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The "acids of modernity..."
"Corrosion is an apt metaphor for the effects of overblown
certainty, legalism, inerrancy, and the insistence on
surely knowing everything. It can eat you alive."
- anon
As part of my conscious review of all things modern and postmodern in the Christian faith my friend Roger Olson has recently written a book on the influences of modernity upon the Western culture. For the past several years Relevancy22 has made a concerted effort to speak to the deficiencies of modernity's influences upon all things Christian - whether to our Christian faith, our reading of the Bible, our understanding of God, ourselves, our church, or even our ministries and missional callings.
As an offset, we have here offered a postmodern Christianity that attempts to move past modernity's constricting structures in attempts to tell of a faith that is post-secular, post-foundational, and post-structural. Many articles have been written to speak to what a postmodern Christian might look like if based upon a broader, more liberal perspective of thought and theology. Hence, topics have covered progressive ideas in hermeneutics, philosophy, science, and theology, to name a few in attempts to distinguish to the modernist Christian mindset a broader, more expansive form of Christianity that might embrace a less harsh, less judgmental, fuller perspective of faith, ministry, and mission.
To that end we have actively explored a Bible and faith that allows for multi-vocality of biblical narration, cultural pluralism, multi-ethnicity, scientific and hermeneutical criticism, the presence of paradox and mystery, personal revelatory existentialism (sic, the Spirit of God at work within us, our calling and ministry), and an epistemological re-orientation gained from today's postmodernal reactions to modernity's Western cultural influences. Thus, we've here described what an emergent, postmodern Christianity might look like; how to accept and utilize postmodern scientific discoveries; how to interpret religious surveys and postmodern movements both in our culture as well as in non-Western cultures that are uniquely different from our own; how to react to economic and political statements in a world filled with conflict and brokenness; how God and the Bible are much larger than our own modernal ideas constricting sociological structures; and so forth.
Part of this more recent effort to think through postmodernity's newer perspectives for the Christian faith was recently begun in a digest of articles presently being developed under Phase III of this blogsite. Here I wish to further break down modernity's philosophical reach by repositioning Continental Philosophy's postmodernal influences through a Radical Theology that returns the Christian faith to its apocalyptic roots set amid a theology of weakness (which, in the Kingdom parlance of reversals, means that such a weakness would be paradoxically overwhelming to the breaking of everlasting sinful bonds). Even as this present effort of thought and prayer is still in its formation as I write of it, I would ask for an openness of mind-and-heart by my readers knowing that my conservative background and roots have been in a constant turmoil of self-discovery and cultural re-awakening since beginning this blog journey several years ago. And so, any modernal fears of Continental Philosophy would be better shelved and reconsidered as a more helpful subject that might offset our own, more rigorous, Western individualism and excluding ideologies. Especially as set against any emerging, postmodern, Christian re-awakenings when explored through postmodern theological and philosophical research and perspective.
Assuredly, I feel a deep obligation to pay attention to Christianity's more recent roots as expressed within the past 500 years of church history. To not only pay attention to good doctrine as set forth by church decree, but to also pay attention to church decrees that have limited our Christian faith from seeing God and understanding His Word from His perspective rather than our own filtrations (or selective readings) of it. As such, a broadly flexible, expansive, and non-limiting philosophical hermeneutic might allow for this newer kind of outlook as compared to the modernal, Evangelic hermeneutic I had grown up with.... A doctrinaire that lamentably became excluding to science, preferential towards preferred "Christian" Westernized beliefs, preferential towards Reformed thinking and syllogistic debate, calling for enforceable religious boundaries (such as career firings from seminaries or removal from the church pulpit), and reinforced by spurious church folklore couched within assenting congregational agreement. Perhaps the prophets of the Bible were not unlike the prophetic theologians of today who walked the earth alone, chastised and ignored by those who disputed God's living Word when spoken by the Spirit through the pales of mortal flesh. Nor by forward-looking theologians alone, but by every lip-and-tongue that languishes under the sin's oppression before the tyranny of unloving, uncompassionate, unforgiving religious belief - including that of remorseless demagoguery - regardless of denominational faith or world religion.
Therefore, we wish to rightly distinguish how Christianity has changed over the eras of man from its even older roots found within the pages of the New Testament - even as the NT itself was built upon the more ancient pages of the older Old Testament. Thus, I am not bothered to critique, or throw off, any Reformational (or Calvinistic) doctrines should they not be more biblically oriented than as it was first developed under the lingering Greek influences of Aristotle and Plato. This was known to the Early Church as Greek Hellenism (sic, a syncretism of Greek culture with that of the Semitic); and within the early-to-late Medieval eras as under the aforesaid Aristotelian and Platonic influences of Medieval Scholasticism as summarily re-worked under Thomas Aquinas' studious pen. Following these significant periods of plague, illiteracy, conflicts, and medieval kingdom came the era of the Renaissance's arising enlightenment, and along with it, the church's rebirth under the Reformational influences of Luther and Calvin (amongst others) who would lay down any future philosophical foundations of incipient modernity. Knowing of these historical developments, it may be too simplistic to seek a discerning Christian faith more rooted in past Jewish perspective knowing that even in Jesus' day He too spoke within Hellenism's dominating Greek influences. (That is, Jesus made cultural adaptations to His message of redemption even as Paul would in his missionary travels throughout the Roman Empire).
But even so, was not the Old Testament constructed by its ancient authors within the religious, socio-economic, and political influences of the more ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian (Persian) cultural beliefs of their day? Let us not then be so ignorant to the fact that we must each speak and live out our faiths within this world's cultures, philosophies, attitudes, and platitudes.... Sorting out the good from the bad, the legitimate from the illegitimate, the helpful from the debilitating, as we weigh out God's Word to what we think we know and observe in humble obedience.... So then, what does this mean for us today in light of God's revelation and revelatory presence in our midst by His Spirit, His cosmos, His Word, and church?
That like the prophets and theologs of yore, we may also speak God's Word to the generations of our time in discernment and in spiritual wisdom. To some we speak words of enlightenment; to others words of healing; and yet to others words of death and cessation. Thankfully, postmodernity has been in formation for some time (as early as the 19th century) but has more recently been embraced since the early 1970s under the Jesus and Vineyard movements; the calls to church reform in the 80s; the early Emergent church movements of the 90s; the restyling of church worship and message in the 2000s; and even now in updated discussions of scientific assimilation to biblical doctrine (think of the Catholic Church's "rope-a-dope" doctrinal mind-benders when confronted by Copernicus and Galileo's concurring discoveries of our solar systems heliocentrism!). Moreover, postmodernism had by now made the church seriously aware of its secularism. But rather than despair, as the political commentator Walter Lippmann did after studying the ill-affects of World War I upon society, asserting that the church should discard its religion for the religion of humanism, a postmodern Christian sees all the enlightenment that has come from this movement and excises it towards the Christian message of hope and reconstruction. As Jesus-following Christians we do indeed agree with Lippmann that the church must throw out the affects of religion from its faith even as we hold onto faith's assurances amidst modernity's humanism and postmodernity's flight to post-humanism. The answer isn't in humanism, nor in neo-humanism, but in Jesus, and all the paradox and conflict that He brings to our Christian faith as we try to discern it against the ages of man and all that man's turmoil brings with his largesse.
Which also means that we are free to reconstruct (or promote) a more progressive, enlightening form of philosophy that might more helpfully critique our past even as it might help us to re-construct our Christian faith and church doctrines (sic, the ideas of deconstruction and reconstruction as found in postmodernism, even as God does the same in our lives casting out sin and bringing love's redemptive healing). By utilizing the academic labor of ANE biblical scholars, the ceaseless research of postmodern philosophers and scientists, and even by listening to the observations and complaints of agnostics and atheists, we might better distinguish the shortcomings of our well-meaning, Christianized cultural perspectives in order to better approach the God of biblical faith. A God whom we truly cannot know except through His incarnational presence through the Jesus of the NT who set forth God's rule of love against His animosity to religion's idols found in our works of self-righteousness and religious legalism. Though the Pharisees and Scribes of the NT believed they knew God, His Word, and His will, even so did Jesus say that by their very faith, and works, they were dead. Unseeing and blind. Lepers that led God's sheepfolds to certain destruction. Who killed the Son of God but could not kill the Risen God nor His follower's resurrected faith. Yet even now, God so works His divine will within the moiling masses of mankind - making it known both to the seeing un-believer and the un-seeing believer alike (remember, we live in an upside-down, inside-out Kingdom of reversals that would defeat our magistrates of knowledge and faith). No man, church doctrine, nor miscreant theolog may defeat God's restless spirit of renewal and proclamation.
What I take from all this is that we must hold onto a healthy reserve of doubt about ourselves and our beliefs while becoming more open to God's movement of His Spirit within this profound postmodern era we live within. That today's Christian faith and interpretive theology is as open now as it was for Abraham, David, John, or Paul. That we are allowed to think of our Creator-Redeemer God in more expansive forms than we currently have limited ourselves to as set within our cultural boundaries and limiting regional (if not temporal!) perspectives. That we may mitigate all past doctrinal creeds and confessions to scientific discoveries and advancement without rapprochement; even as we would submit our theological beliefs to God's overriding decrees of love and goodwill to exclusionism's unwanted, and hateful, discriminations (think homosexuality, gender, and race inequalities here).
That we might learn to speak to one another in tones of uplift, reassurance, truth, and community, without fear of violating the self-righteous doctrines of man as set forth by unloving, ill-timed church charters should they come into conflict with God's broader divine authority. No, we are not saying that there is no sin to be found in man. Assuredly there is, and it lives well and high upon the feast tables of the self-righteous and unrepentant. But to the despised and ill-regarded amongst us who are humble of heart, and hungry for God's healing presence and personal restoration, know that God's love and forgiveness will be their first master against our own unforgiving hearts, however it is played out upon the church dockets and public presses. God's Spirit will not be defeated. But if we do, we do to our own certain destruction which would bind and enslave our souls to death's benighted strongholds and hell's bounded deeps.
Not unlike the carousel's of this wicked world, we must know when to get off, and not be misled by its withering dawns. But to discern our unenlightened past and there realize that our future is brightly open. That our faith is as boundless as the blue-studded skies above our heads. That our missional calling made more powerful when accompanied by the graceful dresses of love's remit. That we might embrace all that seeks God to His great delight. To preach Christ crucified as our humble Savior-Redeemer. To overfill the church with God's apocalyptic Kingdom presence come suddenly upon us. A presence that is weak, humble, believing, resurrected, hopeful, sacrificial, serving, and spiritually alive. To know that our most recent journey in modernity has ended if by nothing else than by the bloody, torn, evil World Wars, regional conflicts, and terrorism of our past global history. And that our formidable journey towards a kind of radical postmodernity even now begins. Yeah, let the church be biblical... but let it also be visionary in its spiritual quest for revolution... and no longer withholding from cultural irrelevancy like a fly stuck on glued paper. Know that God will surely dissettle us even as He did when He called Abraham to follow Him from Ur's safe fleshpots. Or the Shepherd-King David's learned obedience. Or the beggarly prophet's ignored messages to repent and obey. God is not in the business of making us comfortable. Keep to this knowledge even as we, the church, face humbly in the Spirit's grasp turmoil's heightening revelations yet to come. "Even so Lord Jesus, rain down on us." Amen and amen.
R.E. Slater
August 29, 2013
* * * * * * * * * *
Modernity and Christianity
Part 1
by Roger Olson
August 27, 2013
My immediately preceding post announced my forthcoming book about modern (and postmodern) theologies:
The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (InterVarsity Press, 2013).
A major thesis of the book is that virtually every Western (and some non-Western) theology since the early nineteenth century is influenced in some way by the modern mindset. Even those like Charles Hodge’s that resisted innovation and claimed to be simply restatements in systematic form of the Bible were influenced more than they knew or admitted by modernity. Modernity is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Europeans and Americans can hardly escape it. Some Christians (and others) have made overt efforts to escape it. The Amish come to mind. But theologians, among other church professionals, have rarely escaped its influence—even when they have set out to avoid that.
But all that begs an answer to a fundamental question:
What is “modernity?” Above I called it a “mindset.” By that I mean a certain way of perceiving and interpreting reality,
a “blik,” to borrow philosopher
R. M. Hare’s term (which I believe he coined) [more commonly known as a
"Zeitgeist" (noun, German) meaning "the
spirit of the time; the general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time. - res].
A blik is a way of seeing reality “as” something such that it takes a kind of conversion to see it “as” something else. Let’s take a mundane example or analogy from physical existence. Recently I suffered a bout of altitude sickness from hiking in the Rocky Mountains. One side effect was double vision, for a whole day my binocular vision was gone and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get it back. I saw two of everything where others saw only one. Needless to say, that day I couldn’t drive or hardly function. To me the world was double and I couldn’t see it “as” otherwise.
A blik is a way of seeing reality “as,” a way of processing and interpreting the data of experience in the world. Modernity, stemming from the Enlightenment and scientific revolutions of the 18
th and 19
th centuries, became so pervasive and influenced so many aspects of social and individual life that it changed reality as we (at least in the so-called West) perceive it. Most people are unaware of that. It’s like a fish is unaware of water. Even committed Christians are largely unaware of how modernity shapes their understanding of the Bible and Christianity.
Two experiences can alter that. One is going to live in a non-Western culture and become acquainted first hand with “non-modern Christianity.” A lighter form of the same experience is to become acquainted with Christian people in one’s own culture (Western) that come from a culture that does not assume modernity. I have not had the advantage of living in a non-Western culture, but I have had many students over the years who came to my classes directly from non-Western cultures and whose Christianity was virtually untouched by modernity.
The other experience that can affect allowing modernity’s blik to influence one’s Christianity is growing up in or converting to a Christian community here, in a Western cultural context, that consciously resists modernity as a mindset. For example, I grew up in a Christian form of life that I call “
urban Amish.” We drove cars and sometimes had televisions, etc., but much of our Christianity revolved around consciously
rejecting “worldliness” by which we meant not only blatant sins of the flesh but also the life of the mind—especially insofar as it was corrupted by modernity. I recently heard a story about a pastor’s widow. She and her husband were my pastor for a time while I was in college. When her son showed her
a dinosaur footprint in a slab of stone cut out of a river bed and now erected in front of a county courthouse (in a county famous for dinosaur fossils) she just stared at it as if it were an apparition. Her son, a seminary student, asked her what she thought of it. Her response was predictable (to any of us who grew up in that Christian form of life): “I don’t believe in dinosaurs.”
I remember a Bible college class where the majority of the students argued that
ancient fossils were put in the ground by God at creation, about ten thousand years ago,
to test our faith in his Word which requires disbelief in such things as an ancient earth and pre-Adamic animals.
There are intentional forms of religious life (and perhaps some non-religious ones) in Western societies that intentionally resist modernity; they work hard to inoculate their youth against believing anything they read or hear at school or see on television that contradicts what they believe is pre-modern, traditional, “true” Christian belief. That is the way I was raised. We didn’t have a Christian school, so my parents, church and spiritual mentors taught me from a very early age that
“the modern world” was evil and its influence to be avoided as much as possible. (We thought most Baptists were corrupted by modernity because
they didn’t “really” believe in miracles—at least not contemporary ones. Baptists thought we were corrupted by modernity because we insisted there had to be “initial,
physical evidence” of Spirit baptism.)
In any case, some Christians in Western societies (and probably most in non-Western societies) think modernity and Christianity are like oil and water—they cannot be made to mix. You have one or the other, never both together.
However, unless a person is raised in something like
“The Village” (of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie), it’s very difficult not to be influenced by modernity. For example, the vast majority of Americans simply take for granted
radical individualism—a product of modernity. More specifically, Americans (and most other Westerners) take grant
the “social contract theory” of government. They may not have studied it, but if they do (as I did) they will recognize it as a product of modernity.
Throughout my higher education, after college, I began to recognize that many of the things even my parents and grandparents took for granted as benefits of
“the American Way of Life” were products of modernity. Democracy itself, as we know it, anyway, is that.
So I opened my mind to at least considering the possibility that modernity is not unequivocally bad.
But then I began to encounter forms of Christianity that seemed totally accommodated to modernity. During seminary I read
the “radical theologians” of the 1960s (Cox, Robinson, Hamilton, Altizer, van Buren, et al.) and was shocked to discover that there were (and still are)
“Christian” theologians who believed Christianity must shed everything pre-modern and adopt a modern blik as its framework of thought. I began to trace that tendency backwards from them to “Christian” thinkers like Matthew Tyndal (
Christianity as Old as the Creation) and Adolf Harnack, Ernst Troeltsch and Rudolf Bultmann.
Then I began to see that virtually every Western Christian theologian was influenced by modernity, some more and some less, some critically and some uncritically, some consciously and some unwittingly. I decided to make the study of modern theology the center of my life’s research as a theologian. Of course, I branched out into many other areas, teaching about and conducting research into
the reformers and post-reformation theologians (prior to the Enlightenment). But over the thirty-one years of my professional life as a theologian my main interest has been “modern theology”—theologians and theological ideas as they are influenced by and respond to the modern blik or Zeitgeist.
Without doubt, many modern Christian theologians believe modernity and Christianity are
not oil and water; it is possible and even necessary (for the survival of Christianity in the modern world) to have them in some kind of combination.
The Journey of Modern Theology is the story of how leading Christian thinkers have wrestled with the often tense relationship between Christianity and modernity and have sought to integrate them or “rescue” Christianity from being totally accommodated to modernity.
Next I will discuss how I understand “modernity”
as a blik—a perspective on reality.
* * * * * * * * * *
Modernity and Christianity
Part 2
by Roger Olson
August 29, 2013
In my immediately preceding post, part 1 of this series, I mentioned that I view modernity as a “blik”—a fundamental perspective, a way of seeing the world “as,” a world view. Of course, it is also a cultural “Zeitgeist,” a “spirit of the age,” a collection of socio-cultural habits shared by people and societies. I talked about how some Christians view Christianity and modernity as like oil and water—incapable of integration. That’s true of many radical moderns as well, of course. They too see at least traditional Christianity and modernity as antithetical to one another. Others, especially many “[modernistic] progressive Christians,” see modernity as a challenge to traditional Christianity but not to “the essence of Christianity.” In other words, modernity, as they view it, helps clean away the Hellenistic and medieval accretions that have attached to "simple," original Christianity, and forces us to rediscover Christianity’s true essence which turns out to be compatible with much of modernity.
So what is “modernity” in the sense of a blik? What new mindset or set of cultural habits of thought arose with the Enlightenment and scientific revolutions? I remind you that “modernity,” in this sense, as I am using the concept in this series (and as I use it in The Journey of Modern Theology) is not a time period nor is it “what’s trending now.” Rather, it’s a blik shared by most educated people in the Western world during the last three to four hundred years. Am I now contradicting myself? No, because not all people living in Western societies in the last three to four hundred years shared that blik. I argue, however, that it influences virtually everyone in some way. It “trickles down” to them.
Describing both modernity’s blik and “authentic Christianity” is essential to deciding whether they are like oil and water, incapable of integration, or whether they are capable of integration. This is important, of course, because of the perceived need to “contextualize” Christianity in culture as part of the missionary endeavor: must we call people out of modernity in order to disciple them? Or can true Christian discipleship combine modernity and gospel belief and life? Can one be both thoroughly modern and authentically Christian? Or will there necessarily be harsh cognitive dissonance within any person or group that tries to be both?
What follows here are the results of my study of and reflection on “modernity” as a blik. Others may disagree; they may want to subtract from it or add to it. It seems to me, however, that these tendencies, directions of thought and interpretation, are the core elements of what it means to be “modern.”
[First], at the root of everything modern, it seems to me, is Immanuel Kant’s imperative “Sapere aude!”—“think for yourself!” In other words, the mature individual ought to believe only what is convincing to his or her own mind and not allow external authorities to determine what to believe just because they hold positions of authority. Of course we can find examples of this before the Enlightenment. During the Middle Ages Peter Abelard broke from authority and thought for himself. During the Reformation Martin Luther thought for himself. But neither Abelard nor Luther thought it should be a policy for all mature people to think for themselves, that it was a sign of weakness, immaturity, to allow one’s beliefs to be determined by others. Both claimed the right to choose one authority over another, but neither thought the reasoning, autonomous self should be the highest authority.
Second, the modern blik includes belief that “knowledge” is “justified true belief” and that “justified true” means rationally certain beyond reasonable doubt. Beliefs held on the basis of authority, tradition, inspiration or intuition do not count as “knowledge.” Logic and evidence govern knowledge. People believe many things, and have the right to believe what is illogical, mysterious, unprovable. But if a truth claim is to be counted as knowledge, it must carry the credential of rational proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Until then it is at best theory and at worst superstition. In between lies “opinion.”
Both the first and second aspects of the modern blik assume the potential of a “view from nowhere” approach to knowledge. That is, knowledge is not tied to any life narrative or bias or prejudice or narrow perspective determined by one’s gender, ethnicity or social location.
Third, the modern blik is, as a matter of policy or habit, skeptical toward claims of the supernatural (miracles, the paranormal). Some moderns reject such claims out of hand; others simply turn them aside as possibly true but, if so, eventually capable, in principle, of rational explanation.
Fourth, the modern blik views religion as primarily functional. It is valuable not for explanation but for therapy and ethical motivation. It inspires, motivates, comforts, but it does not explain anything that truly needs explanation. People who do not need the inspiration, motivation and comfort offered by religion do not need religion.
Fifth, the modern blik regards tradition (other than that launched by the Enlightenment) with suspicion [even itself!]. “Newer is better.” That something is “traditional” carries no weight when deciding whether it is true or good.
Sixth, the modern blik places great value on (the right kind of) education, science and technology. These are the paths toward solving humanity’s problems. Evil arises out of ignorance, disease and poverty. The cures for these ills, and therefore for evil, lie in education, science and technology. (Religion can also play a role through inspiration, motivation and comfort.)
Seventh, the modern blik values and rewards “mastery”—the achievement of conquering and subduing what needs to be conquered and subdued—and regards everyone as inherently capable of it. The person who “masters” something, whether language or nature or people, who tames, controls, civilizes what is wild and out of control, is admirable. Of course, most modern people would argue that mastery should be ethical; it should not be unnecessarily violent.
Together, these seven “signs” of modernity as a blik raise to intense pitch the question of whether Christianity and modernity are compatible. Can they mix, be integrated, or are they like oil and water—inevitably separate and even in tension with each other?
You will notice, I hope, that here “modernity” does not mean a certain style of clothes or architecture or music, etc. A very modern person, a person who embodies and lives out this modern blik to a “t” (a person like the fictional character Sherlock Holmes), might prefer old fashioned clothes, traditional furniture (and worship!), etc. Think of the prototypical Oxford or Cambridge “don” who wears an academic robe everywhere on campus, just like in the distant past, but who thinks the “modern way” (as described above). It’s a shallow view of modernity that regards it as a matter of style or fashion. Strangely enough, many “modern Christians,” in terms of “blik,” prefer traditional, liturgical worship! And many anti-modern Christians, those who regard the modern blik as I’ve described it here as antithetical to true Christianity, prefer “contemporary worship.” This is one of the most fascinating enigmas of church life.
In part 3 of this series I will take up the question of how Christians have responded to modernity. As you might expect, the approaches have been and are many and varied.
* * * * * * * * * *
Modernity and Christianity
Part 3 (Final)
by Roger Olson
August 27, 2013
In the previous two posts I’ve raised the question whether modernity, as a “blik” (a worldview perspective, lens through which reality is seen and interpreted), and Christianity are at all compatible. Can they be integrated? Can authentic Christianity be contextualized with modernity without terminal loss to one or both? Must one leave Christianity behind to be truly modern? Must one leave modernity behind to be truly Christian?
These questions arise out of the research project leading up to my forthcoming book The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (InterVarsity Press, 2013). And that research project has basically been my life’s work as a professional Christian theologian. My first book was 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (IVP, 1992). The forthcoming book was to be a light revision of that first one, but it turned out to be a whole new and vastly expanded one—covering roughly the same time period and issue (viz., how modern theologians have dealt with the task of relating Christianity to modernity).
As far back as I can remember this issue has gripped me. I was raised in a form of Christian life that claimed to abhor and resist modernity. Whatever was “modern” was inimical to truth, beauty and goodness—unless “modern” only meant (as it does to most untutored people) “contemporary styles.” (I should add here that we were not so sure about that, either! Contemporary styles in cars was one thing; hair and clothes were something else!) My spiritual mentors had at least a vague understanding of what “modern” meant.
I remember sitting in a remote location under a pine tree at “Bible camp” reading a book by a modern theologian (Paul Tillich). I was about 20 years old. The “camp evangelist,” who had been my youth pastor earlier, walked by and saw what I was reading. He said “You oughtn’t be reading that.” I asked why and he told me it would corrupt my mind and spirit. I respectfully disagreed and told him he had taught me well enough how to discern the good from the bad and that I could do that even with Tillich. He simply said, “No, you can’t. Nobody can.” In other words, he, in concert with most of my spiritual mentors, thought just reading modern theologians, studying modern thought, was corrupting.
I didn’t believe him, but I was intrigued. Then I got to seminary (an evangelical Baptist seminary) and my systematic theology professor assigned me to do an independent “reading course” under him. He wanted me to read “1960s radical theology”—Cox, Hamilton, Altizer, et al. He actually trusted me to read it and not be corrupted by it! I was amazed by that. Of course, when we met to discuss my readings he firmly nudged me away from “death of God theology” while helping me to appreciate some ideas in Cox and even John A. T. Robinson.
Those things happened forty years ago. Since then I have immersed myself in the study of modernity and modern theology (or perhaps it should be “modern theology-ies” as there is no one modern theology).
I certainly don’t agree with my youth pastor and camp evangelist friend that merely reading a modern theologian corrupts a person. However, my study of 1960s radical theologies, including especially the various “death of God theologies,” convinced me that, modernity, taken to an extreme, taken to its logical conclusion, embodied certain impulses strongly inimical to authentic Christianity, to the gospel itself. What I have found in modern theologies is a series of sometimes bold, sometimes lame, sometimes intriguing, sometimes disgusting attempts to merge, integrate, accommodate modernity with and to Christianity and vice versa.
Of course all this begs the question “What is ‘authentic Christianity?” In my immediately preceding post I described how I regard modernity—its basic impulses, tendencies and trajectories. Here I will layout briefly, wholly inadequately, I’m sure, how I regard authentic Christianity as a worldview, as a blik, as a life-and-world perspective. Yes, to be sure, it’s more than that, but it includes that. If Christianity is compatible with any and every view of reality it is meaningless. While we must not inflate the cognitive aspect of Christianity to the whole of it, neither should we minimize it to the point where it is endlessly flexible.
Here, due to limitations of time and space, I will focus on one point of an authentic Christian worldview that raises problems for modernity and vice versa—belief in the supernatural.
The word “supernatural” sends shudders down many Christians’ spines and makes their skin crawl. I understand that. Like “awesome” it has been over used so much and so wrongly that it seems almost useless. But I can’t discard it. Authentic Christianity necessarily includes belief in the supernatural in the sense of acts of God that transcend anything explainable by scientific reason alone. One example, the crucial and obvious one, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many modern theologians, allergic to anything supernatural (because they think it contrary to science), have “reinterpreted” the resurrection of Jesus Christ as an existential experience of faith (Bultmann and Tillich). They regard the resurrection appearances reported in the gospels as “visions.” Bultmann spoke for many modern theologians when he said (paraphrasing) “We know dead men do not rise.”
I do not think authentic Christianity includes gullible belief in every supernatural story that emanates from a seemingly spiritual source (e.g., popular books and television testimonies). But I do think belief that God raised Jesus from the dead such that the tomb was empty is part and parcel of authentic Christianity. Modernity inclines against that. Swallowed whole, modernity tends to force one to reinvent Christianity such that it does not include any miracles or supernatural events even interpreted as special acts of God insofar as they are in principle unexplainable by scientific methods and means.
The impulse I’m talking about in modernity is “naturalism”—an inclination to be skeptical of anything, including Jesus’ resurrection or ours, that is in principle beyond science’s ability now or ever to explain.
But, of course, not all modern Christian theologians have gone so far. Some have pushed back against naturalism and attempted to rescue belief in the supernatural (even if they don’t like the term) by various means.
I studied under German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg in Munich who is famous for pushing back against Bultmann and the whole existentialist, “demythologizing” approach to the New Testament and Christianity. Pannenberg is most definitely “modern” in some regards while not swallowing modernity hook, line and sinker. His modernity shows especially in his epistemology which, even though not foundationalist, is rationalistic. He does not believe truth should ever be based on special revelation and faith alone; in order to be considered truth it must be publicly verifiable using the ordinary (modern) canons of rationality.
The range of accommodations to modernity by modern theologians is vast—all the way from the deepest accommodation, wholesale sell-out by 1960s radical theologians and their contemporary followers (such as Don Cupitt), to conservatives who don’t realize they are accommodating to modernity when they emphasize propositional truth as the [truest] form of revelation (Paul Helm) and biblical inerrancy as essential to Christianity.
My conclusion is that modernity represents something new in human history—new as of modernity’s birth in the later 17th century and especially its pinnacle in the eighteenth century. That something new is a secularized view of reality—the idea that life can be lived successfully without any reference to anything spiritual beyond what is discoverable by science.... Hellenistic culture, the Greek-inspired “blik,” was not wholly congenial to Christianity, but at least it included belief in a spiritual reality beyond the physical and its governing laws. Plato’s philosophy, Aristotle’s philosophy, neo-Platonism, even Stoicism believed in a spiritual reality beyond complete human comprehension and control.
The secularizing impulse in modernity has forced Christianity and religion in general into a defensive posture. Too seldom have Christian intellectuals gone on the offensive with strong arguments against modernity’s secularity. One reason I appreciate John Caputo, in spite of thinking he is not wholly consistent, is his scathing scorn aimed at the over-reaching rationalism of modernity. Postmodernity has opened doors for taking religion seriously that modernity tried to close.
In sum, I consider modernity, taken to its logical conclusion, inimical to authentic Christianity. Christian theology’s various attempts to escape its threat by radical revisioning of Christianity, especially de-supernaturalizing it, were, I believe, misguided. Only a few theologians really rose to the challenge and defended authentic Christianity in the face of modernity without retreating into pre-modern obscurantism. They include especially (and they are my heroes for this reason) Karl Barth among Protestants and Hans Urs von Balthasar among Catholics. Neither can be accused of obscurantism. Both saw modernity as inimical to authentic Christianity without retreating into an escapist anti-modernism that failed to wrestle with it.
What is needed is a form of Christian life that preserves the essence of Christianity (not redefined and reduced so that it cannot conflict with modernity), including belief in supernatural acts of God, past and present, and at the same time takes the cultural changes modernity has introduced seriously. Such a form of Christian life would:
1) value and encourage critical thinking without reducing truth to what autonomous human reason can discover unaided by the Spirit of God or His Word],
2) believe in and look for supernatural acts of God in persons’ lives without miracle mongering [that is, God's supernatural acts is how God normally communicates with people, even as we communicate with him by our life's witness and activity; this communication between the Father and His church, between His son and daughter with His Spirit is not deemed strictly as a miracle even though its sum and activity is miraculous. As it were, it falls more along the lines of God's providence and even must be considered as part-and-parcel salvifically with that of our redemption through Jesus and by His Spirit. - res]
3) allow the biblical narrative to “absorb the world” without withdrawing from modern discoveries and contributions,
4) value science without idolizing it, and
5) embrace those aspects of postmodernity that re-open the doors of the spiritual without rushing into relativism.
