Horizons and Proper Theological Education

Good theology is always involved in mediation.  I am not here directly talking about the Vermittlungstheologie of the nineteenth century, a theology inspired by the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), and associated with such names as Isaak Dorner (1809-84), Julius Mueller (1801-78), and Richard Rothe (1799-1867).  A look at Vermittlungstheologie is, however, important to clarify what it is that I don't and do mean when talking about theology as mediation.

Historically, Vermittlungstheologie commenced with the 1828 founding of the Heidelberg theological journal Theologische Studien und Kritiken.  The founding editor of the journal was obviously thinking Hegelian thoughts when he wrote:  "Mediation is the scientifically tracing back of relative oppositions to their original unity, through which an inner reconciliation and higher standpoint is gained by which they are transcended, the intellectual position arising out of this mediation being the true, healthy mean."  [See Roger Olsen, The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction, p. 242.]  

As practiced, however, Vermittlungstheologie was less concerned with making proper Hegelian moves, and more interested simply in carving out a bridge between two apparent opposites, e.g., between the Gospel and the secularized culture, between rationalism and supernaturalism, between Hegel and Schleiermacher, between theology and the life of the church.

Dorner was perhaps the most famous of the mediating theologians, trying as he did to mediate faith as Christianity's subjective standard with Scripture as its objective standard.  He also wanted to combine aspects of the "feeling approach" of Schleiermacher with the deeply rational intellectual approach of Hegel [Olsen, p. 243].  In his reflection upon God, he searched to mediate between transcendent immutability and immanent changeability.  His "progressive incarnation" attempted to mediate orthodox and kenotic Christology.  

Many of the moves of historical mediating theology can be associated with the tension between rationalism and romanticism, between objectivity and subjectivity.  While this dialectic remains with us today - - I am thinking specifically of views of scriptural authority advocating a causal relationship between God and Scripture versus views that claim authority arises in the meaningful confrontation of text and reader  - - I am not thinking primarily of objectivity/subjectivity or thinking/feeling when conceiving mediation, but rather the the poles of message and context, kerygma and cultural situation.   All good theology is contextual because all effective theology must start with the historical proclamation of the particularity of Christ and the constellation of events so linked, and connect this to the universal human situation - - or at least that which is considered universal within a particular cultural trajectory.  Theology mediates the horizon of the proclaimed Christ event with the intellectual and cultural horizon of its reception.  

As I look at the current situation within Lutheran churches within North America, I see a general attempt to avoid effective mediating theology.  This is no surprise in this.  This type of mediation is very difficult work.  The problem is that one pole of the mediation seems often to be cancelled, redescribed, or otherwise assimilated by the other.   This seems true of theological education in particular.  

In order to see this, consider one antipode of the dialectic to be the proclaimed Christ event, the kerygma of Christ and Him crucified for our salvation, and the other pole to be the present intellectual and cultural horizon, the sum total of received contexts of significance and meaning, the assumed cannons of rationality, the intellectual/cultural ethos.   Thinking about theological education, it is easy to see that Lutheran seminaries have a tendency to concentrate upon one of the poles and, accordingly, seek to understand the other pole on the basis of the former.   For instance, there are a number of Lutheran seminaries that know deeply the intellectual and cultural horizon of the present and, upon this basis, seek to articulate the relevance of the historic kerygma for the contemporary horizon.   Although it is dangerous to generalize, I will do so nonetheless simply for the sake of illustration.  (I am not seeking to establish here or in the next two paragraphs that particular seminaries have a particular orientation.)

The ELCA seminaries seem sometimes to be engaged in assimilating the particularity of the proclamation to the generality of the cultural standpoint.   For instance, the faculty and students at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago clearly know what positions are just, right, compassionate and loving with regard to same sex relationships and same sex marriage.  Their position on this issue is not one that they assume needs profound argumentation; it is clearly and immediately experienced as just and loving.  Its rectitude is in the cultural air, following facilely from vague and inchoate cultural intuitions about natural rights.  Something so clearly known must be given theological legitimation as well, of course, and thus appeal is made to the prophetic element within the theological tradition to do just that.  Kerygma and context are thus not mediated, but rather the general context tends to assimilate the particularity of the proclamation.  Here the contour of the intellectual/cultural context trumps that of the traditional kerygma.  

One might regard the LCMS seminaries as occasionally emphasizing the other pole to the exclusion of the former.   Here the effort is to hold on tightly to the particularity of the kerygmatic proclamation against the horizon of the cultural context.  While it is important to understand deeply the particularity of the proclamation, sometimes the focus on this risks ignoring the subtleties of the intellectual/cultural horizon.  This can, occasionally, lead to an effort to repristinate the past articulations of kerygma at the expense of being open to more deeply understanding the contemporary horizon.   Now the kerygma can trump the context.

At the Institute of Lutheran Theology we want profoundly to explore both the contemporary cultural/intellectual horizon and the tradition's proclamation of kerygma.  Why?   It is because we believe that effective theology must mediate proclamation and context, kerygma and the contemporary situation.   In this way there is a mediation between the horizons that keeps in tact the contour of each while yet bridging between that which might prima facie appear as disparate.  The goal is never to reduce one to the other; never to understand the kergyma as a movement upon the horizon of the cultural context, nor to understand the cultural context as a movement brought forth from the determinate contour of the proclamation.   Ultimately, God's work in creation, obscured by the Fall, is nonetheless still dimly palpable within the contemporary situation.  It is therefore always "addressable" by the kerygma.  Good theology always mediates kerygma and context, forming, as it were, an isometric between the two hands of God.

On the Logical Priority of Logos

Theology's function is to interpret the kerygma into the context.   This much has always been clear to me.   But what are the limits of this interpretation?  What norms sort theological attempts between success and failure?   And what are the proper words to use here?   Ought we to speak of true theological statements over and against false ones?    Are theological claims made in this interpretation better thought to be felicitous or infelicitous?   Are some more fecund than others, and, if so, what are the marks of this fecundity?

Over three decades ago I decided that I wanted to do theology seriously.  But over the decades I have been paralyzed by the Herculean effort seemingly needed to make any true theological advance in our time.   I knew that I could not simply parrot putative truths of another time as if they were truths of our time, yet I did not want to say that the truth-values of theological statements were simply and facilely indexed to time.  I have watched contemporary theology (and theologians) come and go and I have marveled at how little their passage on the theological stage seemingly depends upon the strength of their arguments.  I have always assumed that the acceptance of theological positions ought not be like that of political ones.   Theology, the grand discipline of the west, could not be simply a matter of fad, whim, and immediate political, economic and social cash value.   It simply has to be something more, I have hoped.

The proclamation of the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ has to be the starting point of theology.  The source of theology must be the Cross.  Of this, I have never had doubt.   An analysis of the cultural and intellectual horizon is necessary to the task of theology and, in some way, this horizon is itself a source of theological reflection.   However, this source is not of the same type as the other source.  While one has particular insight into the horizon, and while the horizon is something we "bump up against" in all experience, the horizon is not revealed.   The kerygma is revealed and the horizon is not.

Yet the two are given in a different way than our interpretative activity of unpacking the poles of kerygma and horizon, and carefully and patiently laying out, uncovering, or constructively articulating the relationships holding between those poles.  Our language, culture, philosophical assumptions, conceptual schemes, and own existences (including the socio-political) are the media by which the poles are refracted.  The hard task of locating the poles with respect to each other by specifying their connections is, of course, what the method of correlation is all about.   This creative, interpretive act of correlation is built upon previous acts of interpretation.   There is a hermeneutic of kerygma, a hermeneutic of horizon, and a hermeneutic correlating the deliverances of the first two hermeneutics.   Since the hermeneutical act is historically, culturally, conceptually influenced - - the product of the hermeneutic seems destined to be a here today, gone tomorrow, Johnny one-hit phenomenon.  Or so it seems on first reflection.

But perhaps we theologians spend too much creative energy wallowing in the quagmire of the seeming relativism based upon historical, cultural, and conceptual dynamism.  After all, it is not that the hermeneutical task - - and the hermeneutical circle and its effects - - infect what we do alone.   All intellectual activity proceeds by interpreting one thing, then interpreting another thing, and finally interpreting how those things fit, or don't fit, together.  It is what human beings do, and it is what we have always done.   Yet, there was once a time - - and there is in many other disciplines still a time - - when truth claims were/are vigorously asserted, supported, denied and repudiated on the basis of criteria that are abiding even within the flux of history, language, and culture.  It is not that everything is a Heraclitian flux only.  There is, after all, logos in the flux; there is order and reason.  We theologians have tended to concentrate so much upon the flux that we miss the order.   We tend to forget that the very categories we use in thinking and communicating the historical flux of thought are, in some sense stable categories.   In fact, the necessary condition for communicating flux is an ordered, coherent structure of thinking and being.  One cannot state change without perdurance.   This very old thought is either true or false, and I believe there are very good reasons to think it true - - Gorgias aside.  

What we theologians need again is a healthy dose of the reality of logos.  Our task is not dissimilar to Descartes'.   We must assume the worse-case scenario for theological knowledge, and try to uncover those stable structures presupposed by that worse case.  We must again learn to employ principle of contradiction:  If a theological position, or a hermeneutical interpretation of the hermeneutical situation ramifies a contradiction, then we must learn again to state clearly that the denial of that position is at least possible.  Moreover, we must learn again to think deeply enough theologically to spot the ways in which theological discourse is not generally a discourse of the contingent, and be able to conclude appropriately from this how the possible thus relates to the actual.  This is not easy work, but it is the work before us.

Just as flux presupposes logos, so does the historicity of the hermeneutical situation presuppose a metaphysics, that ontological correlate to the stable structural categories necessary even to state a non-completable hermeneutical dynamism.  It is precisely this metaphysics that theology has forgotten about, and it is precisely this that must be investigated again.   My hope is to begin this investigation soon.