The Story of Christian Theology

By Dr. Roger E. Olson

Olson (Ph.D., RiceUniversity) is professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of BaylorUniversity in Waco, Texas. He has contributed to such publications as The Scottish Journal of Theology and Perspectives on Religious Studies, and he also serves as editor of Christian Scholar's Review.

For Schleiermacher, theology no longer dealt in facts, but only in values.  Traditional beliefs that might conflict with modernity such as the virgin birth, Jesus’ nature, miracles and second coming, and realms of angels and demons and heaven and hell were all gradually relegated to the dust bin of ancient theology through neglect or radical reinterpretation.  On the other hand, at least now no one would be burned at the stake like Servetus in Geneva for questioning orthodox doctrines. Quite the contrary.  Once liberal Protestant theologians controlled seminaries and divinity schools, scholars who insisted on teaching orthodox doctrines as facts would often be excluded as old-fashioned obscurantists.

A second common theme was the moralization of dogma.  Under the influence of Kant, liberal Protestant thinkers insisted on reinterpreting all doctrines and dogmas of Christianity in ethical and moral terms, and those that could not be so reinterpreted were neglected if not discarded entirely.  The deity of Christ could be moralized as an expression of his moral influence.  He brought the kingdom of God into human social history as an ideal.

The third common theme is the universal salvation of humanity.  Almost entirely missing from liberal Protestantism was any acknowledgment of radical sin and evil or of God’s judgement, wrath and hell.  The latter was reinterpreted as states of conscientiousness when humans are alienated from God and God’s kingdom by their own decisions and actions.  It is not that God judges them so much as they judge themselves.

Once the full impact of liberal Protestant theology was felt, a stern reaction erupted from theologians committed to forms of Protestant orthodoxy.  Out of Protestant orthodoxy arose a militant theology of reaction against liberal theology and modern through in general that came to be called fundamentalism.  Historically and theologically, then, fundamentalists were those Protestant Christians who defend entire, detailed systems of very conservative doctrines against perceived modernist, liberal encroachments and dilutions, and they often call for and practice separation from Christians who are guilty of participating in or condoning modernism in theology.  More often than not, fundamentalists insist on belief in the supernatural, verbal inspiration of the Bible, absolute biblical inerrancy with regard to historical and natural as well as theological matters, a literalistic biblical hermeneutic, and strong opposition to any and all deviations form these principles or fundamental beliefs of conservative Protestantism. 
Liberal Protestant theology borrowed heavily from Enlightenment philosophy and especially Kant’s critical idealism and moral objectivism.  It was foreshadowed by Locke’s rationalism and Deism’s natural religion and influenced heavily by Hegel’s religious philosophy of Absolute Spirit.  Fundamentalism and conservative evangelical theology stood on the foundation laid by the Princeton theologians Hodge and Warfield and looked to Thomas Reid’s common sense realism as their common philosophical framework.  Neo-orthodoxy (Barth and Brunner) attempted to rediscover a pure theology of the Word of God free of any dominating philosophical influence. 

Barth opposed the orthodox Protestant view of the Bible found in Turretin and Hodge and others who insisted on the Bible as primary revelation in propositional form.  He rejected propositional revelation – the idea that when God wishes to communicate to humans, he communicates information in truth statements.  He especially rejected the idea of biblical inerrancy.  The Bible for Barth was human through and through.  It is a book of human testimony to Jesus Christ, and in spite of all its humanness it is unique because God uses it.  According to Barth, the statements of the Bible can be wrong at any point.

Barth is the primary systematics taught in ELCA Lutheran seminaries, and one can see how there is a contrast between the orthodoxy proclaimed in the pew and the theology preached in the pulpit as taught in Lutheran seminaries.  This compendium is published to provide a basis of understanding for the reader why there is such seeming contrast in the ELCA today between what is said and what is understood when we say we are confessional and orthodox.