Is Christian Relevant for Today?

Christianity is loosing its influence on contemporary life.  Thus, the theologians of the 19th Century into our present time began rethinking the points of contact with the modern culture.  Since the Enlightenment God was conceived as the creator and sustainer of the universe and the order of nature as the foundation for moral law.  Yet, some theologians found that natural theology did not go far enough.  They believed that reason and man's ability to think was not enough.  It did not take into consideration God and faith.  As humans we still need something or someone to believe in.

People are not looking to religion for the answers for their existence, but to science.  This often leads to a naturalistic view of the world with nature as the only reality and the center of our experience and understanding.   Science and naturalism go together.  With this in mind, Christianity needs to be credible and relevant to a person's life experience.  As Bultmann claimed, we cannot speak about God without speaking about God's relationship with the human person.   The question to be answered is how Christianity speaks to my life's experience.  What does it mean to exist?  What does it mean to be a finite being?  What is the point of life question would be a way to confront why I am here.  Naturalism has no answers to give to these questions.  We are always looking for something bigger than ourselves.

Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology from the 19th Century, sought to base theology on human experience. (pg.43). He wanted "culture despisers" to see religion as something human and to keep it from being placed under science or ethics.   He "defined theology as the attempt to set forth the Christian religious affections in speech." (20th Century Theology, Grenz & Olson, pg. 45)  Religious feeling lies at the heart of his theology.  He describes religious feeling as an eternal and universal state of consciousness that comes from God.  It cannot be generated by individuals or anything in the world.  Feeling is not an emotion, but a direct awareness that a person is not alone, but part of something greater.  This awareness comes up with a question "Is this all there is?"  There is a sense of dependence on something outside of oneself.  Church becomes the place to join others who have this sense.   In Schleiemacher's view, the true essence of Christianity is the mediation of Christ between the human and divine, the infinite and finite.  It was his attempt to make Christianity viable by replacing the confession of God with the personal awareness of the All as found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

Later, Paul Tillich developed an answering theology to what it means to exist.  Science can speak to our lives about the facts-what can be measured, but it cannot answer questions regarding values and purpose.  Tillich proposed that the right questions are present in our human existence and these questions could be answered by the contents of Christian faith.  The task of the theologian is to bring the questions and answers together in a critical correlation.  "The theologian's task is to interpret the answers of revelation so that they remain faithful to the original Christian message while becoming relevant to the questions asked by modern secular men and women."  (20th Century Theology, Grenz & Olson, pg. 120)

What about hope for the future?  Christianity can make a point of contact with the human desire for a better world.  These are anxious times for the modern world.  Transformation is happening on all levels of life.   Our personal, communal, national and international lives are being turned upside down.  The Christian message does have a message that can be used to anchor our hope for a better future.  The motif of the Kingdom of God is utilized by contemporary theology in a couple of ways.

Early on in the 20th Century Reynold Niebuhr's theology addressed our responsibility as Christians and still speaks to us in our current times.  Niebuhr recognized the importance of the human experience in knowing God.  His theology is opposite that of Barth, who believed the only source of Christian theology is God's Word found in Jesus Christ, the privileged witness to divine revelation-Scripture and the proclamation of the Gospel.  (20th Century Theology, Grenz & Olson,p. 71) Yet, Niebuhr did not want to do away with God's transcendence.  Niebuhr affirmed the revelation of God in Scripture and also, recognized within Scripture how God interacted with the world.  He talks about a twofold revelation coming from God:  historical revelation and private revelation which is derived from one's human experience.  Niebuhr found a point of contact between God and humans.  God is portrayed as being in relationship with us and us in relationship with God. 

Niebuhr was concerned that the biblical understanding of human nature was being lost.  He saw humans as created in the image and likeness of God, but also capable of sin.  Sin is seldom talked about today, despite the violence and evil we see and hear in the media.  Niebuhr's theology reflects that liberalism had lost the biblical message with God as a judge and the fall of humankind.  Liberation theology does not skip out on sin.  It does not dwell on private but social sin with emphasis on how we deal with the oppressed and marginalized.  Sin is a historical fact when love is absent in relationships.  Liberation theology starts from below rather than from above and I believe it still speak to our times.  The whole world is experiencing the collapse of the economy and more are aware that only a small percent hold the wealth of the world.  Capitalism is not working for everyone, but draining the resources from those the most impoverished. 

The drawback in liberation theology is that the oppressed can kill the oppressor for the inequities.  To do so is still sin.  With that said, Liberation theology is valid for our contemporary times as long as it will embrace non-violence in the attempt to change the corporate and social abuses of our day.  The Kingdom of God that Jesus preached still applies even if it is difficult to see it as in our present times.

The doctrine of the Kingdom of God that comes with Jesus Christ becomes the expression of God's transcendence in Niebuhr's theology.  Our world is looking for a world wherein harmony, peace and good will prevail.  "To the first generation of disciple the hope of the Lord's return meant the hope of a Christian social order on earth under the personal rule of Jesus Christ, and they would have been amazed if they had learned that this hope was to be motioned out of theology and other ideas substituted." (Neibuhr, Reinhold, A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 25).  The doctrine of the Kingdom of God was seldom mentioned except in theological writings on eschatology. 

Jurgen Moltmann was creative in bringing back an emphasis on eschatology and created a theology of hope.  He saw hope for the future based on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  His theology strikes a chord in this century with all its turmoil and anxiety.  At the heart of Christianity lies a hope for the coming of God's Kingdom where humans will be free along with the liberation of creation.  Moltmann's theology is grounded in Scripture wherein we find that Israel and the early Church regarded God among them as a promise.  Their history was led them to break away from the present towards the future.  We see this in the narratives of both the Old Testament and the New Testament-the anticipation of the future.  God is not ‘beyond us' or ‘in us', but God is ahead of us.  God is fully revealed in the future.  Moltmann brings a point of contact to our culture in the image of a suffering God, which was part of Bonhoeffer's theology.  In the past religion was seen as a way to extol the glory of God in nature rather than an involvement of God's struggle in human nature.  The Church has been somewhat silent about the human needs of today and as Bonhoeffer states we are looking for cheap grace.  We have forgotten about the Cross, which for many of us is a stumbling block.  In looking at the cross, the center point of our Christian faith, we know that grace is costly.  I believe Moltmann is right on with the Cross being a point of contact.  "By entering into the Godforsakeness of sin and death (which is Nothingness), God overcomes it and make it part of his eternal life…" (Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 82)

In conclusion, the primary point of contact that Christian Theology can make with our present world is the third question of Kant's philosophy, "what may I hope?"  We need to look more closely at how Moltmann and Panneberg responded to this question.   It is the nature of hope to press forward to what has not yet been realized.  Pannenberg does not see the Kingdom of God as an ethical community, but as the final lordship of God over creation that broke into history with the event of Jesus.  In the meantime, we are to remain in the world and to grapple with what is the truth of God?