Neo-Orthodoxy

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Neo-orthodoxy is not a single system; it is not a unified movement; it does not have a
commonly articulated set of essentials. At best it can be described as an approach or
attitude that began in a common environment but soon expressed itself in diverse ways.
It began in the crisis associated with the disillusionment following World War I, with a
rejection of Protestant scholasticism, and with a denial of the Protestant liberal
movement which had stressed accommodation of Christianity to Western science and
culture, the immanence of God, and the progressive improvement of mankind.

The first important expression of the movement was Karl Barth's Romerbrief, published
in 1919. Soon a number of Swiss and German pastors were involved. In the two years
1921 - 22 Friedrich Gogarten published his Religious Decision, Emil Brunner his
Experience, Knowledge and Faith, Eduard Thurneysen his Dostoievsky, and Barth the
second edition of his Commentary on Romans. In the fall of 1922 they established
Zwischen den Zeiten, a journal whose title characterized the crisis element in their
thinking in that they felt they lived between the time when the Word was made flesh
and the imminent appearance of the Word again. Although at this point most of the
early members of the movement held to some common points of view, such as the
absolute transcendence of God over all human knowledge and work, the sovereignty of
the revelation in Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the sinfulness of mankind,
it was not long before their dialectical approach led them to disagreements and a parting
of the ways.

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However, the disagreements seemed to make the movement all the more vigorous and
intriguing. Soon it spread to England, where C H Dodd and Edwyn Hoskyns became
involved; in Sweden Gustaf Aulen and Anders Nygren became followers; in America
the Niebuhr brothers were identified as neo - orthodox; and others in other churches and
lands began to read about the movement and watch what was happening. With the rise
of the Nazi movement in Germany many of the leaders of the neo - orthodox movement
met with other German Christians in Barmen in 1934 and issued a declaration against
the evils of Nazism. The resulting crackdown by Hitler forced some into exile, as Paul
Tillich; some back to their homeland, as Barth; some underground, as Dietrich
Bonhoeffer; and some ultimately into concentration camps, as Martin Niemoeller. The
movement continued throughout the period of World War II and into the postwar
period, but with the death of the main leaders it tended to lose its cutting edge in
theology.
The movement was called neo - orthodox for a number of reasons. Some used the term
in derision, claiming it had abandoned the traditional Protestant creedal formulations
and was advocating a new "off" brand of orthodoxy. Others saw the movement as a
narrowing of the traditional stance of Protestantism and thus to be avoided in favor of a
more liberal stance. Those in sympathy with the movement saw in the word
"orthodoxy" the effort to get back to the basic ideas of the Protestant Reformation and
even the early church, as a means of proclaiming the truth of the gospel in the twentieth
century; and in the prefix "neo" they saw the validity of new philological principles in
helping to attain an accurate view of Scripture, which in turn and in combination with
orthodoxy would provide a powerful witness to God's action in Christ for those of the
new century.

Methodology
The methodologial approach of the movement involved dialectical theology, theology
of paradox, and crisis theology. The use of dialectical thinking goes back to the Greek
world and Socrates' use of questions and answers to derive insight and truth. It was used
by Abelard in Sic et Non, and is the technique of posing opposites against each other in
the search for truth. Barth and the early leaders were probably attracted to the dialectic
as the result of their study of Soren Kierkegaard's writing. For Kierkegaard,
propositional truths are not sufficient; assent to a series of religious formulations or
creeds is not enough. Kierkegaard believed theological assertions of the faith to be
paradoxical. This requires the believer to hold opposite "truths" in tension. Their
reconciliation comes in an existential act generated after anxiety, tension, and crisis, and
which the mind takes to be a leap of faith.

The neo - orthodox took the position that traditional and liberal Protestantism had lost
the insight and truth of the faith. The nineteenth century theologians had taken the
paradoxes of faith, dissolved their tension, used rational, logical, coherent explanations
as a substitute, creating propositions, and thus had destroyed the living dynamic of the
faith. For the neo - orthodox, paradoxes of the faith must remain precisely that, and the
dialectic method which seeks to find the truth in the opposites of the paradoxes leads to
a true dynamic faith. As an example of this consider the statement: "In the No found in
God's righteous anger one finds the Yes of his compassion and mercy."

Some of the paradoxes identified by the neoorthodox movement are the absolute
transcendence of God in contrast with the self - disclosure of God; Christ as the God -
man; faith as a gift and yet an act; humans as sinful yet free; eternity entering time. How
is it possible to have a wholly other God who reveals himself? How is it possible for the
man Jesus of history to be the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity? How can
one speak of faith as God's gift and yet involve human action? How is it possible for
humans to be simultaneously sinful and saved? How is it possible for eternity, which is
apart from time, to break in on time? In struggling with these, the temptation is to
rationalize answers and avoid the crisis of faith; but the neo - orthodox eschewed such a
solution. It is only in crisis / struggling that one can rise above the paradox and be
grasped by the truth in such a way as to defy rational explanation. Crisis is that point
where yes and no meet.

It is that theological point where the human recognizes God's condemnation of all
human endeavors in morals, religion, thought processes, scientific discoveries, and so
on, and the only release is from God's word. The neo - orthodox, in summarizing their
methodology, used dialectics in relation to the paradoxes of the faith which precipitated
crises which in turn became the situation for the revelation of truth.

Some Key Beliefs

Perhaps the fundamental theological concept of the movement is that of the totally free,
sovereign God, the wholly other in relation to his creation as to how it is controlled,
redeemed, and how he chooses to reveal himself to it. Next is God's self - revelation, a
dynamic act of grace to which mankind's response is to listen. This revelation is the
Word of God in a threefold sense: Jesus as the word made flesh; Scripture which points
to the word made flesh; and the sermon which is the vehicle for the proclamation of the
Word made flesh. In its first sense, the Word made flesh, it is not a concern for the
historical Jesus as in Protestant liberalism, but a concern for the Christ of faith, the risen
Christ testified to and proclaimed by the apostles. In the second sense, Word as
Scripture, it is not intended that the two be seen as one. The Scripture contains the Word
but is not the Word.

In the third sense, the Word is proclaimed and witnessed to, in and through the body of
Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The movement also stressed the sinfulness of mankind. The sovereign, free God who
reveals himself does so to a sinful fallen humanity and creation. There is a vast chasm
between the sovereign God and mankind, and there is no way that mankind can bridge
that chasm. All of mankind's efforts to do so in his religious, moral, and ethical thoughts
and actions are as nothing. The only possible way for the chasm to be crossed is by
God, and this he has done in Christ. And now the paradox and the crisis: when the
paradox of the word's No against mankind's sin is given along with the Yes of the Word
of grace and mercy, the crisis mankind faces is to decide either yes or no. The turning
point has been reached as the eternal God reveals himself in mankind's time and
existence.

Significance
The neo - orthodox movement has made a number of important contributions to
twentieth century theology. With its stress on Scripture as the container of the Word it
emphasized the unity of Scripture and helped to precipitate a renewed interest in
hermeneutics. With its rejection of nineteenth century Protestant liberalism and its
return to the principles of the Reformation it helped to rejuvenate interest in the
theology of the sixteenth century reformers and in the early church fathers. With its
threefold view of the Word the doctrine of Christology has been more carefully
examined, and the Word as proclamation has reemphasized the importance of preaching
and the church as the fellowship of believers. The use of dialectic, paradox, and crisis
introduced an effort to preserve the absolutes of the faith from every dogmatic
formulation and, by so doing, aided the cause of ecumenism. Finally, the urgency found
in the writings and in the title of its first journal has encouraged a renewed interest in
eschatology.

Neo - orthodoxy is tied to its own Zeitgeist and thus does not have the popularity it
enjoyed earlier in the century. Certain inherent elements have precluded its continuing
influence. For example, its dialectic has presented confusing concepts such as "the
impossible - possibility" and "the history beyond time"; its view of Scripture, "The
Bible is God's Word so far as God lets it be his Word" (Barth, Church Dogmatics, I / 2,
123), has been seen as a rejection of the infallible sola Scriptura of conservative
Protestantism. The reliance of some of the neo - orthodox upon existentialism and other
nineteenth and twentieth century concepts has meant that when those concepts became
unfashionable, neo - orthodoxy became unfashionable. Perhaps the greatest weakness
within the movement has been its pessimism concerning the reliability and validity of
human reason.

If human reason cannot be trusted, then it follows that since neo - orthodoxy relied on
human reason, it could not be trusted. Finally, some have criticized neo - orthodoxy for
lacking a plan for the reformation of society; most theologies, however, are susceptible
to this charge. Neo - orthodoxy's stance toward the conservatives and the liberals has
satisfied neither group and the moderates have not embraced it. Thus although one
cannot ignore the movement, its ultimate place in the history of theology is not yet
clear.