Return to Theology

In the 20th Century traditional theology has taken a back-seat to political ideology, has not even done much back-seat driving. Reason: theologians, unlike political ideologists, have not known exactly where they want to go, nor how fast. Princeton Theological Seminary's President Dr. John Alexander Mackay, an articulate, lofty-minded Presbyterian with missionary experience, summed the matter up in his "historymaking" inaugural address at Princeton last year: "The new crusading religions (Fascism, Naziism, Communism) . . . are schooled in massive thought systems, which make the average Christians who come up against them feel like infants. . . . The churches must return to theology and begin to agonize about the formulation of belief, or they will perish. . . ."

Last week, as Princeton and other U. S. seminaries were opening, evidence could be found that U. S. theologians are beginning to think about getting back in the driver's seat. True, U. S. churches were not agonizing in public over their beliefs. But important seminarians averred that young men were taking a new interest in theological problems, are this year showing that interest by attending seminaries in larger numbers than before.

Presbyterian Princeton Seminary last week took a strategic seat in the theological van. To Princeton as guest professor (one year) of Systematic Theology --and possibly to fill permanently its Hodge professorship in that subject-- came one of the ablest of European theologians, Dr. Emil Brunner, late of the University of Zurich. Princeton thus reinforced its support of the "New Orthodoxy," the new theology based on old revealed truths and largely associated with the name of Switzerland's Karl Earth (TIME, April 25). Often bracketed with Earth, but not his follower, Dr. Brunner is a Bible theologian, orthodox enough in the Reformed faith to suit watchful Princeton Presbyterians.

Arrival of this thinker pointed the fact that U. S. theological Modernists (counterparts of ideological Liberals) are at last awaking to the essential weakness of their position: they have based their theology on emotion rather than intellect, have sought truth with their nerves rather than with their minds.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.