Can Theology Do Without Metaphysics? Part II

1.    Liberal Theology

First, we note that beginning with Hegel a large number of new metaphysical systems have emerged over the past two centuries. Examples of such systems include those of Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, F. H. Bradley, and A. N. Whitehead. It must be recognized that they all differ from each other in important respects, but what I wish to point out here is that each one is an attempt to provide a viable alternative to classical metaphysics. All of them try to obey the “Prime Directive” of modernity, namely, that we can only have true knowledge of empirical reality by scientific means. Any statement about what lies beyond the reach of our five senses can only be personal opinion rather than knowledge. None of these systems of metaphysics have had much impact of Western culture because they do not challenge the scientism that says that metaphysics is not a science, but just personal opinions.Modern metaphysics rejects the reality of the intelligible realm by denying universals and also rejects the knowability of the transcendent God. Click To Tweet

Classical metaphysics sought to integrate two levels, the empirical level known by sense experience and the intelligible realm known by the intellect. But Classical Christian metaphysics added a third and more fundamental level of reality. It affirmed the material cosmos as known by the five senses and also the intelligible realm of angels and heaven. But, in addition, it also affirmed the existence of a God who stands above and apart from the material and spiritual realms, who is the Cause of all and eternal. Modern metaphysics rejects the reality of the intelligible realm by denying universals and also rejects the knowability of the transcendent God.

God, in the classical, Christian conception is the one, simple, immutable, eternal, self-existent, perfect, First Cause of the universe, who was dimly perceived by the philosophers, who revealed himself to Israel, and who is most fully known in Jesus Christ.

Classical Christian theology brings the sensible and intelligible realms into relation to God, who  is not a part of either the material cosmos or the spiritual realm. God is transcendent of both and therefore immanent to both. To confuse God with creation is as bad as separating God from creation.To confuse God with creation is as bad as separating God from creation. Click To Tweet

Modern liberal theology rejects the theology of the the Bible and reverts to the pantheism and polytheism of the nations around Israel, which the Old Testament was given to correct. The theological systems of John Cobb, W. Pannenberg, and J. Moltmann all speak of God, but they draw him down from his lofty heights of transcendence and portray him as a god who is a part of, or identical with, the cosmos.

God might be the one out of whom the cosmos is made or the soul of the world. Or God might be reinterpreted as the laws driving history forward. But such a God does not have aseity and is not eternal. Instead the cosmos is self-existent and eternal. The attributes of God in classical theism are thus transferred to the cosmos and the God of the Bible, bereft of his metaphysical attributes, is lowered to the level of the gods of ancient mythology.

2.    Fundamentalist Theology

The fundamentalist theology of the early twentieth century had good intentions. It arose as a reaction to the liberal theology of the nineteenth century and it wanted to defend biblical Christianity. It wanted to preserve miracles, heaven and hell, biblical authority, and the character of Christianity as a religion of sin and salvation.

The problem with fundamentalism was that its critique of liberal theology did not go deep enough to expose the Enlightenment roots of the problem. It recognized that liberal theology had gone off the rails when it denied the virgin birth or saw contradictions in Scripture. But why had liberal theology veered so far off from orthodoxy?The problem with fundamentalism was that its critique of liberal theology did not go deep enough to expose the Enlightenment roots of the problem. Click To Tweet

Fundamentalists framed the issue in terms of prooftexts and biblical interpretation. They saw it as a “Battle for the Bible” in which if only they could get their opponents to accept the authority of the Bible as inspired and inerrant they could prove that miracles should be accepted and that traditional doctrinal formulations like original sin should be affirmed.

But the issue ran deeper than the authority of the Bible. Even if you could prove that the Bible teaches the virgin birth, a person committed to philosophical naturalism would automatically assume that literal virgin births are impossible. So if the Bible teaches a virgin birth then it must be using the concept as a symbol of some other meaning that is compatible with a naturalistic metaphysics. Given the metaphysical premise, this hermeneutical move logically follows.

What the fundamentalists never quite understood was that biblical exegesis is always done on the basis of certain metaphysical assumptions. They did not grasp the need to reform the erroneous metaphysical assumptions of modernity on the basis of special revelation. They never quite caught up to the historic orthodox tradition that existed from the fourth to eighteenth centuries! So, contemporary Evangelicalism falls short of the Protestant orthodoxy that produced the great confessions of the Reformation.Fundamentalist biblicism ignores the distinction between the doctrines of the immanent and economic Trinity and tends, therefore, to read historical development back into the being of the Triune God. Click To Tweet

Fundamentalist biblicism ignores the distinction between the doctrines of the immanent and economic Trinity and tends, therefore, to read historical development back into the being of the Triune God. The actions of God in speaking and acting in history to judge and save his people are taken as descriptive of God in Himself. A good example of this tendency is the tendency of Grudem, Ware, and others to read the Son’s subordination to the Father in the economy back into the eternal Trinity. Another example would be social trinitarianism, which projects human concepts of personhood onto God in Himself. Yet another example would be Open Theism, with it concept of a mutable god. The result is an overly-anthropomorphic view of God in which God is understood as a being in time and space, rather than as a transcendent being able to produce effects in time and space. The mystery is rationalized and the result is theistic personalism rather than classical theism.

Theistic personalism turns God into a person like us differing only in degree. He operates as part of the cosmos. Historic Christian orthodoxy sees God as personal but also as transcendent of the cosmos. He causes all things from outside the cosmos as the mysterious One who speaks and acts but who is utterly unlike us creatures.

3.    Barthian Theology

Karl Barth’s profound and powerful dogmatics has seemed to a large number of conservative theologians over the past fifty years to be a better alternative to liberalism than fundamentalism. But Barth did not recover classical metaphysics and tried to be (as Bruce McCormack rightly puts it) both orthodox and modern simultaneously. In my view, Barth’s magnificent attempt to reconcile Christian orthodoxy with post-metaphysical modernity must be judged to be a failure in the end.

Many resist this conclusion. Nothing appeals to the majority of conservative theologians more than the idea that they might be able to preserve historic orthodoxy while also making themselves acceptable to a late-modern academy that is in the grip of historicism and scientism. Whereas fundamentalism accepted exile from the centers of cultural influence, the appeal of Barthianism was that it offered a chance to do serious theology within the great centers of cultural influence.Barth did not recover classical metaphysics and tried to be both orthodox and modern simultaneously. Click To Tweet

However, it is critical to understand why Barth’s project ultimately fails. It was not because he wanted to replace pagan metaphysical doctrines with specifically Christian doctrine. That was right and proper. The problem was that he rejected the true insights of the pagan philosophers along with the false ones. He was not willing to challenge the influence of Hume and Kant and recover the premodern classical metaphysics that integrated philosophical reason into revelation. True philosophy was swept away with false philosophy; the Egyptian gold was refused rather than plundered.

As a result, his theology never quite makes contact with empirical reality because it never regained the premodern confidence in the ability of the human reason to know the created order and reason from it to the existence of a First Cause. Barth’s neglect of the metaphysical proofs for the existence of God is typical of modern theology, but fatal to the quest to re-describe reality theologically in two ways. One is that it leaves his theology hanging in midair and the second is that it leads to the mistake of reading the economic activities of God into the immanent Trinity. The missions and the processions are not distinguished from each other properly.

Barth wanted all his dogmatics to be Christologically based. But he could not see that classical orthodoxy had a doctrine of creation that was Christologically based and known partly through reason and partly through revelation. He saw the classical proofs as an assertion of human autonomous reason rather than as a reverent bowing before the Logos. A correct understanding of the eternal pre-existence of the Son as the eternal Word of the Father is crucial for a proper doctrine of creation.A correct understanding of the eternal pre-existence of the Son as the eternal Word of the Father is crucial for a proper doctrine of creation. Click To Tweet

Barth’s problem was not so much that he wanted to derive his dogmatics from Christology. It was more that his focus on the incarnate Son rather than the pre-existent Son led him to read the narrative Christology of the New Testament back into the eternal Trinity. Ironically, he ended up making the same kind of mistake as the fundamentalists did by historicizing God. Barth’s thought is complicated but one reason it is so is not because it is so profound, but rather because it tries to paper over a basic incoherency. It is trying to hold together an orthodox doctrine of God as one, simple, perfect, self-existent, immutable God with a narrative Christology from which his entire doctrine of God is derived. The base is inadequate to to support the superstructure. He needed to recover the classical doctrine of creation as including natural theology.

It seems to me that the trajectory of his thought thus is developed logically in the work of Jungel, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Jenson. They do not corrupt his thought; they extend it. Despite the heroic (and partially successful) efforts of George Hunsinger and Paul Molnar to interpret Barth as a continuation of the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy, the trajectory of his thought as developed in the next generation shows that he never escaped the gravitational pull of modernity.

Conclusion

What can we take away from all of this? It seems to me that three points stand out as most important:

1. Christian theology is not merely a narrative we tell each other to express our experience of God. Rather, it is a metaphysical description of reality, that is, of God and all things in relation to God. It deals with objective truth, not merely subjective opinion.
2. Since metaphysical realism is a deduction from biblical revelation and necessary for an adequate statement of Christian orthodoxy, we must go back before the Enlightenment to the period of Protestant scholastic orthodoxy to pick up the thread of the Great Tradition and build further on the foundations of the tradition handed down to us from the church fathers, medieval schoolmen, and Protestant reformers.
3. Evangelicalism, as the heir of fundamentalism, has failed us and so we need a revival of historic Protestantism. We need “Evangelical Protestantism” not merely “Evangelicalism.”

Christian theology is a metaphysical description of reality, that is, of God and all things in relation to God. Click To TweetTheological liberalism, reactionary fundamentalism, and neo-orthodox Barthianism involve various degrees of compromise with modernity. But we should read the signs of the times and conclude that modernity has run its course and is now in the process of self-destruction. Those who marry the spirit of the age will soon find themselves widowed.

We are entering into a period of Ressourcement in which premodern exegesis, doctrine, and metaphysics are being recovered and used to reinvigorate twenty-first century theology. The recovery of Christian metaphysics is a massive task that will require the efforts of many historical and systematic theologians in the decades ahead. But it will be worthwhile because ultimately a theology without classical metaphysics can never be classical orthodoxy.

*This article was originally published in Dr. Carter’s newsletter.