Rationalism

What is the difference between the positions of Harnack and Ritschl?

- Harnack is doubtless the foremost patristic scholar living, nor is he surpassed as an authority in the history of dogma. But his point of view is thoroughly antisupernatural, and his conclusions are therefore often valueless to the man of faith. As a mine of fact, and as the product of vast learning, adequate historical imagination, and uncommon charm of style (even in translation) his “History ‘ of Dogma” is invaluable.

This cannot be said of his latest book on Christianity. Here, without ceasing to be the historian, he is yet far more the controversialist, and his conclusions are therefore colored by his materialistic point of view. He leaves very little of Christianity.

It is difficult to define Ritschlianism because Ritschlianism is not, in the ordinary sense, a system. It has no “points” like Calvinism, nor even a core of doctrine, with liberty concerning inferential doctrines, like the Medium Theology. In a word Ritschlianism is the religious “zeitgiest.” It represents the formlessness which is the present characteristic of religious thought in Germany, and therefore appeals to minds strongly impressed with the results of German criticism; who believe the old theology to be in ruins, but are not yet prepared to reconstruct theology on the basis (if it can be called basis) of what is left. Ritschl gives relief to such minds (and they are many) by his device of divorcing religion, by which he means all that the older thinkers called piety, from dogma. He contends that we may go on being good Christians, worshipping God and enjoying communion with Him, without any system of belief whatever.

Ritschl was admirably qualified to frame a theology for this present time of unrest, for he gathered into his own experience every phase of it. Beginning at Bonn under Nitzsch, he soon declared him “‘shallow when hard pressed,” and removing to Halle, came under Tholuck’s influence. He judged Tholuck to “lack foundation,’ and, after six months at Heidelberg under Rothe, he went to Tubingen where Baur was then at the zenith of his peculiar reputation.

Into the worst excesses of the destructive criticism Ritschl at once entered. At last his enthusiasm was aroused. But, as with Nitzsch, Tholuck and Rothe, Ritschl’s powerful understanding soon began to react — his judicial poise probably finding offence in the very riot of destruction which he saw around him.

Becoming himself a professor of theology at Gottingen, he was, both by office and inclination, impelled to fashion a theology; and, of necessity, there entered into it somewhat of all the systems and critical influences which had so variously shaped the man.

Tested at vital points, the extreme variance of Ritschl from historic and confessional Christianity is easily seen. In his doctrine of the person of Christ he utterly rejects the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, with its corollary, the incarnation of the Eternal Son — not only rejects, but heaps scorn upon it. Christ is simply the Revealer of God, and King over a spiritual kingdom. Here enters his peculiar idea of “values.” Christ is not God, was not pre-existent, but has “the religious value of God.’ He rejects, also, the idea of sin as guilt, except as we impute it to ourselves as guilt. The idea of reward and punishment as divine disciplines are excluded, as is also retribution in any sense. He rejects original or inherited sin, and the universality of sin is to be accounted for as the result of ignorance. As for redemption, Christ’s death removes the distrust of God which the sinner’s bad conscience gives him. The extreme difficulty, however, of defining the Ritschlian position on the doctrines, arises from the habit of the Ritschlians of using all the great words of Scripture and of theology while emptying them of their accepted sense. And herein lies the peculiar danger of Ritschlianism. Deceived by finding the Ritschlians to use the familiar words, the unlearned and unstable suppose all to be right.

For an affectionate and sympathetic book on Ritschlianism see “Reconstruction in Theology,” by Prof. King of Oberlin. For a remarkably able, fair, but judicial view, “The Ritschlian Theology,’ by Prof. Orr of Edinburgh.

The ultimate basis of authority is the Christ revealed

N to us in Scripture, a revelation confirmed to the universal church by the experience of 1900 years. As Bushnell long ago showed, in a book never answered, Christ cannot be accounted for on natural grounds, nor upon any grounds other than those stated by Himself. He could not have been invented by the apostles, for human genius has never invented a perfect character. He was not the product of evolution, for evolution produces species, and Christ remains unique.

Christ once established as the basis of authority, a coauthority is found in the Scriptures, for we find our authoritative Christ in them, and He, in turn, authenticates them to us by word and example.