Contemporary theology needs to shift away from the liberal project because the opportunity costs of investing so much time and effort in appeasing a dying culture is too high. The church needs to focus on God and on understanding all things in relation to God, rather than trying to make it possible for a neo-pagan culture to accept our doctrine without being converted.
There are many ways of categorizing theology in the contemporary world. In centuries past, it was common to use denominational affiliation as key boundary markers, but that approach has broken down. Conservative Anglicans and conservative Presbyterians may have far more in common with each other than the conservatives have with liberal members of their own denominations. Protestantism has become so theologically incoherent that I feel closer in doctrine to Pope Benedict XVI than I do to some Baptists.
For a time (from, say, the 1950’s to the late twentieth century), it was useful to speak of Evangelical versus liberal theology, but not anymore. Evangelicalism spans such a wide theological spectrum that within its general, sociologically defined ethos, radically incompatible theological approaches jostle for position. Evangelicalism has become something like Anglicanism with liberal, evangelical and charismatic wings held together more by institutional loyalty than by theological convictions. The mere fact that a theologian teaches in an Evangelical institution or writes for Evangelical publishers tells you nothing about what kind of theological approach to expect. It could be anything from fundamentalism to Marxism. It could involve gender theory, psychobabble, environmentalism or panentheism. In many ways, the book tables at the Evangelical Theological Association reflect the image of the world in which we live today. Evangelicalism and the Spirit of the Age have each other’s phone numbers.
I would like to suggest an entirely new typology for this task which will help us make sense out of puzzling phenomena such as those documented in James Dolezal’s book, All That is in God. In that book he shows that even conservative, confessional Protestants, as well as Evangelicals, are writing things today that are inconsistent with the classical, orthodox doctrine of God contained in the ancient creeds and Reformation era confessions. This is an astonishing fact that cries out for explanation. How did we get here?
In response to this question, I want to suggest that there are two main approaches to writing theology in the contemporary world: the liberal project and the Ressourcement project. Both are responses to modernity, but whereas one attempts to make peace with modernity, the other sees modernity as in terminal decline and so is focussed on surviving the fall of modernity and continuing the Christian faith after modernity. All contemporary theologians can be classified as participating in one or the other.
The Liberal Project
The liberal project originated in the Enlightenment and has two wings: historical criticism of the Bible, which stems from the pantheist Spinoza and doctrinal revision, which stems from the pantheist Schleiermacher. The Enlightenment (1648-1804) was a rejection of orthodox Christianity by many of the leading intellectuals of Europe and an attempt to substitute reason alone for revelation as the basis of knowledge. It cleverly leveraged the prestige of early modern science through rhetorically sophisticated sophistry in order to drive a wedge between faith and reason that did not exist before and does not need to exist.
The Enlightenment was a reversion to the materialism, the mechanism and the nominalism of the pre-Christian Epicureanism and Atomism that the early church fathers deliberately rejected as they transformed the philosophical tradition of the ancient world using metaphysical concepts deduced from doctrines derived from biblical exegesis. In the Enlightenment, however, the older, Christian metaphysics of Nicaea was gradually eroded, and Western culture entered – in fits and starts and over a long period of time – its post-Christian, neo-pagan era. This is what I call modernity.
The question confronting every theologian today is how to position oneself with regard to modernity. Hardly anyone takes the entirety of secular modernity on board in toto. And hardly anyone is left untouched by it. All of us swim in the ocean of modern culture and we cannot avoid it even if we are trying to spit it out! Should we make peace with modernity? Can we come to acceptable terms? We want to continue to live as Christians, but we also want to participate in modern society.
For centuries (from, say, the 17-20th centuries) it appeared that this was quite possible, and we just need to negotiate terms. In the early 21st century, however, modernity has become more aggressive and demanding toward the church. All the energy in the culture wars comes from an aggressive cultural Left and the church is clearly on the defensive. Liberal democracy itself, a major fruit of the détente achieved between conservatives and radicals, is now under threat. The culture of death is expanding, and the surveillance society is ramping up.
Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, has resonated so strongly because it shows that the weird political things that we hear about in the news have roots in philosophical ideas that redefine what it means to be human. This confirms what many have suspected but been slow to articulate, namely, that the crisis of modernity is not really political or ethical but metaphysical and theological at root. Modernity is not just bizarre or quirky; it is in deep trouble philosophically. It may take a long time to fall apart (because it is so wealthy) but the process began long ago and is accelerating.
