Neo-orthodoxy

Neither strictly Christian left nor right were members of the Christian neo-orthodoxy movement. These theologians have characteristics in commmon with both the left and the right. Its members include the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and the first generation American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. They rejected much of the liberalism of the social gospel, emphatically embracing the doctrine of original sin, but still held biblical criticism in high regard and never fully questioned the liberal foundations of science and academia—unlike anti-modernism, which discredits, ignores, or soft pedals biblical criticism and has always, continues to, and never shys away from such questioning. The origins of the neo-orthodoxy movement stem from Karl Barth's initial preaching in the way he had been taught at seminary, soon believing many of his own thoughts and words to be hypocrises, and then, subsequently rejecting and refuting 350 years of German, Swiss Protestant teaching—almost everything after or outside of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the Anabaptists. Karl Barth asserted that God is "wholly other" and that man must reshape himself to God's design and not the other way around as had become the norm in 19th century Swiss, German Christian theology. The movement was by no means unified. Still, one common characteristic is an enthusiam for the thought of the Russian Fedor Dostoevski and the Dane Soren Kierkegaard and a rejection of 19th century German theological thought (e.g., Wilhelm Herrmann).

American branch

The American branch of neo-orthodoxy is the theological literature by and on Reinhold Niebuhr, his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, and his friend whom he helped extract from Nazi Germany Paul Tillich. Within the American Academy and mainline churches from the 1930's through the 1960's the theological work of these three men eclipsed that of any others.

Reinhold Niebuhr's 1939 complaint against Liberal Christianity:

“

Liberal Christianity, in short, tended to follow modern culture in estimating both the stature and the virtue of man. It did not recognize that man is a spirit who can find a home neither in nature nor in reason, but only in God.

”

The last of the neo-orthodox theologians was Langdon Gilkey. He died in 2004.

European trunk and root

The European portion of neo-orthodoxy was in fact the movement's trunk and root. The root is clearly the work of Karl Barth yet it was intially not his but those of his colleague Emil Brunner read by the Americans Reinhold Niebuhr and H. Richard Niebuhr. It was the Niebuhr's who helped arrange for English translations of Brunner's work. English translations of Barth's work did not appear until after those of Brunner's. From an Anglo-American perspective Bart's work suffers from and is mired in the swamps of German dialectical thought. Hegelian dialectical thought is steadfastly rejected by the Anglo-American Academy (for example, the British academic Karl Popper waged a war consisting of many battles against dialectical thought, which is apparently as desctructive to the British and American Academy, and as incompatible, as plugging in a 120V/60Hz American appliance into a 240V/50Hz European outlet). Unlike Barth's work, Emil Brunner's did not dwell on what is alternatively called continental, Hegelian, and German dialectic.

Neo-orthodoxy and Christian Antimodernism

A useful but somewhat simplistic way of defining neo-orthodoxy is to define it as the rejection of Professor Wilhelm Herrmann teachings by some of his students—in this sense antimodernism is a branch of neo-orthodoxy. For John Gresham Machen, who traveled to Germany and studied with Herrmann in 1905, is a key figure in the formation of Christian Conservativism. Above all, the common ground between anti-modernism, and Neo-orthodoxy is the acceptance and evangelism of the doctrine of Sin. A significant difference is the solution to the problem of sin. Antimodernism espouses the doctrine of Salvation, while neo-orthodoxy remains eerily silent on such a solution despite all its vociferousness about the doctrine of Sin.

Neo-orthodoxy and Reformed theology

Another way to categorize and define neo-orthodoxy is as a subset of Reformed Christianity. This was done by George M. Marsden and others in the book Reformed Theology in America: A History of Its Modern Development (Eerdmans, 1985).