Davies Alan, Tradition and Modernity in Protestant Christianity

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Studies Journal of Asian and African

DOI: 10.1177/002190969903400103 1999; 34; 19 Journal of Asian and African Studies

Alan Davies Tradition and Modernity in Protestant Christianity

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Tradition and Modernity inProtestant Christianity

ALAN DAVIES*

* Department of Religion, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

ABSTRACT

Protestantism, a relatively late form of Christianity, accepts the principle of sola scriptura as itsessence. For the early reformers this was a creative principle, but for subsequent generations it often

became a sterile orthodoxy, producing theological and moral rigidity. Hence a tension developedbetween biblical literalism and the claims of modernity, including the rise of higher criticism.What is the true meaning of biblical authority in light of a rapidly changing world? What areits implications for the Christian lifestyle? Calvinism in particular concerned itself with the latterquestion, infusing a strain of asceticism into the social order through its distinctive religious ethic.The later puritan extension of Calvinism left an indelible mark on western society. Sometimes thepuritan influence degenerated into a narrow legalism; sometimes it produced a deep and genuinegodliness. Sola scriptura can have both effects — this is the paradox of Protestantism. At its mostprofound, Protestantism represents a creative iconoclasm. This is its genius and enduring strength.

Protestant Christianity, which was described as a &dquo;new sociological type&dquo; byErnst Troeltsch,’ is too varied to be easily defined. Historically, the Protestant

churches are the offspring of the sixteenth century reformation in Europe, butlineage is an insufficient criterion for determining who is and who is not a

Protestant, since new churches have arisen on the spiritual soil of Protestantismthat have departed too far from its formative principles to be regarded as Protestant,except in derivation: for example, the Latter Day Saints (Mormonism) and theUnification Church (Moonism). In either case, a new revelation has supersededwhat C.S. Lewis liked to describe as ’mere Christianity’.’- The main formativeprinciple of Protestantism is contained in the designation ’Protestant’ itself, coinedat the Imperial Diet of Speyer in 1529 when a dissenting group of reformersprotested (Latin: [pro Jtestari, to testify) that they could do nothing contrary to theWord of God (Verbum Dei). By the Word of God, the reforming party meant theauthority of holy scripture, a text that &dquo;shines clearly in its own light&dquo; and requiresno extraneous augmentation. Thus the first Protestants attempted to cast off theaccretions of an increasingly decadent late mediaeval church in order to return

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to what they regarded as the true sense of the biblical message. The Protestanttradition, therefore, coalesced around the theme of soln scriptcrr-a (scripture alone)as the final court of appeal as far as matters of faith and morals were concerned.This, as much as anything, constitutes the essence of Protestantism.

Tradition, however, is always an ambiguous concept, both because traditionsare always defined by later ages and because, once established, a tradition is soonreified into an orthodoxy, losing its original freshness and innovative capacity. Oneof the ironies of Protestantism is that what began as a protest against orthodoxy(in the form of Catholic sacradotalism) ended as a new orthodoxy (in the formof Calvinism or Lutheranisnt). As a result, the first principle of the reformation,sola scriptllra, which, for the first generation of reformers, never signified a literalinerrant biblical text - for Luther, the Bible was the ’cradle’ of Christ, and forCalvin the Word without the Spirit was a dead letter - became an infallible

book or ’paper pope’ in the hands of the Protestant scholastics, producing a typeof intellectual rigor mortis. Another example of the same scholastic process wasthe subtle transformation of the reformation experience of God’s unconditionalforgiveness (justification by grace through faith) into the notion that belief in God’sunconditional forgiveness is the source of our justification. In this fashion, Luther’srediscovery of the radical character of divine mercy was robbed of its existentialpower.

The rise of orthodoxy in any great movement is only a matter of time, andcannot be averted: it simply belongs to the nature of things. Dogmas, creeds,confessions, theologies, ethical codes, rites, sacraments, religious institutions, inshort, all the elements of tradition, not only define a religion but also enable itssurvival. However, orthodoxies always set the stage for profound tensions bothwithin the community itself and between the community and the world. In thecase of historical Protestantism, these tensions arose mostly in conjunction withtwo developments: ( 1 ) the emergence of pietism in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies as a moral and spiritual protest against the barren and arid state of churchlife in northern Europe; (2) the emergence of higher criticism in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries as a spinoff of the Enlightenment, resulting in what has beencalled a &dquo;revolution in thought comparable to the Reformation itself.&dquo;; A crisisof faith, involving a contest between the head and the heart, or modernity andconfessional loyalty, ensued. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s attempt to address thiscrisis inspired his famous speeches to the &dquo;cultured despisers&dquo; of religion, reallyof Christianity, in the Berlin salons: one of the classics of Protestant literature.~ 4

It is no coincidence that he is remembered as the first modem theologian of theChristian church.

The pietists, who emphasized conversion (Wiedergebllrt) and the experientialaspects of religion, saw themselves as completing the reformation, finishing whatthe earlier reformers had left unfinished. Except for the reconstituted Moravian

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Brethren of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, they usually preferred to remain inthe state churches of Germany, where, however, they became a church within thechurch, or a sectarian presence without turning themselves into an actual sect.

English pietism in the form of Methodism did detach itself from the establishedChurch of England, despite John Wesley’s fervent Anglican loyalties. Sectarianin character, whether or not sectarian in fact, pietism was both modem and anti-modem. It was modern in its social reforms - educational in Germany, economicin Britain - and in its stimulation of higher learning because of the conviction thatgodliness requires edification in order to be effective. Wesley, moreover, was farahead of his time on certain issues, as his great tract against slavery in the BritishEmpire demonstrates.5 It was anti-modern in its basic theological orthodoxy, andin its strong ascetic components, which, on occasion, sprang into sharp relief, as,for example, in the prohibition of laughter in August Francke’s schools and inthe young Zinzendorf’s prohibition of sexual intercourse during his honeymoon.Seriousness, not frivolity and carnal pleasure, was regarded as the true mark of theChristian life.

The rise of higher criticism, which entailed the application of the new tools ofliterary and historical research to the text of the Bible, as well as the investigationof the origins of Christianity in the religious and cultural milieu of Hellenisticantiquity, was immensely threatening to traditional belief with its creedal and

confessional certitudes, especially the dogma of an inerrant text. Suddenly andcatastrophically, the authority of scripture was buffeted, and the entire edifice oforthodox Christianity was in danger of imminent ruin. Was the Christian faithitself nothing more than an eclectic compound of ancient gnosticism, esotericcultism with its dying and rising gods. Stoic morality, Iranian dualism and Hebreweschatology? The discovery of myth in the pages of holy scripture was anothershock. Was Jesus of Nazareth even a real man, or merely another mythicalfigure like the phantom Christ favoured by the second century gnostic theologianMarcion? What, if anything, can be known about him, given the unreliable

character of the canonical gospels? Not only the Old Testament, with its taleof paradise lost, but also the New Testament, according to the radical criticDavid Strauss, was permeated with myth and legend, and to be regarded withscepticism.~ Even professional theologians began to sink into doubt. One of them,Ludwig Feuerbach, bequeathed to his age what was destined to become one

of the classical texts of modern atheism, The Essence of Christianity, in whichthe treasured articles of traditional belief were dismissed as fantasies arising outof an alienated consciousness? 7 Feuerbach’s philosophical materialism greatlyinfluenced the young Karl Marx, who described him as the &dquo;purgatory of ourtime.&dquo;’

In the face of this challenge, which only grew more formidable throughoutthe nineteenth century, Protestantism adopted two strategies: ( 1 ) that of embracing

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modernity, or at least the best elements in modernity, while seeking to preservethe substance of Christian tradition by following the path of reformulation; (2)that of rejecting modernity, or at least the worst elements in modernity, byrestating the cardinal doctrines of Protestant orthodoxy in their pristine form indefiance of higher criticism, evolutionary science and the secular Zeitgeist. Thefirst strategy, which was pioneered by Schleiermacher, gave birth to the powerfulintellectual, spiritual and social school of Protestant liberalism, which produced anumber of creative theologians, especially Albrecht Ritschl in Germany and WalterRauschenbusch in the United States. Disavowing metaphysics, the Protestant

liberals emphasized ethics, taking advantage of a revival of Kantian philosophy(neo-Kantianism) to argue that Christianity is essentially a moral religion with itsown supreme version of the categorical imperative in the teachings as well as thelife and death of Jesus. In this fashion, they sought to address the anti-religiousand anti-Christian polemicists of an increasingly sceptical and secular century.The church, in liberal Protestant eyes, existed in order to establish the kingdomof God, or the ethical fellowship of the human race. It was difficult to quarrel withthis Kantian goal, especially when fact, the realm of science, was separated fromreligion, the realm of value, allowing each to function without interference fromthe other. Tradition and modernity were both accommodated, and placed in a stateof reasonable equilibrium.

The other strategy, which eventually acquired the name of fundamentalism,found its inspiration in a back-to-the-Bible movement in which the classical

principle of sola scriptura was reasserted by turning the words of scripture into a&dquo;God-breathed&dquo; infallible text.9 Only the autographs were God-breathed, however,not the extant manuscript. On this basis, the conservative Protestants attacked

Darwinism, liberalism, positivism, agnosticism, atheism and the other assortedevils of the new age of doubt. However, these defenders of tradition did not concernthemselves merely with matters of doctrine; they also reacted against a perceivedthreat to human dignity in the Darwinist reduction of Homo sapiens to a purelyanimal level, eliminating moral and spiritual meaning from existence. If humansare essentially higher apes, if life is essentially a struggle for survival, if the lawof nature - a nature &dquo;red in tooth and claw&dquo; - is the only law, what becomesof the commandments of scripture, not to mention the ideals of traditional ethics?Is nihilism the final verdict on all things? Implicit in conservative Protestantism,especially in its puritan and pietist expressions, was a powerful sense of moralorder stemming from the Word of God, which was the final court of appeal for theProtestant conscience. Tradition, therefore, meant more than correct belief; it alsomeant correct morality. Lifestyle and faith were interwoven.

The sixteenth century reformation, as Troeltsch never wearied of pointingout,lo concerned itself as much with the shape of life in the world as with

anything else, and with society as much as the individual in spite of its so

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called individualism. Divided into multitudinous churches, and split from thebeginning into two broad segments, later defined as the classical and radical orright and left wings by historian, 1 Protestantism nevertheless embodied a singlereligious idea: the direct bestowal of divine grace without the mediation of priests,sacraments, ecclesiastical systems and institutions. &dquo;Luther, the young monk...dared to reject all safeguards that piety and the church wished to extend to him.&dquo; ~ zThe consequence of this conception was both a spiritual egalitarianism, sinceChristians of all ranks found themselves on the same footing vis-a-vis God, andthe abolition of the two-story ethics of the Middle Ages (nature and supemature),since love in its New Testament sense (agape) cannot exist on two levels and stillbe love. The further consequence was the abolition of the monastic system andthe release of the monastic spirit into the world (&dquo;intramundane asceticism&dquo;) withmonumental results for western society. It was not Lutheranism but Calvinism,according to Max Weber, that turned every Protestant into a monk, so to speak, andthus infused the social order with the values of asceticism.’ 3

Weber’s tl~esis is famous. Calvin’s peculiar doctrine of double predestination,with its decretlini absolutum or secret decree of the divine will, divided the massesof the human race into two categories: the elect and the reprobate. Since no one,not even Calvin himself, had access to the the divine will, doubt concerning one’spersonal destiny was a natural fruit, along with fear: ’Am I among the elect?’Such apprehensions could only be dissolved through the diligent application ofthe individual to his worldly calling. As Protestantism had sanctified the old secularvocations, there was no reason why they could not serve a spiritual purpose, helpingthe Calvinist to assuage his soul. Thus a religious energy transmuted itself into asocial energy, generating a new and potent dynamic in the midst of pre-modemand early modem society. It was the discipline of the Calvinist that changed theface of the earth, a discipline rooted not only in mediaeval monasticism but alsoin the great reformer’s Aristotelian belief in the golden mean, or rule of holymoderation with respect to the appetites of the flesh. 1.+ A life governed by the spiritof holy moderation will never indulge itself with excesses; if the Christian prospers,therefore, he must not reward himself unduly, but, mindful of the higher ends ofhis existence, detach himself as much as possible spiritually from the goods andglories of the world by sharing his riches with the poor. Calvin was not opposedto the possession of wealth, nor did he depreciate the material aspects of life, asdid the mediaeval Christian ascetics. Instead, he affirmed the emergent money andcommercial economy of his age - in that respect, he was a thoroughly modemman - while favouring the constant redistribution of its gains in order to create abetter social equilibrium

Among the later Calvinists, however, by whom Weber meant the seventeenthcentury puritans, Calvin’s noble social humanism suffered erosion as the purelyascetic elements in his ethic suffered exaggeration. The result was a tendency

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to combine extreme personal diligence and conscientiousness with the pursuit ofprofit, since profit had providential implications as long as money was never con-verted into Mammon. A man as intensely spiritual and psychologically profoundas Richard Baxter, for whom the whole of life and every moment of existence werematters of immeasurable concern, nevertheless reflected this strange obsession:

If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way(without wrong to your soul or to any other), if you refuse this, and choose the less

gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’ssteward, and to accept His gifts and use them for Him when he requireth it: you maylabour to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sino

From this spiritual ground, Weber believed, rightly or wrongly, the titanic power ofmodern capitalism gained its impetus.

It is not the rise of capitalism, however, but the diffusion of asceticism throughpuritanism into the broad stream of Protestant Christianity that is the concern ofthis essay. Its mental characteristics have been summarized eloquently by GeraldCragg:

The brevity of life, no less than the imminence of danger, was responsible for theearnestness so characteristic of the Puritan. Day and night there hung over his spiritan urgent sense of the incomparable value of time... Human life was bounded byan eternity that was pressing upon it; the issues involved were as momentous asthe permitted span was brief... Amusements were treacherous: time flew past soquickly that a man learned too late how much he had lost. Company was dangerous;he lingered too long in unprofitable conversation. Sleep, in particular, presentedtemptations against which a man needed to be ceaselessly on guard... Over everyaspect of life there brooded a firm conviction from which in turn there crystallised anunfaltering desire: ’Time is precious; Lord give me skill and wisdom to redeem it.’ 17

Not all Protestants, of course, were puritans, either in the seventeenth centuryor in later periods; in fact, an anti-puritan protest lodged itself early in Protestanthistory, especially in Anglicanism. However, the puritan spirit became a substantialpart of the Protestant religious tradition, penetrating and embracing the churchesdescended from both wings of the reformation on both sides of the English channeland both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In Richard Tawney’s magnificent words, itwas &dquo;will organized and disciplined and inspired, will quiescent in rapt adoration orstraining in violent energy, but always will&dquo; which was the essence of Puritanism. 18 sLike a &dquo;steel spring compressed by an inner force, which shatters every obstacleby its rebound,&dquo; Tawney continued, the puritan, whether religious or secular, leftan indelible mark on the modem word. 19 9

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This spirit of necessity moulded the Protestant lifestyle and dominated themores of countless Protestant societies, past and present. At its highest, it repre-sented a harmonious and classical balance between reason and passion, with reasonin control, as exemplified in the simple but beautiful whitewashed churches of NewEngland with their pleasing and sometimes perfectly symmetrical proportions. Artand life inspired each other. At its lowest, it turned into the kind of dismal repres-sion that Weber inveighed against: an asceticism that &dquo;descended like frost&dquo; onMerrie old England, killing every pleasure and instilling monotony and drearinessinto every aspect of modem culture, from dress to social conventions to modes ofworship. 20 Today, in our post-Freudian climate, ’puritanism’ has acquired a pejo-rative meaning, but the negative aspects of the puritan movement were never itsauthentic substance. John Bunyan’s beautiful and profound allegory of the journeyof the soul, The Pil~Jr-im’s Progress - &dquo;As I walked through the wilderness of theworld, I lighted upon a certain place where there was a den,... as I slept, I dreameda dream...&dquo; - defies caricature.

In post-puritan times, the Protestant lifestyle in fact often did degenerate intoa narrow religious legalism and moralism, with all of the attributes of a new andrigid orthodoxy, particularly in its fixation on ’blue laws’ and sabbatarianism. &dquo;Inthe evangelical mind,&dquo; writes the American church historian Robert T. Handy,&dquo;public recognition of Sunday as a holy day provided a clear sign of Christiancivilization...&dquo;’-~ Underlying this notion of virtue was the conviction, shared inthe United States by both liberal and conservative Protestants, that, even if theEuropean pattern of state churches was disavowed, the nation was a Christiannation and should remain a Christian nation. Thus private morality and publicmorality drank from the same deep Protestant well, or from the Bible as interpretedby innumerable expositors and preachers, of which American society with its

origins in religious dissent was a natural spawning ground. In few modem countrieshas the pulpit played such an influential role, for both good and ill. From its vantagepoint, when confronted by the rising militant secularism of the late nineteenthcentury, one side of an anxious Protestantism fought back by invoking not onlythe old doctrinal certitudes of a bygone scholasticism but also the old sabbatariancommandments of a bygone puritanism. The clash between tradition and modernitygrew more and more acute.

In this clash, great and perennial issues rose to the fore. Perhaps the famousScopes ’monkey’ trial in Dayton, Tennesee, in 1925, which pitted the fundamental-ist orator (and onetime candidate for the American presidency) Williams JenningsBryan against the agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow dramatized most effectivelythe tensions between what Reinhold Niebuhr subsequently called ’pious and sec-ular America:’ the two faces of a divided society. 22 The trial revolved around thelegal right to teach evolutionary science in the public schools of Tennessee - thedefendant, John T. Scopes, was accused of &dquo;undermining the faith of Tennesee’s

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children and robbing them of their chance of eternal life&dquo;23 - but became both thesetting and the pretext for an acrimonious debate about the Bible itself, and there-fore about godliness and ungodliness in American society. Secular America nat-urally supported Darrow. Pious America split along modernist and anti-modemistlines, and its contradictory voices and internal dissensions resulted in a general di-minishment of Protestant authority in this most Protestant of Protestant countries. 24Neither the fundamentalist backlash against modernity nor the liberal attempt toreconcile Christianity and modernity carried the day. In the one case, tradition hadossified into a narrow and defensive biblicism unable to address the intellectual,moral and spiritual dilemmas of a changing world in a creative manner; in theother case, despite some creative moments, it had surrendered too much to modemculture, and failed to bring too many of its certitudes, for example, the notion of avalue free science, under serious scrutiny.

The great divide between the modernists and the anti-modemists was over-

come, at least in part, with the rise of a powerful new theology that embodiedboth a return to the sixteenth century reformation and the reinterpretation of itscentral ideas in a twentieth century context: in short, a new dialogue between tra-dition and modernity. Once again, the principle of sola scriptura was brought tothe fore - one of the names attached to the new movement was the ’theologyof the Word of God’ - without, however, negating the fruits of higher criticism,for only by recognizing the fragmentary and fallible character of the biblical text,with its myths, legends, stories, chronicles and other literary materials, can the truemessage of the Bible be distinguished from the many false messages. According tothe Swiss theologian Karl Barth, the Word of God is always being confused withthe ’word of man,’ as successive ages impose their ideologies and idolatries on theproclamation of divine grace that constitutes the &dquo;strange new world&dquo; of biblicaldiscourse that Jews and Christians call holy scripture. 25 From the false prophets ofancient Israel to the worldly popes of the late Middle Ages to the bourgeois nation-alistic Protestants of Barth’s own day who sold out to National Socialist doctrinesof ’blood, race and soil,’ the history of religion is the history of idolatry and thestruggle against idolatry - ecclesia i-efoi-tizata sed semper reformanda (the churchreformed but always in need of reform). Protestantism at its most profound is aprotest against every human attempt to usurp the prerogatives of God, even whenthis attempt is made by Protestants themselves: the &dquo;great misery of Protestantism,&dquo;as far as Barth was concerned, began when Protestant thought &dquo;hardened into Or-thodoxy,&dquo; thereby turning itself into a dogmatic system that claimed to possessrevelatory truth. 26 But, like the wind, the Spirit blows where it will, and can neverbe possessed.

The theology of the Word of God, therefore, or neo-orthodoxy, as it was morepopularly (and erroneously) called ’27 was, on the one hand, deeply traditional, sinceit drew its inspiration from the formative principles of the past, and, on the other

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hand, thoroughly modem, since it appropriated the gains of modernity while settingitself against the securities of the modem age. Not only Barth but also the GermanLutheran theologian Paul Tillich located a creative iconoclasm at the heart of theProtestant tradition, which Tillich defined as the Protestant principle itself, or theprinciple of prophetic self-criticism that owes its origins to the Hebraic roots ofChristianity and its conclusive expression to the sixteenth century reformation:

It is the principle (of prophetic self-criticism) which made the accidental name’Protestant’ an essential and symbolic name. It implies that there cannot be a sacredsystem, ecclesiastical or political; that there cannot be a sacred hierarchy with absoluteauthority; and that there cannot be a truth in human minds which is divine truth initself. Consequently, the prophetic spirit must always criticize, attack, and condemnsacred authorities, doctrines and morals. And every genuine Protestant is called uponto bear personal responsibility for this. Each Protestant, each layman, each minister...has to to decide for himself whether a doctrine is true or not, whether a prophet is a trueor false prophet, whether a power is demonic or divine. Even the Bible cannot liberatehim from this responsibility... For the Protestant, individual decision is inescapable. 28

The Protestant principle, of course, cannot exist apart from the ’Catholic

substance,’ or the sacramental foundations of all religion and religious life,as well as that of communal life in general: &dquo;the symbolic realities that givemeaning to our existence... from birth to death.&dquo;29 A failure to understand thisfact is the constitutional weakness in Protestantism, especially during periods ofsocial disintegration such the fabled ’wasteland’ of the twentieth century whenpeople hunger for the taste of transcendence again. 30 Hence, many EuropeanProtestants underestimated the allure of political collectivism with its overtones ofomnipotence and its quasi-religious paraphernalia of flags, slogans, leadership cultsand revivalistic rallies. To its siren’s song, &dquo;mass man,&dquo; or the typical individualproduced by a social order in extremis - atomized, isolated, angry, alienated, futileand lonely - responded only too readily.31 As the Protestant principle withoutthe Catholic substance is empty (the reformers could reform but not abolish thechurch), the Catholic substance without the Protestant principle is dangerous, sinceit is only a matter of time before its sacred and holy power assumes a dictatorialand demonic character. This realization provoked the Protestant Reformation in thefirst place.

While the particular fascist and communist tyrannies of Tillich’s lifetime havecrumbled into dust, and totalitarianism, at least in Europe, is regarded as pass6(despite the fragility of the democratic political experiments in Russia and the othernations behind the former iron curtain), the relevance of the Protestant principleremains. Today, in our self-styled post-modem society, in which everything is

subject to deconstruction, once again certain ’truths’ have emerged that haveacquired a divine or quasi-divine status, especially when adopted by religious

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communities in the wake of the various liberation movements since the 1960s:

cultural, ethnic, racial, and sexual - in short, the categories of what is regardedfrom one point of view as inclusivism and from another point of view as ’politicalcorrectness.’ 32 Unquestionably, much that is valid has found eloquent expressionin these movements, challenging long entrenched habits of speech and patterns ofdiscrimination with respect to marginalized classes and other social aggregates,including the female half of the human race. The liberationists have exposedhitherto concealed systems of domination (a term that springs from the newdiscourse), and thereby awakened the western Judeo-Christian world from its

dogmatic slumbers. As far as Protestantism is concerned, the stripping of bothscripture and theology of their patriarchal elements is not a loss but a gain, sincethe deeper significance of the biblical and Christian message is brought therebyinto sharper relief.

However, every revolution tends to absolutize itself, and self-righteousnessis no stranger to revolutionaries, who, having discovered a higher truth, usuallysituate themselves on the highest conceivable moral ground. The fact of havingbeen victimized does not obviate this tendency, but rather increases it, bestowing aspecial sanctity on the victim who, by virtue of his or her victimization, becomesthe voice of a superior wisdom, full of inalienable truths. Rarely do the victimsof oppression charge themselves with the same sins with which they charge theiroppressors; rarely even do they contemplate such a possibility. As a result, a newage of ideology has dawned, an age characterized by slogans as much as bycritical thought, which, of course, is the way in which ideologies are articulatedin the first place. 33 No matter how noble the slogan - &dquo;racial equality,&dquo; &dquo;sexual

equality,&dquo; &dquo;minority rights,&dquo; etc., - it is still a slogan and thus a polemical weaponin the hands of a particular group or faction in the political and social arena. 34The &dquo;dark side&dquo; of ideology reveals itself as soon as its precepts are finalized,and consequently rendered immune to any experiences or data that contradict thatwhich in effect has defined itself as beyond contradiction. 35 Yet the Protestantprinciple places every human truth under judgment, whether Christian or non-Christian, whether religious or secular, whether fashionable or unfashionable,whether uttered by majorities or minorities, whether First World, Second World,Third World or Fourth World. Without constituting an ideology itself, it representsa protest against all ideology. This is its enduring worth.

Today, in the Protestant churches, powerful tensions have arisen over suchissues as inclusive language (in relation to God), the rights of homosexuals,the nature of biblical authority, the ’maleness’ of Christ, the legitimacy of suchchristological titles as ’Son of God,’ ’Lord,’ ’Saviour,’ etc., as well as the shapeof the liturgy, the role of the sermon, and a host of related matters. ShouldGod be addressed as ’Mother’ as well as ’Father’? Are the divine personae ofclassical trinitarianism - Father, Son and Spirit - intrinsically sexist? Are the

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time-honoured hymns of the faith too tainted with male imagery to be sung

any longer? Should they be rewritten? Is the traditional doctrine of marriageand understanding of the Christian family informed by ’heterosexist’ prejudice?What meaning or relevance can a male saviour possibly possess for women inlight of ages of male oppression? Can Christ be envisaged symbolically if not

historically as a woman ?36 Is the central metaphor of the reformation - the Wordof God - an authoritarian concept’? Is preaching, the historic focus and strengthof Protestantism, an authoritarian activity? Is the pulpit, so central and importantin Protestant worship, really a symbol of hierarchy? Does hierarchy in any formimply domination?

Any Protestant of today is familiar with these debates and their often divisivecharacter, causing new schisms in an already fractured Christendom. In the deepestpossible sense, tradition and modernity, or more accurately post-modernity, haveclashed and continue to clash with each other, both in the church and in the

surrounding body politic. Feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism, and the otherreigning ’isms’ of a social order in transition have induced a radical reconsiderationof basic tenets and practices, and their powerful critiques cannot be ignored. Noone can forecast the final resolution of these issues, or to what extent Protestant

Christianity will be transformed as a consequence. Certainly, as with the rest ofsociety, it is safe to predict that the Protestant churches of the future will bearthe marks of the conflicts of our generation. This, in itself, is a sign of life ratherthan death, for, as has often been observed, only living things change; that which isdead does not change. Even the most conservative of religious traditions, therefore,must beware of petrification, lest they perish. At the same time, the traditionremains the vibrant core of the religion, and it is self-defeating to lay waste to oldcreeds, confessions and values as if they were nothing more and nothing betterthan the relics of a misogynist, racist and obscurantist pat. 37 For the antidoteto these and similar evils lies in a purified understanding of the central elementsof the tradition rather than in their negation. This is the task of hermeneutics,a term derived from the messenger god of Greek mythology Hermes, who wasalso the patron of eloquence. ’Understanding’ in its hermeneutical sense is a largerconcept than ’understanding’ in its daily usage; to revive a tradition one must graspits true intent, which can be accomplished only if the interpreter is able to stepinside its special world with imagination and sympathy, allowing the text - rites,sacraments, and lifestyles are texts, as well as sacred writings - to be heard afresh.When this happens, the tradition is bom anew.

In the case of Protestantism, the theological insights and spiritual treasures ofthe reformation - justification by grace through faith, sola scriptura, the spiritof prophetic self-criticism - as well as the ascetic values that these conceptsgenerated, disseminated by the puritans but not confined to puritanism, remain aspotent sources of renewal. As has happened so often in the past, these treasures can

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be debased by converting them into either articles of faith to be believed or moralcodes to be obeyed as a matter of rote. A nominal Christianity at best, and a stiflingand legalistic orthodoxy at worst, is the inevitable result. Thus ’puritan’ has becomea term with mainly negative connotations in our modem vocabulary, and the socalled Protestant work ethic a much despised mode of existence, associated withneurosis. The stereotype of the soulless, greedy and penny-pinching capitalist is itsultimate perversion. Asceticism, however, is misunderstood if it is conceived as alife-denying and therefore dehumanizing system of religious discipline, especiallyProtestant asceticism. The rich communal life of the most ascetic Protestants,for example, the Hutterites and the Old Order Mennonites, with their nineteenthcentury dress and preference for antiquated technology, refutes such superficialjudgments. In fact, these groups are probably the closest approximination to

monasticism in Protestant Christianity. Most Protestants are far removed fromcommunitarianism, and few, if any, would regard themselves as ’ascetics’: a termwith Catholic connotations. Yet elements of the puritan ethic - the sense ofstewardship, the preciosity of time, the organization of talent, the abhorrence oflaziness, the tempered soul, the moderate and ordered life - remain as perennialcharacteristics of Protestant spirituality.

As the century approaches its close, Protestants are engaged once again in re-defining their identity. To redefine one’s identity without losing it requires a returnto its foundations, which, as far as Protestant Christianity is concerned, means thoseprinciples around which the Protestant movement coalesced in the first place. Bothcareful scholarship and profound theological reflection are necessarily involved inthis return, which may or may not yield fruitful results. The next century will de-termine the future of Protestantism as a global rather than merely European andNorth American form of Christianity. Modernity, the adversary of tradition, hasmuch larger parameters than formerly, making the task of reformulation more dif-ficult. Can a religious revolution in the heart of Christian Europe almost half amillennium ago preserve its distinctive legacy in the vastly altered cultural and re-ligious situation of our pluralistic age? Can Protestantism survive as Protestantism?Only if it passes the test of history.

NOTES

1. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon, New York:Harper & Brothers, 1960, Vol. II, p. 461.

2. In the case of Mormonism, The Book of Mormon; in the case of Moonism, the Divine Principle.3. John Dillenberger & Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity: Interpreted Through its Develop-

ment, second edition, New York: Macmillan, 1988, p. 175.4. Reden über die Religion, 1799.5. Thoughts upon Slavery, 1774.6. Leben Jesus, kritische bearbeitet, 1835.

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7. Das Wesen des Christentums, 1841.8. Cited in Robert Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1961, p. 81.9. Cf. Benjamin Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 1948 (republished).

10. Op. cit.11. The use of the terms ’left’ and ’right’, which owe their origin to the seeting arrangements of

the various factions (Girondists, Plain, Mountain) of the National Convention established by thefathers of the French Revolution in 1792, is not entirely appropriate in the case of the ProtestantReformation since such a duality simplifies too much the religious situation of the sixteenthcentury. Moreover, those Protestants on the left wing were far from uniform, consisting ofAnabaptists, spiritualists, mystics and rationalists with extremely diverse opinions.

12. Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, trans. James Luther Adams, Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1948, p. 201.

13. Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904-1905.14. Cf. Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd,

1959, Chapter VI.15. Cf. André Biéler, The Social Humanism of Calvin, trans. Paul T. Fuhrmann, Richmond, Virginia:

John Knox Press, 1964.16. Cited in Weber, op. cit., p. 162.17. G.R. Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution 1660-1688, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1957, pp. 134-135.18. R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, West Drayton, Middlesex: Pelican Books,

1926, p. 201.19. Ibid.

20. Max Weber, op. cit., p. 168f.21. Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities, New York:

Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 49.22. Cf. Reinhold Niebuhr, Pious and Secular America, New York: Scribner’s, 1958.23. Cited in Ralph Volney Harlow, The Growth of the United States, Vol. II, New York: Henry Holt,

1943, p. 464.24. Handy, op. cit., p. 203.25. Karl Barth. The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton, New York: Harper

Brothers, 1957.26. Ibid., p. 246.27. Other designations for the movement were neo-Reformation theology, theology of crisis and

dialectical theology.28. Tillich, op. cit., p. 226.29. Ibid., p. 228.30. Cf. T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland.31. Cf. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Meridian Books, 1958, Chapters

X, XI. Like Tillich, Arendt was a German émigrée.32. The concept of inclusiveness has been adopted by exponents of egalitarian principles with

respect to women, homosexuals, and social minorities of every description. The term ’politicalcorrectness,’ which may have Maoist origins, has, in more recent years, been employed by criticsof self-styled anti-racist and anti-sexist policies, especially in the schools and universities, whenthese policies have developed an intolerant strain. Much, of course, depends on one’s point ofview. To social egalitarians, anti-racism and anti-sexism are self-evident and therefore absolute

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values; to their critics, these ’politically correct’ attitudes (politically correct in terms of reigningmores) frequently contain moral blindspots, as, for example, when anti-racist educators displayracial prejudice themselves, or anti-fascist activists adopt fascist tactics in their war againstfascism. An interesting recent example of the clash of values occurred at a roundtable discussionon racism in Toronto in 1994 in which I was a participant. A decision to open a new music hallwith the famous musical SHOWBOAT divided the local Jewish and Black communities, which

exchanged charges of racism and antisemitism.33. Cf. Roger L. Shinn, Forced Options: Social Decisions for the 21st Century, New York: Harper

& Row, 1982, p. 231.34. Ibid., pp. 231-232.35. Terence R. Anderson, Walking the Way: Christian Ethics as a Guide, Toronto: United Church

Publishing House, 1993, p. 259.36. Some contemporary (post-modern?) sculptors have designed crucifixes and statues of a female

Christ.

37. An example of this self-defeating mindset is supplied by those occasional Christian Holocausttheologians who assert that the true roots of antisemitism lie not in the derogatory anti-Jewish’teaching of contempt’ in Christian history that accused the Jews of a cosmic crime and placedtheir existence under the curse of God (i.e., the Cainlike people), but in the very frameworkof Christian faith itself, with its incarnation/crucifixion/resurrection motifs, particularly theresurrection, which is interpreted as a supersessionist and triumphalistic dogma. Much depends,of course, on how these motifs are interpreted, and it cannot be denied that an antisemitic

interpretation is always possible. Surely, however, for spiritually sensitive Christians at least,the antidote to antisemitism is contained in the traditional incarnation/crucifixion/ resurrection

framework, since that which is crucified is what Paul called "our old self", or our sinful self

(Romans 6:6), and that which is risen is a new person, or a person, one might say, liberatedfrom such sins as Jew-hatred and the like.

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