What Can We Believe? A Study Of The New Protestantism

WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE BOOKS BY JAMES GORDON GILKEY A FAITH FOR THE NEW GENERATION SECRETS OF EFFECTIVE LIVING THE CERTAINTY OF GOD SOLVING LIFES EVERYDAY PROBLEMS MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF MODERN DOUBT MANAGING ONES SELF WHAT CAN WE BELIEVE TO MRS, ALBERT DODGE SMITH A small return for twenty years of kindness FOREWORD THERE have been three clearly discernible periods in the long history of Christianity. The first covered the first one hundred and fifty years of our era, and was dominated by Jesus, Paul and John. It is usually called the primi tive or apostolic period. The second lasted from the middle of the second century to the be ginning of the sixteenth, and was dominated by Athanasius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. We might term it the period of early Catholicism. The third, the period of early Protestantism, be gan in 1517 and continued till the closing years of the nineteenth century. Its dominating figures were Luther and Calvin. The thesis of this book is that Christianity has now entered a fourth period in its evolution, the period of the New Protestantism. The different churches found in the modern world reflect the varying forms of Christian be vii viii Foreword lief and practice which have emerged in these four periods. The Protestant sects which em phasize such doctrines as divine healing and the second coming of Christ are recrudescences of the Christianity which flourished in the first century. Their familiar claim that they represent primitive or apostolic Christianity is a valid one. The Catholic Church of to-day represents the continua tion and development of that form of Christian ity which began to take shape during the second century. The conservative branch ofpresent-day Protestantism, clinging to a belief in the verbal infallibility of the Bible and retaining a strictly Biblical theology, is the successor of that type of Christianity which Luther and Calvin called into being. The present group of liberal Protestant churches is the matrix within which the New Protestantism, with its new beliefs and its new objectives, is now taking shape. In the effort to establish and maintain friendly relations between all the Protestant churdbes many recent religious leaders have deliberately minimised the differences between the Old Prot estantism and the New. They have claimed that Foreword ix the two teach essentially the same doctrines, and that the difference between the two is only a dif ference in terminology. All of us realize there are many beliefs which the two systems do hold in common, and ail of us agree it is of prime im portance to establish within Protestantism a better spirit of cooperation. But the attempt to manu facture a superficial and temporary harmony at the cost of concealing significant and irreconcil able differences of attitude and approach seems to some of us a serious blunder. For one thing it will rob Protestantism of the support of that ever-enlarging group which is openly dissatisfied with nineteenth-century orthodoxy and which in sistently demands something better. We feel that the wise, and certainly the candid, course for lib erals is to confess frankly that their gospel is at least partially new, to state clearly what this new gospel is, and then to explain why they feel com pelled to proclaim it. This at any rate is the task undertaken by this volume. la arranging and presenting this material I have tried to do twothings. The first Is to state the new beliefs in positive fashion, spending as x Foreword little time as possible in analyzing and criticiz ing the beliefs of yesterday. Most laymen and this book is intended primarily for them are not interested in being told what they should not be lieve. Their desire is to hear what beliefs they can accept. In these chapters I have sought to meet their familiar and essentially reasonable de mand...