Theology for the Tent Meeting

Many people divide American Protestantism into two stereotypes: the liberals, whose faith is supported by reason, and the conservatives or Evangelicals, who favor an emotional religion of testimonials and tent meetings. One leading Evangelical, however, contends that the underlying principles are just the reverse. Liberal theology is mired in a swamp of subjectivity, he says, while Evangelicalism stands or falls on the basis of reason, not emotion.

That argument comes from the Rev. Carl F.H. Henry in the first two volumes of his projected four-volume work, God, Revelation and Authority (Word Books; $12.95 per volume). Publication of the two volumes establishes Baptist Henry, 64, as the leading theologian of the nation's growing Evangelical flank.

Evangelicals often buttress their preachments with the phrase "the Bible says ..." and see no need for further evidence. But Henry, who holds doctorates in both theology and philosophy, knows that modern intellectuals need to be persuaded concerning biblical authority. For two centuries, he writes, "divine revelation has been stretched into everything, stripped into nothing."

No Flaw. Skepticism about the Bible, he thinks, results not from any flaw in the book itself but from the antisupernatural mood of modern philosophies. Logical positivism, for example, declares that statements about God are nonsense because they cannot be verified by direct empirical observation.

But that argument is "self-defeating," Henry says. Other philosophers note that the rule of empirical verification cannot itself be verified empirically.

Henry finds secular philosophies inadequate not only because of logical weaknesses and unexamined presuppositions, but also because they do not take into account the breadth of human experience. Without revelation from God, he says, philosophers cannot prove their case for the dignity of mankind, nor can they provide any coherent basis for the truths and values to which people, religious or not, want to cling. In his view, the Bible offers the most comprehensive and satisfying explanation of "the meaning and worth of individual existence."

Modern theologians have been so overwhelmed by the onslaught of secular philosophies, Henry believes, that they have retreated into various forms of subjectivism to protect their claims of truth. One of Henry's major targets is the late Karl Earth, who thought that God could be known only through a mortal's inner decision and obedience. The result of such Christian existentialism has not been the protection of faith, Henry argues, but the "suicide of theology."

In proposing his alternative system, Henry does not make his case strictly by reasoning. But he proposes that if God exists at all, it is reasonable to suppose that he has spoken to man and that he has conveyed rather specific information: "Christianity does not communicate a message sounded by heavenly harps, couched in exotic tongues and understood only by angels. It employs intelligible language and truths comprehensible to rational human beings." In particular, God has given mankind the Bible, which can be understood by everyone.

Reason is not itself the source of truth, Henry believes, but rather an "instrument" given by God to discover the truth that God has communicated. Without reason, man "could never intelligibly discriminate God from the not-God, right from wrong, truth from untruth." Unlike many Evangelicals, Henry therefore insists that the Bible must be open to the tests of logical consistency and coherence.

Henry then turns to the development of " 15 theses" that describe the nature of the Bible. His most controversial material, however, is left for Volume III. In this section Henry will defend the belief that the Bible was totally error-proof ("inerrant") when it was originally written, and that later copies and translations "convey the truth of revelation in reliable verbal form."

Down to Earth. For a writer whose volumes are peppered with words like supracosmical and mythometaphysical, Carl Henry began his career in down-to-earth fashion. After high school, he started at a $12-a-week job selling newspaper subscriptions. By age 20 he had worked himself up to being Long Island's youngest newspaper editor, on the Smithtown Star. One morning in 1933, Church Dropout Henry found himself in a car discussing religion with an ardent layman. After three hours, he says, "I made a commitment to Christ. I knew my life was no longer my own." So even the faith of a rationalist was born in a typical Evangelical way.

Henry first won fame in 1948, while teaching at California's Fuller Theological Seminary, when he wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. It became the rallying point for the "New Evangelicals," who wanted to embrace orthodox doctrine while rejecting Fundamentalist excesses. From 1956 to 1968, Henry was Evangelicalism's foremost journalist and strategist, as the founding editor of Christianity Today. Since leaving the journal after a complex dispute with its board, Henry has become a freelance theologian based in Arlington, Va., and is currently the "lecturer at large" with World Vision.

Henry recognizes that many Evangelicals may be too busy with "soul winning" to plow through his work. Nonetheless, "if the Evangelical movement settles merely for popular appeals and does not sink its roots in theology, it will be in serious trouble in another generation." To help provide these roots, he hopes to finish his third volume next year and the final one by 1980.

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