Christ, History and Apocalyptic: A Symposium, part 2

Today's engagement with Nathan Kerr's Christ, History and Apocalyptic focuses on chapter 2 entitled "Ernst Troeltsch: The Triumph of Ideology and the Eclipse of Apocalyptic."  [Part 1 here.]  Interacting with this chapter is David Congdon, a PhD Student in Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of the blog The Fire and the Rose.

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I am honored to have been asked to comment on the second chapter of Nate Kerr's book on Christ, History and Apocalyptic.  I have learned much from this book, in part because it argues for a position that is largely my own already-and it does so in a way that is winsome, learned, and replete with moments of brilliance.  Nate's creative work is constructed, on one level, around "the eclipse, re-emergence, failure, and promise of Christian apocalyptic."  The second chapter on Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) examines the first "critical moment" in this genealogy: the eclipse of apocalyptic.  What I will do here is briefly summarize Nate's argument in this chapter and then conclude with some reflective comments and questions regarding the work as a whole.

One of the key figures in the sociology of religion, Troeltsch is a German Protestant theologian who stands in the tradition of Schleiermacher and Ritschl.  Trained within modern theological liberalism, Troeltsch takes the historical-critical method as his starting-point, which, as he says, "relativizes everything . . . in the sense that every historical structure and moment can be understood only in relation to others and ultimately to the total context, and that standards of values cannot be derived from isolated events but only from an overview of the historical totality."  This is the key historicist point from which the rest follows: particular contingent events are all relativized by the historical method and find their significance not in themselves but rather in their "historical totality," in their teleological indication of universal, unconditional, and absolute reason.  Troeltsch's own project is a radicalizing of this historicist foundation for the purposes of establishing a Christian social ethics.

As Nate emphasizes from the start, Troeltsch's project is nothing less than a "new metaphysics of history," by which he means "a new conception of the relation of the relative to the absolute, of the particular to the universal."  Without rehearsing all the details here, I will note the key aspects of Troeltsch's vision as they set the stage for Nate's counter-proposal.  First, since everything in history is contingent and relative, the realm of the universal and absolute "lies beyond history," though in a certain relationship with contingent particularity.  Second, Troeltsch's radical historicism resolves this tension between the relative and the absolute by understanding the absolute as the telos of intrahistorical development.  The absolute arises out of the progress of history.  Third, Troeltsch's historicist metaphysics results in "an ethic of 'mastery' and 'control,'" in that human beings are now responsible for constructing the eschatological future through their sociopolitical action in the present.  Fourth, on the basis of a subjective-individual "religious a priori," Troeltsch conceives of the participation of the human in the absolute in terms of a spiritual absorption into the divine life.

While Nate seeks to retain Troeltsch's emphasis on historical contingency, he rejects the nature/spirit dualism that results in an ethics of mastery for the sake of constructing an ideal historical future.  According to Nate, Troeltsch's metaphysics is intrinsically "Constantinian," in the sense defined by John Howard Yoder.  Christian ethics takes the form of political compromise with the established order for the purpose of mastering history.  Christian mission, likewise, is a compromise with the present social structures for the purpose of establishing human unity by means of the universalization of the Christian religion within history.  Since true religion falls on the "spirit" side of Troeltsch's dichotomy, the gospel is fundamentally "apolitical" in nature.  And it is precisely this separation between spirit and nature which allows Troeltsch to advocate the mastery of history (nature) by means of sociopolitical compromise for the sake of realizing the absolute-eschatological unity of humanity with the divine (spirit).

It's not hard to see what the consequences of this vision are.  If the gospel has no sociopolitical implications, and if compromise with current sociopolitical structures is a necessary part of Christian mission, then we find in Troeltsch a justification for the German Christian alliance with Nazism.  In short, Troeltsch's vision of Christianity is "religion in the service of ideology."

Nate contrasts Troeltsch with the messianic vision of Walter Benjamin, whose "Theses on the Philosophy of History" offer an anti-historicist, and thus anti-ideological, conception of human existence.  Against Troeltsch's idealistic historicism, Nate proposes an "apocalyptic historicism."  With Troeltsch, Nate maintains the emphasis on historical particularities, but instead of viewing them as natural "givens" that are to be mastered and controlled, Nate's apocalyptic christology means that contingencies are "transformed by a decisive, singularly irruptive act of the transcendent God."

On all of these points, I find myself in basic agreement with Nate.  The section on Benjamin is a highlight of this chapter, and I've made use of it in my own work.  My differences with Nate's book come in the following chapter on Barth, where he criticizes Barth for abstracting from contingent historical reality by interpreting the historical existence of Jesus as the temporal manifestation of an ontological reality already actualized in eternity.  My own interpretation of Barth-influenced by Rudolf Bultmann, Eberhard Jüngel, Bruce McCormack, and Robert Jenson-views the eternal reality of God as ontologically actualized in the historical.  The history of Jesus Christ is not the temporal recapitulation of an eternal history; rather, the history of Jesus Christ is the historicization of God.  A fuller response to Nate on this point will have to wait for a future engagement.  For now, I think it's appropriate to close with a quote from Barth in which he refers to Troeltsch as a key moment in his rejection of liberalism:

Troeltsch was a gifted and, in his own way, a pious man. . . . But it was obvious that with him the doctrine of faith was on the point of dissolution into endless and useless talk, and that for all the high self-consciousness of its conduct Neo-Protestantism in general had been betrayed on to the rocks, or the quicksands.  It was because we could no longer take part in this that about the end of the second decade of this century we left the ship.  For some it was to Catholicism . . . . For others it meant a fresh beginning of serious theological study on a quite different basis. (Church Dogmatics IV/1, 386-87)

Clearly, Nate Kerr has followed in Barth's footsteps.  For Nate, as with Barth, Troeltsch forms the basis for "a fresh beginning of serious theological study on a quite different basis."  The result is a creative, first-rate work of theology.

David W. Congdon
PhD Student in Systematic Theology
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ

Comments

[Richard G. Lanzara, Ph.D.]

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[Thomas Bridges]

David,

Thanks for the post. I have one question: how is the historicizationof God not a Hegelian move? (Or is it, and is intentional on your part?). Forgive me if you have already answered this question elsewhere (I have missed it if you have).

Thanks,
Thomas