What is Progressive Theology? Part One of Four

The term ‘progressivism’ once applied to a nineteenth century, modernist philosophical belief in the progress of society that came to a shocking demise with the First World War.  Today it refers to social reform that is the social expression of postmodernity.  In this essay in four parts, four points about a progressive theology will be considered.  First, I will describe the work of theology and say more about my choice of the label ‘Progressive Theology’.  It is very different from the liberal theology of the modernist era, let alone orthodox theology.  Second, I will note how this theology functions more like art and artistic expression than theology as textual interpretation or systematic theology.  Third, I will comment on the hermeneutic involved in Progressive Theology.  It is something that has long been with us now in liberation theology, where ideology drives a reader-response hermeneutic.  It rejects the idea that an author’s words relate to the author’s intentions and thereby denies textual authority. Fourth, I will conclude with an example in how Revelation 7.9 has been given a new interpretation in order to provide textual support for a progressive multicultural and diversity agenda.

Enquiry and the Work of Theology

What is the work of theology?  I would suggest it can be understood in one of three ways.  These involve what Alasdair MacIntyre describes as the incommensurable versions of enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition.[1]  By using these terms, MacIntyre avoids the implicit suggestion that one approach follows another as a movement in culture, as in the terminology ‘Modernism’ and ‘Postmodernism.’  Rather, these three versions of enquiry stand as alternative types of enquiry.

‘Encyclopedia’ is, as its name implies, characteristic of the view that greater and greater knowledge accumulates over time to bring assured, universally agreeable knowledge to a subject.  This knowledge rests on incontrovertible foundations that cannot be doubted (Rene Descartes).  It is scientifically established, the product of reason.  Methodologies for enquiry may be developed that will lead to the same results no matter who is conducting the study: knowledge is objective.  It is also integrated: what is found in one area of knowledge will not contradict what is found in another area of knowledge.

MacIntyre’s term ‘genealogy’ comes from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, in which the argument is presented that Western society is beholden to a Jewish, slave-morality that was perpetuated by the Church.  The ‘superman’ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) was the one who overrides this conditioning, and he can do so by recognizing the genealogical history of the morality that Western society has handed him.  He needs to deconstruct it and, with his own will and power, construct his own world.  Thus, the existentialism of Nietzsche and the postmodern views of Michel Foucault represent the Genealogical version of enquiry.

For a ‘tradition’ approach to enquiry, MacIntyre examines the theology of Thomas Aquinas.  One might note, however, that a tradition approach need not apply to one theological or religious tradition in particular—it is a mode of enquiry that can be considered with writers from Socrates on.  The characteristics of a tradition version of enquiry might be listed in the following points:

1.     prior commitment to a certain perspective

2.     narrative view of history

3.     locates authority in (a) a given community, (b) authoritative texts, and (c) a tradition of interpretation of these texts

4.     appreciates the need for a prerational reordering of the reader

5.     understands that a trusted teacher is needed to guide students in appropriating and understanding the tradition of the community

6.     uses dialectic, arguing towards first principles

 More traditional Protestant theology today tends to follow these aspects of tradition enquiry while also learning from academic scholarship in the more ‘encyclopedic’ version of enquiry.  However, MacIntyre intended to emphasise that these versions of enquiry are incommensurable.  Thus, traditional theology may use critical methods of interpretation, but it will not place science over faith.  It will proceed from faith to reason.  It is not simply an endorsement of past-held beliefs but is in itself a mode of enquiry.  It is open to enquiry because it believes that all areas of understanding will fit together because there is one God, the Creator of all things.

What is underway, however, is a development of Progressive Theology in the mode of what MacIntyre means by Genealogy.  This mode of enquiry is more like artwork than science and more like artistic expression than faithfulness to a tradition.  Some forms of art in a Genealogy mode of enquiry are expressionism, cubism, and dadaism, and these will be examined briefly later to identify the related views and perspectives of Progressive Theology.

 About the Name, ‘Progressive Theology’

 Before undertaking a more thorough description of Progressive Theology by seeing it as an art in the mode of Genealogical enquiry, why use the term itself?  The first answer is that the term ‘liberal’ is becoming somewhat contained rather than functioning as a general term for all things unorthodox, or all things resulting from the Enlightenment.  ‘Liberal Theology’ is not just liberal but is a particular way of understanding theology.  It had to do with the most general convictions in theology, such as we find in Adolf von Harnack’s What is Christianity? in 1900.  Harnack described Christianity as belief in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of mankind, and the infinite worth of the human soul (although he gives various definitions along these lines in the work).  Notice that nothing is said about Jesus Christ in this definition.  Liberalism was as general and ahistorical or non-contextual as possible in all its various forms.  It located ‘religion’ in experience—the external forms it took were inconsequential.

 This meaning of liberal in the world of theology is certainly not what people intend today when they choose a theological understanding that is not orthodox.  We need different terminology, and for that we can turn to terminology developing in social and political discussions already.  Increasingly, people are no longer ‘liberal’ but ‘progressive’.  Perhaps a further definition of ‘liberal’ outside of theology will help.  We might note that liberalism might be discussed as a perspective originating in the thought and period of John Locke.  Today, however, the term might be described in various emphases identified by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.  They say that the

main tenets of liberalism are political democracy, limitations on the power of government, the development of universal human rights, legal equality for all adult citizens, freedom of expression, respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate, respect for evidence and reason, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion.[2]

 Such views, MacIntyre would respond, are typical of Encyclopedia.  The description of liberalism provides a way to contrast progressivism.  Progressives, then, want majority rule, an expansion of government, tribal rights over other, opposing tribes, penalties for those who do not conform to the progressive agenda, a limitation on free speech, a championing of politically correct viewpoints over others, a use of science insofar as it can be made to support the causes of progressives, a focus on issues of social justice that make the Church irrelevant, and a disempowering of religion.  These last two points might be stated a little differently when defining a Progressive Theology, but this perspective, a hyper-Protestantism in a way, makes the Church quite irrelevant.  The Church equals individual Christians who take up public square causes of justice—as an entity of some sort in itself, it is irrelevant.  A Progressive theologian would not understand or appreciate, and would actively work against, a fundamental understanding of the important role of the Church in its communal aspect by social ethicist Stanley Hauerwas:

 I am…challenging the very idea that Christian social ethics is primarily to make the world more peaceable or just. Put starkly, the first social ethical task of the church is to be the church –the servant community. Such a claim may well sound self-serving until we remember what makes the church the church is its faithful manifestation of the peaceable kingdom in the world. As such the church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic.[3]

The term, ‘progressive theology,’ has been used before.  While the specific examples used in the definition no longer apply, the notion of a progressive theology was already stated by Charles Spurgeon in the 19^th century.  His more general description of this theology applies rather well, and who could state the matter better than the great preacher?  He begins by noting the developmental nature of Progressive Theology in that people see themselves as coming to a further, improved understanding than what the whole Church has taught always and everywhere (to use language defining orthodoxy by St. Vincent of Lérins).  He also notes how these progressives suddenly come out of the closet, so to speak.

In this age of progress, religious opinions move at railway speed. Within the last few weeks many have made an open advance of a very special kind; we say an open advance, for we suspect that secretly they had for a long time harbored the errors which now they have avowed. And what a revelation it is! Here, one sees a "Moderate" declaring his advance to "another gospel" in the boldest terms; and there, another, highly esteemed for his supposed love of the truth, stubbing it after the subtle manner of its most malicious foes. While some of the most perverted cunningly endeavor to appear orthodox, others of a braver nature come out in their true colors, and astonish us with the glaring hue of their heresy. That which makes manifest is light; and, however much we may deplore the unwelcome discoveries of the present controversy, we ought to be thankful that they are made, for it is better for us to know where we are, and with whom we are associating.[4]

Spurgeon likens their theology to a ‘cross-breed between nonsense and blasphemy’ in its attempt to add to the sound teaching of the Church through the centuries.  He says that they set themselves a presumptuous task like moles setting out to improve the sun’s light.  They think that they can ‘hatch out the meanings of the Infinite’, and they brood over hidden truths.  The ‘ever-developing theology’ will ‘owe a great deal to the wisdom of men.  God may provide the marble, but it is man who will carve the statue.’

Spurgeon’s designation of progressive theology had to do with the progression of theologians from orthodoxy in an age of Modernity.  While the same spirit of progress applies to what I am calling ‘Progressive Theology,’ I reserve the language—in keeping with the other ‘progressives’ in our day—for those working out a theology in keeping with postmodernity and the economically and politically left in today’s society.  The progressive spirit that Spurgeon found already in the air in the 1800s remains, and it is particularly a force in Marxist thought in the post-World War I era.  A ‘Critical Theory’ of what has come before, it is a ‘Progressive Theory’ of how things might be changed (without a view toward what that change will necessarily be in the ongoing, ‘long march through the institutions’[5] of society).

[to be continued with Part 2]

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[1] Alasdair Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1990).  See my Rival Versions of Theological Enquiry (Prague: International Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005).

[2] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everything (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Pub., 2020).

[3] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, UNDP, 1983), p.99.

[4] Charles Spurgeon, ‘Progressive Theology,’ in Sword and Trowel (April, 1888); available online: https://archive.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/dg10.php.

[5] The phrase was used by the communist student, Rudi Dutschke in a speech in 1967.  Cf. Loren Balhorn, ‘Joschka Fischer’s Long March,’ Jacobin (May, 23, 2018); online at: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/joschka-fischers-long-march/.