19th and 20th Centuries
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[edit] Scripture as Rulebook of Morals
18th-century rationalism and Enlightenment had made the Scriptures into a rulebook for moral information. Whoever followed the “simple precepts of Jesus” was to be considered a Christian, regardless of whatever he might “believe” about this Jesus or God in general. A major aspect of the biblical religion rationalism was unable truly to accommodate was that of history. “Random” historical events or documents could never become the basis for the true religion and worship of the true God. True, reasonable religion was there before there was a bible (Lessing).
[edit] Scripture as Record of Religous Development of Man
However, toward the end of the 18th century the idea of “development” gained currency in the interpretation of the Scriptures. E.g., Lessing writes an essay on The Development of the Human Race. And the German Lutheran pastor and thinker Johann Gottfried Herder claims that the emotional poetic language was the most ancient way of communicating religious truths. Others see especially the OT and its religion and language as an earlier stage of human and religious development. These approaches thus assume that the revelation and biblical religion themselves are subject to historical development which need not have come to an end in Jesus Christ. They also allow for, in fact demand, critical work on the biblical Scripture. Because large portions of the Scriptures belong to earlier, more childlike stages of development, they do not apply to the “mature” reader of today anymore.
[edit] Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
Schleiermacher stands at the beginning of the 19th century. He comes from a Moravian-Pietistic-Reformed background, but also made a name for himself as a translator of the dialogues of Plato. He served as professor at the University of Berlin and was instrumental in bringing about the Reformed-Lutheran church union in Prussia.
He adopts, at least as far as the OT in relation to the NT is concerned, the idea of historical development of religion. The OT is, therefore, the document of a different, non-Christian religion. The key factor for the NT is that it came about when men wrote about their experience of Jesus. In doing so they were, to be sure, guided by the Holy Spirit (personal inspiration), but “inspiration” did not mean that specific words were provided them. In other words, Schleiermacher solves the paradox of verbal inspiration and individual expression of the human writers (as already seen and described by the orthodox theologians) in favor of the human writers.
What makes the NT “normative” for us today is not that we can easily quote proof texts to derive religious or moral teachings from the Scriptures – for Schleiermacher true religion is neither chiefly what we do (rationalism, moralism) nor what we know (“orthodoxy”). Religion is rather the realm of feelings. The NT, as expression of the first impact Jesus made in the lives of human beings, remains normative because it has the power to convey an encounter with Jesus through the testimony of the first witnesses. In other words, it can generate genuine Christian pious feelings, summarized in the expression “feeling of utter dependency.” No wonder that Schleiermacher, following earlier Pietists, advocated a psychological method of interpretation, which, based on historical reconstruction of the person of Jesus, aimed at reliving the experiences and feelings of the authors closest to Jesus. In a different way Jesus also becomes the “canon within the canon,” that is, the critical reconstruction of Jesus serves as a criterion to determine what is canonical within and without the NT canon and what is owed to distracting Jewish or pagan influences on the human authors.
[edit] David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874)
Strauss views the NT as a time-bound form of a religious idea. This idea realizes itself in ever more true forms of consciousness. The NT as one time-bound form among many can easily be destructed by historical criticism without destroying the religious core. His critical Life of Jesus is often seen as the most important theological book of the 19th century. It views the NT life of Jesus as veiled in mythical, legendary form. The mythical form was derived, according to Strauss, from popular imagination and the OT. Because the writers of the NT believed Jesus to be the Messiah (based on their faith in the resurrection of Jesus), they clothed him in the images and concepts that were part of the traditional concept of “messiah.” In other words, the myths surrounding Jesus are not simply “inventions” of the evangelists; they spoke, not only because they believed, but also as they believed.
Strauss rejects the classical doctrine of inspiration because he sees in it a self-contradiction: it sought to base the divine authority of the bible on human, rationalizing arguments. He also sees a double dissolution of the “inner testimony of the Holy Spirit:” this pneumatological foundation of the inspiration becomes either spiritism or rationalism (reason deciding whether the “inner testimony” was in fact that of the Holy Spirit). In other words, the authority of the Scriptures always rests on something outside of them. The doctrine of the “inner testimony” Strauss described as the “Achilles heel” of the Protestant system. Along with the self-authenticating power of Scripture Strauss sees the self-interpretation of Scripture as “figurative speech.” The history of interpretation shows that interpretation is not the work of the Scriptures but that of the human mind. Strauss realizes that the emergence of historical criticism leads to the distinction between (historical) shell and (religious) core, which, however, cannot be sustained: eventually, even the core will be subject to, and destroyed by, historical criticism. Under the rules of historical criticism, a new papacy has been established in Protestantism that directs the people to submit to the many (and contradicting) historical and exegetical experts.
[edit] Johann Tobias Beck (1804-1878)
Beck, a contemporary of Strauss close to the Awakening at the beginning of the 19th century, views the Scriptures as documents of divine revelation. In other words, divine revelation can only be known from the Scriptures. He views revelation, according to Scripture, as an “organism” which, as any other organism, has the power to procreate – the only adequate form of this kind of self-perpetuation is the Scripture itself. Due to its inner relation to divine revelation, Scripture has the power to interpret itself, and that implies also the conversion of the “reader.” In Beck, the doctrine of self-authentication of the bible takes on a specific form: The Scriptures prove to be God’s word because they prove to be the principle of life of the church. That is to say, they have had a formative impact on the life of individual Christians as well as on the church as a whole.
While Beck thus seems to restate the orthodox teachings on Scripture, albeit in a modified form, he is not immune to historical criticism: he assumes various degrees of inspiration in the individual writers in analogy to degrees of sanctification.
[edit] Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810-1877)
Von Hofmann, an Erlangen theologian (i.e., Lutheran) who was influenced by the confessional awakening at the beginning of the 19th century, but also by Georg F. Hegel and F. Schleiermacher. His “mathematical point” on which he bases his entire theological system (including his teachings on Scripture) is the subjective experience of certainty, which, according to Hofmann, is caused neither by Scripture nor by the church, but by the Holy Spirit. Following Schleiermacher’s lead, Hofmann sees theology’s task in reflecting on the Christian personality of the theologian. Scripture and the church’s confessions are but reflections of that “ego” of the Christian (which apparently is understood to be changeless over time and space). Scripture is thus no longer seen as God’s powerful Word which can authenticate itself; it is merely the norm for all teaching. The Spirit’s work in relation to Scripture is strictly limited to the act of inspiration in the writer (which is clearly not understood as “dictation” of revealed truths), not to that of illumination/certainty in the reader/listener. Hofmann seems to see the latter as a more direct result of the Spirit’s work.
Methodologically, Hofmann opts for a limited use of historical research; in other words, he seeks middle ground between the old orthodox paradigm and the newer, liberal one. He points out, on the one hand, that, e.g., the letters in the NT “didn’t fall from heaven,” are were written in response to concrete historical circumstances. On the other hand, he claims that the original history of the church as we have it in the NT already contains all that is necessary for the church to know (sufficiency of Scripture); that the importance of historical research is easily overestimated; and that Scripture is the result of God’s revelation through the Spirit.
[edit] Franz Hermann Reinhold von Frank (1827-1894)
Toward the end of the 19th century, von Frank, likewise a Lutheran of Erlangen, continued along the path set forth by Hofmann, but not without modifications. For he teaches the causative authority of Scripture Hofmann denies. According to Frank, the Scriptures create the subjective consciousness of being reborn which, in turn, lets one believe that the Scriptures are indeed God’s Word. This fides divina (faith in God’s Word of the bible caused by the Holy Spirit) in the Scriptures is mediated by the fides humana (faith caused by historical and rational arguments for the Scriptures); chief among these historical arguments for the Scriptures as God’s word is their continued presence, use, and authority in the church.
Frank criticizes the historical criticism of his age by pointing out that it focuses exclusively on the “human side” of Scripture which prevents it from seeing the dual nature of Scripture, its human and divine aspects, together. He agrees, on the other hand, with the critical description of the NT as part of the apostolic proclamation. This grants, even strictly historically speaking, preeminence to the documents contained in the NT.
Due to his historical approach he rejects any preconceived notions of “inerrancy” or “infallibility” of God’s word. The “development” of this doctrine has to be understood out of its historical context, that is, the opposition between the Protestant reformers and the Roman church. “Infallible” thus describes merely what they experienced as infallible, that is, the gospel and everything necessary for salvation, not simply the whole content of Scripture.
[edit] The History of Religions School
While the historical research of the Scriptures during the first half of the 19th century still aimed at a religious application of their contents to the present age, this became less and less the case. Consistent application of historical criticism led to a view of the Scriptures as a strictly historical document, without any immediate relevance for the present. This development culminated in the “history of religions” school whose members were, among others, Wilhelm Bousset, Ernst Troeltsch, William Wrede, Hermann Gunkel, Adolf Jülicher, and Hans Lietzmann. These men and others viewed Scripture consistently as a product of history, that is, as expression of religions of the past which are an integral part of their historical and religious contexts. The religions of the bible become part of the ancient religious world. E.g., the early Christian texts have to be differentiated from everything that followed (and preceded) as clearly as possible and to be described as worthwhile in their own right. Any present-day meaning of the ancient biblical documents is a highly subjective matter which cannot be controlled by any plausible method.
[edit] Ernst Troeltsch
Troeltsch at the beginning of the 20th century, stated that the consistent application of the historical method to the biblical writings places those writings in the larger context of the history of humanity. This method relativizes everything, that is, it puts it in relation with other things (Troeltsch had an “organic” understanding of history, where everything is somehow connected to everything else). Historical research, however, can also point out the relative advantage of Christianity, that is, its greater historical vitality, in comparison with other religions; the relative advantage makes it plausible to the modern person that the organizing center of Christianity (the life of Jesus, its founder) has truth and life.
Troeltsch, like many of his time, views the “orthodox bible dogma” strictly as a product of history, that is, of the 17th century. For him, this dogma is unhistorical because it absolutizes one element of the history of religions at the expense of all others. Rightly understood, so Troeltsch, can the Scriptures only be viewed as the source of a development, not as the only means to nourish the faith. As in earlier writers, Scripture and tradition (the latter understood as the history of Scripture’s effect / historical-cultural impact) are seen as an organic continuum.
[edit] Wilhelm Herrmann (1846-1922)
Herrmann is historically important as teacher of K. Barth and R. Bultmann. According to Herrmann, the historical criticism has shown that the verbally-inspired bible of Protestant orthodoxy did not, and could not, exist. In other words, the doctrine of inspiration is a useless attempt to prove the reliability of the bible as transmitter of God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. Instead, he proposes to accept the bible as reliable because of the role Christ plays in the Christian church. The Christological reference is, at the same time, also the critical standard he uses to limit Scripture’s authority.
Revelation is thus not the publication of certain propositional truths, but an event which elevates the recipient to commune with God. For the Christian, this event is the historical appearance of Jesus. That is, only the historical Christ is the foundation of the faith – the biblical Christ, the Christ of the kerygma (proclamation) is the content of the faith. (The biblical, exalted Christ – including all creeds – is generated by the faith of the early followers of Jesus; it can thus not be the basis for faith today because that would found it on the convictions of other humans.)
The historical Christ (the personal life of Jesus) obviously has to be distilled out of the biblical accounts as a historically credible personality. This is done in two stages: First, through historical work, the inner life of the biblical authors has to be set forth (which, by the way, establishes the importance of the “community of faith” or of “tradition” for the mediation of revelation). In this work, then, the biblical Christ becomes a real, present-day experience and event, free from the views of the apostles. Christ re-presents himself, that is, he makes himself present again.
Scripture’s authority is thus based on its role as mediator of an encounter with the inner life of Jesus. For Herrmann, Scripture is not identical with God’s Word (Orthodoxy) nor does it “contain” God’s Word (later accommodations); Scripture instead becomes God’s Word. Whenever some biblical text makes some of the inner life of Jesus clear to the modern reader / hearer, then it has become a mysterious word from God to him. This revelatory event and encounter cannot be described or secured methodologically.
[edit] Martin Kähler
Kähler, a contemporary of Herrmann, points out that the historical nature of God’s revelation does not mean that God’s acts are, as such, recognizable as revelation. God’s Word is needed to accompany and interpret God’s acts. Thus, the Word is the crucial mediator of revelation. This view of the importance of the Word leads Kähler to criticize Herrmann for separating the historical Christ from the biblical one: the biblical Christ is the only one we have, so Kähler; there is no wordless, merely experiential revelation. Instead, the interpretation of the impact of Jesus on them by the apostles is the interpretation of God’s act in Christ by God’s revealing Word. (The idea of “impact” replaces the classic doctrine of inspiration.) In this way, the word of Scripture re-presents Christ and thus creates a relationship with God. The original impact of Jesus continues through the course of church history by means of the Scriptures, which, according to Kähler, makes the revelatory nature of the bible at least plausible, but will not convince anyone denying revelation as such (difference between fides divina and fides humana).
Interestingly, Kähler ascribes a certain trans-historical (übergeschichtlich) nature to the events and facts of the bible that are beyond the reach of historical criticism. On the one hand, he finds that historical criticism reasserts the bible over against abstract dogmatism and contributes useful information concerning the historical nature of revelation. On the other hand, historical criticism is incapable of grasping the trans-historical character of revelation. Kähler’s advice for accessing the historical Christ is basically a restatement of earlier attempts at “pneumatological” exegesis, which bring him again closer to Herrmann’s position of revelatory event: the Scriptures interpret themselves; a methodological description of this process is, according to Kähler, impossible because it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
[edit] Karl Barth
Barth continues along the lines set forth by Herrmann and Kähler. He first asserts a threefold form of the word of God: Christ, Scripture, the churchly proclamation of today. He renews the doctrine of self-authentication which, according to Barth, theology has to describe but not to substantiate by giving “human” reasons for it. However, he does point out that actual obedience to Scripture in church history is proof enough for its self-authenticating power.
To describe the nature of Scripture, Barth uses the category of “witness”: the Scriptures are human witness to divine revelation which, however, as true witness points beyond itself to that divine revelation which is to be found in the text of the human witness. For him, the identification of Scripture and God’s Word is a statement of that faith which owes its existence to the Scriptures as God’s Word.
Inspiration includes, according to Barth, both the production and the reception of the Scriptures. He, on the one hand, distinguishes between the doctrine of inspiration of the reformers and that of the Protestant orthodoxy; he sees in the former a genuine expression of the sovereignty of God’s Word, in the latter an attempt to secure by reason what cannot be secured by reason (the bible becomes a paper pope with an inadequate claim to infallibility). For Barth, inspiration is that process in which the content of Scripture shows itself to be God’s Word; inspiration is, in other words, an event, a happening: God’s grace takes the fallible human word into its service; it becomes the vehicle for God’s own Word, his self-revelation in Christ Jesus. Inspiration is thus no inherent quality of the bible. Barth explicitly rejects the older and newer attempts to classify Scripture as one form of God’s revelation among others in the history of the church. By doing so, he rejects also the newer attempts to transform the old Protestant distinction between Scripture and tradition into an ongoing process of development. In other words, the authority of the church is based on, and limited by, the Scriptures alone.
Because Scripture is different from, but also one with, revelation, Barth proposes a dual process of interpretation. On the one hand, he does not reject historical-literary study. However, he does give limited weight to the grammatical and philological exegesis since it can only research the views of the humans speaking in the bible. The belief in the self-interpreting power of God’s word prevents from proposing any human “method”: the point is not, so Barth, to master God’s word methodologically but to be mastered by it.
[edit] Rudolf Bultmann
Barth ultimately rejected any hermeneutical “method;” his former comrade Rudolf Bultmann, on the other hand, demanded it all the more lest unscientific arbitrariness hold sway in theology. Bultmann was at home in the “history of religions” school. However, Bultmann does not simply uncritically follow the exegetical and hermeneutical tradition. He criticizes the older liberal paradigm for not being historical enough: it had not recognized that through historical means no reliable basis for faith can be established. This insight leads Bultmann to the claim that the “historical Jesus” (or his “inner life”) cannot, for one, be reconstructed with sufficient clarity based on the NT accounts; and that he or a present-day “encounter” with him, for two, cannot be made the basis for the faith because this would be, in Bultmann’s words, “historical pantheism” (God’s acts are believed to be of historical nature).
The theological resolution for Bultmann’s historical radicalism is found in his understanding of kerygma, which he defines as “direct address.” This present-day address is, for the Lutheran Bultmann, the call to repentance and the promise of salvation for those who repent which creates faith. This is revelation: it places man into a new situation in which man can understand himself in a new way; it does not transmit information. This understanding of course limits the authority of the bible to, basically, law and gospel. Not surprisingly, as already Barth and Herrmann, Bultmann also rejects a “qualitative” identity of God’s Word with the bible; likewise, he asserts that the bible can become God’s living Word in the sense of God’s direct, eschatological address, kerygma. This is also the reason why the church has handed down the Scriptures. The apostle Paul himself is for Bultmann the prototype of every Christian today: the apostle only encountered the historical Jesus in the early Christian eschatological kerygma, which forced him into a decision. It is meaningless, impossible, and illegitimate to attempt to go behind the kerygma; faith does not need, or have, any historical supports.
Kerygma as God’s direct address and call to decision is, according to Bultmann, to be distinguished from any time-bound form; he applies this to the mythological “worldview” of the NT (his famous “demythologization”) as well as to the theological explication of the kerygma in the NT. He recognizes, however, that it is never easy to separate the kerygmatic wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, he, unlike Barth, asserts that, while the event of hearing the kerygma is God’s free act, the kerygma itself is nonetheless a word that can be understood – because it leads man to a new self-understanding of himself. And the process of understanding follows certain rules. This is why Bultmann’s theology is, as a whole, a hermeneutical theology: a theology focused on “understanding.”
This hermeneutical core of his theology leads him to reject any form of a-methodical “pneumatic” exegesis. In this context he reasserts the anti-spiritualistic impetus of the Scripture principle: there is no “spirit” or “faith” to be had apart from the bible. Furthermore, the process of understanding is neither irrational nor unscientific; understanding the bible is simply a special case of understanding texts in general. And here the presupposition for “understanding” is not the “faith” of the reader but his “pre-understanding,” conditioned as it is by that person’s prior life. While scientific theology is not direct proclamation, the historian, according to Bultmann, nonetheless has the task to show in his interpretation of Scripture that in a given text a certain possibility of human existence as defined by God is realized; this gives the text a present-day claim on the reader: tua res agitur – this text speaks about you. Bultmann, therefore, defines the NT texts as explication of the believing self-understanding.
