TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF CONTEMPORANIETY:
TILLICH OR WESLEY?

Moody S. Johnson, B.D.
(Professor Biblical Literature, Olivet College)

Shortly before his death Karl Barth had a frustrating exchange of letters with his former student, turned critic, Rudolf Bultmann. Barth compared their communications gap to that of a whale and an elephant who eye each other by the shore of the Pacific. The one is squirting a mighty stream of water into the air, the other is making loud trumpeting sounds through his trunk. The whale and the elephant can see and hear each other, but neither understands a word the other is saying. They speak a different language.(1) Now suppose Barth had lived in the first century and Bultmann in the twentieth. The communication problem would have increased with every generation.

This great gulf fixed between the centuries has caused every generation of Christians to ask how the message can leap over hundreds of years of changing history and speak meaningfully about a first century Gospel to an 18th, 19th, or 20th century man. The purpose of this paper is to explore two approaches to the problem, Tillich's Theology of Culture and John Wesley's Theology of the Word.

Karl Barth, with his commentary, The Epistle to the Romans, is credited with saving Protestantism from the impotence of liberalism. Paul Tillich, the giant of American theology, accepted as one of his chief missions the task of saving Protestantism from extinction.

Along with his concern for the church in general and Protestantism in particular, Tillich was also greatly exercised over the problems of society. As a professor of philosophy and theology in several German universities he had seen the disintegration of the church and society under Hitler. He fled to America where he taught at Union Theological Seminary and later at Harvard and Chicago Universities.

During his long and distinguished teaching career he was both a philosopher Interested in the problems of society and a theologian interested in Christianity. In Tillich's thinking the two institutions were interdependent.

Introducing his Theology of Culture he writes "Most of my writings -- including the two volumes of Systematic Theology try to define the way in which Christianity is related to secular culture."(2) He was greatly disturbed when the church began to lose its impact upon culture. In a mood of pessimism Tillich wrote about the "post Protestant era" and thus sets himself to the task of saving Protestantism and culture by "evangelizing" educated doubters -- people outside the church who have rejected traditional Christianity. Toward this end he formulates a question: "How shall the message be focused for the people of our time?"(3) In of Culture Tillich gives an entire chapter to answering this question.(4)

Elsewhere Tillich summarizes the answer in a brief statement: "Protestantism as a church for the masses can exist only if it succeeds in undergoing a fundamental change... To continue to live it must reformulate its appeal so that it will provide a message which a disintegrated world seeking reintegration will accept."(5)

How then shall the Gospel be focused to people of our time? The distilled essence of Tillich's answer is that it should "appeal... to a disintegrated world" and should be a message this world "will accept."

Tillich's description of the disintegrated world, of people overwhelmed with existential anxieties -- especially death, meaninglessness and guilt -- is discussed at length in his Systematic Theology.(6) His answer to these anxieties is that they are basic to all human existence. The solution is found when one comes to a point of acceptance by way of self understanding. As a result one will discover "the courage to be." Bloesch says of Tillich's answer that it is anthropology, not theology.(7)

The second essential of the message according to Tillich is that it must be acceptable to secular man. According to Bonhoeffer modern man has "come of age." lust as a child outgrows Santa Claus, so man has matured beyond the need of God. He now sings "Science is my shepherd I shall not want." He is utterly uninterested in God or His Word. To reach him the Gospel we must cross a 2,000 year culture gap, the credibility gap and the communications gap. But how?

Tillich bridged the culture gap by showing man how to be both secular and Christian. He bridged the credibility gap by explaining that modern Christians could appreciate the grand insights of the Scriptures without accepting the miracles as true. The communications gap was closed by a clever process of reinterpreting certain embarrassing scriptural terms without a supernatural frame of reference. For instance:

1. Salvation refers to society as a whole.

2. The Gospel is good news of a great new social order with the dawning of the new age.

3. Reconciliation no longer has a vertical content but is horizontal. It now refers to justice, equality and civil rights for all.

4. One is redeemed when he is freed from the shackles of oppression in an unjust social situation.

5. The term 'witness' refers no longer to what God does for one but to one's own act, such as an act of draft evasion or a march in Selma, Alabama, or burning the draft card.

6. Christ is a preeminent word even with radical theologians. He is in the streets where the action is -- sometimes in a violent confrontation with the establishment.

7. G. Aiken Taylor likens Christ's position to that of Mao in China. His image and his spirit is in every upheaval galvanizing the action.(8)

The end result of accommodating the Gospel to 20th century culture has been:

1. A change in the Gospel itself, rather than simply a change in language.

2. A return to 18th century deism -- for whether we accept the existence of God as creator, but claim Him detached from the results of His creation, or think of Him as irrelevant to the human scene, there is no practical difference.

3. A third result has been a capitulation to culture. What Tillich's theology actually says is "if you can't lick 'em -- join em.

4. And most tragic, Tillich has either become an atheist or is easily mistaken for one. Professor McIntyre observes that Tillich has put atheism in theological language.(9)

5. Finally, Tillich inadvertently became one of the fathers of radical theology.

John Wesley's formula for communicating the Gospel recognizes the culture gap, the credibility gap, and the communications gap. But Wesley discovered still another dimension to the problem -- a spiritual gap. The man to whom the Gospel must speak is "dead in trespasses and sins."(10)

The question then becomes, "How does the Gospel speak to one who is on an entirely different wave length?" The answer to this question unfolded to Wesley gradually by way of his own personal experience. The Holy Spirit found within his heart a living moral response to what Wesley called prevenient grace. This became the point of contact for the Holy Spirit. Wesley's heart was "strangely warmed" and he was raised from the dead."

Not only was Wesley a changed person but nothing that he touched remained the same. His sermons became powerful and bore fruit. Each one was a "happening." He was communicating! The explanation lies in the quickened Word.(11)

Communicating the Gospel became more than a man to man operation. Preaching for Wesley was an event -- an event in which his hearers were brought into the presence of God by means of the Word -- and the point of contact between the first century Gospel and the 18th century hearer was the Holy Spirit. God was speaking to man through His Word.

We would not, however, leave the impression that Wesley placed all responsibility upon God. Communicating the Word had both a horizontal and vertical dimension. Before observing this God-man partnership in action let us survey briefly Wesley's field of operation.

The state of the church and society in Wesley's day was remarkably like ours. Both church and secular historians devote many pages to describing the low morality, the wickedness, and the extreme social evils of this decadent period in England. But the real tragedy of the day was that the church was a part of the problem rather than the cure. We are told that the prophetic function of the ministry was almost extinct. The evangelical truths of the Lutheran Reformation were seldom preached. William Black-stone, the famous authority in English law, after visiting the most outstanding churches in London reported, "I could not find in any one of the sermons any more of Christianity than could be found in Cicero. Nor could I determine whether the preacher was a disciple of Mohammed, Confucius, or Christ."(12)

"Historic Christianity," says Dr. Cell "appeared to be obsolete. There were wise men who were sure the day of the church was past and some of the brightest were even beforehand writing the epitaph of both the Church and historic Christianity."(13) What must the church do to be saved from disentegration? Many felt that no options were open except to "abandon religion itself along with the metaphysical jargon bequeathed by uncouth forefathers." But this would be capitulation to atheism. Some way must be found by which Christianity could be made "acceptable" to secular man. The solution suggested by the church leaders was the same as that "discovered" by the "new theology" of the 20th century -- namely, discard ideas and concepts incompatible with the spirit of the age. The most important changes were: (1) a new God-concept (the God within and the God of nature), and (2) a change in vocabulary. It was in this kind of a religious climate that Wesley and the Methodists set out on a three-fold mission: (1) to reform the nation; (2) to reform the church, and (3) to spread scriptural holiness over the land.(14)

Wesley's blueprint for a Christian world is given in a remarkable sermon on "Scriptural Christianity." This was the last of three sermons at Oxford University St. Mary's Church and led to his expulsion. The text is taken from Acts 4:31, "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." Under three headings he discusses Christian experience, Christian activity and a Christian world. The third point is especially apropos.

He declared that "the time will come when Christianity will prevail over all, and cover the earth." He invited his audience to "stand a little" and survey "this strange sight, a Christian world." War is no more; civil discord, oppression, injustice, poverty are gone. Just as in the conversion of the individual, good tempers had replaced the bad, so now peace, equality, honesty, justice and human love and kindness prevail among all men. This Christian order, declared Wesley, is the end assured by Christianity, when it is accepted, not merely as belief, but as a way of life.(15)

As to when Wesley expected this Christian world is not clear. He refers to Isaiah's prophecy, "It shall come to pass in the last days..."(16) But such terms as premillennialism, postmillennialism and amillennialism were not used in his day. Wesley's sermon, "The Great Assize," would seem to indicate a premillennial view.

But one thing is clear, a great spiritual and social revolution occurred in England and where ever the Methodist Church was established. Wesley's biographers agree that the Wesleyan revival was responsible for prison reform, new and more just laws, abolition of the slave trade and the first impulse toward public education. Historians Woodrow Wilson and Lecky, among others, insist that the Wesleyan revival saved England from the disaster of the French Revolution across the channel.(17) These exploits cannot be explained without seeing them in the light of Wesley's method of communicating the Gospel. Three basic principles are self evident.

1. He spoke with the authority of love. This beautiful phrase occurs again and again in his journal following a message. One senses that his hearers felt God was loving them through this preacher.

2. He spoke the language of his hearers. Wesley would not quarrel with the liberals for wanting a vocabulary to fit the times. His New Testament translation changed several hundred words. But he was careful to see that the original meaning was clarified, not compromised.

Concerning language in preaching Wesley writes:

I design plain truth for plain people: therefore, of set purpose, I abstain from all nice and philosophical speculations; from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; and, as far as possible, from even the how of learning, unless in sometimes citing the original Scripture. I labour to avoid all words which are not easy to be understood, all which are not used in common life; and, in particular, those kinds of technical terms that so frequently occur in Bodies of Divinity; those modes of speaking which men of reading are intimately acquainted with, but which to common people are unknown tongue. Yet, I am not assured that I do not sometimes slide into them unawares; it is so extremely natural to imagine that a word which is familiar to ourselves is so to all the world.(18)

3. He relied upon the Holy Spirit to contemporize Christ. John Wesley put his whole weight down on Paul's words to the Corinthians: "My speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of man's wisdom but in the demonstration of the spirit and of power." He insisted that "our preaching is also in vain unless it be attended with the power of the Holy Spirit who alone perceiveth the heart. And your hearing is vain unless that same power be present to heal your soul and give you a faith which standeth not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."(19) Again he writes concerning the same passage: "See the force of the word, conquering believers by the persuasiveness attended with the power of God." It is the miracle of contemporizing Christ, the cross, the resurrection, Pentecost!

How is this miracle possible today? Wesley would agree with Mounce that "the answer lies in the distinctive nature of preaching."(20) And what is the distinctive nature of preaching? Mounce continues:

Preaching is the timeless link between God's great redemptive act and man's apprehension of it. It is the medium through which God contemporizes His historic self-disclosure and offers man the opportunity to respond in faith. Without response, revelation is incomplete. Without preaching, God's mighty act remains an event in the past. What man desperately needs is a redemptive encounter in the ever present NOW. Preaching answers to this need by contemporizing the past and moving the individual to respond in faith. The contemporaneity of what took place long ago is an ultimate and inescapable miracle of Christianity. It defies explanation. Yet without this miracle, preaching is not really preaching.(21)

1. The National Catholic Reporter, August 6, 1969.

2. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. v.

3. Ibid., p. 201.

4. Ibid., pp. 201-213.

5. Donald Bloesch, The Christian Witness in a Secular Age (Minneapolis: Augusburg Publishing House, 1968), p. 73.

6. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), I, 191-201.

7. Bloesch, op. cit., p.81.

8. For an excellent discussion of traditional versus modern use of Bible terminology see an address by Dr. G. Aiken Taylor, "The Ecumenical Movement" in Herald of Holiness, October 2, 1968.

9. David L. Edwards (ed.), The Honest to God Debate (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963), p. 5.

10. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: Epworth Press, 1952), p. 706 (note).

11. George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1935), pp. 161, 185.

12. Ibid., p. 71.

13. Ibid., p. 71.

14. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House (from authorized edition published by the Wesleyan Conference Office in London, England, in 1872), VIII, 299.

15. Mary Alice Tenny, Blueprint for a Christian World (Winona Lake: The Light and Life Press, 1953), p. 18.

16. Edward H. Sugden (ed. and annotated), Wesley's Standard Sermons (London: The Epworth Press, 1968), I, 102. 74

17. Harry Emmerson Fosdick, Voices of the Reformation (New York: Random House, 1939), p.496.

18. Sugden, op. cit., p. 30.

19. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, p. 590 (notes).

20. Robert H. Mounce, The Essential Nature of New Testament Preaching (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960), p. 153.

21. Ibid.

Edited by Nick Nettles