can speak of the
"classical" tradition instead. All modern theology is an attempt to
unite these two trends in the recent history of Christian thought. But, of
course, this is only a very general formulation. The situation is infinitely
richer, both culturally and religiously, than this can indicate. But if we
look carefully, we will find that all the theologians, especially the great
ones, will try to answer the question: What is the relation between the
classical and the humanist traditions? One answer could be: There is no
positive relation between them at all; the one simply stands beside the other.
There could be the opposite answer: There is a complete unity between them,
either in the one direction or in the other. But between these two opposite
answers there can be many others, not as onesided as these two, which try to
find a vital relationship, filled with many problems, tensions, and possible
solutions.
First, I will develop the different elements in this divergent situation
which had to be united. After having shown these elements, namely, Orthodoxy,
Pietism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, etc., I will
Introduction: Problem
and Method 301
discuss the
greatest, the most embracing and effective, but in the last analysis
unsuccessful attempts to bring about a union of all of them. I call these the
great synthesis. Synthesis in Greek means "putting together," but
in English this word has a negative connotation. Synthetic pearls are not
genuine pearls. However, the theology of Schleier-macher and the philosophy of
Hegel—these two great representatives of the synthesis in the early nineteenth
century—are certainly not artificial pearls. They are very genuine and have had
a tremendous impact on the whole history of thought to the present day. Hegel,
for example, through the reactions of his pupils, has changed the surface of
the earth in the twentieth century, perhaps more than any philosopher has ever
done. We have only to think of the Communist Revolution.
These two thinkers, Schleiermacher and Hegel, are the points toward
which all elements go and from which they then diverge, later bringing about
the demand for new syntheses. We will see how these new syntheses have been
attempted again and again, and finally what in my opinion has to be done today.
So the whole story has a dramatic character. It is the drama of the rise of a
humanism in the midst of Christianity which is critical of the Christian
tradition, departs from it and produces a vast world of secular existence and
thought. Then there is the rise of some of the greatest philosophers and
theologians who try to unite these divergent elements again. Their syntheses in
turn are destroyed and the divergent elements collide and try to conquer each
other, and new attempts to reunite them have to be made. The Ritschl-ian school
is an example of this, with Hamack as its leading representative. And in our
century there is the Bultmann school, and so on.
Thus we really have a drama before us, a drama in which many tragedies
are involved. All the disruptions of inner, personal, spiritual life of
countless people are involved in the conflicts of this drama—con-flicts which
do not stop before the sacred doors of theological schools and seminaries. They
are inescapable for all of us, whether we like it or not.
There is one thing in what I have said that you might tend to question,
namely, the predominance of German theology in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. This is simply a fact which I cannot help. The reason for
this is that other Protestant countries were
302 A History of Christian
Thought
not involved in this
conflict to the same intense degree. If we look at Great Britain for a moment,
we see that there was no great depth of genuine theological interest. The
Anglican Church put its main emphasis on liturgical questions, and on
questions of political structure and ethical consequences. This is its genius,
its greatness, but it is not theology in the strict sense. In the Scandinavian
countries there is only one man who made a great difference in the nineteenth
century, and he is Soren Kierkegaard. He was not only a religious writer, as
Martin Heidegger calls him, but in his religious writings the existentialist
philosophy was present. Many modern existentialists have derived their
philosophy from Kierkegaard's writings. Kierkegaard was what he was because he
had to struggle to overcome his master, Hegel. Hegel's thought permeates his
whole work, almost every sentence. And contemporary with Kierkegaard there was
another theologian greatly influenced by Hegel, Bishop Hans Martensen of
Denmark (1808-1884). He was a theologian of mediation,3 to use a term dating
from the middle of the nineteenth century.
In Holland during the nineteenth century there developed a split between
the critical attitude on the one side (the liberal church took into itself all
the critical elements of liberalism) and the orthodox Calvinist Church on the
other side, which maintained the traditional theology with great tenacity. But
during this period there were no new theological solutions in Holland.
In Switzerland the older traditions were preserved, but here there arose
certain other influences which were later to shape modern theology. Three
names must be mentioned. The greatest of them is Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), whose attack on Christianity had an enormous influence on the
whole later theological development. The second is Jacob Burckhardt
(1818-1897), the historian, who wrote the beautiful books about the Renaissance
and the art of Florence and Rome. And the third one is Franz Overbeck
(1837-1905), who declared —something which Barth often mentions—that if
Christianity has arrived at the point of nineteenth-century liberalism, then
one must ask
The expression "theology of mediation" is a technical term
referring to various nineteenth-century efforts to correlate the Christian
faith with the modern mind. For a discussion of this Vermittlungsthealogie,
see below, Pp. 208-215.
Introduction: Problem
and Method 303
the question:
Are we still Christians? and he passionately denied that. He had a great
influence on later thought. These are some of the vital new impulses that were
experienced in Switzerland, and which played an important role in the
theological revolution that occurred in the twentieth century (Barth and
Brunner).
In France, which has only a small number of Protestants, the modernist
movement was the most interesting, comprising those who represented what was
called "symbolofideism." This means literally the "symbolism of
faith." Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) is the best known of the modernists.
These modernists had an interesting theory of religious symbolism. They were
excommunicated by the Pope, but their influence has never ceased. Often I meet
Catholic laymen, especially highly educated ones, who take it for granted that
most of the dogmas have to be taken symbolically. But officially this is not
permitted. The modernistic symbolofideists were condemned by the Pope.
Now the United States followed generally the continental development,
first orthodoxy, then pietism, usually called revivalism here, and then
liberalism. But there are two differences. The first is that in this country
liberalism took the form of a church, namely, Unitarianism. This has never
happened in Europe. There liberalism was a theological movement in the
established churches, but it never established itself as a church. Perhaps this
was a better solution because it seems that Unitarianism in this country
suffers from its separation. It tends to be less flexible than liberal theology
in Europe because it becomes bound to a church tradition.
The second important difference is the rise of the social gospel movement.
There were also social ethical elements in the late nineteenth-century liberal
theology represented by Harnack, but they were not essential. Only with the
rise of religious socialism, a comparatively small movement after the first
World War, did similar things occur in Germany. Before this they had already
occurred in Switzerland and in England. But the transformation of all theology
from the point of view of social ethics, thus creating a theology of the social
gospel ,4 is something original in this country.
4 Cf. Walter Rauschenbusch, Theology of the Social Gospel (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1918).
304 A History of Christian Thought
Now that gives us a broad overview of things. It is
enough to show you that the central and most dramatic movements of theology
took place in Germany. This also means that it happened on Lutheran soil. This
is not strange, because there is no other Protestant church which Places such a
heavy emphasis on doctrine, on the pure doctrine as it was called in the
Reformation period. What Luther called the Word of God over against the Roman
Church was embodied in the Lutheran confessions and doctrines. And
Lutheranism, at least in some sections, still preserves this tremendous
emphasis on the doctrinal side of Christianity. Calvinism lays more stress on
the disciplinary, ethical side, and Episcopalianism more on the liturgical
side.
All this shows that the kind of history of Christian
thought to which I will introduce you is, so to speak, the historical dimension
of systematic theology. It is not church history and I am no church historian.
And when you ask, Why should I learn all this? Why these studies of the history
of Christian thought which only seek to establish dates that can soon be
forgotten again?—then I must answer that this is not the way in which I intend
to deal with the past.
CHAPTER
I Oscillating Emphases in Orthodoxy,Pietism and Rationalism
A. THE PERIOD OF ORTHODOXY
First I want to say a
few words about what followed the period of the Reformation, namely, the development
of orthodoxy. Now the word "orthodoxy" has two meanings. There is
both Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestant Orthodoxy. The Eastern Churches which
call themselves Orthodox (e.g., Russian and Greek) do so not so much because of
their doctrinal interests, but because of their interest in the tradition. The
Eastern Orthodox Churches, of course, have fixed liturgical forms and they also
have doctrinal statements, but they are very flexible in this tespect. They
have the good fortune of not having a Pope. Because they feel that they are in
continual development, they can work in close relation with Protestantism in
the World Council of Churches. The term "orthodoxy" in Greek simply
means "right opinion," but in Eastern Orthodoxy it connotes the
"classical tradition." The tradition is expressed in the councils,
in the creeds, in the acknowledged Fathers, and in the whole liturgical
development. This is Eastern Orthodoxy. It is clear that here orthodoxy means
something quite different from what it means when we speak of Protestant
Orthodoxy.
306 A History of Christian Thought
We
must also be sure to distinguish between orthodoxy and fundamentalism. The
orthodox period of Protestantism has very little to do
with what is called
fundamentalism in America. Rather, it has special reference to the scholastic
period of Protestant history. There were great scholastics in Protestantism,
some of them equally as great as the medieval scholastics. One of them is
Johann Gerhard (1582-1637) who in his monumental work' developed fully as many
problems as the tomes of the medieval scholastics in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Such a thing has never been done in American
fundamentalism. Protestant Orthodoxy was constructive. It did not have anything
like the pietistic or revivalistic background of American fundamentalism. It
was objective as well as constructive, and attempted to present the pure and
comprehensive doctrine concerning God and man and the world. It was not
determined by a kind of lay biblicism as is the case in American
fundamentalism—a biblicism which rejects any theological penetration into the
biblical writings and makes itself dependent on traditional interpretations of
the Word of God.
You
cannot find anything like that in classical orthodoxy. Therefore it is a pity
that very often orthodoxy and fundamentalism are confused. One of the great
achievements of classical orthodoxy in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries was the fact that it remained in continual discussion with
all the centuries of Christian thought. Those theologians were not
untheological lay people ignorant of the meanings of the concepts which they
used in biblical interpretation. They knew the past meanings of these concepts
in the history of the church which covered a period of over fifteen hundred
years. These orthodox theologians knew the history of philosophy as well as
the theology of the Reformation. The fact that they were in the tradition of
the Reformers did not prevent them from knowing thoroughly scholastic theology,
from discussing and refuting it, or even accepting it when possible.
All
this makes classical orthodoxy one of the great events in the history of
Christian thought. I feel that the superiority of the more educated Catholic
theologians in our century over the more educated Protestant theologians is
largely due to the fact that they know their
1 The reference is to Gerhard's
9-volume work on dogmatics, Loci theoJogici (1610-22). This is a classic
expression of the "local" (or topical) method of scholastic theology.
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 307
Latin as well as you
know your English. They are able to formulate the classical doctrines of
Christianity in continuity with the Latin language that in theology goes back
at least to Tertullian in the second century. We have in the Latin language
something that I sometimes call a philosophical and theological clearing house.
Its sharpness of linguistic and logical distinctions overcomes much of the
vagueness that is prevalent in Protestant thought. There is no modern language
that has this kind of sharpness. Now I would not suggest that you should all
speak Latin as well as our theological fathers used to do. They had to write an
essay in Latin in order to pass an examination for admission into the
university. They had to be able to use Latin freely, without a commentary.
Although this ability has been lost—and it represents a great loss of sharpness
in theological thinking—we should at least be able to read the Latin texts with
a translation running on one side. I hope somebody will take this to heart and
write such a book. We could have a compendium, as it was called in Germany in
my time, of classical orthodoxy, Lutheran or Calvinist, or better both united
in one compendium, where you have on one side the classical formulations in
Latin—which you could recognize because there is so much of the Latin language
in English—and on the other side the English translations, which are never as
good as the Latin.
In
this connection I often think of the saying of one of my former teachers,
Martin Kähler, who lived in the period immediately following Goethe, and who
knew his Goethe as well as the Bible by heart. He used to say that the
orthodoxy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the abutment against
which the bridge of all later Protestant theology leans. That is a very good
symbol, because all later Protestant theology becomes a bit vague and is
suspended in the air if it is not related to the classic formulation of
Reformation theology in Protestant Orthodoxy. The vagueness of much theological
thinking in modern Protestantism stems from this lack of knowledge of
Protestant Orthodoxy.
Friedrich
Schleiermacher, the father of modern Protestant theology, was theologically
educated within the framework of Protestant Orthodoxy. If you read his
dogmatics, The Christian Faith,2 you will find that
2 Edited by H. R. Mackintosh and
J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928).
308 A History of Christian Thought
he never develops any
thought without making reference to classical orthodoxy, then to the pietist
criticism of orthodoxy, and finally to the Enlightenment criticism of both,
before he goes on to state his own solutions. This is an important procedure
for all theological thought.
Orthodoxy
is the most objective representation of Protestant theology. Of course, when I
use the word "objective," I find that I must always carefully define
what "objective" means as over against "subjective." Today
the word "objective" means scientifically verified or empirically
true. This is not the sense in which I mean it. One cannot simply transpose
categories from science to the humanities. When we speak of Orthodoxy as
"objective" we have in mind a representation of doctrine as such
without particular reference to the individual who accepts or rejects it. The
"subjective" element—the word "subjective" does not mean
willful or arbitrary as it is usually used today—has reference to the believing
subject, construing something in what we today call existential terms.
Orthodoxy tried to be as objective as possible, but even this system was open
to subjective elements. First of all, there was the subjective element which
belongs to all Protestantism, namely, Luther's personal experience, or
Zwingli's, or later on Calvin's. All three of them broke through the
objectivism of the Roman Church. This breakthrough was an element in the
orthodox system itself. This becomes very clear when we look at the two main
principles of Orthodoxy. These have been called the "material
principle" and the "formal principle."
The
material principle of the Reformation is the doctrine of justification by
faith, or rather by grace through faith. Excuse me for this slip of the tongue!
Never say what I just said by mistake, but always say, justification by grace
through faith. The justifying power is the divine grace; the channel
through which men receive this grace is faith. Faith is by no means the cause,
but only the channel. In the moment in which faith is understood as the cause
of justification, it is a worse work of man than anything in Roman Catholicism.
It results in destroying one's own honesty by compelling oneself to believe
certain things. This is the consequence of the phrase, justification by faith.
If faith is a human work which makes us acceptable to God, and if this human
work is the basis or cause of salvation, then we can never be certain of our
salvation in the sense in which Luther sought for certainty when he asked the
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 309
question, "How do I
find a merciful God?" Therefore, whenever you are dealing with Protestant
theology, dismiss forever this distortion of faith —sola fide in
Latin—which sees faith as a cause instead of as a channel. Luther made this clear
repeatedly when he said that faith is always receiving and only receiving; it
does not produce anything. Certainly it does not produce the good will of God.
Here
the linguistic problem becomes the profoundest theological problem. The great
distortions in Protestantism have come from this basic confusion—as if Luther
ever said that an intellectual acceptance of doctrines can be the saving power
for men. For Luther faith is the result of the divine Spirit, and the divine
Spirit and grace are one and the same thing. God gives us grace by giving us
the Spirit. It is the Spirit who makes it possible for us to accept the message
that our sins are forgiven. It is absolutely contrary to the whole Reformation
if somebody should say that before you can be forgiven you must first have
belief in God, in Christ and his atonement, plus Luther's doctrines and
Catechisms. That is anti-divine and anti-Reformation. The primary thing is to
be open for the divine grace, and not the attempt to produce it. The worst form
of trying to produce it—at least today—is to try to accept doctrines, to
believe in something which somehow we believe is unbelievable, force it upon
ourselves and repress honest doubt. That is the Worst kind of distortion.
There
is the other principle, the "formal principle," on which the system
of Orthodoxy was built. This is the principle of Scripture which became fixed
and rigid. Is it not possible to rest confidently on this? But we all know that
ever since Origen there have been many interpretations of the Bible. Every
period of history has a different understanding of what is decisive in the
Bible. The Bible is an object of interpretation. If somebody does not believe
that, just ask him, 'Do you know what the Greek words meant at the time they
were written so that you can identify them with the Word of God?" Then
very likely he will say, "I don't even know Greek, but I have the King
James Bible, and of course, that is the true Word of God. All of the
modernistic Bibles should be burned." That is the typical point of view of
somebody who simply does not know. It may be a repression of willingness to
face the real situation. The Bible is the book which contains the reports of
the events which
310 A History of Christian Thought
have happened
both in the Old and the New Testaments. It presents the history of revelation
and its fulfillment in the Christ as the foundation of the Christian Church.
This is the central event which the Bible proclaims.
But if we say that this protects us from being subjective, then we have
never tried to translate even one verse of Scripture. The right translation of
all the great passages of the New Testament is dependent on an understanding of
their meaning, and this is a work for which rigorous scholarship is needed. At
the same time, the religious tradition is at work in the understanding of
Scripture when simple believers read it. Their reading does have saving power
for them. This is the meaning
of the Protestant formula Scriptura
sulipsius inter pres," (Scripture
interprets itself). It does this to every pious layman who reads the Bible;
this does not mean, however, that he may make a theological dogma out of his
ignorance of the situation, as fundamentalism does. So here we have the
principle of subjectivity unavoidably entering in, although the Reformers tried
to prevent it by putting the authority of the Bible in place of the authority
of the church. This is most clear in Calvin. For Calvin the Bible does not say
anything to anyone, either to theologians or to pious readers, without the
divine Spirit. The divine Spirit is the creative power in which our own
personal spirit is involved and transcended. The spirit is not a mechanism for
dictating material as in some forms of the theory of inspiration.
There is another dangerous element in classical orthodoxy to which I
must refer. This is the two-storied character of orthodoxy theology. The lower
story is called "natural theology," which works with reason, and the
upper story is called "revealed theology." The theologians always had
difficulty determining what belonged to each. Naturally, doctrines like those
dealing with the trinity and the incarnation were placed into revealed
theology, but already the doctrines of creation and providence were doubtful.
Where did they belong? Thus Johann Gerhard, of whom we spoke earlier,
distinguished between pure and mixed doctrines (doctrinae purae et mixtae). The
pure doctrines are those which can be deduced only from divine revelation; the
mixed doctrines are those which can be dealt with partly in terms of reason and
partly in terms of revelation.
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 311
Such a view is quite unsatisfactory and presupposes a concept of reason
that itself is unsatisfactory. Thus it happened that a revolution occurred by
the lower story fighting against the upper story. As often happens in society,
the lower classes fight against the upper classes. But during the Enlightenment
it was the lower story of the building of theology which revolted against the
upper story. The lower claimed the right to become the whole building and
denied the Tight to have any independent upper story at all. We call this
"rationalism" in theology. There was something in the very structure
of Orthodoxy which made it possible for this revolution of rationalism to take
place
B. THE RUAOTION OF PIETISM
AGAINST ORTHODOXY
Before the revolution of natural theology against revealed theology took
place, there was another type of criticism against the orthodox system which
had recourse to a subjective element and recalled Luther's personal experience.
In the power of the Spirit which speaks through the biblical message Luther had
carried out a revolution against the objectivism of the Roman Church. In his
earlier development Luther was very much influenced by mystical elements. He
was profoundly influenced by the so-called Theologia Germanica, the
classic of devotional literature from the period of German mysticism. It was
Luther's experience of God which produced the explosiveness of his teaching
that really transformed the surface of the earth. What was this experience? It
was not the criticism of dogma. There had been much of that prior to Luther.
Most of his positions had been theoretically formulated earlier by the
so-called prereformers. But it was the explosion of a personal relation to God.
Was that based on human achievements of an intellectual or moral kind, or was
it based on openness for what God gives and in particular forgives? The latter
was the decisive thing. Thus already in the period of the Reformation there
were elements that we must call mystical, and which became pronounced again in
the anti-orthodox movement of Pietism. This happened first in Germany in the
seventeenth century (Spener and Francke), then in British Methodism (the Wesley
brothers), and finally in a great number of sectarian move‑
312 A History of Christian Thought
ments in this country
which claim for themselves the presence of the Spirit.
Pietism
also had its theology, but it was generally a theology which accepted the
orthodox tradition, just as the revivalist movement in America did, only making
it less theologically relevant by a fundamentalist deviation and
primitivization. However, Pietism fought against Orthodoxy on the ground of
Orthodoxy; this was a long and often bitter fight. Let me give you an
illustration of this. There was a debate on what was called the "theologia
irregenetoruin," the theology of the unregenerate, of those who are
not born again. Orthodoxy maintained the view that since theology is an
objective science, it is possible to write a fully valid theology whether we
are reborn or not. Pietism said, "No, that's impossible; you must be
reborn with respect to everything in which you participate, in all that you
talk about; you can be a theologian only if you have the experience of
regeneration." The answer of the Orthodox theologians to this was: "How
can you state beyond any doubt that you are regenerate? Is any emotional
experience to be considered a real rebirth? Is not regeneration a process
under the guidance of the divine Spirit which does not permit you to make a
clear distinction between before and after?"
Of
course there are some people who have a decisive experience. John Wesley had
it; August Francke, the German pietist, had it, and Nicho-laus von Zinzendorf
had it, but these are exceptional cases. The development of the ordinary
Christian does not manifest a clear-cut division between before and after, so
that he could say with finality: Now I am able to be a theologian because I
have really experienced rebirth. Modern theology is still discussing this
point. Today we ask instead: Isn't existential participation in theological
problems necessary in order to understand and solve them? I think that this way
of putting the question can be a formula of union, combining the concerns of
the orthodox and the pietist theologians. Existential participation indeed is
necessary, but an experience of regeneration at a definite point in time is
certainly not. That is impossible. It is enough that we are existentially
concerned about these problems, that we participate in them existentially,
even though for the moment it may be in the form of doubt. So my answer to the
question which became one of the chief points of
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 313
contention between
Orthodoxy and Pietism is that existential participation and ultimate
seriousness in dealing with theological questions is necessary. Indeed, this is
a presupposition of theology, but by no means does it entail the fixing of a
date and pointing to an inner experience of regeneration. The final upshot was that
Pietism succeeded in bringing Orthodoxy out of its seemingly unconquerable
fortress by appealing to the element of subjectivity in the Reformers
themselves. That was the other side of Luther and Calvin which had been
neglected in Orthodoxy. Thus Pietism was able to break open this very frozen
system of thought.
C. Tim RISE OI RATIONALISM
The
theology of the Reformation created a special educational problem which opened
the door to rationalism. In Roman Catholicism you can be saved by believing
what the church believes. This is called the (ides implicita (implicit
faith). If you believe what you are taught, then implicitly you receive the
truth which the Catholic Church teaches. This was one of the points on which
the Reformation erupted, for in Place of the (ides implicita the
Reformers taught that everyone must have an experience of grace in faith. Each
individual must be able to confess his sins, to experience the meaning of
repentance, and to became certain of his salvation through Christ. This became
a problem in Protestantism. It meant that everyone would have to have some
basic knowledge of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Church. In
teaching these doctrines, you could not carry on the instruction of ordinary
people in the same way as future professors of theology are taught, with their
knowledge of Latin and Greek, of the history of exegesis and theological
thought. How can you teach everybody? By making the teaching extremely simple.
This simplification became more and more a rationalization. You must teach what
is understandable by reason in your religious education, because it is
necessary that everyone should know what is said and meant in the Catechism.
The
consequence of this was that the doctrines had to be made more reasonable to become
more understandable. This was one of the ways in which religious education
served as a preparation for the Enlighten‑
314 A History
of Christian Thought
ment. Often the people
of the Enlightenment had no idea that they were doing anything else than preserving
the religious tradition. But they said, 'We must do it in a reasonable way so
that people can understand." In Protestantism we cannot have people like
the masses of Roman Catholic people, who attend church, listen to the mass,
perhaps go to confession, and then leave again. Protestants must have a direct
personal relationship with God, whether or not they go to church. They must
know for themselves, and cannot be led to priests and professors. Therefore,
doctrine must be made understandable to the people. Do not forget that this is
still a problem for us. Since we are all autonomous in contrast to the Roman
Christians who accept what the church teaches, we must know the doctrine for
ourselves, whether we are laymen or ministers. Thus liberal education in our
time faces this same problem: How can these things be made understandable? That
is not the whole problem, but that is the educational side which is very
important for the whole development.
We
have been discussing the revolt against Orthodoxy from the side of natural
theology which Orthodoxy itself had made a part of its two-story system. The
substructure of orthodox theology is natural theology, and natural theology is
rational theology. Thus the rise of rational criticism of revealed theology
came out of Orthodoxy itself. Rational theology is a theology which through
arguments for the existence of God, and the like, attempts to build a
universally acceptable theology by pure reason. At this point the revolt could
take place, the revolt of the substructure against the superstructure. The
substructure was built by the tools of rational arguments; the superstructure
as revealed theology is based on the sources of revelation. In Protestantism these
are virtually equated with the biblical writings, while in Catholicism the
tradition of the church is included as well. The whole structure was delicately
built and extremely vulnerable from the point of view of the relation between
the two stories. It would be possible for reason to revolt against revelation,
as it is usually phrased in traditional terminology. But this is a poor way of
phrasing it, as I will show later.
This
led to the struggle in the eighteenth century between a naturalistic or rationalistic
and a supernaturalistic theology. This struggle
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 315
brought about the
weakening of the power of Orthodoxy. Now Pietism and Rationalism had one
element in common. Pietism was more modern than Orthodoxy; it was nearer to the
modern mind, because of the element of subjectivity in it. If the word
"subjectivity" has the connotation of willfulness to you, it should
not be used; rather, we should speak of existential participation. This may be
a clumsy expression, but at least it avoids the bad connotation of
arbitrariness which is usually connected with the word
"subjectivity." The common denominator in Pietism, or revivalism as
it is often called, and in Rationalism is the mystical element. This is one of
the most important insights for understanding the development of Protestant
theology after the Reformation to the present time. Therefore, I want to
discuss now the relation between the mystical and rational elements in
theology.
Rationalism
and mysticism do not stand in contradiction to each other, as is so often
thought. Both in Greek and modern culture rationalism is the daughter of
mysticism. Rationalism developed out of the mystical experience of the
"inner light" or the "inner truth" in every human being.
Reason emerged within us out of mystical experience, namely, the experience of
the divine presence within us. This can be seen most clearly in the Quaker
movement. Quakerism in George Fox's time was an ecstatic, mystical movement, as
were most of the radical movements of the Reformation and post-Reformation
periods. Already in the second generation of Quakerism there developed a moral
rationalism from which have come the great moral principles of modern Quaker
activities. There never was the feeling on the part of Quakers that their
rational, pacifist, and in certain respects, very bourgeois morality stood in
conflict with their mystical experience of intuition. Therefore, it is useful
to study the development of Quakerism in order to understand the relation between
mystical and rational inwardness. Both of them exist within our subjectivity.
The opposite of a theology of inwardness is the classical theology of the
Reformers, namely, the theology of the Word of God which comes to us from the
outside, stands over against us and judges us, so that we have to accept it on
the authority of the revelatory experiences of the prophets and apostles.
This
whole conflict is of fundamental importance to the movements of theology in the
centuries that we wish to discuss. The same conflict
316 A History of Christian Thought
occurred in our century,
between the liberal theology of Harnack's What Is Christianity?3
and Karl Barth's theology of crisis. To see this conflict you should read the
classical exchange of letters between Harnack and Barth. Here we have the
modern parallel to the encounter between the theologians of the Reformation and
the Anabaptists and other spiritualistic movements. Unfortunately, the terms
"spiritualist" and "spiritist" have been Stolen by the
occultists, and can no longer be used in good theology. In the third volume of
my Systematic The-ology,4 in the part on "Life and the
Spirit," I develop a theology of the Spirit, but I do not use these
confusing adjectives. If by chance I do use them, I am not thinking about
spiritualism in the sense of entering into communication with souls that have
passed beyond death. I would not be interested in that even if it were a
reality. The spiritualist movements in the Reformation period are often called
"radical evangelical movements." We have this same sort of conflict
between Orthodoxy and Pietism, which we have discussed, and in the nineteenth
century between German classical idealism and the rebirth of Orthodoxy in the
restoration theology of the mid-nineteenth century.
If
for a moment I may be allowed to be personal, you see this same conflict going
on between my own theology and Karl Barth's, the one approaching man by coming
from the outside (Barth) and the other starting with man. Now I believe that
there is one concept which can reconcile these two ways. This is the concept of
the divine Spirit. It was there in the apostle Paul. Paul was the great
theologian of the divine Spirit. It formed the center of his theology. The
classical Protestant view has held, along with Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and
Bucer, that Paul was a theologian of justification by grace through faith. That
certainly is not wrong. But this was a defensive doctrine for Paul. He
developed this doctrine in his fight against the so-called Judaizers. They
wanted to transform the gospel into another law; they demanded that the pagans
or Gentiles subject themselves to the Jewish law, and for them Jesus was only
another interpreter of the law. Paul had to fight against this, otherwise there
could be no Christian Church in the pagan
3
Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? translated by Thomas B.
Saunders (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957).
4 The University of Chicago
Press, 1963.
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 317
nations. Christianity
would have remained a small Jewish sect. Nevertheless, as important as the
doctrine of justification was for Paul, it was not the center of his theology.
At the center was his experience and doctrine of the Spirit. Thus he is on the
side of those in Protestant theology who stress inwardness. Paul goes so far as
to say what many mystics have stressed since, namely, that a successful prayer
is not one which obtains what we ask for, but one which attains the Spirit of
God. It is God himself as Spirit who prays for us and bears witness with our
spirit. You can read this in Romans 8. You will find there that Paul is indeed
the theologian of the Spirit.
Although
I am not a mystical theologian, I would say that I am more on the side of the
theology of experience and inwardness, for I believe that the Spirit is in us.
In the concept of the Spirit the highest synthesis is given between the Word of
God which comes from the outside and the experience which occurs inside. Now
all this has been a digression, but if a systematic theologian teaches history,
he cannot help but tell you what he thinks about things. He cannot simply
enumerate facts in textbook fashion. You can do that much better for yourself.
The problem is the difference between the theology of the Word from the
outside and the theology of inner experience, which is frequently but wrongly
called "the inner Word." That is not a good term. "Inner
light" is better. In modem terminology we speak of "existential
experience." The point is that these two things are not mutually
exclusive. The concept of the Spirit is the mediating power which overcomes the
conflict between outside and inside.
I
said that the principles of reason develop out of an originally ecstatic
experience which produces insight. This insight can become rationalized. As
the principles of reason emerge within us, the original underlying ecstasy can
disappear or recede, with the result that the Spirit becomes Reason in the
largest sense of the concept. We will develop this later in the lectures on the
Enlightenment. Anyway, I hope that you now understand one thing: The opposite
of mysticism is not rationalism, but rationalism is the daughter of mysticism.
The opposite of mysticism is the theology of the Word in terms of an authority
coming From the outside, to which we subject ourselves either by accepting
doctrines or by fulfilling moral commands. We should also avoid the
318 A History of Christian Thought
distortions of the word
"mystical." A person, for instance, is said to be a bit
mystical when he is somewhat foggy in his mind. That is not a serious usage of
the term. Mysticism means inwardness, participation in the Ultimate Reality
through inner experience. In some cases mystics have tried to produce this
participation by means of asceticism, self-emptying exercises, and the like.
But mysticism should not be identified with these exercises either.
Whatever
we may think of abstract mysticism such as we find in Plotinus or in Hinduism,
which are very similar to each other, we must nevertheless say that there is a
mystical element in every religion and in every prayer. This mystical element
is the inward participation in and experience of the presence of the divine.
Where this is lacking we have only intellect or will; we have a system of
doctrines or a system of ethics, but we do not have religion. In Protestantism,
especially in some Protestant groups in this country, we see what happens when
the mystical element is neglected and forgotten. Doctrines are not pushed
aside, but they are put on the altar or in a box, so to speak. They are taken
for granted, and no one is supposed to question them seriously. Theology is not
very important. But so-called Christian morals are kept, with the result that
the "teachings of Jesus" are misused and Jesus is modeled after the
poor image of a teacher. Jesus was more than a teacher; his teachings were
expressions of his being, and were thus not teachings in an ordinary sense.
Thus Protestantism becomes an unmystical system of moral commandments, and its
specifically religious basis, the presence of the Spirit of God in our spirit,
is disregarded. The history of Protestant theology refutes such an attitude and
shows that it is a complete deviation from the genuine experience of the
divine presence.
There
are many reasons why rationalism was born out of mysticism both in Greek and
modern culture. But we cannot go into them. We can only observe that it
happened on a large scale in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Ecstatic Protestant groups and their leaders were also the leaders of the
Enlightenment. This happened in many places and can be understood only on the
basis of what I have said about the relation of rationalism to mysticism. The
one term which grasps their unity is the term "inner light." It comes
from the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition in medieval theology, which was
renewed
Orthodoxy, Pietism and
Rationalism 319
by the sectarian
movements in the Reformation period, and underlies much of Protestant theology
in America. The inner light is the light which everybody has within himself
because he belongs to God, and in virtue of which he is able to receive the
divine Word when it is spoken to him.
