An Introduction to “Neo-Orthodoxy”

In the comment thread to the previous post, I lamented the lack of serious engagement, from too many evangelical students, with the theology of Karl Barth, Thomas Torrance, and kindred spirits. In response, Mike Cheek asked about recommendations for understanding their context and what they were accomplishing. Naturally, not missing an opportunity to proselytize, I wrote him a mini-lecture on early 20th century theology. I am reproducing it below for the possible benefit of others.

Note: I do make some brief remarks on the propriety of the “neo-orthodox” label.

These “theologians of the Word” (i.e., early 20th century “neo-orthodox” writers) were working against an epistemological and metaphysical crisis — the fallout of Kant’s rejection of metaphysics, which was adopted by mainline Protestant theology (in various ways), from Schleiermacher to Ritschl to Harnack to Tillich.

With H. R. Mackintosh and P. T. Forsyth in Britain, E. Y. Mullins in America, and then Emil Brunner and Karl Barth in Switzerland/Germany, we have the first serious, in-depth offensive against this liberal tradition. [Prior to this, confessional critics of the dominant liberal academy were largely, with notable exceptions, on the defensive, resorting to apologetics or sometimes fideism.] All of the neo-orthodox theologians were trained in the liberal academy (e.g., Forsyth went to Germany to study under Ritschl), which contributes to their incisive critiques, as well as an appreciative appropriation of the liberal attack on metaphysics. Their response was, what I call, an “evangelical metaphysics.” In short, the power of the Word — the revelation of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit — creates a metaphysics of its own. Indeed, the Word creates the only metaphysics possible. Apart from this Word, Kant is right and metaphysics is impossible, except for certain moral postulates that never achieve a sure foundation outside of the human will’s self-determination (which Nietzsche correctly saw).

Thus, the liberals rightly (against the confessional orthodox) accepted the Kantian attack on a philosophical metaphysics but wrongly (against the neo-orthodox) extended this attack to any metaphysics whatsoever. As a result, the liberals rejected the agency of a God “out there” working and revealing himself “here.” Hence, we see the moralism and demythology that plagues this liberal tradition. Instead, the neo-orthodox, in a sense, humbled themselves before the power of the “wholly other” Word, which came in Israel/Christ, and comes now in the Spirit, and resides in His own self-sufficiency apart and above the created order (hence, meta-physics, above-the-physical).

The best introduction to all of this is to actually read the theologians themselves. They were fully conscious of what they were doing. I highly recommend P. T. Forsyth’s The Principle of Authority (currently published by Wipf & Stock) as an introduction to these issues and the neo-orthodox response. It should be noted that they did not think of themselves as “neo-orthodox” or even as a cohesive “movement.” Barth especially rejected any sort of labeling, in part because of his own eccentric approach (e.g., his vigorous attack on any natural knowledge of God, which nonetheless sort of allows for a natural knowledge of God!). The main problem with labels is that their use tends toward an over-emphasis of common traits, forgetting important differences (oh, like in the presentation you are currently reading!). Still, labels are unavoidable and helpful for students to organize the massive landscape of theology and philosophy.

Emil Brunner’s The Mediator (which can be found used for a reasonable price) is also a great introduction to this theology of the Word, especially the first two chapters where he positions himself vis-à-vis Schleiermacher and Ritschl, on the one hand, and Protestant orthodoxy, on the other hand. Barth is undoubtedly the greatest of all of these theologians, but because of the esoteric nature of his works and the shifts in his approach, from his more existential-deconstructive early writings to his more positive-constructive writings, he should probably be read after grappling with Forsyth and Brunner. However, Barth, like the others, always remained fairly existential, given his/their critique of scholasticism. I call this “good existentialism” as opposed to the bad existentialism which remains at the level of existentialism, lacking confidence in the new world of God’s re-creation. Barth’s Evangelical Theology is the best and most accessible introduction to this confidence amidst an existential critique of the world.

posted by Kevin Davis

For further reading, Paul Moser (Professor of Philosophy, Loyola Chicago) has an excellent faculty page with an extensive list of free pdf books by P. T. Forsyth, Emil Brunner, John Baillie, H. H. Farmer, H. R. Mackintosh, et al.

Edgar Y. Mullins’ dogmatic theology, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression, can be read or downloaded for free by clicking here or purchased from Wipf & Stock.

The Canon in Protestant Dogmatics, pt. 2

See series index

Auguste Lecerf’s Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics deals with the formal principle of the Reformation — the authority of scripture alone — in six chapters, of which I will excerpt from the first three:

8. Christian Dogmatics must be Protestant

9. The Formal and External Principle of the Reformed Faith

10. The Testimony of the Holy Spirit and the Authority of Scripture: The Canon of the New Testament

The subsequent chapters deal with the canon of the Old Testament (ch. 11), the unity of the Church (ch. 12), and the primacy for dogmatic loci of the formal principle (ch. 13).

Chapter 8, partially excerpted below, deals with the “protest” in evangelical dogmatics of the Reformation and its parallel with the infant church of the apostles.

For the Reformers, there was no question as to whether the Church, the visible institution, was of divine origin; nor even whether, under certain conditions, it was infallible and indefectible. On these two points Calvin gives as categorical an affirmative as Luther. Neither the one nor the other had the least doubt as to the divine institution of the ministry of the Word and of the sacraments.

They did not deny that the Church had authority in matters of faith and discipline. Normally, the Christian cannot be conceived to the life of faith except in the bosom of the mother of the faithful, which is the Church. On her teaching and authority he depends all the days of his life.

…

In referring to churches subject to the yoke of error and superstition, Calvin declares that they are still churches, for this reason, among others, that “the Lord wondrously preserves in them a remnant of His people, however scattered they may be.” (Inst. IV, ii. 12.) By this very circumstance the efficacy of Christ’s promises is assured. He is with His ministers when they teach, even if their teaching is tainted with ignorance or error. He is even with an unfaithful preacher, when he prevents any but the elements of truth contained in his defective preaching from entering into the souls of the faithful. The example of the conversion of Mere Angelique of Port Royal furnishes a striking proof of this.

When evil grows in the Church to such an extent that it becomes unfit as an institution to fulfil its function, God can if it please Him, raise up by an extraordinary vocation such men as Calvin calls evangelists and we call Reformers. He thus re-establishes, in sufficient clarity and purity, the proclamation of the evangelical message and the administration of the sacraments.

…

As to the formal principle of Protestantism, Scripture as the unique source and rule of faith and life, it is justified scientifically by a verification which is based on historical evidence.

It is evident that Christianity, confronted by the Synagogue, could only make good its claim to be the succession Church of ancient Israel by basing itself on the very principle which became the formal principle of the Reformation when confronted by the Church of Rome. In relation to the Synagogue and the Sanhedrin, the primitive Church was in exactly the same position as the Reformed Church in relation to the Papacy and the Council.

Christianity is formally a Protestantism opposing legitimist and traditionalist Judaism. Because Judaism has been vanquished and the centuries have rolled away, Christians of the sacerdotalist type have forgotten all this. But they would not be here to oppose Protestants with their legitimist prepossessions, that is to say, the preliminary legitimist question, under pretext that the Protestants have broken with legitimate authority; they would not be here, we say, if our Lord and His disciples had not adopted the same attitude toward the priesthood of Jerusalem as Luther and Calvin later adopted toward the priesthood of Rome.

What is the precise point which formally distinguishes historic Protestantism from Rome and Constantinople? It has already been said that there is no question of denying to ecclesiastical authority the right of declaring its sentiments and of judging in matters of religious controversy, provided it takes for its supreme rule the Word of God. Still less is it a question of encouraging the pride of private individuals by giving them the right to base themselves on their autonomous reason or sensibility, in order to reject that which is confessed by the representative Church.

The question is just this: when the representative Church — which is not necessarily to be identified with the Church pure and simple — claims in an arbitrary fashion to place her authority or her “tradition of the elders” on the same footing as the Word of God, does her decision bind before God the consciences of the members of the Church?

In other words, if a believer refuses to accept the instruction of an ecclesiastical tribunal, out of respect for the Word of God, is he necessarily and a priori a proud man? The Roman Church says “Yes”; the Reformed, “No.”

In support of her affirmation, Rome cites certain well-known passages of Scripture: the famous Tu es Petrus (Matthew 16:18) and the not less celebrated Dic Ecclesiae (Matthew 18:17). But in so doing she encloses herself in a vicious circle. For, on the one hand, it is claimed that the private individual can only judge of the sense of Holy Scripture by basing himself on the infallible authority of the Church; while, on the other hand, texts of Scripture are quoted to him in order to prove this assertion. Thus an appeal is made to the judgment of the individual to decide, in his independence, the sense of Scripture which is is claimed that the representative Church alone has the right and power to judge.

But we need not insist on this point. Let us note simply what has happened historically since the foundation of Christianity (of the Christian Church, we grant, despite the denials of certain neo-Protestants). At the time when our Lord exercised His “irregular” ministry, there existed a Church by divine right: the Synagogue. Rome will not dispute this. The regular authorities of this Church were able to base their authority on a passage of the Old Testament as clear as those texts of the New Testament invoked by Rome, namely, Deuteronomy (17: 8-13).

In this passage we read that, should difficult questions arise, the priest and the judge must decide, and that if anyone, through pride, refuses to submit to his sentence, he must be cut off, that thus the people may be preserved from presumption.

Now, He whom we recognize as the Christ was condemned in the place which the Lord had chosen, as the text of the Law prescribes (Deuteronomy 17:8), by the priest and the judge, for having followed the example of the most faithful prophets of the Old Testament, who had judged that theirs was not a case of resistance through pride.

Unless we condemn the infant Church, which no Christian could think of doing, it must be acknowledged that there are, in fact, cases in which resistance to the regular ecclesiastical authority does not imply a revolt through pride; that there are some cases in which private individuals, like the fishers of Galilee, were obliged in conscience to make appeal from the sentence of the priests to that which impressed their minds as the faithful interpretation of the prophecies of Scripture.

(pp. 294, 296-8)

The Canon in Protestant Dogmatics, pt. 1 (intro)

Auguste Lecerf, with Sergius Bulgakov (middle) and Fritz Lieb (right) in 1933.

series index

This post begins a series on the formal principle of the Reformation (sola scriptura) as presented in Auguste Lecerf’s An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics. I’ve covered this issue before with P. T. Forsyth’s discussion in The Person and Place of Jesus Christ:

The Canon: A Protestant Account

The Canon: A Protestant Account, pt. 2

Auguste Lecerf (1872-1943) was a French Reformed pastor and professor at the Protestant Faculty of Theology, University of Paris. The preface to An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics has this description of his work:

In 1930 a visitor knocked at Professor Lecerf’s door and introduced himself with these words: “Some friends of mine, hearing that I was passing through Paris, have advised me to come and see you. M. Lecerf is a unique personality, they say, he is in fact the last of the Calvinists and when he dies the type will be extinct. So whatever happens, do not fail to pay him a visit.” When God called his servant home in 1943, he had seen the divine blessing upon his labours. Far from being the sole defender of a lost cause, he had become the leader of a living movement, which was rapidly and irresistibly reversing all the positions of the once prevalent modernism. Practically all the young people coming out of the Theological Faculties of France and Geneva were declaring themselves Calvinists. (S. Leigh-Hunt, preface, p. 7)

Lecerf was indeed a fully confessional Calvinist, unlike many of the other renewers of the Reformation (e.g., Karl Barth) who adapted Reformed principles but reformulated key doctrines, notably on scripture and election. His affinities are more with Bavinck than Barth, and so we see Bavinck, along with Calvin, in most of the footnotes. His Introduction was part of a larger project covering the whole system of Reformed theology, but, unfortunately, he died before it could be completed. As such, we have a volume dealing with the foundations of Reformed dogmatics. Epistemology and the question of sources (authority) is the content.

This blog series is going to be excerpts from Lecerf with little commentary. He is a clear writer. I’m offering this largely because his Introduction is fairly expensive and is not available to read online. I also desire to see this Protestant principle actually understood and articulated in online discussions, which often devolve into an interchange of fantastic ignorance and arrogance.

As will be seen, Lecerf is concerned in maintaining the objectivity of the Protestant principle of authority. The Bible judges the Church, to be sure, but the Church does not then become an abstraction, supplanted by the individual’s faith. The Church is the field for the economy of the Holy Spirit as the reconciling agent of the Risen Lord. As such, the God who commissions and oversees (as with all things) the heralds of his Gospel and the chroniclers of his Word is the God who elects and redeems in the life of the Church. But, this Gospel that is the raison d’être of the Church does not originate or find its fulfillment in the continuing life of the Church; rather, the Gospel is antecedent to the ministry of the Church and forms the content of this ministry. As the Church takes course, she is ever-dependent on the unique revelation of this Gospel. The Christ-event, and the old covenant community and prophecies that prepared the way, is where the Church finds her salvation. The recognition of a canon of scripture is the recognition of this salvation. It is the conscious placement of the Church under this rule. Thus, the Church does not sanction the rule; rather, the Rule sanctions the Church. If the Church takes the position of the absolute under which the scriptures are made subject, then the Church effectively replaces scripture with herself. This is what the Reformers faced, and so they began to set aright the Bible and the Church as distinct.

Whether the Catholic believes, understandably, that this is folly and dangerous, he or she can at least recognize and appreciate the conscience-bound purposes of the Reformers and their heirs today. Both sides have a compelling and coherent thesis to offer, within a narrative of God’s providence, so let us go ahead with information in hand and humility in the heart.

Richard Gaffin on union with Christ

Justin Taylor has linked to some fine lectures on union with Christ by Richard Gaffin, systematics professor at WTS.

You won’t understand the Reformation until you understand this identity, through faith, with the Christ who is justified and glorified, beyond all sin, law, and condemnation.

What is “Apostolic”?

If you are interested in the issue of doctrinal development, and, specifically, the Catholic understanding of apostolic criteria, then I recommend the discussion being had on the blog, Fides Quaerens Intellectum. In particular, see this post by Kepha on the historicity of the bodily assumption of Mary. The comment section is quite lengthy but with some good thoughts, especially from Tim Enloe, Peter Escalante, and others. Kepha has a good summary of the discussion (the Catholic points and counter-points) here:

Ecclesiology and Epistemology

And, lastly, here is a list of links to the most important posts related to the subject (we’ve been going over this from many different angles for several months now):

Ecclesiology and Epistemology, pt. 2

I do not know of anywhere else on the web currently where the Catholic side is taken as respectfully and seriously along with Protestant objections forthrightly displayed.