The Lasting Significance Of Ernst Troeltsch’s Critical Moment

By Paul Wells

[Paul Wells is Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean at the Faculte Libre de Theologie Reformee, Aix-en-Provence, France. This article is a revision of the lecture given by Professor Wells on April 7, 2010, at Westminster Theological Seminary as the third annual Richard B. Gaffin Lecture Series in Theology, Culture, and Missions.]

If, as the saying goes, it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie, why dig Troeltsch up? The question is legitimate and skepticism is justified. However, Ernst Troeltsch, the father of modern criticism, described the critical mindset and its implications with a lucidity admired even by his enemies. Critical attitudes to Scripture have never been buried and are still alive in spite of hermeneutical pluralism.

As the Barthian behemoth ploughed through the twentieth century it took the skyway rather than the seaway, precisely because of the reefs of historical relativity. For Barth, Troeltsch exemplified all that was wrong with the rationalism of the previous century, everything that made the downfall of liberalism inevitable.[1]

Today it is strange to see them both trumpeted as heralds of postmodernism. In our age of kaleidoscopic theology they are pressed into service to show the way forward—Troeltsch because of his synthesis of theology and historico-sociological perspectives, opening Christianity up to world religions, Barth because of a dialectic that secures a special place for Christian revelation. Of the former it has been said that “the man once thought to be the last theologian of the nineteenth century may even turn out to be the first theologian of the twentieth—or even the twenty-first.”[2] If Barth skirted the historical problem, Troeltsch made it unavoidable. The historical questions he raised are still relevant, in spite of postmodernism or perhaps because of it. Nothing less than Christianity’s claim to absolute truth is the issue. With relativism in the driving seat there is no final revelation of God’s truth, an idea not unwelcome at present to Christianity’s cultured despisers.

Troeltsch was bourgeois-born in 1865 near Augsburg. He studied at the University of Erlangen where he met his lifelong friend Wilhelm Bousset, and later at Gottingen under Albrecht Ritschl. He became Professor of Systematic theology at Heidelberg in 1894, living next door to social historian Max Weber. Both Troeltsch and Weber had contact with Abraham Kuyper and were interested in his sphere pluralism as an approach to history and culture. In 1914 Troeltsch became Professor of Philosophy at Berlin, where he died in 1923.[3]

Like Kant,[4] Troeltsch marks the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. His concern for the well-being of the church was widely misunderstood; the “historical and existential concern for the fate of Christianity in the modern world penetrated his entire scientific endeavor.”[5] Essentially a historical sociologist, he pioneered a socio-psychological interpretation of religious phenomena and particularly of Christianity, which is to be examined like any historical case. All knowledge is relative to its time and culture and is of a personal nature; its value is to be sought in the broadest perspectives possible. What makes humans tick is a moral awareness expressed in a variety of religious beliefs. Everything is provisional, but people long for an ideal and measure value in terms of humanness. As a forerunner of postmodernism,[6] Troeltsch accomplished the feat of combining the excesses of both the rationalism and the romanticism of the post-Enlightenment era.[7]

If, on the one hand there are strong rationalistic tendencies in his thought, the pull of mysticism is never far away. Bavinck perceived this and commented about Troeltsch’s viewpoint: “In the development of the religions Christianity occupies the highest rank . . . not as a result of purely empirical research, but in virtue of a personal appreciation, by another route than that by which, in theory, he looks for certainty”[8]

I. Der Historismus Rules

As Troeltsch’s work is vast, we will focus on one of its aspects, his conception of faith and history. A generation ago, Van A. Harvey wrote an influential book, The Historian and the Believer,[9] claiming that firstly history and its specific rules must be accommodated and then faith and historically sanctioned beliefs come into perspective. Academic honesty demands that this order be respected. Modern historical knowledge provides the framework and the parameters within which Christian faith must be enunciated. The results of Harvey’s enquiry are in line with Troeltsch’s results—a belief so human it claims no finality as a religious experience.

Troeltsch was “the architect of the idea of historicism,”[10] defined as the fundamental historicizing of all our thinking about and experience of human beings, their culture, and their values.[11] Religion can only ever be legitimately expressed within the limits of the historical consciousness alone.[12] Continuing interest in Troeltsch and his relevance[13] accrues from the fact that he embodied the results of scientific research of the nineteenth century into academic debate and established the conditions of historiography that are generally recognized down to the present.[14] “The hidden focus of his thought lies in the paradigm change introduced by the historico-critical method, a shift that prevents the historian from considering Christianity on the grounds of dogmatic criteria, but which necessitates a consideration of the global historical context in which it is situated.”[15]

Even if addiction to the elixir of historical criticism is in rehab today and the obsession has been loosened by linguistics and narrative interests, it still holds thrall in biblical studies at least as prolegomena. Its methods define the conditions of what is considered “scientific.” Moreover, it has continuing, if not growing, influence in evangelical milieux, particularly where contextual relevance makes it important to keep up with at least some of the Joneses.

II. “Everything Is Tottering”

Troeltsch was, for his admirers, the greatest religious historian since Hegel, whereas his critics considered him a renegade, a wart on Protestantism, as one of them graphically commented. For this reason he was unceremoniously banished from the elysian fields of academia with the advent of dialectical theology.[16] Troeltsch’s project and its development did not leave his contemporaries indifferent. Hartmut Ruddies evaluates it thus: “His analysis of the problem of modernity facing theology led him to develop a program in which Christian religion takes on the challenge of criticism by assuming its role in the context of European culture and in the development of the global prospect on the horizon. . . . Troeltsch opened theology to modern culture by way of dialogue with the human, historical and social sciences.”[17]

What is the place of Christianity in the modern Weltanschauung, the historical standing of its texts, its capacity to develop a positive relation with modernity when Bismark is on the rampage?—such are the questions that kept Troeltsch awake at night. In his own words terminating a heated debate in 1896, “Everything is tottering!” Such was the challenge from the realpolitik of knowledge that Christianity could no longer retreat to a faith bunker to protect Jesus and the church tradition. Or, stated in a less dramatic way, “The disintegration of the Christian world of ideas. . . is absolutely decisive. . . . Once applied to the scientific study of the Bible and church history, the historical method acts as a leaven transforming everything and ultimately exploding the very form of earlier theological methods.”[18] A historical belief must be considered in the context of the history of religion as a whole, without special claims or privileged methodology. Faith and intellectual freedom wrestle like Jacob and Esau on every page of his work, and Troeltsch, like Isaac, wants to bless them both.[19]

The three musketeers of a modern scientific program in the realm of history are autonomy, naturalism, and relativism. In his essay on the crisis of historicity Troeltsch states: “Historicity is the autonomous principle that rhymes with naturalism ... by which the whole of the world system is examined according to the principles of natural causality.” And he adds with rather pedantic assurance:

The historical conditioning of our knowledge and our perception of the world of ideas . . . recognizes that all our understanding is carried by a stream of becoming, by an uninterrupted, ever advancing process of differentiation, which shakes eternal truth, whether the truths of the supernatural teaching of the Church ... or the eternal truths of reason, of religion and of ethics.[20]

Historicity attempts to throw light on the smallest cultural details by means of comparing and evaluating each fact in the perspective of unbroken progress. To be taken seriously, theology, like any science worthy of the name, can but undergo a transformation in attitudes and methods. Autonomy closes the door on “faith approaches” dependent on dogma and the claims to special revelation or salvation history.[21] Divine interventions or miracles breaking the seamless historical current are only for the traditionalists driving down the road with eyes riveted on the rear view mirror.[22] Troeltsch claimed, for example, that historicity can know nothing of the resurrection, and so he was at least consistent in opening the game reserves in which biblical fauna cannot be hunted. Theology cannot survive as a science with built-in protections and its own special methods.

Troeltsch’s autonomy implies radical naturalism. Phenomena must be interpreted by the natural explanations available. A naturalistic and autonomous frame is one in which every fact is unique but also interdependent in an unbroken field of relationships.[23] Historical research requires rigorous honesty with the data, and the autonomy of the historian inevitably provokes skirmishes with accepted interpretations.

The autonomy and naturalism of historicity make relativism inevitable.[24] Relativism recognizes that each historical instance is unique, even if a universal and normative meaning is present in particulars, a throwback to Hegelian idealism. The facts of Scripture are not custom-made but the results of socio-historical mass-production. History is like a Henry Ford production line, so Christianity owes its existence to the same factors found in other religions. Nor is it legitimate to pretend that Christianity is the summum of human religious aspirations or the antechamber to absolute truth.[25] History knows no absolutes at all and historical consciousness alone delivers from cloud cuckoo land.[26] Logically, Troeltsch concedes that one day in the future the values dear to Christianity could be replaced by something better.

What is new about Troeltsch’s historicity?[27] Just this: one is more likely to find a white blackbird in the garden than to spot anything absolute or final in history. Relativism conditions everything radically.[28] It may be possible to claim, anticipating process theology, that progress itself becomes an absolute, because “history is the Absolute strung out in the temporal series.” However, as H. R. Mackintosh stated many moons ago, “Nothing absolute can have a place in it, nothing absolute can even touch or enter it.”[29] An absolute “cannot be conceptualized because it is not in any way a concept.”[30] So having slid down the snakes of relativistic autonomy, Troeltsch hopes to find a ladder back up, as historical relativism leaves open the way of present experience: “The essential and unusual miracle that theology needs is the interior miracle of the present instant that everyone can experience.”[31]

It’s small wonder that Troeltsch was accused by traditionalists in the church of being the “enemy from within”; his approach is a dart to the heart of historic Christianity. If anything at all came from God by special revelation, it would not be open to contradiction and would be oppressive rather than liberating. So “the hypothesis making Christianity an absolute religion is impossible when one takes into account the methods and arguments of historical science and its conclusions.”[32]

Toward the end of his life the Berlin philosopher conceded, with a tinge of sadness perhaps, that man’s lofty desires for transcendence are like smoke in the wind. The numinous is the same in the varieties of mystical experience. The Absolute is elusive as a butterfly and not unlike Marx’s new man, always just beyond the conditions of history. All that one can do is hope for the “extra allowance” (Zuschuss) that allows one to sense and feel the unity of the meaning of the whole.

III. The Critic As Ubermensch

As Emil Brunner correctly remarked in his criticism of the Religionsgeschichte-schule, “historical positivism is a dangerous ally for faith ... it glides into historical relativism.”[33] The essence of Christianity, the holy grail sought by liberals up to Harnack’s time is an illusion, according to Troeltsch. What remains is an innate experience of “a presence.”[34]

The principles of autonomy and naturalism with the correlate of historical relativism impose neutrality on the historian. The historical-critical method must be applied in theology in a perfectly consistent way free from biases.[35] Even if dogmatics pretends to have a special character founded on saving facts (Heilsgeschichte), these special events are not fundamentally different to what is found in the ancient pagan world and in other religions.[36] The biblical texts claim a special status, but must be the object of a critical approach, like all that belongs to our cultural heritage. Historical consciousness (Nietzsche called it man’s sixth sense) is the principle of normative values.

This insight is Troeltsch’s claim to fame, expressed in his classical article on criticism, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology.”[37] His analysis ruled sovereign, with some necessary adjustments, throughout modernity. Many theologians, past or present, have felt obliged to broker a Faustian agreement with his method.[38] Even when not accepted lock, stock, and barrel and practiced with moderation, the outcome is nevertheless critical results, a fact remarked upon not only by its founder, but also by the likes of Tillich and Barr. The latter in particular criticized the tendency of evangelicals to dabble in criticism and to save the day by plumping for the most conservative results possible.[39] Troeltsch expressed his principle like this:

The historical method itself . . . once admitted at any one point, necessarily draws everything into its train and weaves together all events into one great web of correlative effects and changes. . . . No general philosophical theory is required to arrive at this result. The historical method itself by use of criticism, analogy, and correlation, produces with irresistible necessity, a web of mutual interacting activities of the human spirit, which are never independent and absolute but always interrelated and therefore understandable only within the context of the most comprehensive whole.[40] 

The three attendants of historical research are criticism, analogy, and correlatio.[41]

In regard to criticism, Troeltsch recalls Gotthold Lessing at the beginning of his essay entitled “The Contingence of Historical Truths” (1923): “Contingent historical truths cannot be proof of the eternal [sic] truths of reason.”[42] The duty of the critical historian is to establish the relationship of the facts in a way that respects contingency. The result functions in the realm of probability: “In the realm of history there are only judgments of probability varying from the highest to the lowest degree, and . . . consequently an estimate must be made of the degree of probability attaching to any tradition.”[43] The consequence for belief is that “the application of historical criticism to religious tradition must result in a profound change in one’s inward attitude to it and in one’s understanding of it.”[44] Both the nature of faith and its content are metamorphosed. To exempt one religious tradition from criticism while applying it to others is not feasible.

Analogy is the means by which criticism is possible. Its stock is present knowledge.

Analogous occurrences with things that take place before our eyes and happen in our midst furnish us with the key to historical criticism. . . . The omnipotence of analogy implies the fundamental similarity of all historical events—which does not, of course, mean identity. While leaving all possible room for differences, however, the analogical method always presupposes a common core of similarity that makes the differences comprehensible and empathy possible. . . . Jewish and Christian history are thus made analogous to all other history. . . . Many would content themselves with placing Jesus’ moral character and the resurrection in this category.[45]

The hie et nunc is the matrix for interpretation of the past because of the homogeneity of human nature and culture. Past unknowns are interpreted by the present; what is comparable is admitted, what is erratic is excluded. Facts are interpreted contextually the analytic tools being those of the present. This all-powerful tool makes the critic a hermeneutical superman and lies at the root of the “two horizons” problem of modern interpretation.

Correlation means that events stand in a single, unbroken flow, linked with all the others. One commentator called this “the mainspring of the historical-critical method.”[46]

There can be no change at any one point without some preceding and consequent change elsewhere, so that all historical happening is knotted together in a permanent relation of correlation, inevitably forming a current in which everything is interconnected and each single event is related to all others.[47]

Events may be exceptional but conditions are invariable. Each event is determined by a cause (causality), linked to what precedes (an antecedent), and has consequent results (effects). The new and the contingent never overstep the boundary of determined conditions. Troeltsch may be the Kant of historicism but he is also its Heraclitus.[48]

Correlation means that among relative causes the divine is excluded. There is no “God of the gaps” as there are no more gaps. Interpretation of the past supposes a common humanity and insight. The art of the historian lies in sensing original meanings and sympathetically tracing the flow of mutually conditioning transformations. The real challenge concerns “essence and foundations,” that is, what the historian makes of the whole. We live in a room in which all the doors and windows are closed, but we can rely on criticism to determine the temperature.

The historical method gets hold on theology, says Troeltsch, first coyly and fragmentarily with all sorts of reservations and restrictions, then more comprehensively and energetically until it affects theology in the same way it affects everything else. This is in fact a good description of what happens when evangelicals paddle in the pool of historical criticism. What it implies is that biblical religion is essentially the same as Assyrian or Greek religion, and correlation means that the only transcendence possible lies in human aspirations. If the mythical gods in which the Greeks did not really believe are symbolic projections of human powers, are the biblical stories any different? What the net of correlation cannot catch is not fish.

Finally, for Troeltsch, as for Dilthey before him, if cultural facts are historically determined, so is the interpreter; the very notion of Man is historically constructed.[49] The historian himself does not escape relativity but nevertheless shapes the value of the facts of history, as in Friedrich Schleiermacher.[50] Man becomes the creator of historical meaning, even if he is subject to the historical process and limited by it.[51]

Historicism closes the door on the universe and locks it with its three keys. External intrusions are prohibited, even on the part of the Master of the universe. The opening of the door from the inside is a psychological miracle, a mystical Carnaveral, at the point where rationalism ends and mysticism takes over.[52]

IV. Jesus Deconstructed And Reconstructed

Troeltsch follows his penchant in a programmatic essay, originally a conference given to students in 1911 and entitled “The Significance of the Historicity of Jesus for Faith.”[53]

Criticism shakes off the shackles and gives Jesus back to temporality and context by constructing a real Charakterbild of Jesus. However, Troeltsch rejected the extremism of an Arthur Drews, who thought that Jesus never existed. The real question is whether religious faith convictions can be attached to the historic fact.[54] Faith and history must meet, each on its own terms, to negotiate the conditions of mutual recognition. Claims to special revelation are redundant, as they cannot establish a link between the Christ of faith and the narratives of the Gospels. Total relativity must be accepted precisely at this delicate point. As with all other historical facts given in contexts of relatedness, the “fact” of Jesus can only be established by historical research. Faith may interpret facts, it cannot establish them.[55]

Troeltsch’s minimalism is rather disappointing.[56] The psychological portrait of Jesus is one that must be acceptable to modern man. Particulars are sacrificed on the altar of psychological impression; Jesus is akin to the inspired prophets of other faiths. For Troeltsch the question is not about details, but about the total impression of the appearing of Jesus, the main lines of his teaching, and the contours of his religious personality. These facts must be established by historical-criticism, so that the “symbol Christ” can have a stable rooting in the “fact” Jesus. If criticism were to make a deposition against the historicity of Jesus or the possibility of knowing him, the result would be the beginning of the end of the symbol of Christ among those respecting scientific conditions of knowledge.[57]

This statement is prophetic of subsequent debates between faith and fact established by historical science. Bultmann will be a pessimistic minimalist and Pannenberg an optimistic maximalist, but the relationship between history and faith has a comparable structure in both systems of thought. Barthianism restructured the problem by transforming the horizontal horizons into a vertical dialectic.

Troeltsch’s legacy is a socio-psychological picture of the Nazarene, a figure surrounded with aura, but stripped of messianic claims. Jesus becomes a symbol of human aspirations, a far call from the isolated and divinized mythological Logos of church tradition. Jesus, he states, is not the only historical fact pertinent for faith. Next to him we must recognize the claims of other historical personalities who can be viable symbols and supports for the experience of faith.[58] Troeltsch seeks to limit the problem of the historical Jesus by describing a personality that can be a rallying point for the Christian religion and appeal to the aspirations of modern people.[59]

Two paradoxical consequences follow from this. Firstly, those who were closest to Jesus historically, claims Troeltsch, were least equipped to understand, as they were farthest from him in terms of history as we know it. To their limited perspective, Jesus was the Son of God, but this view, as well as claims to miracles, must be compared with other traditions in the light of universal history. Secondly, the personality of Jesus and his teaching set off a domino movement: the community originating in Jesus flows to the present and needs no metaphysics to explain it. Jesus has status in and for this ongoing community, but this is not an absolute or universal value. This position is rather close to the claims of some postmodernists, who consider the value of the Christian tradition to be understood mainly from an “in-house” position.

Jesus evokes transcendence and God is found in him as a symbol of the absolute, of holy love, and as an expression of human aspirations. A skeptic may ask, however, whether this symbol tallies historically with the Jesus encountered in the Gospel texts. Does Troeltsch do anything other than cull from their pages the “revelation” that corresponds to what he expected to find? As H. R. Mackintosh said, Troeltsch and his school get out of history just as much as they resolved beforehand that it is permitted to contain.[60]

V. “Perchance In The Beyond”

Such are the laws governing the historical method, but what are the conditions that govern interwoven historical events?[61] Troeltsch describes these conditions in terms of contingency in his important articles on “Historiography” and “Contingency” in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.[62]

Causality is the factor that distinguishes natural from human history because “psychological motives are totally different from natural causes.”[63] Historical examination must be able to account for the psychological and the irrational element in which newness is experienced. Contrary to natural causality, the realm of history must allow for individual complexity, the unexpected, global perspectives, and progression.[64] Troeltsch recognizes the existence of historical elements that escape rational analysis. The historian “understands to the extent that causality allows it and is necessary.”[65]

But how can the historical materials be molded into a meaningful overview? If causality establishes probable facts can there be any global interpretation? Troeltsch comes to us cap in hand when this question is asked. The philosophy of history can only conclude that chaos rules in the realm of meaning. It is impossible to show that progress is being made toward a final and universal goal, human or other: “The absolute in the relative, yet not fully and finally in it, but always pressing towards fresh forms of self-expression, and so effecting the mutual criticism of its relative individualization—such is the last word of the philosophy of history.”[66] Any absolute necessarily undoes the relative. If facts are constrained by the straitjacket of causality values and interpretations lie in the domain of intuition and imagination.

If consistently applied, the historical method leaves the historian in a sea of wreckage in the realm of fact with no moorings for interpretation. This accounts for the innumerable hypotheses that invariably appear in critical reconstruction. A common feature of modernity and postmodernity lies in a dialectic of strict deconstruction and free autonomous reconstruction from the tohu bohu.

Idealism, which strives to impose a form on randomness, must struggle with the problem of contingency or avoid it altogether. Troeltsch encounters it at several places in his work. Contingency is the accidental and factual nature of history in contrast with what is logical and necessary. It describes the dialectic of the irrational and the rational, the actual and the logical, the new over against structure, and creativity over against necessary existence. Contingency inevitably defeats rationality because:

• Facts are by nature brute facts, random and irrational:
• Cosmic laws, necessary in themselves, are contingent in their relations:
• Irregularity destroys rational systems of explanation and undermines universal law;[67]
• Newness in the real world could not exist in an exhaustively rational system:
• Freedom obliges law to recognize a modicum of contingency:
• Particulars are not necessary, even if law implies a necessity.

Troeltsch concludes: “The reconciliation of these opposites is impossible. The actual thinking of man consists in a continuous combination of the antitheses. . . . The final synthesis does not lie within the scope of human thought and all attempts to reach it lead to contradiction.”[68]

In the closed cosmos, existing conditions are dictated by contingency and irrationalism and the rational mind cannot manage to digest them. This is what historicism ultimately implies. In a certain way, chance rises to devour human rationality as an ultimate principle, because brute fact cannot be domesticated in a purely rational interpretation. Idealism is ultimately a mirage and those who crawl toward its waters end up with the sand of brute fact in their mouths. At the end of his article on “Contingency” Troeltsch reaches the following judgment:

In its religious aspect, the idea of contingency implies the vitality, multiplicity, and freedom of the world in God and, indeed, the creative freedom of God Himself; while Rationalism, on the other hand, signifies the unity of the world, the supremacy of the super-sensuous, the comprehension of all things in a universal Divine law. Here again, the logical solution lies beyond us.[69]

Human thought sees the “world in God” in terms of irrational contingency and, at the same time, God is the universal principle of rational laws. In both rationalism and irrationalism, however, self-consciousness and God-consciousness seem to be superposed. God is not a sovereign divinity over human thought or the creator of all things that are. There is no creation, fall, or redemption of the human mind, it is “just there” and it can but hope for a “perchance in the Beyond.” This was the Berlin philosopher’s legacy toward the end of his life in his lectures in England:

As all religion has a common goal in the Unknown, the Future, perchance in the Beyond, so too it has a common ground in the Divine Spirit ever pressing the finite mind onward towards further light and fuller consciousness, a Spirit Which indwells the finite spirit, and Whose ultimate union with it is the purpose of the whole many-sided purpose.[70]

Scientific historical enquiry that started with a bang ends in an idealistic whimper. Troeltsch established causality as the law over historical processes in criticism, analogy, and correlation, but these theoretical principles are found wanting as they produce no practical certainty and they are overtaken by chance as the ultimate principle and mystery as the final hope. Contingency not analogy, is the supreme power broker. Pure chance relativizes the constraints imposed by law, since contingency is unrelenting.

Does contingency open a window of opportunity that was once shut by rationalism for revelation and divine acts? The chance would be a fine thing! Postmodern individualism and subjectivism use precisely the same window to deny a final revelation. Truth is fragmented in individual experience—a consequence of the rejection of the rationalism of modernism.

VI. Icarus Not Quite Flying

Such is the complexity of Troeltsch’s logic that his critics have expended no litde energy trying to expose its fallacies. H. R. Mackintosh said long ago that it is always depressing to be told a priori exactly what one must believe[71] and Troeltsch seems to do just that.

The unresolved problem is obviously that of Troeltsch’s dialectic of historical law and contingency. If in the field of historical and sociological analysis the Berlin philosopher established a rigid structure, on the level of interpretation and meaning everything seems relativized.[72] In a paradoxical fashion, contingency is a necessary evil that serves to preserve human freedom, whereas from the perspective of naive observation, criticism, correlation, and analogy are guarantees of freedom and wisdom in the field of common grace. When they are transposed into an idealistic theoretical straitjacket, they become limitations imposed not only on human but also on divine freedom.

Three tactical lines of opposition have been developed by Troeltsch’s critics who seek to undermine his program. Firstly, some arguments loosen the strait-jacket of the historical method, which seems, in this instance, to go beyond what is legitimate and necessary. If history implies an immanent perspective, it need not entail anthropocentrism in which man becomes the ultimate judge of probabilities according to rigid criteria.[73] In fact, Troeltsch’s notion of contingency seems to eliminate a rigid view of prediction. Should his kind of contingency be allowed, nothing logically excludes resurrection as an explanation of the Easter event.[74] Nor is knowledge of a probable, possible, or contingent event incompatible with certainty arising from faith. It is no leap in the dark to say that what is possible for historical reason is certain in the realm of faith. Reason and faith are different cognitive functions, but both are functions of the heart and linking them depends on discernment or wisdom. Faith is not independent of historical knowledge, nor antithetical to it, but neither can it be reduced to its confines.[75]

Secondly must the principle of analogy, as the key to the past, limit everything in accordance with the conditions of the observable present? Analogy itself cannot be confined to the present. Any variation at all would be impossible if that were the case, simply because our present is not the sum of all historical and cultural possibilities.[76] Analogy has a dual function, the present to the past, but also the past to the present, allowing not only for what is similar, but also for what is different, or non-analogical. The same applies culturally as well as historically. Historical events are unique and contingency implies the recognition of both what is the same and what is different. If space-time, as T F. Torrance stated, is an open differential, the concept of analogy ought to function in terms of openness, not the contrary.[77] What is different, even radically so, is interpreted by analogy apart from, or in contrast with the strictures of present knowledge. Pannenberg, one of the most eloquent critics of Troeltsch, said: “If the analogies discovered are employed in full knowledge of the limits of their validity, then they can hardly serve as criteria for the reality of an event affirmed in the tradition. . . . That a reported event bursts analogies with otherwise usual or repeatedly attested events is still no ground for disputing its facticity.”[78] All-powerful analogy is far from innocent; as A. Thiselton remarked, “When Troeltsch postulated the basic homogeneity of all reality, including the experience of the interpreter, he turns historical theory into an explicit metaphysic, in this case of a positivistic kind.”[79] To put it less kindly it is a form of historical imperialism, the kind we eschew in the case of cultural differences.

Finally, concerning correlation, the criticisms of K. G. Popper about the poverty of historicism are worth taking into account. Can the totality of historical continuities and functions be formulated and weighed in one unified vision in a logical sense? The universally valid laws of historical continuity and discontinuity define the relation between successive periods of time, and do not necessarily apply to its whole.[80] This means that the correlation of Christian history, its texts and facts, and those of other world-views has a limited value in interpretation. Analogical culture-jumping, often heavily aided and abetted by theories about metaphor, found in hackneyed comparisons between the biblical tradition and other religious practices, can only be of limited credibility, when they are not patently abusive.[81] The development of the history of redemption is not explained by comparison with other events or traditions on the basis of general theories involving correlated metaphors or analogies, but by its internal development and its specific characteristics. The historiography of Scripture, as Bavinck remarked, has a character of its own.[82]

Troeltsch’s three axiomatic principles marked the development of biblical studies in the twentieth century. Apart from them, Bultmann and the Barthian reaction are incomprehensible. The historical skepticism engendered leads, beyond the Barthian parenthesis, to the escape hatch of rhetorical and narrative approaches that bypass factual references. As Barr asked, at the end of one of his articles, would it matter really if this story had not happened?[83] Would we not be as inspired by a narrative myth illuminating existence as by something supposed to have happened once upon a time? The impact of Troeltsch’s methods are far more pervasive than might be admitted. Even in evangelical scholarship, notions of continuous history, critical analysis, and the matrix of the present as we know it lead to the relativization of the specific content of the Bible. If the central events of incarnation and resurrection are excepted from the process, this approach is applied to large tracts of Bible history, and to questions about its content and authorship.

Troeltsch’s fundamental legacy, beyond methodology, lies in the attitudes of neutrality, relativism, autonomy, and naturalism, factors that transcend modernism and fashion the current mindset in a radical and subjective way.[84] At present the contingency and irrationalism anticipated in modernism hold sway. If today presuppositions are to the fore in a subjective sense, Troeltsch himself does not seem to have raised the question as to whether faith presuppositions can be avoided in historical research; positivist metaphysics infiltrated his thought as a whole.[85] God holds the place conceded by rationalism and is limited to the realm of mysticism and subjective intuition. What anyone feels about God is not anything that can be known and assessed factually. This is how Troeltsch concludes his article on historiography: “There still remains the concrete individual character of the objects dealt with, and there remains also the non-rationality of personal life, with its rightful claims.”[86]

Does God exist at all, for Troeltsch, beyond the confines of human religious consciousness? One might argue so, but it is evident that our historian “failed to make room for transcendence and otherness or their appearance in this world.”[87]

VII. Conclusion

We would do well to heed the moral of this story, stated by Troeltsch himself: “Give the historical method an inch and it will take a mile. From a strictly orthodox standpoint, therefore, it seems to bear a certain similarity to the devil.”[88] Quite so, Troeltsch has obviously reached this conclusion by an application of correlation! The essence of this critical moment and its lasting significance is: how can one put a little finger in the machinery and not lose an arm? This is a question that must confront biblical scholars in their work at almost every turn.

In conclusion, when the moon of criticism eclipses the sun of revelation two considerations seem appropriate. The first relates to the humanness of critics and the results of their efforts.

Troeltsch investigates the crime scenes of history with the heavy plod of a Teutonic law enforcement agent, never setting a foot wrong and getting everything down in his black book. This attitude itself raises questions. From the side of human criticism, it is too easily and too often forgotten that there is no single historical approach. A multitude of influences are formative in the process and outcomes of any historical examination and many of them are hidden: social and psychological milieu (academia), world-view or lack of it, the question of authority or loss of it, faith or doubt, individual personality including or excluding ambitions, ideas about what “Christian” is, mistrust in the supernatural and trust in human capacities (and vice versa), a notion of what is scientific or what is progress (or the contrary), honesty and dishonesty, and last but not least, sloppy thinking or meticulous work. Experience shows that even having a pietistic pastor as father is not unimportant. Any one, some, or all of these factors are motivations for adopting a critical approach or rejecting it. Criticism, for this reason, is not a self-evident business as often supposed, particularly when claims are made to neutrality and intellectual honesty. Nothing is self-evident, the whole critical field is an epistemological minefield. Postmodern suspicion can be rather healthy in the sense that behind “objective and neutral” human judgments lie many hidden factors that condition them.

Is it really possible to go about it in this fashion? Consider the statement of a recent author: “My purpose is to lay out as clearly as possible the evidence and logic behind the standard conclusions of mainstream biblical scholarship, so that readers might fairly weigh these claims in the balance of good judgment.”[89] There is no one logic, no standard conclusions, no mainstream biblical scholarship, perhaps no good judgment either. These are merely ideas people take for granted. In fact, this particular commentator lacks the insight of Troeltsch who sees critical scholarship as being a two-level affair. The facts are contingent and the historian makes some order out of them. But as the Berlin gentleman concluded, the task is impossible. The pull of idealism in reconstruction is as inevitable as it is frustrating. In spite of nuances, from Lessing, who distinguished facts and what the Christian feels about them, to Strauss, Wellhausen, Ritschl, Herrmann, Troeltsch, Schweitzer, Bultmann, Dibelius, and through to open theism, the main thing is not the facts, but the reconstruction of what is a possible “Christian” idea. When this is not simply an echo of secular philosophy, it is, in fine, another kind of religion, an expression of a personal mysticism that sails away from Christian revelation into the night of the unknown where all is One and One is all.

The significance of Troeltsch’s critical moment, as of all others, is that it serves the project of the reconstruction of religion in a more reasonable, more rational, more individual, and more autonomous sense—an “essence” of Christianity which is, all told, one’s own decision about belief, a form of subjective dogma beyond dogma. The appeal to fact is too often a smokescreen. A new authority is set up which, although it is purely human, can and does often function as a thought-police. When the outcome is taken to be ultimate, then criticism becomes a kind of docetism in reverse. The critical game is not interesting in itself, or in terms of the truth of Scripture, only in its outcomes. Historical fact and reconstruction are entwined in speculative thought.

Secondly from the perspective of divine revelation, can Holy Scripture be taken like any other book? In spite of lip-service to sacra Scriptura, the constituent elements of biblical truth are shelved when it comes to criticism: transcendence, divine authority, God as author and criterion of truth and error, of good and bad, the wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge of God—these factors seem to go begging because of the fact that the divine Word comes in human form. Criticism invariably forgets that in revelation the human word is a function of the divine. The human ends up by defeating the divine. Attention to the servant form determines the rest, not the contrary. The consequence is an elevation of the subject over the object. Faith in reason, autonomy, and individualism takes precedence over Scripture as God’s Word in human words. An imminent view of historical facts and hypotheses formulated out of respect for the “true humanity” or the “accommodated nature” of Scripture puts the cart before the horse. Should the biblical scholar stand over or under revelation? Criticism may claim unlimited rights because of the humanity of the text, but the heart, as Pascal said, has reasons of its own. To maintain the proper relationship between the two factors, divine and human, is the prime work of theology, as Kuyper allegedly said.[90]

The word “criticism,” it has often been noted, conveys at least two possible meanings. Discerning comprehension or wisdom allows us to criticize and reject errors or false prophecy, but willful negative criticism overturns God’s truth. In the latter sense, man’s critical judgment has lost its integrity and needs renewal. In fact the “criticism” we encounter in revelation turns the tables on critical reason. God himself is the judge who weighs man in the balance. God in his word is kritikos of the thoughts and attitudes of the heart and man must give account to God(Heb 4:12-13). The divine word breaks up hearts of stone and then only is positive discernment possible. Therefore everything hinges on the priority of revelation in the critical process. Only God’s truth coming down to us can restore us to truth, to a right mind. Bavinck affirmed this with great clarity: “Scripture occupies such a high place over against every man that, instead of subjecting itself to his criticism, it rather judges him in all his thoughts and desires. And this has been the standpoint of the Christian church toward Scripture at all times.”[91]

It is a great reversal indeed when this fundamental order is overturned and human analysis becomes the only valid attitude in biblical studies. Instead of maintaining a healthy distance from tradition-ridden dogma, as it claims, it rides roughshod over revelation and divine order. As authority is unavoidable, critical reconstructions invariably serve new syntheses, world-views that are either monistic or pantheistic and are used to criticize the otherness of God and the radical ethical antithesis. Unlimited freedom, as Dostoyevsky remarked, tends to wind up in despotism of one form or another.

Troeltsch had his critical moment and others glory in theirs but, all told, criticism becomes a new form of slavery unless it serves to establish more surely the truth that makes sinners free.

Notes

1. See Mark D. Chapman’s commentary in Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhemine Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 9-11. Cf Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Earth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 45ff, on Troeltsch, Wilhelm Herrmann, and the History of Religions School; Lori K. Pearson, Beyond Essence: Ernst Troeltsch as Historian and Theorist of Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).
2. Garrett E. Paul, introduction to The Christian Faith, by Ernst Troeltsch (trans. Garrett E. Paul: Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), xvi.
3. A general introduction is found in Hans-Georg Drescher, Ernst Troeltsch: His Life and Work (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). More recently Vern Poythress, Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible (Wheaton, 111.: Crossway forthcoming), chs. 5 and 6, gives a concise analysis of how Troeltsch mooted the critical approach, pointing out that the methods of analogy, correlation, and criticism have a theistic foundation, but were applied anti-theistically by Troeltsch.
4. See Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch, ch. 6, on Kant’s diverse influence on nineteenth-century theology.
5. Toshimasa Yasukata, Ernst Troeltsch: Systematic Theologian of Radical Historicity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 197.
6. Cf Garrett E. Paul, “Why Troeltsch? Why Today? Theology for the 21st Century” The Christian Century, June 30, 1993, 676-81; Max L. Stackhouse, “A Premature Postmodern,” First Things 106 (2002): 19-22.
7. Karl Barth commented sarcastically that “the lifework of the last great Romantic in theology Ernst Troeltsch, consisted chiefly in the publication and ever-renewed publication of programs” (Die protestantische Theologie im 19 Jahrhundert: Ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Geschichte [Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1946], 308).
8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend; 4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003-2008), 1:77.
9. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
10. Ernst Schulin quoted by Trutz Rendtorff, “Religion et Histoire,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch (ed. Pierre Gisel; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1992), 272- Cf. Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch, ch. 3; and Yasukata, Ernst Troeltsch, 126-32.
11. Cf. Troeltsch’s 1913 essay, “The Dogmatics of the History-of-Religions School,” in Religion in History (trans. James Luther Adams and Walter E. Bense; Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1991), 87-108: “Die Dogmatik ‘der religionsgeschichte Schule,’ “in Gesammelte Schrften (4 vols.; Tubingen: Scientia Aalen, 1962), 1:500-524. Troeltsch’s writings on the theme of history are found in Gesammelte Schrften, vol. 3, “Der Historismus und seine Probleme.”
12. Cf. the articles by Trutz Rendtorff et al., on the topic, “Troeltsch ou la religion dans les limites de la conscience historique,” Revue de Vhistoire des religions 214 (1997): 131-266.
13. Camille Froidevaux provides a good introduction in Ernst Troeltsch, la religion chretienne et le monde moderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 1-22.
14. Pierre Gisel gives some explanations in his introduction to Religion et Histoire, by Ernst Troeltsch (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1990), 7-20; and in Gisel, “Troeltsch: Un theologien pour aujourd’hui” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 383-414. Cf. Hartmut Ruddies, “Acceptation de la modernite et reformulation des taches de la theologie: Ernst Troeltsch,” Revue de theologie et de philosophie 130 (1998): 194ff Cf. Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 266.
15. Christoph Theobald, “Troeltsch et la methode historico-critique,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 265-66.
16. Rendtorff, “Religion et Histoire,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 274.
17. Ruddies, “Acceptation de la modernite,” 193-94.
18. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology” (1900), in Religion in History, 12: “Historische und dogmatische Methode in der Theologie,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:729-53.
19. Hugh R. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology: Schlemmacher to Barth (London: Nisbet, 1937), 189, in a chapter on Troeltsch that is still pertinent.
20. Troeltsch, “La crise de l’historisme,” in Religion etHistoire, 207; “Die heutige Krisis der Historic,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 3:1-11.
21. The distinction between historical fact and theological dogma is logically applied to the text of Scripture itself as a means of distinguishing between the authentic and the parasitic. For instance, in the discussion of the messianic consciousness, non-messianic strands in the gospel tradition are taken to be original and messianic ones to be later interpretations. Criticism is called upon to unravel the two. See Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 38-39.
22. Troeltsch, “Philosophic de la religion,” in Religion et Histoire, 86-87.
23. Cf Welch, Protestant Thought, 268ff
24. Hans-GeorgDrescher, “Le Kulturprotestantismus et Troeltsch,” in La theologie en postmodernite (ed. Pierre Gisel and Patrick Evrard; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1996), 83.
25. See Jacob Klapwijk, “A la recherche d’une philosophic ouverte: Wilhelm Dilthey et l’historicisme,” Hokhma 70 (1999): 13, on relativism. Cf. Drescher, “Le Kulturprotestantismus, “82ff
26. Jacques Waardenburg “Lhistoire de religions et le caractere absolu du christianisme,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 234-36.
27. Some commentators see Troeltsch as a reflection of Max Weber’s sociological thought, but see Yasukata, Ernst Troeltsch, 43ff
28. James Luther Adams, introduction to The Absoluteness of Christianity, by Ernst Troeltsch (London: SGM Press, 1972), 8. Cf Welch, Protestant Thought, 297.
29. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology, 197, 199. This judgment can be justified in that Troeltsch calls God the source of all historical experience.
30. Ruddies, “La verite au courant de l’histoire,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 37.
31. Troeltsch, “Philosophic de la Religion,” in Religion et Histoire, 86-87.
32. Troeltsch, “L’absoluite du christianisme et l’histoire de la religion,” in Histoire des religions et destin de la theologie (vol. 3 of CEuwes; Paris/Geneva: Gerf/Labor et Fides, 1996), 98.
33. Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (London: Lutterworth, 1934), 64. On the History of Religions School see David Fergusson, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 434-54.
34. Troeltsch, “Was heisst ‘Wesen des Ghristentums’?,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 2:386-451. Cf Welch, Protestant Thought, 300, who considers that the notion of the act of believing as a form of individual responsibility places Troeltsch alongside Pascal, Coleridge, James, or Kierkegaard.
35. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method,” 20ff
36. Troeltsch, “Labsoluite du christianisme,” §4.
37. Troeltsch’s development of a critical methodology is correctly understood when placed in the context of the general theory of his historical program, and dogmatics done in that perspective; see Yasukata, Ernst Troeltsch, ch. 3, 97ff
38. Edgar Krentz, The Historical Critical Method (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 56-61, describes them as the axioms of modern historical research.
39. James Barr, Fundamentalism (London: SCM Press, 1977), 124.
40. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method,” 15.
41. Ibid., 43.
42. Troeltsch, “De la contingence des verites historiques,” in Religion et Histoire, 236. Lessing actually spoke of necessary truths of reason.
43. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method,” 13.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 14.
46. Theobald, “Troeltsch et la methode,” 250.
47. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method,” 14.
48. Adams, “Introduction,” 10. Cf. Welch, Protestant Thought, 275-82.
49. Klapwijk, “Ala recherche,” 11.
50. Cf. T F. Torrance, “Hermeneutics according to F. D. E. Schleiermacher,” SJT 21 (1968): 257-67; and Dietrich Korsch, “Identite et integration: Le rapport entre religion et culture dans Pinterpretation troeltschienne de Schleiermacher,” in Histoireet theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 41-61.
51. The neo-Kantian distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of value, dear to Albrecht Ritschl, left a mark on his prodigal pupil.
52. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology, 202, speaks of “the universal divine transparency of the world.”
53. Troeltsch, “Die Bedeutungder Geschichtlichkeit Jesu fur den Glauben” (1911), mDieAbsolut-heit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte und zwei Schriften zur Theologie (ed. Trutz Rendtorff; Gtiters-loh:Mohn, 1973), 132-62; also ‘mTroe\tsch,HistoiredesReligwnsetDestinde!a TheologiemCEuvres, 3:305-30.
54. Troeltsch, “Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit,” 132-33.
55. Ibid., 151.
56. Cf. Jean-Marc Aveline, L’enjeu christologique en theologie des religions: Le debat Tillich-Toeltsch (Paris: Gerf, 2002), passim; Sarah Goakley, Christ Without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
57. Troeltsch, “Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit,” 132-33.
58. Ibid., 156.
59. Cf. Johann Hinrich Glaussen, Die Jesus-Deutung von Ernst Troeltsch im Kontext der liberalen Theologie (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 259-74.
60. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology, 203.
61. Theobald, “Troeltsch et la methode,” 248.
62. Troeltsch, “Contingency,” ERE 4:87-89; Troeltsch, “Historiography,” ERE 6:716-23. Cf Troeltsch, “La crise de l’historisme” and “De la contingence des verites historiques,” in Religion el Histoire, 197-262.
63. Troeltsch, “Historiography,” 719b.
64. Ibid., 720.
65. Ibid., 721.
66. Ibid., 722b.
67. On the importance of the notion of individuality for Troeltsch, see Wilhelm Grab, “Individualite, histoire et religion: Lignes directrices du concept d’individualite chez Ernst Troeltsch,” in Histoire et theologie chez Ernst Troeltsch, 293-313.
68. Troeltsch, “Contingency,” 89b.
69. Ibid.
70. Troeltsch, “Christianity Among World Religions,” in Christian Thought: Its History and Application; Lectures Written for Delivery in England during March 1923 (London: University of London Press. 1923), 32.
71. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology, 197.
72. Many, including Pannenberg, have underlined this fact. See Wolfhart Pannenberg Theology and the Philosophy of Science (London: Darton, Longmann & Todd, 1976), 103-16. Gf. E. Frank Tipper, The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (London: SGM Press, 1974), 108-15.
73. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, 111.
74. Anthony G. Thiselton, referring to Pannenberg, in The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description (Exeter: Paternoster, 1980), 74-84.
75. Alan D. Galloway, Wolfhart Pannenberg (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), 48. Cf. Tipper, The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, 58.
76. Cf. the criticisms of historicism made by Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957); and Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), ch. 16.
77. T F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 13-20. Torrance says that theological concepts are essentially open ones.
78. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Redemptive Event and History,” in Basic Questions in Theology (2 vols.: London: SCM Press, 1970), 1:48-49.
79. Thiselton, Two Horizons, 78.
80. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 41, 74-83.
81. See, e.g., David Brown, God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor and Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
82. Cf Richard B. Gaffin, God’s Word in Servant Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck on the Doctrine of Scripture (Jackson, Miss.: Reformed Academic Press, 2008), 98.
83. James Barr, “Reading the Bible as Literature,” BJRL 56 (1973): 10-33.
84. D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1996). ch. 2.
85. Cf. Thiselton, Two Horizons, 84. For Troeltsch, the question of presuppositions comes down to that of Kantian a prions. Cf. Ulrich Barth, “Troeltsch et Kant,” in Histoireettheologiechez Ernst Troeltsch. 73.
86. Troeltsch, “Historiography,” 722b.
87. Andre Gounelle, “Revelation et foi selon Troeltsch et Tillich,” RHPR81 (2001): 14ff, 27.
88. Troeltsch, “Historical and Dogmatic Method,” 46.
89. Kenton L. Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 76.
90. Cf. Gaffin, God’s Word in Servant Form, 21-24.
91. Ibid., 88, Gaffin quoting Bavinck. Cf. Bavinck, Informed Dogmatics, 1:441.