Latest / Reformed Thinking / Historicist Theologies

Transcript

Historicist Theologies · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I am so glad you were joining us
0:02
today. Yeah, thanks for tuning in.
0:04
So imagine finding out the most crucial event in human history,
0:10
like the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
0:12
Imagine finding out it actually happened, but the only book that
0:16
recorded it was full of lies, myths and, you know, massive
0:20
errors. That is quite the scenario to
0:22
start with. Right.
0:23
That is the specific theological nightmare some of the greatest
0:27
minds of the 20th century accidentally created, and they
0:30
did it while trying to defend the Christian faith.
0:32
It sounds absurd, right? It sounds completely
0:34
contradictory. But that is where we are going
0:36
today. Usually when we talk about a
0:38
medical diagnosis, there is an expectation of absolute
0:42
precision. You break your arm, the X-ray
0:44
shows a jagged white line and the Doctor points to the film
0:47
and says there it is. Right, it is binary.
0:50
The bone is broken or it is not broken.
0:52
The visual evidence is clean. It is objective and undeniable.
0:56
Yeah, and that kind of clarity is comforting.
0:58
We like things to be visible. We like them to be cleanly
1:00
categorized. But then you step into the world
1:02
of modern theology and suddenly that X-ray machine is, well, it
1:06
is malfunctioning. Yeah, it is sitting out blurry
1:09
images. Exactly the wait.
1:10
I mean spot on. We're looking at a diagnostic
1:13
landscape that is incredibly murky.
1:16
O again, welcome to Reformed Thinking.
1:18
You reached out with a desire to understand how historical events
1:21
and biblical authority intersect, and we have crafted
1:24
this specific deep dive customized just for you.
1:27
We really have. Our mission today is to unpack
1:30
some fascinating excerpts from The Moody Handbook of Theology,
1:34
revised and expanded by Paul Inns.
1:37
Yes, specifically, we are going to look at the section on
1:39
historicist theologies. It is the absolute definition of
1:43
diagnostic Muddy Waters. To borrow your metaphor from a
1:46
minute ago, the core tension we are looking at in this text
1:49
revolves around how 2 modern German theologians, Oscar
1:52
Coleman and Wolfhart Panenberg, attempted to anchor Christian
1:54
faith in literal, verifiable historical events.
1:58
Which sounds good on the surface, right?
1:59
Oh, absolutely. They wanted to move away from
2:02
abstract philosophy and ground the faith in real things that
2:05
happened on a calendar. But in doing so, they created
2:09
massive theological friction. Fiction's a polite word for it.
2:12
Yeah, it really is. They tried to fix one problem
2:15
but ended up breaking the X-ray machine all together.
2:17
They wanted something solid, you know, something you could point
2:19
to. But the method they used to get
2:22
there caused catastrophic structural damage to their own
2:25
theology. It really did.
2:27
So to understand how history became such a massive focal
2:30
point, we need to look the specific terminology and the
2:34
people who started using it. Let us start with Oscar Coleman.
2:38
A place to start. He lived from 19-O2 to 1999,
2:42
which means his life spanned almost the entire 20th century.
2:45
He watched the world change radically.
2:47
He saw a lot of history happened first hand.
2:49
Yeah, and his theological framework is closely identified
2:51
with a very specific German term, heis keshikta.
2:56
I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, but it translates
2:59
roughly to salvation history or holy history.
3:01
Your pronunciation is close enough for our purposes today,
3:05
and that term itself is crucial for grasping everything that
3:08
follows. JCK von Hoffman actually
3:12
initiated the usage of the term back in the 19th century.
3:15
Whoa. OK.
3:15
So it predates Coleman? It does, but it was Coleman who
3:19
really developed its usage and brought it to the forefront of
3:22
20th century theological discussion.
3:24
Got it. The core idea of Hais Kashikta
3:27
is that it views the historical events of God saving acts in
3:30
history as the main event. It focuses on that rather than
3:34
focusing on a philosophy of religion.
3:36
OK, let us unpack this concept of philosophy of religion,
3:40
because it sounds a bit academic.
3:41
Yeah, when we say older theologians focus on a
3:43
philosophy of religion, we're talking about abstract concepts.
3:46
Right. Yeah.
3:47
Mostly things like general moral principles, ethical frameworks,
3:50
or vague ideas about a divine being that exists outside of
3:54
space and time. Right, it is very detached.
3:56
It is like treating Christianity as a set of good ideas for
4:00
living a moral life rather than a series of of events that
4:03
actually occurred. Coleman wanted to get away from
4:06
that. He wanted to focus on actual
4:08
events. You know, battles, births,
4:10
executions, resurrections. Spot on.
4:13
Coleman is looking back at older liberal theologians and neo
4:17
orthodox writers who had essentially stripped the history
4:20
out of the Bible. He just hollowed it out.
4:22
Pretty much. Now, salvation history does
4:24
acknowledge the critical approach to Scripture advocated
4:27
by those more liberal groups. They accept higher criticism,
4:31
which often tears the biblical text apart.
4:33
Wait, they accept the criticism that tears the text apart?
4:36
They do, but Coleman's focus shifts dramatically to the
4:39
timeline. He views the Bible as the record
4:41
of God's saving acts in history. However, and this is the massive
4:45
catch, we have to zero in. On I feel a huge catch coming.
4:48
Oh, it is a big one. While they view the Bible as a
4:50
record, they explicitly deny the infallibility of the Bible.
4:54
Furthermore, they refuse to develop a systematized theology
4:57
from the Bible itself. Wow, I want to make sure I am
5:01
grasping the magnitude of what you just said.
5:04
They were saying the events actually happened, but the book
5:07
recording the events is fundamentally flawed.
5:10
That is their stance, yes. It is like looking at a
5:12
historical artifact in a museum. Let us say you were looking at a
5:16
sword from a famous battle. OK, I like this analogy, they
5:19
believe. The battle actually happened
5:22
right? But they think the bronze plaque
5:24
describing the battle is full of typos, myths and historical
5:28
errors. Yeah, the plaque is totally
5:30
unreliable to them. You can trust that the battle
5:32
took place, but you cannot trust the words telling you about it.
5:35
That analogy paints the picture very well.
5:39
The significance of Scripture, according to this view, is that
5:42
it functions as a flawed human record of God's dealings in
5:45
history. They are separating the action
5:47
from the text. That seems incredibly dangerous.
5:50
It leads to a catastrophic theological problem, especially
5:53
when viewed through a Reformed lens.
5:55
The danger here is severing God's acts in history from the
5:58
infallibility of the words God inspired to record them.
6:01
Because if the plaque is full of errors, how do we know the
6:04
specific details of the battle? We do not.
6:07
More pressingly, how do we know the actual meaning of the
6:10
battle? Right, Because if the record is
6:13
flawed, the interpretation of the event is totally up for
6:16
grabs. It is left wide open to human
6:18
imagination. A general might have won a
6:20
battle to secure freedom, but if the plaque is wrong, a historian
6:24
might say he won the battle out of pure greed.
6:27
The motive is lost. And by borrowing from Neo
6:29
Orthodoxy, salvation history proponents stress that the
6:32
benefits of God's saving acts are personally appropriated by
6:36
faith in Christ. So they hand you this flawed
6:39
error ridden record, but you were still supposed to conjure
6:42
up this intense personal faith connection to the events it
6:45
describes. It feels disjointed.
6:47
It's entirely disjointed. To understand why Coleman
6:50
arrived at such a precarious conclusion, we have to look
6:53
closely at his academic background.
6:55
We have to see what shaped his thinking.
6:57
Right. The environment he inhabited
6:59
shaped these views significantly.
7:01
He studied at the University of Strasbourg.
7:03
That is where he later taught Greek and ancient Church
7:06
history. Teaching Greek an ancient church
7:08
history means he was deeply embedded in the ancient texts.
7:12
You know the language, the raw materials of the early Christian
7:15
movement. He was in the weeds with the
7:17
primary sources. He was not just sitting in a
7:19
room thinking abstract philosophical thoughts.
7:22
He was dealing with historical documents every single day.
7:26
And then he gets invited to the University of Basel.
7:28
A very significant move for him. It was a prestigious school and
7:32
he served there as professor of Church history in New Testament,
7:35
enhancing their scholarship and global reputation.
7:38
Basil is where the plot really thickens. 2 massive academic
7:43
influences shaped Coleman while he was there.
7:46
The 1st is Karl Barth. Karl Barth is a huge name.
7:49
He is Barth influenced Coleman's Christological approach to the
7:53
New Testament. Karl Barth is a towering figure
7:56
in a movement called Neo Orthodoxy.
7:58
His presence at Basel would have created an intense, almost
8:01
gravitational, academic atmosphere.
8:03
I can imagine it is hard to escape that kind of intellectual
8:05
gravity. Exactly.
8:07
I mean spot on. The second major factor we have
8:10
to discuss is Coleman's fierce opposition to Rudolf Boltman.
8:14
Wait, let us slow down and break these concepts down.
8:16
The source mentions Coleman opposed some of the radical
8:20
features of Boltman's form, criticism and demythologization.
8:24
Those are heavy terms. They really are.
8:25
What does demythologization actually mean for someone
8:28
sitting in a Pew on a Sunday morning?
8:30
Well, Boltman had this idea of church and shrouded myths.
8:35
He looked at the New Testament and decided that a modern person
8:38
living in an age of electricity and modern medicine simply could
8:42
not believe in supernatural events.
8:44
Oh, I see. So the miracles were a problem.
8:46
For him, a massive problem. So he argued that a lot of the
8:49
miraculous elements in the Bible, angels, demons, the
8:53
virgin birth, even the physical resurrection, were just myths
8:57
added by the early church. They just made them up to sound
8:59
more impressive. Basically, they were layers of
9:02
cultural storytelling and shrouding the real hidden
9:05
message. Boltman wanted to strip away
9:07
those myths to demythologize the text to find a core existential
9:12
message for the individual. Existentialism is one of those
9:15
words that gets thrown around in philosophy classes, but how does
9:18
it apply here? Is it just about finding a
9:20
personal meaning in the present moment, regardless of whether
9:23
the story is true? In Boltman's application, yes,
9:27
he thought the historical facts did not matter.
9:30
What mattered was the here and now encounter with the idea of
9:33
the cross or the idea of resurrection.
9:36
So just the concept of. It right, he thought the concept
9:38
would shock you into an authentic existence.
9:41
And Coleman looked at that and flat out rejected it.
9:45
He was less dependent upon existentialism and focused on
9:48
actual exegesis. He wanted to ground things in
9:52
reality. He looked at Bohman saying this
9:54
is all myth, and Coleman countered with no, these are
9:57
actual historical events. We need to do rigorous textual
10:01
analysis rather than just treating the Bible as
10:03
existential poetry. You can imagine the academic
10:06
pressure cooker at the University of Basel during this
10:08
era. You have Karl Barth pushing a
10:11
certain type of neo orthodox subjectivity, and then you have
10:14
Bohmann out there trying to turn the whole New Testament into an
10:16
existential fable. So Coleman is caught in the
10:18
middle. He is walking, making a very
10:20
thin tightrope between them. He wants to maintain that the
10:24
events of the New Testament actually happened in real time,
10:27
in space, pushing back hard against Boltman.
10:30
But he is still heavily influenced by Barth's framework.
10:33
Yes, which leads him to reject the strict infallibility of the
10:37
text. It sounds like he is trying to
10:39
hold the line on history, but completely surrendering the
10:42
ground on biblical inerrancy. That is a great way to summarize
10:46
it. So, since he rejected Boltman's
10:48
idea of pure myth, what did Coleman actually affirm?
10:52
His doctrinal affirmations form a fascinating, if unstable, mix.
10:57
Unstable is the keyword. He places a massive focus on
11:00
God, revealing himself in the events of history.
11:03
The events of Scripture are historical, occurring in literal
11:06
time. Literal time is the absolute
11:08
core of his system. But again, we must underline
11:11
that for Coleman, Scripture itself is not infallible.
11:14
It is just that flawed bronze plaque.
11:16
Right. It is only the flawed vehicle
11:18
explaining God's events of holy history.
11:20
The main element for Him is the actual timeline, the holy
11:23
history, not the literal words written on the parchment.
11:26
He draws a hard line there. He draws a hard, impenetrable
11:30
line between the historical event and the text recording the
11:34
event. And the culmination of this
11:35
salvation history timeline is the coming of Jesus as the
11:39
Messiah that is the peak of the mountain for.
11:41
Him. It is the defining moment.
11:43
But then we run into Coleman's redefined eschatology.
11:46
Typically, when we talk about eschatology, we're talking about
11:49
the study of the end times, right?
11:51
The final events of history, the Book of Revelation.
11:53
But Coleman redefines the entire concept.
11:56
He does. Coleman believed the
11:57
eschatological age began the moment Jesus Christ was
12:01
incarnated. Oh wow, so it already started.
12:03
Yes, though its ultimate completion remains in the
12:06
future. Because of this framework, he
12:08
defines all New Testament events and all subsequent events of
12:11
church history as eschatological.
12:14
So everything from the Manger onward.
12:16
Everything from the moment Jesus was born onward is part of the
12:19
end times in Coleman's view. OK, here is where it gets highly
12:23
problematic for me. If the words of scripture are
12:26
not infallible and we are just dealing with a flawed vehicle
12:29
explaining these historical events, how does an individual
12:32
believer actually connect with this holy history?
12:35
That is the $1,000,000 question. How do you have any real faith
12:40
if you cannot fully trust the book you were holding in your
12:42
hands? He attempts to solve that
12:45
massive problem by borrowing heavily from near Orthodoxy,
12:49
salvation, history, adherence, insist on the necessity of a
12:52
subjective encounter to gain a knowledge of the meaning of the
12:55
revelation. A subjective encounter.
12:57
Yes, because the text is not objective, infallible truth.
13:01
The truth becomes entirely subjective.
13:03
You have to have a personal, internal, subjective experience
13:06
or encounter to understand what the revelation means for you.
13:09
So the truth is not found by just reading the words on the
13:12
page and believing them is objective facts.
13:14
Not in his system, no. The truth happens inside you
13:17
during this mystical, subjective encounter.
13:20
It completely strips the authority away from the written
13:22
page and relocates it into the highly volatile realm of
13:26
personal human experience. Which is an incredibly
13:28
precarious place to build a theology.
13:31
Personal experience is subjective, emotional, and
13:34
easily manipulated. It changes from day to.
13:36
Day, it really does. And this brings us directly to
13:39
the evaluation of Coleman's system, looking at the fatal
13:43
flaws of salvation history. We should probably mention the
13:46
good things first, right? The source does highlight some
13:49
commendable aspects before delivering the critique and we
13:52
should acknowledge those. Right.
13:53
There are a few things he got right in his pushback against
13:55
the liberals. His stress on the historicity of
13:58
your answer. Scripture is vital to the
14:00
Christian message. We need history.
14:03
Christianity is not a philosophy, it is an event.
14:06
Coleman affirms that authentic Christian faith requires
14:09
believing the historical fact that Jesus actually regarded
14:13
himself as the Messiah. He stresses the centrality and
14:16
historicity of Jesus Christ. But then we hit the critical
14:20
evaluation and the whole system starts to collapse.
14:23
It crumbles pretty quickly. Because Coleman only accepts as
14:26
historical those accounts that are verifiable by secular
14:29
standards. If a secular historian or a
14:32
scientific message cannot verify it, Coleman has a massive
14:35
problem and tends to discard it. Let us get specific about what
14:39
he tosses out, because it is shocking.
14:41
He identifies the Adam story and the events of future eschatology
14:45
as myth. Wait, he just throws them out?
14:47
He throws out the very beginning of the book and the very end of
14:50
the book because he cannot verify a talking snake in a
14:53
laboratory and he cannot verify a future return of Christ with a
14:57
secular historical document. This is where we see the glaring
15:00
contradiction in his life's work.
15:02
He vigorously opposed Boltmann earlier for doing this exact
15:06
kind of thing right. Yes, but Coleman actually
15:09
continues to follow the Bolt Manian method of form criticism
15:12
by discepting the scriptures as he sees fit.
15:14
He is picking and choosing. He is selectively applying the
15:17
very method he claimed to hate. He wants to keep Jesus as a
15:20
historical figure, but he is perfectly willing to take a
15:23
scalpel to Genesis and Revelation and call them myths.
15:26
Think about the structural integrity of that theology.
15:30
If the beginning, Adam and the fall of man is a myth, and the
15:34
end, the final judgement and restoration is a myth, the
15:38
historical middle, which is Jesus, loses its entire
15:42
theological foundation. It makes no sense.
15:44
Why did Jesus need to come and die if Adam is just a metaphor?
15:48
The whole narrative of redemption requires a historical
15:51
fall. Coleman essentially cuts off the
15:54
tree branch he is sitting on. Furthermore, we have to look at
15:56
the theological lens regarding that subjective experience we
15:59
discussed earlier. The Salvation History School
16:02
follows Karl Barth and identifying revelation purely as
16:05
a subjective experience. Right, that inward feeling.
16:07
It makes the internal spiritual encounter the sole focal point
16:10
of revelation. This completely divorces the
16:13
believer from the objective truth of God's written Word.
16:16
Because you are not looking at the text anymore, right?
16:19
You are no longer submitting your mind to what the text
16:21
objectively says. You are submitting to your own
16:24
subjective encounter with the vague idea of the text.
16:27
It is a subtle shift, but the consequences are catastrophic.
16:32
You start by trying to defend historical events against
16:35
abstract philosophy, but you end up relying on internal
16:38
subjective feelings because you threw away the infallibility of
16:42
the Bible. It is a fascinating yet tragic
16:44
theological maneuver, and witnessing that collapse sets
16:48
the stage for the next major figure we need to analyze in
16:52
this deep dive. So if Coleman tried to balance
16:55
objective encounters with history and failed, Wolfhard
16:58
Pennenberg looked at that mess and attempted to root everything
17:01
exclusively in raw, undeniable history.
17:04
He saw the weakness in the subjective approach and decided
17:06
to go all in on cold, hard historical facts.
17:09
I can see how that happens. Coleman tries to walk this
17:11
tightrope between history and subjective feeling and he falls
17:14
off. It is too unstable so.
17:16
Pennenberg decides to just build on the ground.
17:18
Yeah, if you are a young German theologian watching this
17:20
theological collapse happen in real time, what do you do?
17:23
You would probably think, forget the subjective feelings.
17:26
Let us build this entirely on facts.
17:28
And that is the massive overcorrection Wolfart
17:30
Hannenberg attempts. Born in 1928, he becomes a
17:34
professor of systematic theology at the University of Munich.
17:37
He's a new generation. He represents a total break with
17:40
the past and a completely new wave in German theology.
17:44
Penenburg's mission was to entirely divorce himself from
17:47
Rudolf Boltmann's existential focus.
17:49
He wanted absolutely nothing to do with myths, metaphors and
17:53
subjective existentialism. Nothing at all.
17:55
He rooted his theology purely in history, particularly focusing
17:59
on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
18:01
So the resurrection is the focal point.
18:03
He regards the resurrection as the absolute, verifiable center
18:06
of Christianity. Because of this intense, narrow
18:09
focus, his system is widely termed the theology of history
18:13
or the theology of resurrection. I want to make sure I'm grasping
18:16
his angle here, unlike Bolt Man, who saw the resurrection as a
18:19
helpful myth to give you a subjective feeling, Panenberg
18:22
says. It is a cold, hard, objective
18:24
historical fact. Yes, an indisputable fact.
18:27
It sounds like Panenberg is acting like a courtroom lawyer
18:30
who refuses to use character witnesses, refuses to talk about
18:34
feelings, and only relies on forensic DNA evidence.
18:37
That is a great comparison. He does not care about your
18:40
existential crisis, he just wants the historical evidence of
18:44
an empty tomb. Now let me play devil's advocate
18:47
for a second. OK, that's here.
18:49
In a modern scientific world filled with skeptics, shouldn't
18:52
we demand forensic proof? Isn't building a theology on
18:55
solid historical evidence a good thing?
18:58
Why is this considered a theological overcorrection?
19:02
Demanding historical truth is a good thing, yes, but his
19:05
overcorrection lies in how he defines revelation itself.
19:09
How does he define it? Well, Panenberg demands
19:11
historicity for a valid faith, which is fine.
19:14
But in doing so, he rejects Karl Barth's dichotomy between two
19:17
German concepts, history and Geshefta.
19:20
Let us break those two German words down so we can understand
19:23
the philosophical trap he walks into.
19:25
Because Barth like to separate things he did.
19:27
History refers to raw, factual, verifiable history.
19:31
The stuff you can prove with archaeology.
19:33
Just the raw data. Right, and Keshikta refers to
19:36
the significant interpreted history, the theological meaning
19:39
behind those raw events. Barth kept them separated.
19:42
Panenberg refuses that separation entirely.
19:45
For him, it is impossible to proclaim the gospel without
19:49
having it firmly, exclusively rooted in a factual history.
19:53
He understands all history to be revelation.
19:56
Wait. All history, like everything
19:58
that happens on the planet, is revelation.
19:59
Yes, everything. And this is where we have to
20:02
look at the mechanics of his theology.
20:04
Panenberg views revelation as coming through the events of
20:07
history on a horizontal level, not on a vertical level from
20:11
God. OK, I need a strong analogy for
20:13
this horizontal versus vertical concept.
20:15
Let us say you work for a massive corporation.
20:18
I'm following. Vertical revelation would be
20:20
receiving a direct, explicit text message from the CEO
20:24
explaining the company's new secret direction.
20:26
A message right from the top. Exactly.
20:29
I mean, yes, the CEO speaks downwards to you, giving you
20:32
propositional truth you could never guess on your own.
20:35
That is vertical. Horizontal revelation means you
20:38
never get a text from the CEO. Instead, you just look around
20:41
horizontally at the events happening in the world.
20:44
You watch the stock market ticker.
20:46
You observe what the warehouse workers are loading onto trucks
20:49
and you tried to deduce the CE OS plan from those worldly
20:53
events. That is a brilliant way to frame
20:56
it. If you are only looking at the
20:57
warehouse workers horizontally, you might see them moving boxes
21:02
out the door rapidly and deduce the company is growing rapidly.
21:06
You would think profits are soaring.
21:07
But what if they are actually liquidating inventory because
21:11
the company is going bankrupt? Without a direct vertical word
21:15
from the CEO, the horizontal observation is highly ambiguous.
21:20
So Panenberg is just looking at the warehouse workers.
21:22
Panenberg investigates the life of Christ strictly from a
21:25
horizontal historical perspective, not in terms of
21:27
direct vertical revelation from God.
21:30
That seems really limiting. It is.
21:32
He believes revelation comes from all events of general
21:35
history, not just from the specific words of Scripture.
21:38
He erases the distinction entirely between natural
21:42
revelation, what we see in nature and human events, and
21:45
special revelation, which is the specific breathed out words of
21:49
God in the Bible. Let us apply that to the cross.
21:52
If you just look at the crucifixion horizontally as a
21:55
historical event, it is just a Roman execution.
21:58
Just another day in the Roman Empire, right?
22:00
It is 2 thieves and a Carpenter dying on a hill.
22:03
A historian can verify that a man named Jesus was crucified,
22:08
but horizontal history cannot tell you why it.
22:10
Cannot give you the motive. You need the vertical
22:11
revelation. You know the Texas Scripture to
22:14
say this specific death is the substitutionary atonement for
22:17
human sin. If you erase the vertical, you
22:19
just have a dead man on a cross. Spot on.
22:21
And this leads to another glaring issue.
22:23
If Revelation is just historical facts available to anyone
22:27
looking horizontally at the world, how does Pennenburg
22:30
account for the human condition? That is what I was wondering.
22:32
What about human thin? If history is just raw data,
22:38
anyone should be able to read it and come to the right
22:40
conclusion. In theory, yes.
22:42
But we know humans are hopelessly biased.
22:45
We suppress the truth. We look at evidence and twist it
22:48
to fit our desires. We do it all the time.
22:50
How does Pannenberg handle the fact that two people can look at
22:53
the exact same historical event and come to completely different
22:56
conclusions because of their own internal sinful biases?
23:00
He handles it by completely ignoring reality.
23:03
But he just ignores it. He really does.
23:05
Pannenberg believes that revelation through history can
23:08
be understood by anyone who comes to it by faith, using
23:11
their own natural reason. Spiritual blindness does not
23:14
enter into the equation for him at all.
23:17
Thus, he completely ignores the doctrine of original sin.
23:20
He completely sidesteps the idea that human beings are fallen,
23:24
that our intellects are darkened, and that we are
23:26
naturally hostile to God. He has to ignore it if human
23:29
minds are corrupted by sin, which is the orthodox reformed
23:32
view. His whole horizontal history
23:35
only framework collapses instantly.
23:38
He needs the observer to be objective.
23:40
He needs human reason to be pristine and objective.
23:43
He assumes a perfectly neutral human observer.
23:46
He assumes natural fallen man is entirely capable of
23:50
understanding divine revelation hidden in history without any
23:53
help. That is just not how people
23:55
work. No, it is not.
23:57
There is no need for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the mind,
24:00
no need for regeneration to overcome spiritual deadness.
24:03
Just look at the historical data, use your brain and you
24:07
will arrive at at the revelation.
24:08
That is a staggering theological casualty.
24:12
Focusing on forensic historical evidence sounds great initially,
24:15
but do you have to pretend original sin does not exist to
24:18
make your system work? You are living in a fantasy
24:20
world. You have departed wildly from
24:22
biblical anthropology. The Bible is clear that the
24:25
natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for
24:27
they are falling to him. Penneberg just sweeps that under
24:30
the rug to save his historical method.
24:33
And this philosophical trap leads directly to the downfall
24:36
of Penenburg's entire system. Elevating secular historical
24:39
methodology above the written text of Scripture leads to an
24:43
inevitable disastrous theological collapse.
24:45
We should probably go through the specific defects in his
24:48
theology because they are severe.
24:50
We need to 1st as we just discussed, he does not identify
24:55
man in his fallen estate as being in need of divine grace to
24:58
understand truth. He explicitly rejects Karl
25:02
Barth's claim that the truth of Christianity enters into the
25:05
hearts of Christians only by a miracle of grace.
25:08
Which is a fundamental rejection of the necessity of the Holy
25:12
Spirit in conversion. It is he turns salvation into an
25:15
intellectual exercise of analyzing historical data.
25:18
So if you are smart enough, you get it.
25:20
Basically. But the collapse gets much worse
25:23
when we look at how he treats the biblical text itself under
25:26
the weight of his horizontal methodology.
25:28
Because he elevates historical criticism to the supreme
25:31
position, he ends up adopting some highly destructive.
25:34
Views The conclusions Padenburg reaches are genuinely shocking
25:37
for a man claiming to defend the faith.
25:39
They really are. He follows the theses of secular
25:41
historical criticism by suggesting the virgin birth of
25:44
Christ is a myth. We have to stop and recognize
25:47
the sheer irony there. The irony is huge.
25:50
He built a massive system called the Theology of Resurrection
25:54
specifically to fight against Bolt Man's tendency to call
25:58
everything a myth. And that he does the exact same
26:00
thing. Yet he turns around and calls
26:02
the virgin birth a myth, simply because his secular, horizontal
26:07
historical method cannot verify a miraculous conception in a
26:11
laboratory. It is entirely inconsistent.
26:14
He is using the same scissors Boltman used, just cutting out
26:17
different pages. And, it continues, He ascribes
26:21
error to the Bible, suggesting there are factual inaccuracies
26:24
in the resurrection accounts themselves.
26:26
Let that sink in for a moment. The guy whose whole theology is
26:29
based on the resurrection thinks the biblical accounts of the
26:32
resurrection have errors. It is baffling.
26:34
Even more shockingly, he suggests Jesus himself was an
26:37
error. Panaburg claims Jesus mistakenly
26:40
thought his own resurrection would coincide with the end of
26:43
the world and the general resurrection of all believers.
26:46
This brings us to the ultimate crisis of authority.
26:48
If the Bible has historical errors, and if even Jesus Christ
26:52
himself had errors in his earthly teaching, who or what is
26:55
the final authority for the Christian?
26:57
Pennenburg provides a terrifying answer.
26:59
He does not identify the Bible with revelation.
27:02
He substitutes history for the Bible as his absolute highest
27:06
authority. And since history is just an
27:08
abstract concept that cannot speak for itself, someone has to
27:11
interpret. It someone always has to
27:13
interpret the data the conclusion.
27:14
Is that in Pennenburg's system the individual believer must
27:18
submit to the human interpreter of history rather than to the
27:22
Scriptures. You are trading the divine
27:24
authority of the prophets and apostles for the fallible
27:27
authority of a secular historian sitting in a university office
27:31
in Munich. It is a devastating, lethal
27:34
critique of his life's work. Despite all his intense emphasis
27:37
on history and his genuine desire to root faith in the
27:40
factual event of the empty tomb, he has not followed historic
27:43
orthodoxy. He compromised too much.
27:45
He rejects the Bible as God's infallible verbal revelation to
27:49
mankind. He tried to build a massive,
27:51
impenetrable fortress of historical facts, but he built
27:54
it on the shifting sand of autonomous human intellect
27:57
rather than the solid rock of God's Word.
28:00
It really shows how dangerous it is to adopt A methodology that
28:04
places human reason or secular historical standards above the
28:08
text of Scripture. It is a cautionary tale.
28:10
Both Coleman and Panenberg looked at the landscape of
28:13
liberal theology and wanted to save Christianity from becoming
28:17
just a mystical moral philosophy.
28:20
They wanted to stand up and and say no, this is real.
28:23
This happened in time and space. Which is a noble goal.
28:26
But to win the argument with the secular world, they compromised
28:29
the very document that tells us what happened and why it
28:32
matters. They surrendered the sword of
28:34
the spirit to win a debate on secular terms.
28:37
Before we wrap up our analysis, we need to look at the For
28:39
Further Study section provided in the source.
28:42
This bibliography functions as a vital theological map.
28:45
It shows just how wide the influence of these two men
28:47
spread. Yes, and the massive academic
28:50
response they provoked from the Orthodox community.
28:52
Let us look at some of these titles and authors to give you a
28:54
sense of the academic landscape at the time.
28:57
Under the Salvation History section for Coleman, we see his
29:00
own major works listed, Christ in Time, published in 1951, and
29:05
The Christology of the New Testament, published in 1959.
29:08
Christ and time is particularly significant because that is
29:11
where he lays out his redefined eschatology in great detail.
29:14
The already but not yet concept, right?
29:16
That is where he argues that the timeline of history is the
29:19
primary vehicle for understanding God's actions.
29:22
He heavily utilizes the analogy of D-Day and VE Day to explain
29:27
the tension between Christ's incarnation and his future
29:30
return. We also see names of
29:31
commentators who evaluated his work.
29:34
Karl FH Henry's Frontiers in Modern Theology is listed, along
29:38
with Bernard Rahm's A Handbook of Contemporary Theology.
29:41
And under the Theology of Resurrection section for
29:43
Panenburg, we see his major works Basic Questions in
29:47
Theology, which is a dense 3 volume set, and Faith in Reality
29:50
published in 1977. We also see commentators like GC
29:53
Burkhauer with his work 1/2 Century of Theology.
29:56
The presence of commentators like Carl FH, Henry Bernard Rahm
30:00
and GC Burkhauer is very telling.
30:02
These are heavyweight Orthodox theologians.
30:05
They're not minor figures. Not at all.
30:07
Their inclusion indicates these historicist theologies.
30:10
Salvation history and the theology of resurrection were
30:14
not fringe ideas localized to a single German university.
30:18
They were spreading globally. They were dominant persuasive
30:21
forces that compelled Orthodox thinkers to mount massive,
30:25
rigorous academic responses in the mid to late 20th century.
30:29
They could not just ignore them. They had to systematically
30:32
dismantle the errors we've discussed today because these
30:34
ideas were actively infiltrating seminaries and pulpits
30:37
worldwide. So what does this all mean for
30:39
you and me? Today we have covered a massive
30:42
amount of ground looking at the intricate, often frustrating
30:45
details of Coleman and Panenberg.
30:48
Let us recap the core theme of this deep dive.
30:50
A recap is definitely needed here.
30:52
Both of these men rightly recognize that Christianity must
30:55
happen in real history. It is not a fairy tale.
30:58
It is not an abstract moral philosophy.
31:00
God acts in real time, in real physical space.
31:03
We can all agree on that. However, they critically erred
31:06
by placing their preferred secular historical methodology
31:10
above the inerrancy of God's Word.
31:12
Coleman wanted verifiable history but fell back on
31:15
subjective internal encounters to find meaning.
31:18
He dissected the Scripture with a secular scalpel to remove
31:22
things like Adam and future prophecy.
31:24
Which destroys the cohesive narrative of redemption.
31:27
It does. Panenberg wanted absolute
31:29
forensic history, but to get it, he had to ignore the reality of
31:33
original sin. He concluded the Bible and even
31:36
Jesus had errors, making the secular academic historian the
31:40
highest authority in the Christian life.
31:42
The result for both of them was picking and choosing what parts
31:45
of the Bible to believe based on an external standard, rather
31:48
than letting the Bible be the absolute standard that judges
31:51
all of human history. They built elaborate
31:53
intellectual systems that look robust on the outside but
31:56
crumbled under their own massive inconsistencies.
31:59
And that leads to a crucial application for anyone studying
32:03
these frameworks. If your faith is based purely on
32:06
what a secular historian can verify in a laboratory today,
32:10
what happens to your faith tomorrow when the academic
32:13
consensus changes? That is the danger right there.
32:16
History is constantly being rewritten by men.
32:19
If your authority is the historian, your faith is built
32:22
on shifting shadows. That is a chilling, sobering
32:26
thought to end on. You start by demanding
32:28
precision, like that X-ray machine we talked about the very
32:30
beginning. You want to see the exact
32:32
fracture. You want to know exactly what
32:34
is. Wrong.
32:34
But if you throw away the machine, the infallible God
32:37
breathed Word, you were just left staring into the dark,
32:40
hoping the secular historians guess right.
32:42
It is a dark place to be. Thank you so much for joining us
32:45
on this deep dive. We hope this customized analysis
32:47
has given you a clear, thorough understanding of how these
32:50
historicist theologies attempt and fail to proper early
32:54
intersect historical events with biblical authority.
32:56
Keep asking great questions. Keep reading your Bible and we
32:59
will catch you next time on Reformed thinking.