Bakernitions
Apr 19th, 2009 by Robert C. Baker
Inclusivism
Support of all belief systems except those that promote exclusive beliefs or doctrines.
Reductionism
Theory that complex ideas or concepts can be broken down into essential components. Ironically, theological liberalism and fundamentalism are both reductionistic: liberalism reduces Christianity to core ethical acts or values, while fundamentalism reduces Christianity down to non-negotiable doctrines. As the twin daughters of reductionism, liberalism and fundamentalism prove themselves compatible toward utilitarian ends.
Systematic categories
Word placeholders, or shorthand for systematic theology. Examples: sin, grace, justification. Systematic categories can be misused as übervalues.
Templating
Applying übervalues in a discussion or debate in order to silence dissent. Übervalues are never expressed to in order to gain adherents, but rather to force a predetermined conclusion.
Twentieth-Century Project
What is the Twentieth-Century Project?
The Twentieth-Century Project (TCP) is the attempt by late nineteenth through early twenty-first century Lutheran theologians to salvage and/or make relevant Lutheranism by accommodating, in varying degrees, contemporary science, philosophy, history, sociology, and culture. Philosophical influences of the TCP stretch back to the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, which sought to establish human reason as the preeminent source of authority over against divine revelation. As reason collapsed into emotionalism/experience and the promotion of pleasure in the Modern and Post-modern eras, the TCP is is no longer an effective means to address or positively influence culture or culture’s influence on the Church. In short, the Twentieth Century Project is dead.
TCP’s viability required a change in epistemology and theological method in order to reach predetermined theological conclusions, superficially appearing Christlich oder Lutherisch, that would be acceptable to the Church and the outside world. To accomplish the Project, in addition to the inspired Scripture (accepted along a broad and conflicting spectrum of “authority”), TCP practicioners incorporated the Darwinian theory of evolution, historicism, sociology, psychology, and other “modern” sciences in order to present a theological cosmology acceptable to an increasingly hostile world and an increasingly doubting Church.
Chief Marks of the Twentieth-Century Project
1. TCP appeals chiefly to Luther, or Lutheran systematic categories or über-values, and secondarily to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.
2. TCP leaps over Lutheran Orthodoxy to its own opinion “rediscovered” in the writings of Luther.
3. In certain beliefs and practices, there appears to be no continuity between Luther and the Lutheran Orthodoxy and the beliefs and practices of TCP.
4. TCP uncharitably, although on occasion fairly, characterizes Lutheran Orthodoxy as unfaithful to the “spirit” of Luther due to “Romanising, systematizing, or philosophizing” tendencies.
5. TWP practioners can be divided into two camps: Schleiermachian (focusing on core ethical acts or values derived from inerrant human experience) and Barthian (focusing on non-negotiable doctrines derived from a literalist reading of Scripture).
6. Barthian TCP practicioners devalue Natural Law and human reason, contrary to Luther and the Orthodox Lutherans. In this view, “sin” has nigh destroyed human reason’s ability to understand the natural realm even apart from spiritual matters.
7. The TCP is inherently inimical to the repristination of Lutheran Orthodoxy envisioned by C.F.W. Walther and the early Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
The Death of the Twentieth-Century Project. . . and such
1. The rapid decline in moral values, particularly concerning marriage, sex, and our feelings about sex (”sexuality”), have exposed the serious inadequacies of the TCP.
2. Christian “sexuality” books or Church documents such as the ELCA’s Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust give evidence that the TCP is dead.
3. Inclusivism is not the first breath of Post-Modernism, it is the last dying gasp of Modernism. Philosophically, Modernism died in 1950. In the Church, Modernism died in 2009. We have arrived at a post-Post-Modern Church future.
4. TCP is mind-numbing because it sounds Lutheran and biblical due to its twentieth-century air of antiquity. We are so used to thinking this way we find it difficult to conceive of something different.
5. What is needed is a return to Lutheran Orthodoxy, including strong catechesis, liturgical focus, and a distinctively Lutheran ethos based on Holy Scripture and affirmed by good reasoning as we observe our natural world.
Übervalues
Meta-ideals disconnected from rational scrutiny and grounding in the natural realm. People appeal to meta-ideals but reject rational inquiry into their basis because they are “self-evident.” In the secular realm, we extol concepts such as truth, justice, equality, and so on. While these ideals have a basis in reason and corporeality, they can be misused to serve alternative ends. Templating the übervalue of equality for example, once could attempt to redefine marriage as the legal recognition of two persons who are in love with each other regardless of their sex, as opposed to the traditional concept of marriage, namely, the legal recognition of a life-long union between a man and a wife for the purpose of procreation and mutual aid.
Human sexuality: By templating the übervalue of equality same-sex union advocates have argued that it is an inequality for two adults, who love each other, regardless of their sex, inability to procreate, and concurrent health and stability issues, to marry each other.
Theology: In theological discourse, übervalues frequently are frequently derived from systematic categories, that is, word placeholders that have a common appeal to a diverse audience within a particular communion. So, for example, those promoting same-sex blessings and the ordination of homosexual clergy in same-sex relationships appeal to conscience as an übervalue endorsed by Martin Luther.
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