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New & Enlarged Handbook of Christian Theology. Donald W. Musser
Читать онлайн.Название New & Enlarged Handbook of Christian Theology
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isbn 9781426749919
Автор произведения Donald W. Musser
Жанр Религия: прочее
Издательство Ingram
3. Spirit. Within Protestantism, the Anabaptist movement was marked by a rejection of Lutheran and Reformed teachings on several doctrines (most notably, baptism) and by a differing emphasis on the source of authority. Among these believers, “God’s Spirit, which the Anabaptists believed themselves to possess, is the ultimate authority which first gives authority to the written word of the Bible” (Reventlow, 53). Anabaptists stressed the “outer word” (Scripture) and the “inner word” (the legitimation by the Holy Spirit). A biblical text without the penetration and testing of the Spirit was a “dead letter.” Spiritual authority—of whatever kind—was grounded in the promptings of the Holy Spirit in an individual’s heart. The “authority” of church and Scripture must yield to this “inner light” (Quakerism) of immediate revelation as the ultimate and final authority for Christian theology and the Christian life as well.
Another factor has been active in these three avenues of authority. The place of human reason must also be considered. Although opinions differ on the extent to which “reason” is a “theological” as opposed to a “natural” factor, reason is a means by which theological systems are judged and theological claims assessed (the historic controversies on the relation between reason and revelation point to the necessity to consider reason as an important factor). Appropriation of the church’s tradition, the interpretation of Scripture, and the discernment of individual revelation are all filtered (as Immanuel Kant showed) through the eye of “reason.” Today, theorists recognize that in the interpretations of texts, the interpreter as well as the text itself must be interpreted: One’s own cultural milieu and setting in life actively influence interpretation. In the broadest sense of “reason” as the agent by which we understand and articulate what we perceive as church tradition, Scripture, or the Spirit, this dimension of human involvement and the human community is always present.
In the post-Reformation period, the principal avenues of authority were broadened further by various theological movements. The authority of the church and its traditions was fortified through the Council of Trent (1545-63), in which the Roman Catholic Church asserted that church teachings could be drawn “from Sacred Scripture, the apostolic traditions, the holy and approved councils, the constitutions and authorities of the supreme pontiffs and holy fathers, and the consensus of the Catholic Church.” The authority of the Pope as the interpreter of the Roman Catholic tradition was confirmed by the First Vatican Council, which gave official status to the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870. This gave the Pope’s pronouncements binding authority in the church when he spoke in an official capacity (ex cathedra) under prescribed conditions. The Pope was said to be “the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians.”
Against Counter-Reformation attempts at Trent to establish the authority of the church, Protestant theology in both its Lutheran and Reformed expressions sought to prove the authority of the Bible as the inspired Word of God that must be obeyed and that would take precedence over even the authority of the church. In the elaborate theological systems constructed by Protestant “scholastic” or “orthodox” theologians, Scripture functioned as the formal principle on which a scientific theology could be constructed. Crucial to this treatment of the Bible was detailed attention to the inspiration of Scripture and in some writings, to what became known as Scripture’s “inerrancy.” The Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675), a Reformed confession, pronounced that the Bible was inspired “not only in its matter, but in its words.” This inspiration was found “not only in its consonants, but in its vowels—either the vowel points themselves, or at least the power of the points.” This view accompanied the corollary of Scripture’s inerrancy—that, because Scripture was inspired by God, it could exhibit no “errors” of any kind, including all statements of fact in areas such as geography, science, and history.
In reaction to the interconfessional disputes among continental orthodox churches, the Pietist movement arose in the eighteenth century. It sought a revival of religious fervor and emphasized the religious renewal of individuals through the “new Birth.” The work of the Holy Spirit was a primary source of authority for Pietism and the proof of the Spirit’s work was in the works of “piety” performed. This emphasis stood in contrast to what the Pietists regarded as the formalism of orthodoxy, which was thought to be so heavily influenced by technical theology and the established church structures that lively spiritual experience was virtually lost. In a European culture where the prospects of maintaining a “Christian civilization” were being questioned, the Spirit’s work in individuals became Pietism’s focus.
Attacks on Authority. The period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century saw massive attacks on these traditional sources of Christian authority. Rapid changes in the European intellectual and social climate spurred by new currents in the studies of the natural sciences, philosophy, and literature put authority on all planes on the defensive. The formulations of Isaac Newton for mathematical physics presented nature as a rational, unified order where there were no “hidden purposes” (of God) to discover. As a result of Newton’s work, “God” was no longer needed as the hypothesis to authorize the world; “God” became a projection of nature. The scientific method of Francis Bacon, who emphasized the inductive approach to knowledge, allowed science to pursue truth on its own terms, thus freeing it from having to seek theological warrants as authority. This shift led to a heightened stress on reason as a primary authority for interpreting all human experience. It meant as well that traditions (as promoted by the church) or supernatural appeals to the “Spirit” were suspect. The Cartesian method that led to the “I think” (cogito)—the human being’s existence as a thinking being as the primary datum for reflection—became the starting point for authority. The emphasis of John Locke on reason as a “natural revelation” made reason alone the arbiter of the correctness of any claims to revelation. For English Deism, reason was the supreme reality. Authority was rooted in human perception in “the Age of Reason.”
Similar movements in literary fields brought about the beginnings of biblical criticism. The rise of historical consciousness, in which it was realized that people in the ancient biblical cultures perceived reality and asked questions in ways different from those of Europeans of the nineteenth century, was an important factor. So too were developments from archaeological explorations that enabled history to be reconstructed apart from the biblical data. Biblical texts themselves were being examined in ways that questioned or negated previous orthodox assumptions. Thus attacks on the Bible as “infallible” or “inerrant” became commonplace.
Traditional authority was also questioned by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Hume attacked causality, and with it the validity of making any empirically demonstrable statement about God. In Kant’s analysis of reason and the possibility of metaphysics, he concluded that “the only theology of reason which is possible is that which is based upon moral laws or seeks guidance from them.” Thus in the Enlightenment period, the metaphysical structure of reality, on which traditional models of authority (and Christian revelation) were based, was apparently destroyed.
Alternatives. Christian theologians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries responded to the Enlightenment attacks by shifting the grounds on which authority is based. Friedrich Schleiermacher turned to the realm of religious experience as the foundation for faith. The feeling of “absolute dependence” and the Christian experience of redemption provided the framework by which he believed theology could be possible. Albrecht Ritschl focused on the historical Jesus as the object of faith and revelation of God’s will. Ritschl saw Jesus as the intersection of the religious and ethical foci of theology and as the model for the value judgments that religion makes, particularly as Jesus symbolized the moral ideal of the kingdom of God. Thus Ritschl sought to emphasize the ethical implications of Christian faith.
The challenge of the Enlightenment was met differently by Karl Barth. Instead of seeking an authority grounded in religious experience or history as his liberal teachers had done, Barth turned to God’s self-revelation and disclosure in Jesus Christ as the foundation for all authority. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, God’s