MODERN PERIODCH 511

Industrial Age – 19th Century• Mass movements of people seeking employment in

industrial centers• Mass immigration to North America• Traditional extended family gives way to emphasis on

nuclear family• Sense of progress; future possibilities seemed limitless;

progress a “structure of the universe”

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)

Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848)

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Schleiermacher’s Theology• Son of a Reformed minister, though tutored by Moravians;

hence Pietism was a significant influence• With Schleiermacher we see the end of all attempts to

base religion on reason; profoundly influenced by Romanticism

• Religion is not a form of knowledge (as both rationalists and orthodox held), nor a system of morality (as Kant implied); rather religion was grounded in Gefuhl (inadequately translated as “feeling”) – the profound awareness of the existence of the One on whom all existence depends; the feeling of “dependence”

Schleiermacher’s Theology• The feeling of dependence takes a specific form in each

religious community; for Protestants, two specific historical moments: (1) Jesus and his impact on the disciples; (2) the Reformation

• Function of theology is to explore and expound the implications that feeling on three levels: the self, its relation with the world, and its relation with God

• Schleiermacher is appropriately called the “father of liberalism”

G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831)

Hegel• Started out in theology, but later decided that theology

was too narrow a field of inquiry; necessary to try to understand not only religion but the whole of reality

• In search for a unifying theory or “theory of everything” (if you will);

• Grounded his search in the affirmation that reason is everything (“What is rational exists, and what exists is rational.”)

• Reason is not static, but rather dynamic and processive• Pose an idea Examine the idea so as to surpass it or

deny it in favor of another idea Reach a third idea that includes whatever there was of value in the two previous ideas

Hegelian philosophy

Thesis vs. Antithesis = Synthesis

Hegel• Hegel built an impressive system that included the entirety

of history as the “thought of the Spirit”• Hegel was convinced that Christianity was the “absolute

religion” – summing up the entire process of human religious development

• The central theme of religion is the relationship between God and humanity, which reaches its apex in the incarnation; Similarly the Trinity is the culmination of the idea of God, for it affirms the dynamic nature of the ultimate reality (dialectic of the Trinity, consisting of three “movements”

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Kierkegaard• Born into a strict Danish Lutheran home• Kant’s critique of rationalism left a third option, different

from those followed by Schleiermacher and Hegel• Kant’s pure reason can neither prove nor disprove the

existence of God; but faith knows God directly• The basis for Christianity is not its reasonableness, nor its

place of honor in a system such as Hegel’s, nor even the feeling of absolute dependence; rather Christianity is a matter of faith in God who revelation comes to us in the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ

• True faith is not an easy matter; always a matter of “risk,” requiring the denial of self and of all the joys of the faithless

Kierkegaard – Founder of Existentialism

• The greatest enemy of Christianity was Christendom (“What we call ‘Christianity’ is simply ‘playing at being Christians.’”)

• In order to be truly Christian, one must become aware of the cost of faith and pay the price; true Christianity has to do with a person’s very existence, and not merely with the intellect

• Existence – actual, painful, human existence – is prior to essence, and more important than it; Existence is the constant struggle to become

• In placing existence at the heart of matters, one is forced to abandon every other system, and even all hope for a consistent system; Reality may be a “system” for God, but it could never be seen as such from the perspective of one in the midst of existence

Christianity in relation to History • Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768)

• The question of the “Historical Jesus”

• F.C. Baur (1792-1860)• Applied Hegel’s scheme to development of doctrine in the NT

• Adolph von Harnack (1851-1930)• Development of dogma as the progressive abandonment of the faith

of the early church (SHIFT: teachings of Jesus teachings about Jesus)

• Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889)• Critical of Schleiermacher’s subjectivity; religion was neither a matter

of rational knowledge nor of subjective freedom, but of practical life

• Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)• Suggested that the quests of the nineteenth-century man had not

found “Jesus” as much as it had found its own image

Geographic Expansion• Colonial expansion of European nations in the 19th

century• Napoleonic Wars ironically turned Britain into a major

naval power and turned her attention towards the colonial holdings of its enemies

• Colonial expansion coincided with the industrial revolution• Technological advances required industrial production,

which in turn required more resources, greater capital and wider markets

Neo-colonialism of Latin America • United States, Britain, and France competed for control of

new markets

Control over Asian markets

Colonization of Africa

The “White Man’s Burden”• Colonizers were convinced that their enterprises were

justified on the benefits the colonized would receive• God had placed the benefits of western civilization and

Christian faith in the hands of Europeans and North Americans in order to share them with the rest of the world

• Benefits included: industrialization, capitalism, democracy and Christianity

• “Mixed blessing”

Missionary Enterprises• William Carey (1761-1834) – “Father of Modern Missions”

Missionary Societies• Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) –

1698 • Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) – 1701• Moravians, early Methodists (18th century) • Baptist Missionary Society – 1782 (W. Carey)• London Missionary Society – 1795 (Methodists,

Presbyterians, and Congregationalists)• The Church Missionary Society – 1799 (Evangelical

Anglicans)• British and Foreign Bible Society (1804)

The Ecumenical Movement• Primary Factor: people of different confessions were living

side-by-side (e.g. the United States)• Common causes across denominational lines:

abolitionism, temperance, fundamentalism, liberalism, eschatology

• Anti-denominational sentiments (e.g. Disciples of Christ)• Overseas missions made cooperation mandatory

Ecumenical endeavors• Federal Council of Church (1908)• World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland

(1910)• Faith and Order Movement (1910)• World Council of Churches (1948)

TWENTIETH CENTURY

Conflict between Fundamentalism and Liberalism

• Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925• Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

Inerrancy: Hallmark of Fundamentalism

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)• Founder: Westminster Theological Seminary (1929)• Founder “Orthodox Presbyterian Church” (1936)

Ku Klux Klan• Resurgence in the 1920s

Temperance Movement• 18th Amendment (1919)

The Great Depression (1929-1942)• Christian “Socialism”• Only sharpened the differences between liberalism and

fundamentalism• Ended by the Second World War

Karl Barth & Neo-Orthodoxy (1886-1968)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Cold War with Russia

Billy Graham Crusades

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Gustav Gutierrez (1928- )

James Cone (1938- )

Other 20th Century Movements• Liberation Theology• Charismatic movement (1960, 1967)• Women’s ordination (from 1950s)• Feminist & Womenist Theology• Neo-Fundamentalism (from 1970s)

POSTMODERNITY

Cool to be “post”• Post-Modern?• Post-Evangelical?• Post-Liberal?• Post-Denominational?