A Hermeneutical Divide
When one looks at the history of the church from the perspective of the relation between proclamation and systematic theology, it becomes apparent that a perpetual problem has been the eclipse of primary discourse, especially in the form of proclamation, so that it tends to get truncated or to survive only marginally. Almost from the start the gospel proclamation tended to lose its present tense. It was thought that the eternal Logos made a one-time appearance, came down, acquired a body, was crucified and raised, and then absconded with his body, never to be heard from again. The heavens were silent, the great acts of God were over and done with, and there were o more prophets. Jesus became, in today’s parlance, “history,” past tense. The good news became old news. The only place where the present tense survived in some fashion was in the sacraments. That is why they became so important. But even in sacraments specially authorized successors of the dead-and-gone Jesus were necessary to perform the miracle of making him present tense again. Meanwhile, the discourse of the church, its proclamation, became more and more just secondary, past tense discourse about God and his Christ. [...]
The Reformation was at best a temporary interruption in this tendency to concentrate on the secondary discourse of the church. It was an attempt to get the primary discourse out of the closet of the confessional into the common discourse of Christians and into the public pulpit. It survived by fits and starts in the churches, but increasing separation between university and church could only mean that theology would become more and more academic rather than an ecclesiastical discipline. Secondary discourse again crowded out primary discourse.
[...] The great crisis for the church is that the modern world since the Enlightenment sets serious question marks over this past-tense, secondary discourse. Not only does its historical veracity com under critical scrutiny, but even more seriously, its heteronomous character becomes odious. In other words, as a teaching about a past event it partakes of the uncertainty of all such past events. But even if true, it appears heteronomous (that is, an arbitrary or alien law imposed from without).
The Enlightenment sought to liberate the world from such heteronomy. It saw clearly that old ness was bad news. Those who think that an inerrant or infallible historical record solves the problem mistake the gravity of the crisis. An inerrant record only makes matters worse. Old news remains bad news even if it is inerrant. Gotthold Lessing put the question that hangs over the modern era like a marsh gas: how can accidental truths of history be proofs of eternal truths of reason? [...]
For theology that was a fateful moment. It put an end to ecclesiastical hegemony and demoted theology to one among many academic disciplines. It signified a hermeneutical divide: from that moment on, Scripture would have to be interpreted according to the canons of practical reason. [...]
Ever since, that church has been on the defensive. On the “left” the strategy of theology has been that of accommodation, apologetics, and theological cosmetics. It has been engaged in a valiant effort to rescue the secondary discourse itself from complete dimise by attempting to make it acceptable, credible, palatable, and amenable to human autonomy, to hone down and blunt the sharp edges of the message. The nagging question of what this accomplished still remains. Does the defensive strategy actually defend anything? Or does it gradually erode the faith?
But how is the problem to be met? On the “right,” conservatives and reactionaries insist that we are safe only if everything is, so to speak, set in stone. We are protected from the erosions of time only be an inerrant scripture, infallible secondary discourse. But this is likewise an undermining of the present-tense proclamation. Old news remains bad news even if it is supposedly inerrant or infallible.
[...]
The defensive strategy of theology in the modern world has resulted not in saving but rather in eroding the faith. The conservative and reactionary right has correctly seen that. But its attempt to avert erosion by insistence on setting the secondary discourse in stone is only postponement of eventual disaster. It is time to take a different track. What the church has to offer the modern world is not ancient history but the present-tense unconditional proclamation. The strategy of accommodation and defense has resulted in the sentimentalization and bowdlerization of almost everything. It is time to risk going over to the offense, to recapture the present tense of the gospel, to speak the unconditional promise and see what happens. To do that it will be necessary to construct a theology that is for proclamation, for going over to the offense, not for defense.
