From Calvin to Barth: A Return to Protestant Orthodoxy?

By Phillip D. R. Griffiths

The Enlightenment caused a paradigm shift in the worldview of most people living in the Western world. Those Christian doctrines associated with the Protestant Reformation were believed to be no longer tenable. The great German theologian Karl Barth appeared to provide a remedy for this, with a theology that harkened back to Protestant Reformation. From Calvin to Barth examines just how successful Barth was in returning to the old ways; to ascertain whether he did espouse the thinking of men like John Calvin or whether he simply provided a theological system that was just another face of post-Enlightenment liberal thinking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630873622

Phillip D. R. Griffiths

Phillip D. R. Griffiths lives in Bethlehem in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. He has been happily married for thirty years to Melody, and they have two children, Benjamin and Joseph. Phillip is the author of From Calvin to Barth: A Return to Protestant Orthodoxy?

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From Calvin to Barth

A Return to Protestant Orthodoxy?

By Phillip D. R. Griffiths

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From Calvin to Barth

A Return to Protestant Orthodoxy?

Copyright © 2014 Phillip D. R. Griffiths. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Introduction

I recently overheard a conversation concerning the way Protestant liberalism had served to undermine many of the central beliefs of Protestant orthodoxy. One of the participants in this conversation said something to the effect that one should not worry about liberalism because neo-orthodoxy had once again proclaimed and reestablished the old orthodoxy of the Reformers. This immediately got me thinking. First, about how the rise of liberalism had undermined Protestant orthodoxy and then about the extent to which neo-orthodoxy had reasserted the orthodoxy of the Reformers. This is what I will seek to address in this short work. I have chosen to examine this through the works of three giants of the Protestant faith, namely, John Calvin, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Karl Barth. All three produced history-changing systematic theologies. Calvin produced his Institutes of the Christian Religion; Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith; and Barth, his huge twelve-volume Church Dogmatics.

In what follows I shall seek first to briefly look at what is meant by Protestant orthodoxy. For this I will examine the teachings of Calvin in regard to the person and work of Christ, soteriology, and predestination. I will then try to show how much Protestantism moved away from this position, being influenced by such movements as the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and rational scientific thinking. I will briefly show that these served to bring about a major change, a paradigmatic shift, in Protestant thinking, in the form of Protestant liberalism. Schleiermacher’s theology will then be used as a window, so to speak, into liberalism because he, perhaps more than any other, is credited with being the pioneer of this movement. I will then seek to examine aspects of his theology to see how he rejected the Protestant orthodox position and introduced many of the motifs one associates with Protestant liberalism. Finally, I will examine aspects of Karl Barth’s neo-orthodoxy to determine how far he succeeded in reversing the liberalization of Protestantism, and to what extent he embraced Protestant orthodoxy.

1

Protestant Orthodoxy

Protestant orthodoxy is usually associated with the decades following the death of Calvin, commencing with his immediate successor Theodore Beza. The two centuries following Calvin were marked by a rise of Confessionalism which led to a new emphasis upon doctrinal orthodoxy as conformity to the confessional documents of Protestantism.¹ According to McGrath, the doctrines of Calvin’s followers did represent a significant shift from Calvin’s position on a number of matters of importance.² However, this change was more in terms of emphasis rather than in the substance of what Calvin had to say. The difference lay in the way the Reformer’s teachings were taken to their logical extreme; a good example would be the further development of the doctrine of limited atonement. Alluding briefly to these changes one might say first that Protestant orthodoxy changed the soteriological emphasis where Calvin’s soteriology is replaced by a theocentric emphasis, as the basis of theological speculation, from an inductive position based on the Christ-event to a deductive position based upon the divine decrees.³ Second, whereas the doctrine of limited atonement may have been implicit in Calvin’s writings, it was now made explicit, being unequivocally stated.⁴ And third, predestination was now considered to be an aspect of the doctrine of God, rather than an aspect of the doctrine of salvation.⁵ In other words, it was now looked at top down rather than bottom up, instead of the doctrine being considered a part of the ordo salutis it was now more associated with the decrees of God.

In this work, however, when reference is made to Protestant orthodoxy I will have in mind the works of Calvin himself, unless stated otherwise. This is quite simply because it will more easily enable me to make comparisons. It must be emphasized that Calvin’s successors never sought to undermine or contradict his position, rather, they sought, as previously mentioned, to take his teachings to a logical conclusion, perhaps venturing a little further than Calvin dared to go. Of course, for the comparisons made in this work I could have used others, for example, the works of Beza, or the various Protestant confessions of faith. I have chosen Calvin himself simply because he was the first of the Reformers to produce a systematic theology.

The road to Protestant orthodoxy essentially started with a discovery made by Martin Luther. The doctrines that he rediscovered were to form the bedrock of Protestantism. When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenburg in 1517, he little thought that he was setting in motion a chain of events that would result in a new movement, one which would not only be divorced from the Catholic Church, but would change the religious and political map of Europe. The resulting Reformation would claim to be a more faithful representation of the Bible’s teachings. According to McGrath, it was a movement which sought to return the Western Church to more biblical foundations in relation to its belief system, morality and structures.⁶

Martin Luther had been a monk, a faithful disciple of the Roman Church. He had accepted the authority of the Magisterium, and the Pope. His concern was not the overthrow of the Church, but rather the elimination of certain abuses by reformation from within, for example, he found damnable the practice of selling salvation as exhibited in the issue of indulgences. The purchaser was promised to have the time he would spend in purgatory reduced as a consequence of being in receipt of one of these pieces of paper. Luther found, after examining the Church’s various sources of authority, for example, the Pope, church councils, etc., that they were all, apart from Scripture alone, the work of men and fallible.

It was at the Diet of Worms (1521), while under examination by Eck, the Archbishop of Trier, that he was eventually compelled to utter his now famous words acknowledging Scripture alone as the only ultimate source of authority:

Since then your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.⁷

The Scriptures alone, or sola Scriptura, effectively became the battle cry of the Reformation and a central tenet of Protestant orthodoxy. The Reformers were not saying that other sources of authority—for example, the creeds of the Church, the apochgapha, etc.—were not important, they did, however, maintain that in all matters of faith and doctrine the Scriptures were the only infallible authority. This idea is summarized by Paul Athaus:

We may trust unconditionally only in the Word of God and