Part One: Theology

Chapter 2: The Task of Theology

p. 9 Defining what the concept of theology contains is an extremely difficult thing to bring to a general understanding, because its systems are so drawn out and their connections of meaning so tangled. But we have said¹ that, inasmuch as this is Christian theology, it is to be understood as an effort of spirit:² one that takes the historical tradition of Christianity as its foundation and so preserves its own independent distinctiveness, adds to this a vital reflection shaped by the demands of reason³ and by the understanding of the age, and thereby seeks to supply our life of faith with a foundation, a standard, and a motive. The task of theology, we may suppose, must of course set out from this understanding.

In the course of its historical experience, Christianity has produced a great many differing theological systems, each setting its task differently. All these systems are traces of the one effort to understand the essence of Christianity, and whatever their objects or methods, a generous judgment is called for that grants they all share features common enough to fall within the domain of theology. Here we mean to look more deeply into the inner connection of these common features, to remove the friction that arises among the tasks the several systems take up, and, while granting each of their various forms its historical place, to make of all this our own synthetic task.

Christian theology began in the defense of Christian faith against the claims of the pagans. This called for reflection on the vital, lived experience that is fundamental to Christianity; but because the aim of that reflection lay in apologetics rather than in the systematic ordering of truth, there was some tendency to treat only those concepts that stood in opposition to pagan thought.⁴ p. 10 Justin, who may be called the representative figure of the educated class in the middle of the second century, maintained that among the philosophies Christianity is the true philosophy. He abandoned the traditional Jewish method of interpretation and held that his own change of thought had a historical continuity; yet he identified the claims of the Roman church⁵ with the true revelation of Christianity and labored to defend them. Clement of Alexandria said, "Whatever is necessary and profitable for human life comes from God, and philosophy especially is a covenant granted⁶ by God to the Greeks, a stepping-stone to the philosophy of Christ" (Ante-Nicene Library, 6.8).⁷ Origen too expressed agreement with this thought, and took the natural-theological premise that "Christianity acknowledges that it embraces the truth offered to all humankind and gained through faith."⁸ Yet taken as a whole, their thought held fast to the church's orthodox teaching and centered on Christian apologetics.

Medieval theology, as the science of dogma, was an instrument that existed to meet the needs of ecclesiastical government.⁹ The City of God of St. Augustine, the theologian of the transition, defended the absolute authority of the church's organization, rules, government, and articles of faith, and laid the foundation of Latin theology; and the Summa Theologica¹⁰ of Thomas Aquinas, the spokesman of scholastic theology, sought to set forth and defend the doctrine of the church, whose central themes are the fall of humanity and the redemption wrought by Christ.

The Reformers held that the central task of Christian theology lies not in the doctrine of the church but in Scripture. Scripture is the sole standard for our faith and life; the task of theology, therefore, is said to lie in the exposition of Scripture. In this way the objective authority over religious life moved from the church to Scripture, and the task of theology changed from doctrine to faith. p. 11 Melanchthon's Loci Communes¹¹ and Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, though in practice they had not wholly abandoned the method of natural theology, were in principle attempts to hold fast to the exposition of Scripture, or to biblical thought.

But the distinguishing mark of modern theology is that it breaks through every heteronomous prescription, whether of doctrine or of Scripture, and seeks to locate the task of theology in the vital experience of faith. In this sense, as the book of Schleiermacher, who is called the father of modern theology, indicates, theology is "the science of faith" (Glaubenslehre). According to Schleiermacher,¹² theology was to take religion itself as the central object of its inquiry, rather than being a branch of general philosophy or a discipline that expounds the doctrine of the church; and the religious phenomenon he took as his object was not grounded in heteronomous authority but set out from religious experience viewed from a psychological standpoint. He sought to rescue religion from its outward forms and relocate it in its original essence, and to move theology out of its condition as an instrument into the domain of pure science. Since then, modern theology has broken free of the objective and concrete authority handed down to it, and in an almost unregulated freedom has branched out in so many directions that one can scarcely find one's bearings.

Here Christian theology, commonly called "experimental theology" or "systematic theology" in England and America, and "dogmatic theology" or "dogmatics" in Europe, has striven to give a systematic assessment of the religious truth that Christianity contains.

p. 12 In recent times, as modern philosophy has developed on the one hand, and as understanding of religions other than Christianity has deepened on the other, a discipline called "Christian Evidences" arose, and before long it became "Apologetics." Generalized further, this expanded its field of inquiry into the "philosophy of religion," "comparative religion," and at last the "science of religion."⁴

How, then, are we to define the limits and the task of Christian theology?

Christian theology lies in assessing the ultimate truth of religion. It seeks to press on to the most comprehensive connections, in pursuit of one final, certain point. It is therefore bound by no particular construction; its domain belongs to the realm of the highest freedom of spirit. Judged not only by theology's method but by the very nature of truth, truth must be truth without difference, whatever the place, the time, or the denomination to which it belongs. The function of theology is to give expression to every form of lived experience by means of conceptual thought and to combine them, seeking an unchanging foundation amid what is relative and ever shifting, and to determine its ultimate value and meaning. But theology does not presuppose that universal truth must consist in blending together all the religions of the world, or in fabricating some abstract, universal concept. Religion is not an abstract concept that can exist apart from the forms in which it has been historically embodied. The task of theology, therefore, cannot disregard the distinctiveness of historical religion. Christian theology maintains that a true understanding of Christianity is itself the complete solution of life and the grasp of final truth. This is what is meant by the saying, "Whoever truly knows this religion knows every p. 13 true religion" ("Wer diese Religion Kennt, Kennt Alle." Quoted from Baillie, J., Interpretation of Religion, p. 121).¹³

Is Christian theology, then, to stop at describing the particular conceptions of Christianity, with their historical distinctiveness? Or is it to seek the material for defining an essential concept broadly, in the religions of the world and in the general religious thought of the present, and to aim at a "reconstruction of religion": an abstract unity that treats each individual religion as a repetition of a type? When Christian theology tries to build a system of thought on the basis of historical faith, that theology not only takes on a sectarian exclusiveness but comes to set up a separate standard of truth, different in essence from others. Conversely, when theology clings to the universality of religious thought in general in obedience to the demands of reason,³ it loses its interest in actual religion, relativizing everything absolute and naturalizing everything that astonishes. Theology, therefore, must lean to neither of these two extremes, and must discover a ground on which the two tendencies can be reconciled.

We must first remember that Christianity is a religion possessed of a historical character and historical structures. Yet in its claims of faith, Christianity does not think that it has been entrusted with only a share of religious truth; it holds itself to be the one ultimate truth for humanity. Christian theology, therefore, will preserve the distinctiveness of Christianity and honor the experiential embodiment of the truth revealed in it, the truth, that is, handed down as tradition.

Schleiermacher's theology, on the one hand, looked for the essence of religion in "the intuition of the universe" rather than in thought or action, and on the other sought the content of experience in historical faith as "the distinctive determination of feeling" (eigenthümliche abänderung).¹⁴ p. 14 His theology, accordingly, remained faithful to the end to the thought of German Protestantism. According to his position, "First, since theology is by nature a historical and descriptive science, its task is to report fully and in good order the articles of faith actually held; second, such a report must come from within, from one who is in a position actually to be their spokesman; and third, it must not go beyond the limits of the age or the church to which one belongs" (Baillie, J., The Interpretation of Religion, p. 54).¹⁵

Wilhelm Herrmann, well known as a disciple of Ritschl,¹⁶ likewise insisted that the task of Christian theology is not to discover or to fabricate some universal religion, but to labor at expounding the historical particularity of Christian faith.⁴ He maintains that apart from the truth of Christianity there is no true religious conviction and no true religious experience. The value of Christianity, he held, lies not in its containing some lofty thought found in no other religion, but in the distinct historical fact of Christianity itself: the fact that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God. He not only opposes a vague¹⁷ philosophical absolutism, but declares that even the knowledge of natural science has nothing whatever to do with religion. The task of theology, accordingly, is not to demonstrate the value or certainty of religion; it is, first, to make clear that religion has a character of its own, distinct from general knowledge such as philosophy or science; second, to set forth fully and rightly the particular essence and content of faith that Christianity possesses; and finally, to describe and report the historical doctrine of Christianity (Herrmann, Wm., Christian Communion with God (Eng. transl.), p. 15 3rd ed., pp. 61ff.).¹⁸

But there are many who maintain, on the contrary, that if we are to grasp the heart of religion, understanding only one particular religion or clinging only to subjective conviction cannot bring us to comprehensive truth, and makes even proper self-reflection impossible. If the scientific description of Christianity served only to supply material for a preparatory stage in defining the essential concept of religion, that would be another matter; but inasmuch as theology, seen as a normative science, aims at final and ultimate truth, it must investigate without remainder not only the general learning of humankind but the true treasures of all the world's religions, and seek out their unifying principle.

Long ago the Greek Stoic school, in a spirit of universal brotherhood, studied religious thought beyond the religious convictions to which they themselves belonged, and labored to adjust the traditional, received thought they had inherited to the wider horizon of a new environment. Especially after the Renaissance, inherited authority broke down on the one hand and religious thought gained its freedom, while on the other, under the influence of Romanticism, the ardor for classical studies grew fierce; and when, besides, the knowledge of philosophy in general and of science made astonishing, leaping advances, it is a fact that the bounds of Christian theology widened as well. Even if the task of theology itself did not change, Christian theology found itself confronted with all sorts of new problems and had no choice but to consider new methods.

What, then, should our attitude be? First, the Christian theologian, as one who learns religion, loves religion, and is zealous for religion, must not entertain self-satisfied notions or sectarian prejudice. p. 16 An attitude that, without a second thought, curses as heresy any idea one does not oneself believe or has not oneself understood is something to be most carefully avoided, whether judged by scholarly conscience or by the spirit of religion. This is by no means to say that one should be vague about one's own convictions and go along with¹⁹ the thought of others. The one who "does theology" must learn broadly and understand deeply the thought of any religion or any school, and take it into account. If one should discover that there is truth in a religion other than Christianity, this is no fact that wounds the truth of Christianity; one should rather rejoice in it, taking it as evidence that throws still more light on the truth Christianity possesses.

But to say that we must understand and take into account the various branches of learning and religious thought is not to say that we must believe in a syncretism gathered from a jumble of systems. If, within Christianity itself, it stands on a rational foundation that is exact and beyond doubt, and is grounded in an actual lived experience that does not waver, then this particular religion can itself become a unit of cosmic scope²⁰ and the standard of true religion. Christian theology, therefore, we think, must first believe in the unique and absolute authority of Christian revelation, and then, borrowing the skills of every field of learning and the criticism of the age, set forth its shining truth.