My Opinion on the Jesus Seminar

      The Jesus Seminar is an association of modern liberal biblical scholars which presuposes a naturalistic worldview with disregard for supernatural occurences.  Because of their strong naturalistic understanding, the Scriptures are seen not as an inspired inerrant text, but rather as only a metaphor, albeit the right metaphor. Steeped in higher criticism, the Jesus Seminar attempted to determine in the Scriptures what Jesus most likely said.  The product of this is a bible with a color coded text which reveals what the Jesus Seminar decided Christ must have said and that which he surely did not say.
      I do not agree with the Jesus Seminar in what they do, because I do not hold to a naturalistic viewpoint.  The Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God which is the foundational revelation through which Christian theology is based. Human reason and religious experience is not good enough as revelation, because it is subjective and changing as we are not God. Whenever I see miracles occur in the Bible, I believe that an actual miracle took place.  Christianity rests on Jesus' divinity, His atoning work on the cross, and His physical resurrection.  Without this truth, Christianity is void.
      Also, I do not even attempt to believe that I am the highest source of understanding when it comes to theology; God is.  Therefore, by my limited ability to fully understand the intricasies of God and all He is, I lend myself to faith.  In no way am I saying that faith is unreasonable.  On the contrary, faith is reasonable, but I simply admit that I do not have the full capacities to reason everything and put it in a box.  God has done a work in me, that I may believe in Him, but this belief does not stop with an empty faith, it is faith that seeks understanding.
      Overall, the Jesus Seminar misses the mark of true theology.  In their attempt to reconcile the Bible with human reason and naturalism, they have turned the Word of God into the Metaphor of God.  For the Jesus Seminar there is a great divide in the importance of objective truth over metaphorical truth.  Without a strong biblical grounding, the Jesus Seminar promotes religious experience governed by modern philosophy and understanding as the foundation for knowing God. 

The following video is a good short clip on the Jesus Seminar by William Lane Craig.

Classical Liberal Theology

      Born out of the Age of Reason, classical liberalism is a political ideology focused on the rights of individuals.  John Locke is a significant contributor to the development of classical liberalism.   There are ten main tenets within classical liberalism: 1) Liberty, 2) Individualism, 3) Skepticism of Power, 4) Rule of Law, 5) Civil Society, 6) Spontaneous Order, 7) Free Markets, 8) Toleration, 9) Peace, and 10) Limited Government.  For more detailed information on these tenets, please watch the following video.

      Another product of the Enlightenment was classical liberal theology.  Classical liberal theology really started with Friedrich Schleiermacher.  Central to classical liberal theology is that Christian theology must agree with modern philosophy and scientific knowledge.  Here, man is the arbiter of truth through his innate ability to reason.  When faith and reason clash, reason must win and faith needs to be reconstructed.  Highly important to note is that the foundation of classical liberal theology does not reside in revelation given in the Bible, but in religious experience. 

    One aspect of classical liberal theology is to reconstruct traditional Christian beliefs in light of modern knowledge and philosophy.  In other words, Christianity needs to be relevant to the modern culture.  By becoming relevant, classical liberal theology lays down a foundation of religious experience which leads away from the authority of the Bible.

     Because classical liberation finds its foundation in religious experience, this leads to the right of individuals to criticize and reconstruct traditional beliefs.  In a sense, God becomes who we perceive is the most appealing and philosophically satisfying being.  It is not that God revealed himself to us in an objective way, but that he reveals himself through the subjective faculties of individual experience.         

      Morality is a main focus in classical liberal theology.  A branch off of classical liberal theology is the social gospel.  People's physical and socio-economical statuses become of great concern rather than the true spiritual needs of man found in the Bible.

      Before classical liberal theology, a traditional belief in Christianity was the gap between man and God given by the transcendence of the eternal infinite holy God and the sinfulness of the finite human beings, which Jesus Christ ultimately bridged by making atonement for mankind on the cross at Calvary.  During the Enlightenment, theologians like Schleriermacher drifted towards the idea of the immanence of God.  This is why religious experience became the foundation for classical liberal theology. 

   Classical liberal theology finds its basis in religious experience rather than the Scriptures.  Therefore, as classical liberal theology made Christianity more relevant and believable, classical liberal theology destroyed the biblical basis of Christianity.  Rather than an inspired text, the Bible is on the level of any other literature and should be read as such.  Classical liberal theologians would probably note that though the Bible is not inspired, it still contains some truths that reveal characteristics of God and how he worked in history.

Sources:

For the first paragraph, my source is the video.

The second part of the paper mainly used the following source:

Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 51-53. 

My Personal Evaluation of Schleiermacher

      Without application, theology is not useful.  If Christianity is only expressed in terms that revealed truth in a different time to a different culture, then it is bankrupt.  Only when the truths of Christianity are applied in the modern context will Christian theology be fruitful.  However, the ultimate overarching truths of Christianity should not be hampered by some idea of the "authority" of man's subjective and emotional/spiritual experiences of God. 
      First and foremost, I agree with Friedrich Schleiermacher that theology must be relevant to its times.  However, this is where Schleiermacher and I diverge, our personal experience and trust in our own reason should not be authoritative over Christianity theology.  We must start with some solid authority.  This authority is the Word of God. 
      God's word reveals that mankind is sinful and that everyone is bound to sin.  Only through Christ is someone freed from their bondage and forgiven.  This sin, and sin nature, affects man's experiences and ability to reason.  Therefore, man's reason and experiences should not be looked to as the supreme authority.  This is why God gave us His word, in order that we may come to know Him and have a standard for truth. 
      Schleiermacher's largest failure was not that he emphasized man's experience of God, but rather that he destroyed any trace of biblical authority, placing the authority of man over God.  I agree with Schleiermacher's push to make people see that knowledge without experience, and a faith lived, is dead.  Most of all, I am saddened by the effect Schleiermacher's theology has today.  In our postmodern world, there is no view of the God who is.  Modern liberal theology basically makes man god, in that man is--through his experience--the arbiter of truth. 

Schleiermacher and His Importance in Christian Theology

A Statue of Friedrich Schleiermacher

     



       Often known as the father of modern (or liberal) Protestantism, Friedrich Schleiermacher spearheaded the movement of Christian theology to liberalism in the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.  Schleiermacher made an incredible impact on the theology of his day.  The mark Schleiermacher made still lasts today.  Before getting to know about what Schleiermacher did, it is important to look at the background of his life. 
       Reformed theology was a main influence on Schleiermacher while growing up, because Schleiermacher's father was a Reformed chaplain.  When Schleiermacher came of age, his father sent him to a Moravian seminary.  At the Moravian seminary, Schleiermacher found himself in a world of the pietist movement.  This introduced Schleiermacher to the idea of personal religious experience.
    While Schleiermacher studied at the Moravian seminary, he began to question doctrines he once believed.  Doubt led Schleiermacher to express his feelings and concerns to his father in letter form.  Schleiermacher's father basically told Schleiermacher that if he kept on this course, Schleiermacher was headed straight to Hell.  At this point in Schleiermacher's life, there is a great turn in his theology. 
      After his studies at the Moravian seminary, Schleiermacher studied theology at the University of Halle.  During his studies, Schleiermacher came into contact with Higher Criticism and rational theology.  The University of Halle pushed its students to place theology after philosophy.  Philosophy was to lead the course of theology.  The Enlightenment made reason the basis for theology and epistemology.  Man's reason became central to understanding truth.  Therefore, it makes sense that Schleiermacher was introduced to philosophy as the foundation which theology must find its roots. 
     While Schleiermacher studied at the University of Halle, he came to accept Kant's epistemology.  Because of Schleiermacher's doubts and intellectual struggles with orthodox Christianity, the Enlightenment principle of reason and Kant's epistemology appealed greatly to Schleiermacher.  Schleiermacher felt as if he was intellectually stimulated by reason and personal experience.  Schleiermacher finished schooling at the University of Halle and became a professor at the University of Berlin. 
      With his intellect fulfilled, Schleiermacher saw that there were two main theatres that criticized Christianity: the men of the Enlightenment, and the Romanticists.  Schleiermacher felt it was his duty to save Christianity from these critics and show that Christianity was the best religion.  In an attempt to make Christianity relevant to the modern times, Schleiermacher wrote a systematic theology titled, The Christian Faith.  By making Christianity relevant to his culture and time, Schleiermacher changed Christianity and Christian theology to something that appealed to the people of the Enlightenment and the Romanticists.  For Schleiermacher, he was not destroying Christianity, but rather saving it.  This makes sense, especially knowing that Schleiermacher followed Kant's epistemology. 
       To Schleiermacher, Christianity is not about believing, faith, doctrines, morality, or ultimately about God, it is about one's personal experience with God.  Reiterated, Christianity is not necessarily about truth, but rather one's experience with God.  Schleiermacher believed that true religion is the feeling of absolute dependence.  Everyone feels God, and God is sensed in all religions.  Schleiermacher would say that though all religions reveal God, Christianity is the best way of connecting with God.  At some point, everyone comes to a realization of their total absolute dependence on God.
       In Schleiermacher's book, On Religion, Schleiermacher argues for a more experiential Christianity.  It is not to the Scriptures that one runs to find truth and experience God through His truth, but rather it is man's personal subjective experience with God that truly matters.  From On Religion, Schleiermacher basically says, "religion's essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling, wishes to intuit the universe."  For Schleiermacher Christianity is all about feeling.
      As one sees Schleiermacher's main source of revelation about God, it is not too long of a stretch to see what Schleiermacher did with Christianity's core theological beliefs.  Theology becomes speaking of one's experiences/encounters with God.  Theology is not about stating truths, but rather about articulating and clarifying religious experiences. 
      Christ is central to Christianity, but what does Schleiermacher do with Christology?  For Schleiermacher, Jesus Christ is merely the man, or human, who had the greatest "God consciousness."  As such, Christ can become a medium through which his "God consciousness" is shared with others.  Though, by no means is Christi the only mediator.  This comes directly from Schleiermacher's book, On Religion, "[Christ] never maintained He was the only mediator, the only one in whom His idea actualized itself."  Sure, Christ must have known that there were others like Buddha, and Gandhi, and Zoroaster, and...  Christ is not any different from them in kind, nature, or being, just in degree.  This is what Schleiermacher believed. 
      Sin, for Schleiermacher, is merely God forgetfulness which offends God.  Therefore, redemption gives us the effect of "gaining victory over the sensuous impulses and ordering human consciousness in such a way that pain and melancholy give way to a new sense of equilibrium and joy, a new attunement of the soul in its relation to God and the world." (Christian Faith, 722)  It is not really about the penal-substitutionary sacrifice Jesus made so that we could be restored to our original relationship with God.  Rather than this, it is focused on experience and the feelings of man.  To Schleiermacher, redemption is not an objective historical event, but is rather the experience that takes place inside one's being when he/she realizes his/her total dependence. 
      Overall, Schleiermacher led Christian theology into a totally new arena.  No longer was there objective truth, but religion became focused on man's subjective experience with God.  In making Christianity relevant, Schleiermacher lost the validity of the Christian faith, because he based Christianity on the authority of man's subjective experience of God.  As a natural consequence of this, Schleiermacher downplayed the doctrine of sin and elevated man and man's experience to the center of theology. 

      Schleiermacher's works influenced his time greatly.  The impact Schleiermacher made was so great that liberal theology is still prominent throughout Western Civilization.  While making Christianity relevant, Schleiermacher and his works formed the fountainhead for modern liberal theology which holds the image of man and man's experience at the peak of religion rather than God.  

For More Information, Please See:

  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schleiermacher/

Why is Soren Kierkegaard Important?

Soren Kierkegaard

  

       Soren Kierkegaard was an amazing philosopher moved by the philosophy of his time and the situation with Christianity.  Many know Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism.  Though this term carries differing connotations, I hope to clarify Kierkegaard's meaning of existentialism.   Kierkegaard reacted to philosophies of his day, including Hegel and Hegel's reaction to Kant. Along with this, Kierkegaard wanted to reveal to Christianity the dilapidation of its status quo and present path. 
      To begin to understand Kierkegaard, it is important to understand some background information.  Kierkegaard was born on May 5, 1813 in Copenhagen.  During Kierkegaard's life, his father made an impact on how Kierkegaard saw life.  Michael Kierkeggard, Soren's father, led a very depressed life--always looking for God to strike him down, because of Michael Kierkegaard's past.  This melancholy and outlook of doom seemed to pass on to Soren Kierkegaard.  Kierkegaard's father died when Kierkegaard was only 25 years old. 
      By 1840, Kierkegaard finished schooling in theology.  At this time in his life, Kierkegaard began to live a life estranged from the norm of his cultural context, devoting his time to the development of his religious experience and the publication of articles of philosophy and theological matters.  A significant amount of Kierkegaard's works were polemical in nature.  In the arena of philosophy, Kierkegaard mainly wrangled with Hegelian philosophy. 
      Georg Hegel promoted the idea that history is summed as: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  Known as Hegel's dialectic, this riled Kierkegaard to the core of his being.  Hegel's dialectic assumed that history and life are linearly easy to understand; they are cut and dry.  Kierkegaard attacked Hegel's position by writing how messy life truly is.  One cannot explain everything solely thesis, antithesis, and synthesis!  That is preposterous. 
      As noted earlier, many regard Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism.  What exactly is meant by existentialism?  Today, many take this to be the postmodern viewpoint of the subjectivity of truth--meaning that my truth may be different than your truth, yet it is nonetheless truth.  This is not what Kierkegaard believed.  When on looks at Kierkegaard's writing, he believed in absolute truth.  People see truth objectively, but it needs to also be experienced in one's own life.  This is what he meant, that though truth is objective, it is important that the objective truth is experienced within. 
      Kierkegaard saw the course of the church, mainly talking about the Danish church, as on a wrong heading.  The rudder of the church, though aimed straight, led the church down a non-Christian path.  One thing that Kierkegaard said was, "In a world where everyone is Christian, no one is Christian."  The church, and people within the church, were not living out the Christian life.  For Kierkegaard, the idea of a path in life where one must exercise faith and make choices based on faith was central to the vitality of the Christian life.  If one did not make choices and step out in faith, he or she was not truly living out the faith, but rather living a life of complacency where one did not have to truly live.  The church was not producing true Christians, but rather mindless people who followed blindly and were not required to live.  To Kierkegaard, people are most fully human when they make choices.  Christians are most fully Christians when they have to make decisions based on faith in their lives to walk with God. 
      There are three categories Kierkegaard built to explain the existence of people: the Aesthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious.  The aesthetics are those who look for the good in life.  These are the people who live seeking pleasure in every moment.  A characteristic of this category is that the aesthetics are amoral, meaning that they do not have morals, but merely want to experience life.  The ethical includes everyone who begins to question the difference between right and wrong.  People in this category try to live a good life and know right from wrong.  By Kierkegaard's understanding, most people fall in this category.  The final category is the religious.  People who fall in the religious category are people who move away from asking what is right and wrong to pushing "the end" as the most important thing.  This category views God's ethics as not based on the ethics of humans, but that His ethics are above humanity's ethics.  Therefore, sometimes humans may not understand the reason why things happen, but must step forward in a "leap of faith." 
      As one surveys all of this, one sees how important Kierkegaard was to philosophy and theology of his time.  Not only was Kierkegaard an important character of the past, but he says a lot that is important for theologians and philosophers of today.  Kierkegaard's stress of the personal individual walk characterized by choices and leaps of faith is a powerful idea for today where much of modern Protestantism needs to hear a similar message as to the one Kierkegaard gave the Danish church.  Christians in the mainline churches are not required to live lives that walk by faith, and Kierkegaard's message is vital for today's American Christians.  Kierkegaard provided a foundation in philosphy and the Christian faith that is vital and totally applicable for today. 

"In a world where everyone is Christian, no one is Christian."

"Is reason then alone baptized, are the passions pagans?"

For More Information on Kierkegaard, Please Visit:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/

Hegel and His Beliefs Concerning History

Georg W.F. Hegel

    


      Georg W.F. Hegel was a German philosopher of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  Kantian philosophy championed philosophy of the time when Hegel became prominent.  Following after Kant, a lot of Hegel's philosophy responded to the foundation Kant built.  Where Kant pushed God's transcendence, Hegel took to the opposite that God is immanent and knowable.  Kant's statement that things cannot be known in themselves, building a wall between knowing and being, pushed Hegel to argue that everything is actually known in itself. 
      Hegel viewed God as weltgeist.  The weltgeist (world-spirit, or world-mind) is in everything and in every move of history.  This view of God is a form of panentheism.  In Hegel's view of the weltgeist, God evolves alongside human culture.  Hegel taught that God needs humans to become a self-realization by people's discovery of God. 
      A very important idea within Hegel's philosophy is his dialectic of history.  History is summed up by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  In Hegel's philosophy these three processes move humanity and history to a climax where there is true freedom and a full actualization of the weltgeist.  An example of Hegel's view of history is: Parmenides, a Greek philosopher, taught that everything is in constant change (thesis); Heraclitus, another Greek philosopher, taught that the world is made up of one unchangeable thing (antithesis); Plato taught that the world is made up of unchangeable forms represented by changing images/copies (synthesis). 
      Hegel understood history as a very simple thing which followed his dialectic quite well.  This dialectic is still used today by some historians.  At the center of Hegel's dialectic, Hegel believed that thesis, antithesis, and synthesis worked together to create a more free and perfect world.  Hegel believed that history would climax in perfection with the weltgeist fully realized and fully actualized in the minds of man.  Perfect harmony and freedom would result from history's natural path.


Here are some good lectures:

This is an introduction to Hegel's ideas.

This lecture deals with Hegel's view of the weltgeist and history.

This lecture deals with Hegel's dialectic of history.



Immanuel Kant's Contribution to Philosophy and Theology

Immanuel Kant

    

      During the Enlightenment, people studying epistemology took two very different and incompatible approaches: the rationalist viewed that only rational reflection provided valid truth, whereas the empiricist believed experience and the human senses were the only ways to determine truth.  Both of these views held high the view of man's ability to reason and determine truth by his own perfect means.  By looking at these two philosophies of truth, one can see that neither one provides anything applicable to real life by itself.  As a result of this dichotomy, Immanuel Kant took both approaches and brought them together into one. 
     Kant formulated a synthetic a priori view of epistemology.  There is knowledge without relying upon experience to govern truth.  Kant broke knowledge into two categories: physical, and noumenal.  The physical realm of knowledge is experiential and reasonable.  However, the noumenal realm is unknowable.  When one is in the physical realm, reason and experience provide paths to knowledge. 
      Physical knowledge is not absolutely objective under Kant's view truth.  Kant argued that everyone experiences through categories.  Nothing is known in itself; things are only known through categories by which one filters experiences.  By this view of knowledge, knowledge itself of the physical realm is very subjective.  Since things cannot be known in themselves, one can only articulate his or her perception.  Kantian philosophy brought Sociology and philosophy the idea of a "worldview."
      Though Kant believed that noumena is real, he said that noumena is not experienced.  In Kant's philosophy there is a dichotomy between the physical (or phenomenal) and noumenal realm.  For Kant, God is real, but no one can experience him (or her for that matter).  Since no one can experience God, no one can really know God.  However, God is still important. From experience of the phenomenal and reason one can come to some sort of understanding of God.  Kant's view of the noumenal realm led to a moralistic view of religion.  Knowledge derived from the physical realm gives insight into how a proper life, a spiritually moral life, is lived. 
       As a result of Kant's view of noumena, Kant developed a theory of morality called the categorical imperative.  The categorical imperative is a method of determining whether an action is morally permissible.  In this, Kant argued that one should act in a such a way that if their action became a universal law, then it would be constructive and good.  Kant's categorical imperative became the framework of his moralistic view of religion. 
       What does all of this mean, and what is its impact?  Kant effectively brought two different philosophies of truth and knowledge into one.  Out of Kant's philosophy came the idea of worldviews, which is still used today.  Kantian philosophy came as a dynamic progression of its Enlightenment predecessors, and paved the way for modern philosophy.  In regards to theology, Kant affirmed man's experience and rationality as the center for understanding spiritual morality.  God is not a personal being who is known, rather he is impersonal.  Kant's philosophy leads to deism. 
      Kant's impact on philosophy and theology is incredible.  The impact Kant made during the Enlightenment still affects philosophy and religion today.  Because of Kant, truth became viewed as personally subjective and religion focused on morality.  This leads to deism and liberal theology based on experience.  Studying Kant reveals the evolution of theological and philosophical thought.  Knowing what Kant believed gives insight into why modern liberal theology and philosophy are the way they are today. 


More on Kant Found At:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat