The most significant event for the doing of theology in the last 200 years...

[SolaScriptura]

I'm sitting in a class and the professor just said that when it comes to an historically significant event with ramifications for the doing of theology, "most" professional theologians would say that Karl Barth's break with theological liberalism is the most significant thing to happen in the past 200 years.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

May I inquire as the identity of the Prof?

 

[greenbaggins]

Hmm, my opinion (please, keep this off the record) is that the publication of Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now is the most historically significant event with ramifications for the doing of theology.

On a more serious note, there are several events that could claim this spot, but I would probably say the re-organization of Princeton Seminary, and the aftermath of the startup of Westminster Seminary could lay a fair claim to this spot, since the liberals all followed Princeton, and the conservatives all followed Westminster. Another event, though, that could challenge this one is the adoption of the German division of theological disciplines at Princeton in the 19th century. With the adoption of the Enlightenment thinking in theology, this division resulted in the fracturing of the disciplines with the resultant chasms between systematic theology and biblical theology, and between practical theology and all the other branches of theology.

 

[Jack K]

I like the first Princeton answer. It was the central event in the liberalism/orthodoxy divide, wasn't it?

What would the rest of you (better historians than I am) say about:
1. The rise of revivalism/decisionism?
2. The rise neo-pentecostalism?
Both seem to have had widespread effects all over the world. Can we pick out a single event related to either of these that might be a candidate for most significant?

 

[greenbaggins]

I like the first Princeton answer. It was the central event in the liberalism/orthodoxy divide, wasn't it?

What would the rest of you (better historians than I am) say about:
1. The rise of revivalism/decisionism?
2. The rise neo-pentecostalism?
Both seem to have had widespread effects all over the world. Can we pick out a single event related to either of these that might be a candidate for most significant?

As to revivalism, that one's fairly easy: the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible. Neo-Pentecostalism would be for someone else to answer.

 

[Marrow Man]

'm sitting in a class and the professor just said that when it comes to an historically significant event with ramifications for the doing of theology, "most" professional theologians would say that Karl Barth's break with theological liberalism is the most significant thing to happen in the past 200 years.

Ben, I'm not kidding when I say this: I saw your thread and was going to make a joking comment about your attending this class at Erskine as being the "most significant event." Then I read your OP. Sad, really sad.

 

[Marrow Man]

What would the rest of you (better historians than I am) say about:
1. The rise of revivalism/decisionism?
2. The rise neo-pentecostalism?
Both seem to have had widespread effects all over the world. Can we pick out a single event related to either of these that might be a candidate for most significant?

For the first one, I'd say the Cane Ridge (KY) "revival" was the most significant event, but obviously not for good reasons. The revivalism which followed was heavily influenced by this, but it is more of an American phenomenon and not necessarily a world-wide one (though American religion does affect other places because of media, missions, etc.).

The most significant even in Pentecostalism is the Azusa Street Revival around 1900, though this is arguably a result of #1. But you asked about neo-Pentecostalism, so I'm not sure about that one.

What about the publication of The Fundamentals in the early 20th century? Might that qualify for a significant theological event?

 

[MarieP]

The rise of the charismatic movement, Finneyism and Billy Graham, the liberal trend as Machen so faithfully sounded the alarm on in Christianity and Liberalism, the social gospel, dispensationalism, the New Perspectives on Paul, the New Calvinism, the emerging/emergent church.

 

[Notthemama1984]

In academic circles, Barth might be the right answer.

In general Christianity, I would say Graham.

 

[earl40]

In general Christianity, I would say Graham.

May I ask if this is good or bad? Of course I just asked but in your opinion?

 

[CharlieJ]

What about the publication of The Fundamentals in the early 20th century? Might that qualify for a significant theological event?

I don't think so. If I remember Marsden and others correctly, the Fundamentals was imagined and funded by a private individual, dropped off on a few thousand preacher's doorsteps, and made almost no waves in the theological world. In other words, it's just that the title of the book sounds like it should be significant. It really wasn't. Who even reads it these days? I went to Bob Jones University and never read a word of it until after I graduated.

For fundamentalism, I think the Niagra prophecy conferences are much more significant.

 

[Marrow Man]

I don't think so. If I remember Marsden and others correctly, the Fundamentals was imagined and funded by a private individual, dropped off on a few thousand preacher's doorsteps, and made almost no waves in the theological world.

Really? I would be interested in seeing that source in its context. If that's true, then it makes no sense why Henry Emerson Fosdick would have responded the way he did (e.g., "Shall the Fundamentalist Win?"), or that there would have been a response like the "Auburn Affirmation" in the northern Presbyterian church, along with the subsequent split and the formation of the OPC. But perhaps he is making a distinction between "the theological world" (in the sense of academia) and events that actually impacted the real world (e.g., the rise of evangelicalism in the 20th century). But theological academia was not the target audience for The Fundamentals, either.

And, to be technical, The Fundamentals were financed by two individuals (wealthy California oilmen, brothers) and three million copies (not a few thousand) were sent out to theological students, pastors, and missionaries.

 

[jwright82]

I'm sitting in a class and the professor just said that when it comes to an historically significant event with ramifications for the doing of theology, "most" professional theologians would say that Karl Barth's break with theological liberalism is the most significant thing to happen in the past 200 years.

I know that his book on Romans, the second edition, was described as bomb going off in the liberal playground, or something similer to that. Did your your professor mention why this was so?

 

[MarieP]

Did it have to do with imputation of sin?

 

[Contra_Mundum]

I'm willing to at least consider the significance of Barth, and his "break."

If one looks at the whole-world of theological discourse, and not merely "our" smaller stream, or slightly larger stream of folks who hold to an older Protestantism, Barth's influential break certainly looks like a watershed moment, a tidal shift. It was a turn from massive dominance of the "immanent" in theology, to a rediscovery of the "trancendent."

Of course, from the mind of someone like myself, who thinks with CVT that Barth's "neo-orthodoxy" was more of a "neo-modernism," I'm bound to see more of the continuity between Barth and his predecessors and mentors, than I see discontinuity. I'm not as likely to think very much of significance happened when Barth rejected the "liberal" approach, which made religion mainly just another branch of humanism. Barth's handling of Scripture looks pretty subjective to us, but what made him so radical in his context was his appropriation of Scripture at all.

Scripture's independent ability to speak without the filtering of the critical scholars, and a "recontextualizing" of ancient, foreign, incomprehensible god-talk, was a "new idea." What Barth did NOT do, however, was adopt the principle that God spoke once, and then demanded that his creatures change into an attitude that actually received such speech as embodying formal demands for conformity in thought and life. A Barthian approach still holds that God speaks in such a way that we sometimes "catch" what he's saying to us, in our time, which is different, perhaps even contradictory, from what he says in another place or another time. In this, he is as modernistic as what he rejected.