The Limits of Neoorthodoxy

Our study of biblical authority has established that the Scriptures are breathed out by God, inerrant in their original writings, and recognized by the church as the authoritative canon of God’s Word. But the history of the church shows that threats to biblical authority do not always come in the form of outright denial. Some of the most subtle challenges arise from those who appear to honor the Bible while quietly undermining its nature.

In the aftermath of two devastating world wars, many theologians recognized that the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth century had failed. Its optimistic view of human progress lay shattered in the rubble of Europe. Its reduction of faith to mere sentiment left the church without a message strong enough to address the horrors of the twentieth century. Karl Barth and others associated with the movement known as Neoorthodoxy attempted to restore the Bible to prominence, and they rightly rejected liberalism’s dismissal of the supernatural. They spoke powerfully about the transcendence of God and the centrality of Christ, and in many respects their work represented a genuine step in the right direction.

Yet Neoorthodoxy did not go far enough. Its proponents valued the Bible, but they did not affirm that its propositions are objectively true in the traditional sense. For the Neoorthodox, the Bible becomes the Word of God in the moment when the Holy Spirit uses it to bring a person into an encounter with Christ, and apart from such an encounter the text remains a merely human document. This view creates a dangerous separation between personal experience and objective truth. Without an objectively true and authoritative text, the church has no stable ground on which to stand.

Moreover, the Neoorthodox distinction between propositional truth and personal encounter is foreign to Scripture. Today’s passage commands us to love God with all our mind as well as with our heart and soul (Matt. 22:37–38). The Bible never pits intellectual engagement against personal devotion. Jesus Himself interpreted the events of His own life through propositional teaching (Luke 24:25–27, 44–47), and without Scripture’s authoritative interpretation of redemptive history, we would never fully understand what God has done in Christ or what He requires in response. As Dr. R.C. Sproul observed, God’s revelation addresses the whole person, and any theology that severs the mind from the heart does violence to the character of divine truth.