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Why Historical Theology Matters for Knowing the Christian Faith · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine walking into a movie theater to see a film you have
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been anticipating for months. Oh, I love that feeling, the
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anticipation. Right, so the lights go down,
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the projector flickers to life, and within 10 minutes you
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realize something is dreadfully wrong.
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Like they're playing the wrong movie.
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Worse, the projectionist decided he did not like the director's
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vision for the first half of the story, so he just took a razor
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blade, cut out the entire first act, re edited the dialogue of
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the main character, and spliced together a rogue version of the
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film that completely reverses the original meaning.
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Wow, that would be totally unrecognizable.
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It is a total mess, but that is precisely what a man named
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Marcion did to the Bible in the 2nd century.
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He really did. Welcome to Reformed Thinking.
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Whether you are a seasoned theologian who reads the
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Reformers in your spare time, or you know, a curious learner
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trying to figure out how the Church got from the book of Acts
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to where we are today, this deep dive is designed specifically
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for you. Absolutely.
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And we are analyzing historical theology today.
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Yes, pulling from Paul Enzo's The Moody Handbook of Theology,
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along with supplementary insights from scholars like Lou
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Berkoff, Jeffrey W Bromley, and EH Clutch.
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Great sources. Our mission today is to figure
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out how the specific doctrines we hold dear were actually
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hammered out over centuries of debate, conflict, and even
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physical violence. It is a phenomenal topic,
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honestly, because looking at church history is not like
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looking at a sterile laboratory where theologians carefully
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measured out doctrines and glass speakers.
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You are looking at a battlefield.
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Historical theology based on our sources is the study of how
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cardinal doctrines, the nature of God, the Person of Christ,
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the Holy Spirit, salvation, the Church, how all of those were
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formed and articulated. It makes us cognizant of the
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origins, the growth, and the radical changes in Christian
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dogma over time. It does, and the core premise of
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the material we are analyzing today is crucial.
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Free to grasp right up front. The direction of the Church
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always dictates the direction of its theology.
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They are fundamentally linked. Always, when the church shifts
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its focus, or when it reacts to a new cultural threat, its
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theology shifts right along with it.
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So we are going to trace this causality through 4 massive eras
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today. First, the ancient church from
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the 1st century to 590. ADA Very chaotic time.
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For sure. Second, the medieval church,
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stretching from 590 to 1517 AD. Third, the Reformation era from
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1517 to 1750 AD. And finally, modern theology
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from 1750 all the way to our present day.
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We will see the church react to its cultural surroundings, and
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we will watch the very mechanisms of how those
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reactions shape the confessions we hold today.
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Let's jump right into that first era at the ancient church.
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Sounds good. What stands out immediately in
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the source material is that early Christian doctrine was not
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formulated in a vacuum. The early Church Fathers did not
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just sit around a polished conference table deciding what
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would be nice to believe. No.
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Doctrine was a defense mechanism.
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It was forged in the fires of heresy.
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The text points to the apostate Fathers first.
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These were men who lived in close proximity to the actual
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events of Christ's life in the Apostolic era.
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And because they were so close to the original source, their
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writings on the Trinity, the deity of Christ and salvation
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carried immense weight. But they were writing pastoral
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letters to churches in crisis, basically trying to keep the
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wheels on the bus. Yeah, they were putting out
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local fires constantly. Right alongside them, in the 2nd
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century, we see the apologists. These are the intellectuals
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stepping into the public square, vigorously debating philosophers
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and Roman emperors. They were defending Christianity
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against massive societal criticism.
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They were arguing that it was not some subversive, irrational
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cult, but the truest philosophy. That defensive posture is the
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catalyst for almost all early theological development.
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The text breaks down the specific threats the early
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church faced and well, they were severe enough to wipe
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Christianity off the map if left unchecked.
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Let's walk through those threats.
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First you had Jewish sex pushing Mosaic Law.
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They were trying to drag Christianity back under the Old
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Covenant requirements. Essentially, telling new Gentile
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converts that faith in Christ was not enough.
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Precisely. You had to be circumcised.
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You had to keep the dietary laws.
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The mechanism there is deadly because it adds human works to
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divine grace, denying the total sufficiency of Christ's finished
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work. Which is a massive problem.
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Huge. Then you had the Gnostics.
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The Gnostics sought to tie Christianity to a Greek
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philosophical system that proclaimed physical matter is
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inherently evil and only the spirit is good.
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Think about the mechanical implications of that idea.
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Oh, it destroys everything. Right.
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If physical matter is evil, the incarnation is impossible.
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You cannot have the Word made flesh if flesh is inherently
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sinful. And it completely undermines the
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bodily resurrection of Jesus as well, because a resurrected
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physical body would be seen as a prison, not a victory.
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It is a totally different religion at that point.
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It really is. Finally, the text mentions the
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Montanists. They corrupted the doctrines of
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the Holy Spirit and eschatology by claiming to receive new
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direct revelations from the Spirit that superseded the
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apostles. Like new words from God that
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trumped the Bible. Yes, they created a chaotic,
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hyper charismatic movement that threatened to blow the Canon of
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scripture wide open. So the early church had to play
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defense against the state and offense against these internal
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rebellions. And that brings us right back to
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Marcion, the rogue film editor I mentioned earlier.
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The guy with the razor blade. Yes, I want to unpack his story
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because it provides such a vivid picture of how doctrine actually
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develops in real time. Marcion believed the God of the
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Old Testament was an evil, wrathful demiurge.
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Completely different from the loving Father revealed by Jesus
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in the New Testament. So he took a pair of scissors to
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the Scriptures. He threw out the entire Old
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Testament. It's gone.
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Gone. He threw out anything in the New
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Testament that seemed too Jewish.
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He kept a heavily edited version of Luke's Gospel and a few of
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Paul's letters. He essentially created a custom
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Bible that fit his specific theological biases.
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Right. And because Marcion released
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this heavily edited rogue cut of the Bible, the early church was
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forced into action. They could not just ignore him
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because his teachings were spreading.
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The original directors had to step up and release the
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definitive cut. Spot on.
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The source material shows that Marcion forced the Church to
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officially affirm the 27 books of the New Testament.
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They had to draw a hard line, define the boundaries of divine
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revelation, and say this is the Canon, nothing else.
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If Marcion had never attacked the text, the church might have
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taken much longer to formally codify the New Testament.
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The pressure forced a crystallization of truth.
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And we see that precise dynamic of pressure and response play
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out in the Great Debates over the Trinity in Christology.
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The text unpacks the massive conflict between Arius and
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Athanasius. Which is arguably the most
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critical theological battle in church history?
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Absolutely. Arius was a presbyter in
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Alexandria who basically argued that Jesus was a created being.
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He had a very catchy popular slogan.
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There was a time when he was not.
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Now Arius was trying to protect the absolute unity of God,
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right? He was.
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He thought that if you have a fully divine Father and a fully
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divine Son, you end up with two gods.
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So his rational solution was to make the Son of God a mere
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creature. Perhaps the highest creature,
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the first thing God ever made, But a creature nonetheless?
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Yes. And Athanasius looked at this
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and recognized the catastrophic danger of the Aryan view.
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Let's look at the mechanism of salvation here.
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If Christ is a creature, he cannot save us.
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Because a creature cannot bear the infinite wrath of an
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infinite God. Only God can save.
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This fierce debate engulfed the entire Christian world, leading
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to the Council of Nicaea in 325 ADA.
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Huge moment. At Nicaea, the Church affirmed
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the historic view of the Trinity, declaring that Christ
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is of the exact same substance as the Father.
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They use the specific Greek word homousios meaning same
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substance, flatly rejecting the Aryan idea of similar substance.
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Now you might be thinking, why does a debate from 325AD over a
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single Greek vowel matter to me today?
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Well, if Arius was right, the Jesus you pray to is not God,
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and if he's not God, your salvation is entirely void.
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The stakes could not be higher. But the debate did not end at
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Nicaea. Once the church settled to
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Christ was fully God, they spent the next century struggling over
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the relationship of his two natures.
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If Jesus is fully God and fully man, how do those two natures
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interact in one person? Do they blend together like a
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smoothie to create a third kind of nature?
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Do the divine nature overpower the human nature?
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That massive struggle was finally settled at the Council
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of Chelsea, Don in 451 AD. The Council declared that Christ
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is one person with two distinct natures.
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Without confusion, without change, without division, and
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without separation. They built theological
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guardrails to keep the church from veering into heresy on
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either side. But you know, the ancient church
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was not just fighting over the nature of God.
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They were also fighting over the nature of man.
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And this brings us to a massive clash mentioned in the text, the
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anthropology battle between Pelagius and Augustine.
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This is where we start getting into the mechanics of human will
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and grace. Pelagius taught that man was
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born completely free of original thin.
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He believed that Adam's sin only affected Adam.
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So like a blank slate. Yes, set a bad example, sure,
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but it left the rest of humanity with a completely neutral free
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will, perfectly able to choose the good and save themselves
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without any special divine intervention.
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Augustine, who the text calls a great proponent of grace, looked
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at Scripture and realized Pelagius was completely ignoring
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the biblical data. Agustin stressed that God's
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grace is absolutely necessary to rescue man from his state of
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total depravity. Because of the Fall, man's will
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is bound by sin. He cannot choose God unless God
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acts first to change his heart. From a Reformed perspective,
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looking through the lens of the Westminster Confession, Agustin
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was spot on regarding total depravity and sovereign grace.
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He provided the theological vocabulary that the Protestant
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reformers would use over a Millennium later.
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I completely agree that Augustine nailed the doctrines
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of grace, but here is where I have to ask a question that
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constantly bothers me when reading the source material.
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OK, what is it? The text notes that Augustine
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simultaneously taught baptismal regeneration.
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He taught the necessity of baptism to wash away sins
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committed beforehand. He did.
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How on earth does Augustine, the great champion of grace, who
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correctly diagnosed man's total goodness in sin, justify a
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mechanical ritual like baptism washing away sin?
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It is a tough one. How do you reconcile a dead will
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needing sovereign invisible grace with a physical act
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performed by a priest? That seems like a massive
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contradiction that threatens his entire framework.
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It is a glaring contradiction, and it is the exact fracture
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point that eventually breaks the Church in half.
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On one hand, Augustine gives us the vocabulary of sovereign
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grace, predestination, and total depravity.
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On the other hand, Augustine was a man of his time, deeply
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entrenched in the rapidly developing Sacramento system of
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the Church. The text explicitly notes that
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baptismal regeneration and infant baptism quickly became
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part of the Church's standard teaching.
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So they were tying the invisible reality of grace to the visible
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rituals of the institution. Precisely.
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Augustine could not fully escape that institutional mindset.
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He believed grace was necessary, Yes, but he also believed that
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grace was dispensed through the Church's sacraments,
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specifically Baptism. This is where the synthesis of
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theology and church practice begins to take a very dark turn.
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Let's trace the causality here. Please do.
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When you tie regeneration to the physical act of baptism,
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administered exclusively by an ordained priest, you make the
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institution of the Church the ultimate gatekeeper of
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salvation. You no longer have direct access
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to God's grace. No, you have to go through the
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bureaucratic channels of the Church to get it.
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That single theological concession by Augustine
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regarding baptismal regeneration set the stage for the massive
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theological shifts of the next era.
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It really laid the concrete base for the entire medieval
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Sacramento system. That transition is terrifying
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when you stop to consider the psychological impact on the
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average believer. Oh, it was devastating.
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The text takes us right from Augustine's institutional
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teachings directly into the medieval era, spanning from 590
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AD all the way to 1517 AD. The Church morphed from a
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persecuted minority into a massive, wealthy ecclesiastical
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machine. It drifted far away from the
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Augustinian doctrines of sovereign grace and morphed into
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a bureaucratic distributor of salvation.
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The text refers to the period from 500 to 1500 as the Dark
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Ages. Specifically.
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Because of this ecclesiastical corruption, I want to read the
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Chronological Timeline of Roman Catholic doctrine detailed and
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ends text, but I do not want to just list dates.
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Right, let's look at the mechanism behind a few of these.
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Listen to how the focus drifts away from Christ's finished work
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and onto the Church's control. We start with the concept of
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purgatory becoming doctrine in 593, then prayer to Mary, Saints
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and angels in 600, kissing the Pope's foot in 709.
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It just keeps building. Canonization of dead Saints in
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995. The enforced celibacy of the
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priesthood in 1079, transubstantiation and the
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requirement of confessing sins to a priest in 12/15, and
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finally the codification of the seven sacraments in 1439.
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Every single one of those developments represents a
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deliberate step away from the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Let's examine the mechanics of what happens when a doctrine
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like purgatory is introduced in 593.
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Why did the Church introduce it, and how did it change the
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everyday psychology of a 6th century believer?
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Well, if believers must suffer in purgatory to purge the
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temporal punishments of their sins before they can enter
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heaven, then Christ's substitutionary atonement on the
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cross is no longer viewed as completely sufficient.
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Because Jesus paid the eternal price, but you still have to pay
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the temporal price. That's right, the believer must
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make up the difference through suffering.
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And how do you shorten your time in purgatory?
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Through the mediation of the Church.
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Yes, the Church claimed to control the treasury of merit
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filled with the excess good works of Christ and the Saints.
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The Pope could distribute this merit to you for a price to get
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your dead relatives out of purgatory faster.
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Which leads directly to the practice of praying to Saints
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and 600 seeking their excess merit to help you out.
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It creates A transactional economy of grace controlled
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entirely by the priesthood. It was brilliant economics, but
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it was theological poison. During this same era, we see
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massive controversies tearing the church apart.
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The text notes the iconoclastic controversy where the Western
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church made the use of images an integral part of worship, while
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the East fiercely opposed it. From a Reformed perspective,
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holding strictly to the second commandment, the introduction of
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images into worship, is a severe violation of how God commands us
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to approach Him. And then there was the Filioque
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controversy. This was a massive debate over
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whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone
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or from the Father and the Son. The West unilaterally added the
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Latin phrase filioque meaning and the son to the Nicene Creed
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without an ecumenical counsel. Which was an arrogant to
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unilateral action that permanently split the Eastern
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and Western churches in 1054. I want to focus on another
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massive controversy the text brings up because it hits so
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close to home for those of us who hold to reformed theology.
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The text mentions the predestination controversy and
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specifically highlights the rejection of a man named
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Gottschalk. Gottschalk's story is incredibly
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tragic. He was a 9th century monk.
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He sat in his monastery reading Augustine and the Apostle Paul
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very closely. He argued for double
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predestination, that God from eternity past decreed salvation
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for the elect and damnation for the reprobate.
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He was basically teaching the core of what would become the
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Westminster Confessions chapter on God's eternal decree.
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He saw that God is absolutely sovereign over who is saved.
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But what did the medieval church do to this monk?
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They condemned him as a heretic. They beat him severely, they
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forced him to throw his own writings into a fire, and they
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locked him in a monastery prison for the remaining 20 years of
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his life. That is a harsh, brutal
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suppression of truth. I view this rejection of God
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shock as the critical turning point of the Middle Ages.
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This was the exact moment the medieval church officially,
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violently traded God's absolute sovereignty for human
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cooperation. By suppressing God shock, the
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church firmly committed to a semi Pelagian view.
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Let's unpack the mechanism of semi Pelagianism because it is
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the engine that drives the entire medieval system.
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OK, how does that engine work? Semi Pelagianism says that man
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is sick with sin but not totally dead.
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Therefore, man can make the first move toward God, and God
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will respond with grace. Or alternatively, God provides a
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little bit of grace and man must use his free will to cooperate
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with it to achieve salvation. Either way, man and God are
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working together to earn the final result.
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Well, precisely if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
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rejection of sovereign grace creates a massive theological
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vacuum. If God is not the sole author
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and finisher of salvation, human reason and human effort must
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rush in to fill the void. Which brings us directly to the
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rise of scholasticism and its greatest champion, Thomas
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Aquinas. The text notes that
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Scholasticism was a movement designed to train scholars to
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defend the faith from a rational viewpoint.
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They wanted to synthesize Christian theology with the
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philosophy of Aristotle. Now, utilizing human reason is
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not inherently wrong. No, but the text specifically
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points out the severe cost of this movement.
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Scholasticism, with its heavy reliance on Aristotelian logic,
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influenced theology away from the sovereignty of God.
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Aquinas created an intricate, highly logical system where
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nature and grace were separated. Man was viewed as cooperating
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with God in both salvation and sanctification.
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And the biblical concept of imputed righteousness, where
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Christ's perfect record is credited to your account by
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faith alone, was completely replaced.
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Instead, Aquinas taught a system of infused grace.
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Infused Grace, like grace, is viewed almost like a spiritual
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substance infused into the believer through the seven
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sacraments. Yes, which enabled the believer
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to perform good works that actually merited eternal life.
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Theology became a massive structure of human cooperation
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and measurable outputs. And sitting at the very top of
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that massive structure of human cooperation was the papacy.
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The absolute peak. The text notes the rise of the
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Pope as the vicar of Christ. Think about the weight of that
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title. It literally means the
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substitute for Christ on Earth. The authority of the papacy
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emerged to the point where total submission to the Pope was
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considered absolutely essential for salvation.
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The Pope was not just a spiritual leader, he was a
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political kingmaker holding the literal keys to heaven and hell.
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If a king disobeyed the Pope, the Pope could use a weapon
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called the interdict. He could place the King's entire
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country under a spiritual ban. This meant no priests in that
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country could perform any sacraments.
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No baptisms for babies, no last rites for the dying, no
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communion. In the minds of the medieval
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peasant, the Pope was effectively sending their entire
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population to hell just to win a political argument with a king.
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That is total psychological control.
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You look at that system, the seven sacraments controlling
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your every move from birth to death, transubstantiation, re
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sacrificing Christ on the altar every Sunday, required
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confession to priests who control your penance, purgatory
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looming over you, and a Pope demanding absolute submission.
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It is exhausting. You realize the medieval church
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had built a theological pressure cooker.
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The burden on the conscience of the average believer was
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crushing. There was 0 assurance of
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salvation only, an endless treadmill of works.
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That pressure had to release. It was entirely unsustainable.
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And that brings us perfectly to the third division of historical
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theology, Reformation theology, covering 1517 to 1750.
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AD The pressure you just described found its release
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valve in a German Augustinian monk named Martin Luther.
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The text highlights that Luther was a Roman Catholic priest who
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sparked the Reformation when he nailed his 95 theses to the
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church door at Wittenberg on October 31st, 1517.
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But we have to look at the why behind Luther's actions.
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Luther was a man being crushed to death by the medieval system.
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He tried everything the church offered to earn God's favor.
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He fasted for days. He whipped himself.
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He slept freezing in the snow. He exhausted his confessors with
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hours of agonizing confession over the smallest sins.
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But his conscience was never clean.
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He knew God was perfectly just, and he knew he was completely
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sinful. The medieval system of infused
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grace and human cooperation offered him 0 peace.
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The text states that Luther experienced a conversion based
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on grace through faith when he read Romans 1.17 and finally
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understood that justification is a free gift received by faith
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alone, not by works. It ignited a fire that burned
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down the medieval system. The righteousness God demands is
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the righteousness God provides in Christ.
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This era was fundamentally marked by a return to the
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Scriptures as the ultimate final authority over the Pope and the
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councils. And the text specifically
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credits the publication of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus
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in 1516 as a massive aid to this movement.
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Scholars and pastors were no longer relying on the flawed
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Latin Vulgate, which translated Repent as due penance.
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They were reading the original Greek.
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They were going add fantas back to the original sources and
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discovering that the massive ecclesiastical machine of the
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medieval church was nowhere to be found in the text of the New
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Testament. Luther was the spark that blew
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up the powder keg, but John Calvin was the architect who
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built a new house on the cleared foundation.
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The text outlines Calvins role as a pastor, writer, politician
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and what ends calls a scientific interpreter of the Bible.
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By scientific he means precise, systematic and rigorous in his
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exegesis. Speaking from our shared Reform
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framework, Calvin is the central figure in systematizing biblical
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truth. The source highlights Calvin's
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magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, noting
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that this massive work left its imprint on Protestant theology
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for centuries. Calvin's primary focus,
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contrasting sharply with the scholastic focus on human
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cooperation, was the absolute sovereignty of God.
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The text specifically mentions Calvin's teaching that all
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events have been foreordained by God through his eternal decree.
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Calvin looked at the medieval system of semi Pelagianism and
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obliterated it with the biblical truth that God is the author of
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salvation from beginning to end. Man does not cooperate to earn
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grace. God sovereignly bestows grace on
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His elect. The Westminster Confession
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relies heavily on this exact theological framework, affirming
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that God from all eternity did freely and unchangeably ordain
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whatsoever comes to pass. Calvin gave the Protestant
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movement a robust, logical and biblically sound base that could
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withstand the counter attacks of the Catholic Church.
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Yet as students of historical theology, we have to look
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impartially at the historical reality of the Reformation.
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It was not a unified, peaceful front.
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No, not at all. The decks details severe
23:21
fractures and disagreements among the reformers themselves.
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While they all agree that the medieval Roman system was
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corrupt and needed to be dismantled, they heavily
23:29
disagreed on what should replace it.
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The source material outlines major controversies that quickly
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split the Protestant movement, particularly regarding the
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doctrine of the atonement. Let's look at the different
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mechanisms of justice at play here.
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Luther and Calvin both taught strict penal substitutionary
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atonement. This is the biblical truth that
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Christ took the precise punishment for the sins of his
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people, satisfying God's wrath completely.
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But others vehemently rejected this mechanism.
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So Sinus, who was the forerunner of the modern Unitarian
24:00
movement, completely rejected substitution.
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He argued that it is unjust for God to punish an innocent man
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for the crimes of the guilty. He saw Jesus simply as a moral
24:10
example of sacrificial love. Then you had Hugo Grotius, who
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introduced the governmental theory.
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Grotius taught that Christ's death was not an actual
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substitution bearing God's wrath for specific sins.
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Instead it was a token payment. Because God is the moral
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governor of the universe, and he cannot just forgive sin without
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showing that sin is serious. So Christ's death is a public
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demonstration of God's hatred of sin, allowing God to forgive us
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while still upholding his moral government.
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Finally, Armenian theology arose, rejecting strict
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substitutionary atonement in favor of a universal atonement.
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Arminianism teaches that Christ suffered for every single person
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who will ever live, making salvation possible for all, but
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guaranteed for none. The individual's free will must
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actualize the atonement. The theological unity of the
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early Reformation quickly shattered over how exactly
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Christ's death satisfies divine justice.
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Those fractures did not just stay in the ivory towers of
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academia, they extended right into the life of the local
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church, specifically concerning the Lord's Supper.
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This became a massive issue of division that permanently
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separated the Lutheran and Reformed camps.
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Lutheran theology pushed a view often called consubstantiation.
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They believe that while the bread and wine do not literally
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transform into flesh and blood like the Catholics talk,
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Christ's physical body is still truly present in, with, and
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under the elements. Reformed theology, following
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Calvin, maintained that Christ's physical body is in heaven, but
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he is spiritually present in the meal.
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Grace is transmitted to the recipient who partakes by faith.
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But then you have Ulrich Swingley, the Swiss reformer in
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Zurich. Zwingli pushed the memorial
25:49
view. He argued that the physical
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elements are just symbols. No grace is transmitted and
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partaking. It is strictly a memorial meal
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to remember Christ's death, much like a modern Protestant church
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might view it today. Now I want you to consider the
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mechanism behind Zwingley's thinking.
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The text notes that Zwingli rejected everything the
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Scriptures did not explicitly advocate.
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He took the regulative principle to its absolute logical extreme.
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If the Bible did not command it, you could not do it.
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Luther kept many medieval practices, like certain
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vestments and liturgy that the Bible did not explicitly forbid.
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Calvin reformed the worship drastically but kept the formal
26:27
structure. But Zwingli strict approach
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actually laid the groundwork for a group that would take his
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logic even further, the Anabaptist movement.
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The Anabaptists are a fascinating case study and
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theological consequences. The text notes the Anabaptist
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dramatically influenced the doctrine of the Church with
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their strict adherence to believers baptism and their
26:46
consequent rejection of infant baptism.
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Let's look at how a 16th century peasant would experience this
26:52
difference. If you lived in Luther's Germany
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or Calvin's Geneva, the church and the state were still tied
26:58
together. You were born into the state and
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you were baptized into the state church as an infant.
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The society was the Church. The Anabaptist looked at
27:07
Zwingli's strict biblical literalism and said, where in
27:11
the New Testament do you see babies being baptized to
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maintain a state church system? You don't.
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You only see believers being baptized upon a credible
27:20
profession of faith. They realize that if you only
27:22
baptize adult believers, you completely sever the tie between
27:26
the church and the state. The church becomes a gathered
27:29
community of true believers, separate from the surrounding
27:32
culture. The Anabaptists were willing to
27:34
fracture the Reformation entirely and face horrific
27:37
persecution and drowning from both Catholics and Protestants
27:40
to build a church based solely on their reading of the New
27:43
Testament. This raises A vital question
27:45
about authority. The Reformation successfully
27:47
removed the Pope as the ultimate authority and placed the Bible
27:50
in that position. But the subsequent fracturing
27:53
among Lutherans, Calvinists and Anabaptists prove that
27:56
interpreting the Bible outside of a unified institutional
27:59
tradition leads to endless division.
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The Reformers relied on an authoritative Bible, but as we
28:06
move into the final division of historical theology, modern
28:09
theology from 1750 to the present, we see a violent pivot
28:14
away from that authority. The Enlightenment acted like an
28:17
acid, burning away the entire concept of external divine
28:21
authority. The text connects the after
28:23
effects of the Enlightenment directly to the disaster of
28:26
modern theology. The philosophical shift was
28:28
massive. The focus moved entirely inward,
28:31
toward the centrality of man. 18th century philosophers
28:34
replaced the authority of the Bible with human reason and
28:37
human emotion. This was an outright rejection
28:39
of the supernatural. The text specifically highlights
28:42
three men who left a severe permanent mark on modern
28:45
theology, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher and
28:48
George Hagel. Let's start with Kant.
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Kant stressed that human reason is paramount, but he divided
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reality into two realms. He argued that we cannot know
28:57
things as they actually are in themselves, the numinal realm
29:00
where God, angels and the soul reside.
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We can only know things as they appear to us through our senses
29:07
in the phenomenal realm. Think of Kant's philosophy like
29:10
forcing humanity to wear permanently tinted virtual
29:13
reality goggles. We can only see the digital
29:16
projection, the phenomenal realm, but we can never take the
29:19
goggles off to see the actual computer code or God running the
29:23
system. Therefore, he restricted
29:25
religion entirely to the realm of human reason and moral duty,
29:29
rejecting all divine supernatural revelation outside
29:32
that realm. If you accept Kant's premise,
29:34
you lock God entirely outside of human experience.
29:37
If God cannot break into a reality through supernatural
29:40
revelation, then the Bible is not the inspired word of God.
29:43
It is just a book of angels, ancient human moral philosophy
29:46
that is the first pillar of modern theology.
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Then the text introduces Friedrich Schleiermacher, who's
29:51
often called the father of modern liberal theology.
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If Kant made religion about cold moral reason, Schleiermacher
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reacted by making it about warm subjective feelings.
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Schleiermacher completely rejected historical creeds and
30:05
orthodox doctrines. He argued that the true essence
30:08
of religion is not a set of beliefs you hold or moral duties
30:11
you perform, but a feeling of absolute dependence.
30:15
He shifted the entire basis of theology from the objective
30:18
historical truth of Scripture to the subjective internal feeling
30:22
of the individual. If your religious feeling is the
30:25
ultimate authority, then the historical facts of the Bible do
30:28
not really matter. Finally, the text mentions
30:30
George Hegel. Hegel viewed religion and all of
30:33
human history as a constant, moving evolution.
30:35
He introduced the concept of the dialectic.
30:38
You have a starting idea, the thesis.
30:40
It encounters an opposing idea, the antithesis.
30:43
They crash together, struggle and form a new, higher truth
30:46
called the synthesis. In Hegel's view, truth is never
30:49
fixed, it is always evolving. The text summarizes the root of
30:53
modern theology perfectly based on these three men.
30:56
It is built on human reason, a heavy anti supernatural bias,
31:00
and a completely fallible Bible. When you combine cons,
31:03
rationalism, Schleiermacher's subjectivism, and Hegel's
31:06
constantly evolving truth, historic orthodox Christianity
31:10
does not stand a chance. That philosophical combination
31:13
produce liberal theology, which absolutely dominated the 19th
31:17
and early 20th centuries. Liberal theology gutted the
31:21
Christian faith. They kept the buildings and the
31:23
stained glass, but they denied the virgin birth, the miracles,
31:27
the substitutionary atonement, and the physical resurrection of
31:30
Jesus. They turned Christianity into a
31:33
social club dedicated to moral progress.
31:36
But the text points out that in 1919, modern theology took a
31:39
very sudden turn. World War One shattered the
31:42
liberal optimism that humanity was inevitably evolving into a
31:45
moral utopia through education and reason.
31:48
You cannot believe in the inherent goodness of man when
31:51
you are watching millions of men slaughter each other with
31:53
mustard gas in the trenches of Europe.
31:55
Into this devastation steps a Swiss pastor named Karl Barth.
31:59
Barth is trained in liberal theology, but the test notes he
32:02
rejected it as he watched the world burn.
32:04
He saw that liberalism had absolutely nothing to offer a
32:07
broken, bleeding world. A moral pep talk does not help
32:11
when your country is destroyed. However, and this is crucial to
32:14
understand, Barth did not return completely to conservative
32:18
orthodoxy. Instead, Neo Orthodoxy was born.
32:22
Barth wanted to recover the transcendence of God, the God
32:25
who speaks a word of judgement and grace from outside of human
32:28
experience. But because Barth still accepted
32:30
the higher critical views of the Bible from the Enlightenment, he
32:34
still believed the Bible was full of historical and
32:36
scientific errors. He formulated a massive
32:39
theological compromise. Neo Orthodoxy stressed an
32:42
experiential encounter with God through a leap of faith they
32:46
held to an uninspired, fallible Bible.
32:49
They argued that the Bible is not the word of God in itself,
32:51
but it becomes the word of God in the moment you experience it
32:54
existentially. That distinction is incredibly
32:56
subtle, but highly destructive. The text mentions that many Neo
33:00
Orthodox theologians rejected the actual historicity of
33:03
Christ's bodily resurrection. Instead of viewing it as factual
33:06
history in time and space, they argued the resurrection should
33:09
be considered kefishta, a German word meaning story or meaningful
33:14
narrative, rather than history, which means factual, verifiable
33:18
history. Neo Orthodoxy presents a highly
33:21
dangerous illusion for the Church.
33:24
It uses the traditional Orthodox vocabulary of historical faith
33:28
words like sin, grace, resurrection, revelation, and
33:32
atonement, but it completely hollows out the dictionary
33:35
definitions of those words. When a Neo Orthodox theologian
33:38
stands in the pulpit and says Christ is risen, they do not
33:41
mean the physical tomb in Jerusalem was empty on Sunday
33:43
morning. They mean the story of the
33:45
resurrection has existential meaning for your life today.
33:48
They treat the biblical text as a powerful mythic narrative
33:52
rather than factual history. I have to offer severe pushback
33:55
against the entire Neo Orthodox project here.
33:58
It is entirely necessary. From a Reformed perspective,
34:01
holding to the Westminster Confession, if the bodily
34:04
resurrection of Jesus Christ is not factual, objective history
34:07
in time and space, our faith is entirely futile.
34:10
The Apostle Paul makes that explicitly clear in First
34:12
Corinthians 15. If Christ is not physically
34:15
raised, we are still dead in our sins.
34:17
Neo Orthodoxy tries to have its cake and eat it too.
34:21
It tries to facilitate a supernatural encounter with God
34:24
while keeping the anti supernatural assumptions of the
34:27
Enlightenment and it just does not work.
34:29
You cannot build a solid theological house on a base of
34:33
historical skepticism. If the Bible is just a flawed
34:37
human record of religious experiences, then we have no
34:40
sure word from God. And the text concludes by noting
34:43
that many varied forms of modern theology have evolved directly
34:46
from both liberal and neo orthodox roots.
34:49
We see this today in various liberation theologies, process
34:52
theology, and existentialist approaches to the text.
34:55
They all share that exact same genetic marker of the
34:58
Enlightenment, the rejection of a fully inspired, authoritative
35:01
and inerrant Bible. When you remove the absolute
35:04
authority of God's Word, you are left to build your theology on
35:06
the shifting sands of human reason, cultural trends, and
35:09
subjective feelings. We have covered a massive
35:12
timeline today and we have seen the mechanics of how a doctrine
35:15
shifts. We started in the 1st century
35:18
with the apologist defending the faith against emperors and
35:21
Gnostics, forcing the Church to define the Canon and the
35:24
Trinity. We watched the medieval church
35:26
build a massive system of control and works based on a
35:29
tiny concession regarding baptism.
35:31
We saw the Reformers return to the biblical text, sparking a
35:34
revival of sovereign grace that shattered the medieval machine.
35:37
And we watched the Enlightenment turn the culture inward, leading
35:40
modern theology to substitute subjective feelings for
35:44
objective historical facts. As we synthesize all this, the
35:47
central thesis of end source material is absolutely proven.
35:51
Theology does not exist in a vacuum.
35:54
The specific direction of the Church in any given century
35:57
radically alters the direction of its theology.
36:00
It is always reacting to the culture, for better or worse.
36:03
Let me leave you with a final thought to analyze on your own.
36:06
We discussed Hegel's idea of the dialectic, synthesizing opposing
36:09
views into a new truth, and we discussed modern theology's
36:13
reliance on Schleiermacher's subjective feelings over
36:15
historical creeds. Look around at the current state
36:18
of the church today. Based on those two massive
36:21
philosophical drivers, how will historians 500 years from now
36:25
classify the theology of our current decade?
36:28
What hidden cultural biases or blind spots are currently
36:32
shaping our doctrines without us even realizing it?
36:35
Are we standing resolute on the objective truth of Scripture, or
36:38
are we quietly adapting our theology to fit the emotional
36:42
and rational demands of our present culture?
36:45
That is a question that requires serious reflection.
36:47
It really does. Thank you for joining us on
36:49
Reformed Thinking for this deep dive into historical theology.
36:53
Keep studying the sources, keep testing everything against the
36:55
scriptures and we will see you next time.