Conversing with the Emerging- Part 4

During the Enlightenment and the dawning of modernity the church again faced truth issues, the relevance of the gospel, and the accommodation of the gospel for the sake of cultural relevance. "Modernism made…human reason the king. Reason was supreme in modernism. Out of that came worship of the human mind and the mind trumps God…. Modernism says…there is truth and we can find it in human reason… revelation from God, not the Bible."

It was in this atmosphere that Friedrich Schleiermacher entered and created his own brand of the modern seeker-sensitive theology that sought to make the gospel relevant to the culture of his day that had fallen under the influence of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on human reasoning and its de-emphasis on supernatural revelation and the need for Christian doctrine. His approach was one that stressed feeling or sense of a dependence upon God over doctrinal truth statements.

Mark Patterson captures the essence of Karl Barth’s concern over the theology of Schleiermacher and Emil Brunner of his day. "The church of Germany had almost completely succumbed to the populist theology of its day, a belief that that was built not upon the unique revelation of God in Christ but a theology built upon human feelings, presuppositions, aspirations, and prejudices….What they had done was turn to a new revelatory center, and from this center redefine classic words and reinterpret traditional perspectives….the church rejected its astonishingly unique message of God’s mercy, love, and grace in Christ, and replaced it instead with an all too common message that simply affirmed the biases and opinions of the culture. The populist ideas and values were given a theological vocabulary, dressed up as divine, priceless, and authoritative and presented to a people who had little interest or ability to discern the true and drastic changes that had occurred."

In the 19’TH century Herman Bavinck was dealing with the ‘Ethical Theologians’ of his day. It was upon the writings of men like Schleiermacher that these theologians were dependent upon and built their methods from. And what did this look like" as Bavinck describes, "The method does not start out from the doctrine of the church or from the teaching of Scripture but from the believing subject, from the Christian consciousness. Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel were in agreement in longer regarding religious truth as objectively given in Scripture or confession, and all three believed that it could be found in and derived from the religious subject."

As with the ECM of today, the church during Spurgeon and Shindler’s time was under pressure to adapt their methods and message to accommodate the culture and modern thought. Both warned that such an accommodation would result in the loss of the inherent power of the church, and its subsequent loss of influence and relevance, and both were right. By the mid-nineteenth century all main line denominations who embraced modernist principles in order to be culturally relevant lost influence and membership.