| Part 1 The Theory of Faith | Hirohumi Hoshika |
This concludes the overview of the background of the previous "Approach": Unwelcome Question in Church. Let's get back to the main topic here.
The church I became involved with in Nishi-Ogikubo, Tokyo (see Chapter 1 - Episode 2) was a conservative, orthodox church, a so-called "evangelical" church that would later join the Japan Evangelical Church Association.
Meanwhile, what was written in Easy Studies 1-3 above was the progression from "liberal theology" to "neo-orthodox theology", the predecessors of "contemporary theology". "Contemporary theology" forms the foundation of churches that are now known as "mainline". Today's Protestant churches are broadly divided into "conservative" and "mainline" churches, with the "mainline" churches making up the majority, as the name suggests.
As can be imagined from the fact that the theologies that are the roots of contemporary theology are called "neo-orthodox" and "liberal," these mainline theologies place emphasis on responding to the knowledge and scholarship of the time. In contrast, conservative theology aims to maintain the Protestant theology of the Reformation era of Luther, Calvin, and others. These two streams diverged in the mid-19th century, after Kantian philosophy gained widespread recognition.
The optimistic rationalism prevalent until the 18th century—which held that truth could be attained by exercising reason free from superstition and dogma—was refuted by Kant. Conversely, he argued that reason could only reach within the bounds of the empirical world. This dealt a severe blow to Christian dogmatics, metaphysics, and theology. The person who responded to this was D.E. Schleiermacher in the first half of the 19th century, who became the first Christian theologian to be defined by Kantian thought and came to be known as the "father of modern theology".
As mentioned earlier, as early as the 18th century, there was Reimars, who read the Bible critically, and in the first half of the 19th century, the biblical studies of D.F. Strauss emerged, which denied the historicity of the Gospel of John, which has a different atmosphere from the other three Gospels. The current mainline theology arose from the convergence of this type of theology influenced by Kantian philosophy and critical biblical studies that are skeptical of traditional dogmas.
On the other hand, conservative theology, which inherited the doctrinal system known as the Reformation and 17th-century Old Protestantism, did not show a clear response to Kantian philosophy, critical biblical studies, or liberal theology. It was against neo-orthodox theology that conservatives finally took action. This is because although neo-orthodox theology was a departure from orthodoxy, orthodoxy felt a sense of crisis that neo-orthodox faith was similar to their own.
Namely, in the liberal theology that existed before neo-orthodoxy, which placed religious sentiment and morality as its central concepts, its unorthodoxy was obvious to everyone in the church, and so there was no fear that the realm of orthodoxy would be threatened. However, neo-orthodox theology, which introduced a certain view of revelation and developed a theology that was similar but not identical to orthodoxy, created a strong sense of crisis that the emergence of seminaries and churches that adopted it could transform Christianity as a whole.
Their view of revelation was in line with Kant's thought, which expelled transcendent concepts from the realm of reason, and denied that what is intelligible is revelation. That is, the Bible written in understandable language was denied as revelation, and only revelation as an irrational, mysterious, and personal relationship between God and humanity was acknowledged. Otherwise, at best, it was a view of revelation as found in Barth's theology, which holds that the Bible "becomes" the word of God through the mysterious, present work of the Holy Spirit.
The lament of C.F.H. Henry, who taught at Fuller Theological Seminary in America—a conservative institution until the first half of the 20th century—aptly conveys this situation, so let us quote it.
"We are, as it were, gathered in the land of giants of neo-orthodoxy like Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. ... But this new approach remains unsatisfying, even though it recognizes the uniqueness of special divine revelation and the testimony of Scripture. So our hearts are still heavy. ... The influence of Kant and Kierkegaard, plus its debt to Ebner and Buber in formulating the "encounter between God and man," its perpetuation of Schleiermacher's deeply unbiblical idea that God communicates no truth about himself or his will, and especially its mistreatment of the revelatory rights of the Bible, were features of neo-orthodoxy that particularly troubled us."
From this point onward, conservatives became preoccupied with solidifying their own foothold, and what they raised as their banner was "Bible Faith".
This was not a solution from orthodox theology to the problem of the historical Jesus, as neo-orthodoxy and critical biblical studies tried to solve by adopting their own positions, but rather a way to separate their own theology from them and confirm their traditional, conservative, and evangelical position.
"Bible Faith" means believing that "the Bible is the inerrant Word of God," and this is confirmed in the Bible throughout the Old and New Testaments. Like doctrines such as the Trinity, "Bible Faith" has been included in the faith since the founding of Christianity,
However, in 1978, the content of "Bible Faith" was clearly defined once again in the form of the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy" and it was emphasized as an element of faith that was more important than ever before, and as a result, it became clear that there were differences in understanding of "Bible Faith" even among conservatives. Consequently, the very nature of "Bible Faith" had become controversial, and conservative churches were forced to devote their efforts to internal debate before embarking on their original purpose of fighting externally.
I joined the church in 1979 and entered a conservative seminary about two years later, at a time when there was a lot of heated discussion about "Bible Faith", and some teachers would literally shout it from the podium.
As my baptism approached, I asked the pastor about the basis for "Bible Faith". He had previously said, "Place yourself under the Bible," but he now answered, "I think Bible Faith is 'dogma'." The meaning of this "dogma" was unclear, but it sounded like a creed that should be believed even without evidence. In other words, it seemed to be something that could not be explained but had to be included in faith.
At the time of my baptism, I had no idea about the theological situation surrounding "Bible Faith", but I was keenly aware that this issue was unavoidable even for just a seeker who was not yet in a position to discuss theology.
Jesus taught, "Enter through the narrow gate," but for me the gate of faith was not "narrow" but "double". Believing in Jesus is one gate, but before that, there is another gate, and that is the gate where one must believe that the Bible, especially the events about Jesus in the Gospels, are true.
I went to the baptism ceremony without an answer to this first gate, and at the confirmation of faith, when I was asked the question, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior?" and I confessed my faith by saying, "I believe in Jesus Christ on the premise that the historical accounts written in the Bible are true.
This was done with the approval of the pastor, but this confession of faith by a young man of unknown origin displeased the strict elders of the church, who had their roots in the pre-World War II "Mori" sect
Regardless of whether my faith at the time of my church joining was considered sufficient, it must be unfortunate for the person and the church that someone who wishes to believe in Jesus――for me, "Chapter 1 - Testimony" is its testimony――can only understand trust in Jesus and trust in the Bible as separate things and must include this circumstance in their baptismal confession.
Because of this incident, I was forced to deal with the issue of "historical facts and faith" from the very beginning of my church joining.