The Divide (Existentialism and Neo-Orthodoxy)

 The Divide (Existentialism and Neo-Orthodoxy)

Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Tillich, and Barth

Scriptures: Proverbs 6:6-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8

          Listen to what Proverbs is saying! It is saying that the Wisdom of God is baked into the world at such a fundamental level that if you just observe it enough, even little things like ants, you can get a sense of what is righteous and wise. Viewing the creation, we understand the Creator, and the purpose and meaning of all things.

          Listen to what Isaiah is saying! In his vision of the heavenly temple, “Holy, Holy, Holy” strange, strange, strange is the God who is unapproachable and overwhelming. To speak of this God is to require your lips to be purged; knowing God is not observation, but an act of God, a revealing.

          The tension between these two experiences of God is the tension between observable religious truth and received revelation. This is a divide that is oh so wide. Can we know anything about God outside of revelation? Is our experience of the world itself a revelation from that same God?

 

The Early Church:

          A prime example of this tension comes pretty early on in Christian thought, it is the question of whether the Faith can be taught, or if it must be caught.

Justin Martyr (100-165-ish CE) is an apologist, that is he write about the faith trying to explain it to outsiders. He describes the religious rituals of the early church to Rome, hoping to dispel lies told about the liturgy, and engages with Greek Philosophy. At base he assumed the faith could be taught.

Tertullian (160-240-ish CE) held a different view. When asked about engaging with Greek Philosophy, he responded, “What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” He worried that the act of translating the faith was itself unfaithful. Bridges, after all, go both ways. You might translate some Christian ideas for the pagan world, but in the process pagan ideas will be translated into the Christian faith. Instead, Christians witness to the faith in their faithful death, as Tertullian famously wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seeds of the church.” That’s how the faith is caught, inspiration by righteous deeds.

 

Barth and Brunner:

          Some 1750 years later, as Fascism was infecting Europe, a similar debate raged between the theologians Emil Brunner and Karl Barth.

Brunner affirmed that God can be known through God’s work in creation (including the “order of creation” which included governments and nations). To this Karl Barth let out his famous “No!” in response. He affirms that the only revelation of God in the world is Jesus Christ, which will become the cornerstone for his famed, and heavy, systematic theology.

Barth’s insistent “Nein!” rings out not only in response to Brunner’s way of doing theology, but in response to the Nazification of the German Church of the time. There were many people gleefully confusing the spirit of the time and the spirit of the German people, with the Holy Spirit. So too confusing Jesus’ saving acts with those of Adolf Hitler’s “saving” of the German people.

 

Tillich Essentialist vs. Existentialist:

          Another attempt at bridging the divide can be found in the works of Paul Tillich. I’ve heard him called the last famous theologian (look he made Time Magazine). He translated Christian Theology into a modern vernacular; for example, Sin was translated as Estrangement, Grace as Acceptance, and Faith as Being Ultimately Concerned.

          He made these moves by using the lens of existentialism. At base, this Existential Theology went from experienced problem to solution, instead of beginning with essential categories. So, for example, instead of asking “What are humans?” and answering, “They are social animals” as some theologians would, Tillich began with the question “What do humans experience?” and answered, “I experience people as things, as like me, and as me, for I am a human.”

 

Conclusion:

    From the tension between the Wise Sage and the Famed Prophet to the earliest questions about the spread of the Christian Church to the “Nein!” that was heard around the world to Tillich’s project of prioritizing experience over essence, the Divide has been here. If the revelation of God reveals God as Creator, shouldn’t we search for that Creator in the creation? Yet, in our haste to know God, we regularly embrace creation as Creator, and thus become idolaters. Like any translation, how do we remain faithful to the original language while also making it comprehensible to the hearer? How do we, and should we, and can we, bridge the divide?