Ken Gets to the Point

Consider this: The greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century was Karl Barth. The greatest Protestant theologian of the 19th century was Friedrich Schleiermacher. (Any text, liberal or conservative, will affirm this.) To be a Protestant theologian or minister one would need to understand these 2 writers, at a minimum, right? Would a professional in any other field be able to graduate with an advanced degree, much less practice one's discpline, without having a clue what the greatest thinker in their discipline from each of the last 2 centuries thought? That's the case in Protestant Christianity in the 20th and 21st centuries, during which seminaries broke from a rich tradition of theological thought that had equipped ministers well for two millenia.

Says who? Karl Barth's primary text, The Epistle to the Romans, was, according to Barth's own preface, written under the influence of Barth's "acquantance with Plato and Kant". Barth also wrote a History of Protestant Thought from Rousseau to Ritschl (covering Rousseau and others now considered to be only philosophers). Schleiermacher, not too many modern theologians remember, translated all of Plato's dialogues from Greek into German, and wrote lengthy introductions to them all. Plato, however, is unknown to graduates of today's Protestant seminaries. Why can't one study Plato, or any writer generally referred to as a philosopher, in a Protestant seminary anymore? Because about 150 years ago theology was divorced from philosophy. Furthermore this 20th-21st century divorce of theology from philosophy cannot account for 25 centuries of thinkers and writers for whom these were one and the same subject.

Ever since the term "theology" was coined 25 centuries ago, it has been inseparable from philosophy. Philosophy and theology have not been 2 distinct disciplines, as they are today. From the time of Plato (who first used the term "theology") to 19th century German thinkers such as Schleiermacher and Hegel (both of whom were Protestant theologians and professors of philosophy), the concerns of philosophy and theology have been one and the same. In fact, to speak of philosophy or theology previous to the 19th century is to commit historical anachronism. It may be helpful to use an additional term, such as theological thought.

Does this matter? Are we playing word games here? Absolutely not. During each and every one of the past 25 centuries, thinkers have tried to solve the same problems that Christians are trying to solve today in their seminaries, churches and ministries. And they solved them by working within a rich tradition of the history of theological thought. Today's theologians and ministers, by contrast, are sadly unequipped with the vibrant history of theological thought.

I love ministers. Whenever I meet a minister, of any tradition, I feel a deep sense of respect and warmth. If you're a minister, consider yourself on my good side. What I don't love, however, is the equipping of ministers that happens, or doesn't happen, in seminaries. Ministers aren't told that the questions they've discovered, the insights they've made, have been discovered and made in each of the past 25 centuries. Their horizons are narrowed by their educators. The rich, helpful, and essential history of theological thought has been on hiatus for about 150 years, and Western Christianity of the past 150 years has been the result.

Comments

[Andy Stager]

I agree with you on the need for a theologian to be a philosopher, and vice versa, or better yet, for the categories to be re-merged as they ought to be, at least from the Christian's perspective. As a historian (and, overwhelmingly but again, necessarily, an apprenticing theologian, philosopher, geographer, scientist, etc, etc.) I can't agree more that a developed Christian mind --- especially one that presumes to answer the call to be an ordained servant of the Word, cannot afford to ignorantly "discover" things long ago discovered - and almost always more carefully articulated - by more mature minds and pens.

At the same time, I hope that you are not suggesting that Barth and Schliermacher are our best exegetes and commentators when it comes to preparing to take the pulpit. Recognizably, these men are philosophers and theologians, as you have asserted. But, we must consider that they are perhaps not household names for seminarians because their assertions have strayed from biblical orthodoxy in severe ways. Of course seminarians should know who these influential thinkers were and the impacts they had on preaching and secular versions of philosophy, but I'm not quite ready to enshrine them next to Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and even your favorites Willard and Foster. Perhaps I am reading you wrong, but do you wish to so enshrine them?

[Ken Archer]

Maybe. It would be an interesting discussion to have. In fact, it would be a Great Books debate, but within the history of theology. The primary problem is that such a debate, which seems important to you and me, is unimportant within the seminary experience and, by extension, to most ministers. Having said that, I think I would argue for Barth and Schleiermacher as 2nd Tier figures in the canon of theological thought. By analogy, Lucretius and Fichte may be 2nd Tier figures in the history of philosophy to Plato and Nietzsche, but no decent philosophy graduate program would overlook them.

As for a more detailed defense of Schleiermacher's and Barth's importance, let me zoom in on Schleiermacher. His controversial "feeling of dependence" doctrine of man's relationship to God seems wishy-washy in today's world of wishy-washy churches. It actually is a very well-thought through position influenced by Schleiermacher's reading of Plato and by his evangelistic passion (evangelism and discipleship were much more important to Schleiermacher than to his followers as is clear from his recorded sermons). It was first communicated in an evangelistic tract called On Religion which, as its subtitle indicates (Speeches to its Cultured Despisers) was written to religion's cultured despires, who we today call the "unchurched" (they actually were all Schleiermacher's friends in the Berlin Romantic circle of the late 18th and early 19th centuries). Schleiermacher argued that their passions for culture - their vital dependence on beauty - is actually a dependence on God. We may disagree with Schleiermacher, but any seminary concerned with evangelism must engage him. As to Biblical orthodoxy, the modern history of hermeneutics begins with Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics and Criticism, which prepared the way for Dilthey and Gadamer. While he need not be placed on the same plane as Augustine, no decent seminary should see his work as other than an indispensible preparation for professional ministry.

[Stephen Arnold]

I am no philosopher, yet I find the discussion of the rift between Philosophy and Theology to be quite engaging. Ken, you make many interesting points, none of which I would dispute (admittedly out of ignorance, save for a few of the more pedestrian topics). I would, however, like to make mention of the third, and often neglected, member of that "trinity" - Methodology (i.e., science or scientific thought - and NOT MetaPhysics, but rather actual physics - though there is a connection). Many of the major shifts in Philosophical/Theological thought had their genesis following "advancements" in the Natural Sciences. The likes of Copernicus and Galileo shook the foundations of a theology which said the world was flat and Man the center of the Universe. I won't go into great historical detail here. It is enough to assert that the era of "modernity" had these events as its roots. Like wise (and maybe even more dramatically so), the developement of both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics serve as the anchor by which Post-Modern Thought has emerged. A little background: TOR - your measurement depends on your observation point (or point of view), and QM - you can't know BOTH the position and momentum of a particle EXACTLY, but you can only know something to within some small uncertainty. Of course, these two theories match the observed experimental results quite nicely, but their EXTENSION into the Metaphysical, and an attempt to fit the Theological within that framework, has proven ... difficult. Thoughts?

[Ken Archer]

Steve, I completely agree. In fact, theology, philosophy and science were largely one single field of research until recently (e.g. the last 150-200 years). Seminaries, departments of philosophy and departments in the natural sciences have all sort of veered off on their own courses in the last century or two, such that reading texts by Augustine, Aristotle or Hippocrites, or by Schleiermacher, Kant or Newton, makes very little sense today due to their holism.

Natural science, I think you will agree, is as guilty of this as are theology and philosophy. Natural scientists are, according to Allan Bloom, "interested primarily in the solution of the questions now important in their disciplines and are not particularly concerned with discussions of their foundations, inasmuch as they are so evidently successful. They are indifferent to Newton's conception of time or his disputes with Leibniz about calculus; Aristotle's teleology is an absurdity beneath consideration. Scientific progress, they believe, no longer depends on the kind of comprehensive reflection given to the nature of science by men like Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Kant and Marx." (Closing of the American Mind, p. 345) Bloom goes on to say, "The problem of the humanities, and therefore of the unity of knowledge, is perhaps best represented by the fact that if Galileo, Kepler and Newton exist anywhere in the university now it is in the humanities, as part of one kind of history or another - history of science, history of ideas, history of culture." (ibid, p. 371)

There are obviously exceptions in all three fields. But the point is that students in seminaries and departments of philosophy and natural sciences are not steeped by their professors in this rich historic dialogue. Most philosophy and theology proceeds unbothered by the Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, as you point out. Theologians and philosophers previous to the 19th century would have been shaken, by contrast.

[len]

Unfortunately, there is no going backwards.

Study of philosophy in a tyical university today probably wouldn't be helpful, as it might have been one hundred years ago.

On the other hand, study of literature and the classics, the early thinkers like Plato and Socrates.. now that might be more than merely helpful.

[Sven]

Excellent post - preach it brother!

I share your concern that influential men like Barth and Schleiermacher (and may I add Moltmann and T F Torrance?) are utterly foreign to many in full-time ministry. Granted, they were not primarily exegetes - but never intended to be. Barth especially has much to teach (post?)modern Christians and we would do well to listen.

It would also do evangelicals a power of good to realise that there are great Christian thinkers other than Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Edwards.

Great blog, will definitely be a regular reader.

Sven

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