143 - Recurring Questions

Recurring Questions
By James F. Armstrong

AN initial look at religious and theological issues frequently confirms the adage, "There's nothing new under the sun." Questions raised early in the Church's life still are much alive today, and many a knotty problem in the modern world is discovered to have been pressing centuries ago.

But there is a certain uniqueness about the issues today, making them significantly different from what went before: they are not simply theological questions, but they are our questions. Beyond the variations imposed by factors of history and culture, our problems are unique just because they are our own. It is a commonplace to observe that an erudite grandfather does not necessarily imply an erudite grandson, or that the "faith of our fathers" frequently remains little more than "our fathers' faith." Education and religion have no once-for-all character; they must be brought afresh to every succeeding generation. Thus the great issues of theology are never really solved. Rather, they are raised in every age-in altered but still identifiable forms-and are more or less resolved to fit the needs of that age.

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In the following articles our attention is drawn to some of the old issues that are forever new. As Christians, we do not deplore the necessity to plow fields already furrowed, realizing that it is not the history of the question but the manner in which we handle it that will determine whether or not we "witness a good confession" in this generation.

In the lead editorial, "The Realization of the Church," Joseph Haroutunian returns to the age-old quest of the Church for a satisfactory definition of its own nature. He takes present-day ecclesiology to task for its embarrassing emphasis upon what the Church is -the realm of redemption, the body of Christ-when even the casual observer can notice the discrepancy between assertion and fact. Conceiving the great metaphors for the Church to be descriptive not of what is but of what may be, not of what God has done in the Church but of what he seeks to do in and through it, Haroutunian calls for "less of metaphor and metaphysics about the Church, and more thinking and doing in the Church, in the fear and love of God, in our communion with one another and in edifying one another to the glory of God."

Our author, as most readers need not be told, is Professor of Systematic Theology in McCormick Theological Seminary and a member of the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY. With L. P. Smith, he recently edited volume twenty-three in the "Library of Christian Classics," Calvin: Commentaries (1958).

The devotional article comes from Douglas Webster, the Education Secretary of the Church Missionary Society of the Church of England, and is the epilogue to his volume What Is Evangelism? (1959). Through these brief paragraphs, which whet our interest for the rest of the book, we are reminded that in an age of specialization, when the minister easily can become the Church's principal contact with the community, evangelism remains the task of every Christian. No news-really good news-can be passively contained; and he who cannot release the word may not himself really have heard it aright.

No serious theological inquiry can take place without a discussion of the problem of hermeneutics, and no discussion of hermeneutics is complete without reference to Schleiermacher. In the opening article entitled "Schleiermacher on Language and Feeling," Richard R. Niebuhr sketches the analysis of human self-expression that

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underlies Schleiermacher's principles of interpretation. Proceeding to an exposition of the hermeneutical art itself, he concludes with an attempt to assess the role played by these factors in Schleiermacher's theology. In an era when the behavioral sciences are showing ever more clearly that the propositional content of language is only a part-sometimes a small part-of the complex of communication and self-disclosure, the reader who is not yet well acquainted with Schleiermacher may be stimulated to step backward a century in order to keep abreast of the times.

Richard R. Niebuhr, the son of Yale's H. Richard Niebuhr, earned his doctorate at Yale University and is Associate Professor of Theology in the Divinity School of Harvard University. He is the author of Resurrection and Historical Reason; A Study in Theological Method (1957).

In the article entitled "'Thou Art Peter'" George A. F. Knight deals with one of the questions that have vexed Christian interpreters for centuries: the meaning of Jesus' words, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." Finding the error of traditional exegesis to lie in an assumed future reference of the promise, he begins his study at the other end. Through a painstaking analysis of the terms for "rock" and "stone" in the Old Testament, he concludes that "the rock is none other than God-in-Christ" -upon whom and into whom the whole people of God is built.

George Knight, Lecturer in Old Testament Language and Theology at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews University, Scotland, has been elected to the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary. His concern for perceiving the dynamic continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament-in some ways an unfortunate division that can give the impression that God has changed-may be seen in the title of his recent book, A Christian Theology of the Old Testament (1959).

In Book III of the Institutes Calvin summarizes one of the perennial questions of Christian theology when he undertakes to examine "how we obtain the enjoyment of those blessings which the Father has conferred on his only begotten Son, not for his own private use, but to enrich the poor and needy." Much of the history of the doctrine of the atonement has been concerned with just this issue: how is Christ's work on behalf of man to be understood, without destroying the integrity either of the act itself or of the human

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response. In the article "Atonement and Saving Faith" Brian A. Gerrish sets forth an interpretation of atonement that attempts to do justice to both the objective and subjective sides of the question. Rejecting the notions of substitution and imputation as essentially inconsistent with saving faith, he finds a more appropriate category in the idea of representative sacrifice, by which atonement is effected through Christ's self-offering plus the sinner's identifying of himself therewith. He concludes with the admission that language is inadequate to represent the dimensions of the reality itself. It would seem, from all that has been said and written about the atonement, that the very possibility of diverse explanations should be a primary datum for subsequent theories.

Born in London and educated at Cambridge, Brian Gerrish came to the United States in 1955. After earning degrees from Union Theological Seminary, New York, and Columbia University, he joined the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary, where he is Assistant Professor of Church History, specializing in Reformation theology.

In his stimulating-and disturbing-article, "Text for a Religious Aesthetic," Erik Routley calls the Church to account for its far-flung Saul-worship: namely, judging things by the simple criterion of initial attractiveness. Examining many current practices in architecture, liturgy, evangelism, and preaching, he reminds us that all too often our operations are governed by what will be pleasing and attractive, rather than by the integrity of the Gospel. "The Old and New Testaments combine, I am sure," he writes, "to give us a quite uncompromising reply, namely that true royalty and universal attractiveness need not be expected to go together." And his point well may give us pause. Although ugliness is no virtue, the character of "divine attractiveness" is not to be learned from Madison Avenue, but from the patient tutelage of the saints of God.

Erik Routley is minister of the Augustine-Bristo Congregational Church, Edinburgh, and Sometime Lecturer and Chaplain at Mansfield College, Oxford.

The final article, "Reinhold Niebuhr and Apologetics" by Jerry H. Gill, brings us to an area of considerable controversy: the requirements of-yes, even the possibility for-a rational "defense" of the Christian faith. Noting that "although much has been written recently about Dr. Niebuhr's interpretation of Christianity, very little

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attention has been given to his position on apologetics," Gill analyzes Niebuhr's views under the headings "the limitations of reason," "the functions of reason within its limitations," and "the nature of faith." He concludes with the view (à la Carnell) that Niebuhr fails to provide an objective criterion for faith and thereby gives way to subjectivism. The critique inevitably will raise additional questions in the mind of the reader: the relationship between rational knowledge and religious faith, subjective factors involved in the selection of any objective criterion, and the nature of reason itself. But it is fitting that such issues should come to the fore, and one hopes that they-and others like them-will attract renewed interest.

Jerry H. Gill, after receiving degrees from Westmont College, the University of Washington, and Biblical Seminary in New York, has been called to teach in the field of philosophy and religion at Seattle Pacific College.