The Resurrection, Revelation & Neo-Orthodoxy

Text — Luke 24:36f

There are advantages to preaching the Church Calendar (Lectionary) in as much as the themes and texts are laid out with a thematic unity. For the preacher this obviates the necessity to try to be creative with Sermon plans. This is an advantage. The disadvantage is that there will be times, due to the season, where there will be a danger of repetition given the thematic approach of the seasons of the Church Calendar. This Sunday is such an example as we find again, a text that deals with the resurrection.

Both last week and this week in each text Jesus appears to the disciples who are afraid and unbelieving. The Lord Christ convinces them that he is, indeed their Rabbi and Leader and is not just a Spirit but is corporeally raised from the dead. Further, there is the necessity that the disciples believing His resurrection should be heralds of His truths throughout the Nations.

The danger then is avoid being repetitive and the challenge is to communicate the freshness of the text.

Here in Luke 24 we find a Resurrection account. The two appeals of the Lord Christ for the reality of the Resurrection are (1) His post Resurrection body as continuous with His pre-Resurrection body and (2) The authority of the Scriptures.

That is the proof he offers the disciples and it is the proof that we have to work with today.

However a Theology exists and has existed for quite some time that plays fast and loose with these proofs.

I.) The Shrinking of the Historicity of the Resurrection As a  Proof of the Resurrection

All the Resurrection accounts are straightforward. They each emphasize the simplicity of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was dead and came back to life by the power of God to vindicate the righteousness of the 2nd person of the Trinity. All the Gospel accounts teach this. Paul goes out of his way to teach this in I Cor. 15 where he talks about the 500 witnesses.

However, this resurrection has never been good enough for the Skeptics. A breed of theologian has always been with us that desires to reinterpret the resurrection in a way that unbelievers can remain unbelievers while having the ability to call themselves “Believers.”  And so through history the resurrection has been spiritualized, historicized, and gnosticized so that that affirmation of it is reduced to a few words that lose their meaning in the Church because to many affirming the Resurrection are filling that affirmation with different meaning.

One example of this that is in the Church today is called “Barthianism,” after its founder Karl Barth. It is alternately called “Neo-orthodoxy.” What Barth did in his doctrine was to untie the truth of Scripture from the Historicity of Scripture as we understand History. For this School the Supernatural events of History, as recorded in Scripture, became Supra-Historical (above History) or Trans-Historical (beyond history) though there remained an insistence that these trans and supra historical events still impacted History.

Arminian Philosopher William Lane Craig gives us a taste of what I am speaking of when he describes Barth’s view of the subject of Resurrection

“. . . Liberal theology could not survive World War I, but its demise brought no renewed interest in the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, for the two schools that succeeded it were united in their devaluation of the historical with regard to Jesus. Thus, dialectical theology, propounded by Karl Barth, championed the doctrine of the resurrection, but would have nothing to do with the resurrection as an event of history. In his commentary on the book of Romans (1919), the early Barth declared, “The resurrection touches history as a tangent touches a circle — that is, without really touching it.”

There it is. Did you catch it? “The resurrection touches history as a tangent touches a circle — that is, without really touching it.”

There are many many who followed in this train of thought. For example Dietrich Bonhoffer, who Evangelicals have tried to turn into a Super-Saint Hero because of his resistance to the Nazis shared this thinking. As taken from several of his books (Christ the Center, p. 112; Letters and Papers from Prison, S.C.M. Press edition, Great Britain: Fontana Books, 1953, pp. 93-94, 110), Bonhoffer had no faith in the physical resurrection of Christ. Bonhoeffer believed the “historicity” of the Resurrection was in “the realm of ambiguity,” and that it was one of the “mythological” elements of Christianity that “must be interpreted in such a way as not to make religion a pre-condition of faith.” He also believed that “Belief in the Resurrection is not the solution of the problem of death,” and that such things as miracles and the ascension of Christ were “mythological conceptions” as well

About 20 years after Bonhoffer’s murder a different Neo-Orthodox theologian writing in the 1960’s .. a chap named Mueller pointed out:

“Many interpreters are of the opinion that the detailed accounts of the events in and near the, tomb of Jesus … are embellishing narratives of the later church. The resurrection of Jesus itself, they say, was not a physical process, but something that happened as a spiritual or ‘mythical, super-historical’ process in the hearts of the disciples.”37  “Faith in the risen Christ is not decided by the question of what happened to the material substance of his physical body.”38  “We therefore should not think we are contributing to the defense of faith or historical truth when we agonize over some external side of the resurrection message of the Bible.”

Do you see the elements of what I am speaking of here? There is the affirmation by these people of the Resurrection. An affirmation that allows them into our Churches and into our pulpits but it is a affirmation without any substance. It is the retaining of the word “Resurrection” while the displacing of it of all original meaning.

Neo-Orthodoxy  thus was contrasted with the Biblical world by denying of the Resurrection the following,

Biblical Resurrection        Neo-Orthodox Resurrection

Organic  Identity               Non-Organic identity
A Material body                 Non material body
An event in History           An event beyond history

Now we should introduce here the idea that the Academic and intellectual neo-orthodox theologians are agonizingly careful to qualify and nuance statements regarding the supernatural in Scripture. Indeed, their preternatural ability at studied ambiguity in the language they use is one reason that they were able to go initially undetected in Denominations that had historically been orthodox. However, studied ambiguity once it hits the streets of the average run of the mill clergy becomes less studied and less ambiguous and more obvious in the ability to detect.

We see this from a sermon I found online from a Pastor I personally know that demonstrates some of what I’m speaking of. This does not have to do with the Resurrection account but with the Creation account but the consistency between the two is the inability to hold to the explicit account of Scripture,

Third, some clarification. Genesis 1 is not a scientific report. Genesis 2 and 3 is not an eyewitness account. And Revelation 21 and 22 is neither. What we have in these biblical texts is literature. Literature intended to evoke awe and wonder. Literature intended to sustain faith and hope. Literature intended to give understanding. To read these biblical texts not literarily but literally is misguided. It’s misguided to read them literally and then to dismiss them as hopelessly out of touch with reality.

Now notice the distinction between literal and literary. If we apply that hermeneutic to the Creation account why can we not apply it to the Resurrection account? Why can we not say that in the Resurrection account what we have is literature. Literature intended to evoke awe and wonder. Literature intended to sustain faith and hope. Literature intended to give understanding. To read these resurrection texts not literarily but literally is misguided. It’s misguided to read them literally and then to dismiss them as hopelessly out of touch with reality.

Now why do I spend so much time on this? Simply because we are awash in neo-orthodox theology of one form or another. Call it neo-orthodoxy. Call it post-foundationalism. Call it “Reader-Response” theology. Call it post-modern. Call it emergent. Call it what you will. In the end there is a consistency between the inability to affirm without doubt, qualification, caveat or nuance that Christ is bodily resurrected per the Scriptural accounts.  In the end there is a desire to sound Christian by using the language but a denial of being Christian because of the refusal to actually believe what Scripture everywhere insists that we must believe.

In a recent book we find this kind of disbelief again modified ever so slightly,

“Christianity has never been able to “prove” its claims except by appeal to the experiences and convictions of those already convinced. The only real validation for the claim that Christ is what the creed claims him to be, that is, light from light, true God from true God, is to be found in the quality of life demonstrated by those who make this confession. . . . the claims of the Gospel cannot be demonstrated logically, they cannot be proved historically. They can be validated only existentially by the witness of authentic Christian discipleship.”

But you see, this negates the Historicity and the situated “eventedness” of Christianity from space and time and shifts the meaning of it to our experience. In this understanding it does not matter if Christ really rose from the Grave. It only matters that individuals are convinced that Christ rose from the grave … even if he didn’t. It turns the objective claims, such as we find here in Luke, to be of little consequence so that what emerges is the subjective importance for the individual. Whereas the Gospels are telling us that the Resurrection is True, this kind of theology is telling us that the Resurrection is true to me.

Now what is the upshot of all this.

1.) Well first of all we have gotten to the point that we absolutely must listen to ministers in the Church and professors in our Seminaries with a hermeneutic of suspicion. That is to say, that we cannot trust words out of people’s mouths that sound right without closely examining the Worldview in which their words rest.  And of course we cannot succeed at this unless we know what we believe and why we believe it and what we don’t believe and why we don’t believe it.

2.) We must be very detailed in catechizing ourselves and our children. One reason that this kind of theology was able to take over the Church is because generations in the Church were not anchored in an exact Christian faith.

3.) We must pray pray pray. We are currently living in a Babylonian Captivity of the Church. We must pray that God might be pleased to deliver us from this captivity.

II.) The Shrinking of Revelation As a Proof of The Resurrection

Christ not only demonstrates the Resurrection via His wounds but He also Demonstrates the Resurrection via the Scripture (Moses, Prophets the Psalms).

Perhaps He goes back to Gen. 3 where He is the Seed of the woman promised to crush the seed of the serpent. Perhaps He interprets God’s post fall covering of Adam and Eve with Animal skins as analogous to being covered by God with the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. He could have taken them to the Abraham with Isaac on Mt. Moriah and told of the words that “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” as a substitute for Isaac. The Lord Christ could have pointed to Himself as the Passover Lamb of the Exodus who delivers from the Wrath of God. He could have spoken of Psalm 2, Psalm 16:10, Psalm 110 and a host of other Messianic Psalms. He could have pointed to the Aaronic Priesthood and the Sacrificial system as Promissory of His own coming Priesthood and Sacrifice. Going to the Prophets He could have picked out the sign of Jonah as fulfilled in Him. The Lord Christ might have pointed to Zechariah the Prophet and the disrobing of Joshua the High Priest and the re-clothing of Joshua with royal clothing as metaphor for imputation for the Believer in Christ.  The entire Old Testament points to Christ and everything happened just as the Revelation said it would. 

We will notice in this Resurrection account the Importance the Lord Christ puts on Scripture (Lk. 24:44f). As combined with the Historical reality of the Resurrection Christ invokes the Scriptures as proof positive of the Resurrection.

But Moderns redefine the import of the Scriptures just as they reinterpret the import of the Resurrection.

“Scripture: Recent Protestant and Catholic Views”, Avery Dulles describes Barth’s view of scripture as follows (Theology Today Vol. 37, No. 1. 1980):

“According to this school, the word of God was to be identified with Jesus Christ and him alone. The Bible was not itself the word of God but a witness to that word. Christ, however, could address the community through the word of Scripture, and when he did so the Bible became, in a genuine sense, the word of God. The believing community could encounter Christ personally through that word.”

So we see here is what this school does is it abstracts Christ from the Scripture so that a Christ outside of Scripture is the authority over Scripture. This, of course, tears away the objectivity of the Word as authoritative and subjectivizes the Scripture to the authority to a Christ who does not necessarily have to be shaped by Scriptural categories. The abstracted Christ takes precedence over the Inscripturated Christ.

Also, in this paradigm Scripture is NOT the Word of God but only BECOMES the Word of God upon a existential personal encounter. Because this is so, appeals to the Word can gain little traction because the Word can only mean something Objectively true if someone has had a subjective encounter that affirms an objective character.

Again, the problem here is the loss of the Objective quality of Truth Claims in favor of a personal experience with the word.

Now, we should say here that there is nothing wrong with a personal encounter with the Word but any personal encounter with the Word must be based on the prior Objective truth of the Word. I can’t have an encounter with the Word via an Abstracted Jesus that is inconsistent with what the Objective Word teaches.

Continuing with Dulles

“In Barthian neo-orthodoxy the classical theses of Protestant orthodoxy were notably modified. Inspiration was no longer a property of the biblical authors or of the books taken in themselves. Rather, it was “the promise of God and the Holy Spirit to be present among the faithful when these writings are used in the common life of the church.” Inerrancy, as a property of the texts, was vigorously denied, yet a genuine authority was ascribed to the Bible insofar as it became, on occasion, the word of God. In spite of the errors of the human writers, God acts with sovereign efficacy to lead the believing reader to an authentic faith-encounter.

You see we move here again from an objective word to a word made objective by our subjective authority.

In Luke Christ gives us two proofs of the Resurrection; Himself and the Scriptures. What neo-orthodox theology does is to give verbal affirmation all the while denying the appeal of Christ by reinterpreting Resurrection and the authority of Scripture in a unbelieving worldview.

Conclusion

Re-cap