Montgomery, John Warwick. The Suicide of Christian Theology. Newburgh: Trinity Press, 1970.

Divided into three main sections

Section 1: Reacting

Chapter 1: The Suicide of Christian Theology and a Modest Proposal for Its Resurrection

Montgomery believes that contemporary theology has committed suicide by killing off orthodoxy, which is the sole reason for its existence (see illustration in #1-3). “Contemporary theologians have destroyed themselves by their unnecessary and unwarranted destruction of biblical revelation, on which all sound theology is based. The only hope for a resurrected theology lies in a recovery of confidence in the historical Christ and in the Scriptures He stamped with approval as God’s Word” (Pg 37).

1) [Good illustration] One of [Saul] Steinberg’s drawings well depicts the theme of the present essay. It pictures two men on a teeter-totter poised at the edge of a cliff. The man on the end of the board, which extends over the abyss, is firing the fatal shot at his companion who stands at the safe end of the board. The result of this action is the destruction not only of the one who receives the bullet but also of the one who fires it, since when the shot finds its mark and the murdered man falls, the teeter-totter will throw the killer into the chasm. In killing his supposed enemy, the aggressive gunman has in reality killed himself, for he is dependent on him for his own life. Pg 17

2) One of the best descriptions of the current secular dilemma is provided by Greenwich Village cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s fable, “George’s Moon.” George, the lone inhabitant of the moon, represents contemporary man in his fruitless search to discover meaning in life. His grandiose intellectual attempts (a la 19^th century idealism) to construct a universal philosophy border on the absurd (If I am here and I can see space then space must, in all logic, be able to see me…); his endeavor to lose himself in activistic programs leave him totally unsatisfied (“What good was it to collect rocks, to count craters, to fill the craters you’ve counted with the rocks you collected, to empty the craters and collect the rocks all over again?”); and his existential effort to establish universal significance by total concentration on his own existence results in the loss of his personal starting point (“Since he was the only thing around, George decided to believe in himself…Then he awoke one morning and found that he had forgotten his name”). Pg 19

3) Perhaps the best way to understand the self-destruction of contemporary theology is by way of a modern parable. I call it “The Parable of the Engineers.” Once a corps of engineers was assigned to continue the building of a magnificent cathedral, which had already been under construction many centuries and which had benefited from the devoted labor of great engineers of many generations. Some of the new engineers, however, began to question the architectural soundness of the plans. They said that the plans had numerous errors and contradictions in them. When asked for clarification by some of their fellows, they pointed out that architectural styles were changing and that the plans erroneously presented older stylistic characteristics and contradicted current styles. In reply, a few engineers noted that this did not make the plans erroneous or contradictory in themselves, and it was the architect’s business to draw the plans and the engineers’ to follow them. The majority did not agree, but they did not want to cast direct aspersions on the architect or abandon the construction. So they had recourse to a number of stratagems:
A) First, they argued that though the plans were erroneous and contradictory, this was not the architect’s fault and should be attributed to the draughtsmen. (Intransigent engineers claimed that the architect was always responsible, but this argument was brushed aside.) Endeavors were thus made to ignore the “draughtmen’s errors” while accepting the architect’s “true ideas” as conveyed by the draughtmen’s plans. But since the only knowledge of the architect’s ideas came by way of the draughtmen’s plans, this endeavor failed miserably and led to more radical suggestions. (It is perhaps worth pointing out that while these discussions went on, relatively little building was done.)
B) Then the engineers argued that the purpose of the plans had been misunderstood. They had not intended to be followed as such, but contact with them would increase the engineer’s inner sensitivity to true building methods. But one engineer’s inner sensitivity did not produce the same results as another’s, considerable confusion set in and a tower collapsed.
C) A particularly brilliant engineer now suggested that everything in the plans was symbolic of the architect himself. However, it was soon discovered that if everything was symbolic and nothing literal, no engineer could determine the real meaning of any particular element in the plans. More disputes set in, and another section of the building crumbled.
D) Now the people for whom the cathedral was being built were becoming more and more agitated and many would not enter the half completed edifice at all because of the danger of falling stones, loose mortar, and buckling floors. Some were even crying for a new staff of engineers. This made the engineers terribly nervous and excitable, and finally some of them, to placate the mob, began to claim there was no architect at all, that the people for whom the cathedral was being built were more important than anything else, and that everyone was in as good position as the inaccurate draughtsmen to draw up plans. Oddly enough, this seemed to infuriate the people even more, for the latter apparently considered it self-evident that the plans, the great engineers of the past who had faithfully followed them, and the earlier work on the cathedral (the work done before all the confusion) all presupposed an architect. They began to become violent and even claimed the engineers were destroying their cathedral and making a mockery of the engineering profession.
E) At this point a very vocal engineer tried to convince the people that such efforts as he and the others were making were really acts of tremendous heroism and that even though the plans of the architect were impossibly naïve and had been hopelessly muddled by past draughtsmen and engineers, he himself could lead them through the maze by direct communication with dead engineers of the past, thereby proving the deathless value of engineering science. But instead of being considered a repristination of heroic, reforming engineers of early times, this engineer was regarded as an epitomal fool by virtually all of his colleagues and the great mass of the people. Only the media of communication featured him, for they quickly discovered that people followed his exploits with horror and fascination even as they did the latest scandals of famous entertainers.
F) Thus did the great cathedral eventually crumble and fall, killing not only the people who loved it but also the engineers responsible for its loss. Pathetically, there were a few engineers who, right up to the moment of final destruction, still pleaded that the only hope lay in following rigorously the original plans, that the engineers must bring their stylistic ideas into conformity with the architect’s, and that deviations from their notions of style did not constitute genuine errors or contradictions in the plans. But their voices were scarcely heard amid the din of engineering teams working at cross purposes to each other, and the deafening roar of falling masonry. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that cathedral; and it fell, and great was the fall of it. Pg 25-27

4) In a prevailing atmosphere of doctrinal vagary, with no clear standards of theological truth or error and with the inability to condemn heresy because few know what orthodoxy is, church unions based on piety, sentiment, love of organization, or the simple urge for togetherness, become not live possibilities but appalling actualities. And the result is a steady devaluation of the Gospel. Pg 36-37

Chapter 2: Agent 666 Bishop Pike and His Treasure Hunt

The author exposes bishop Pike’s attempt to ‘recast the identity of Christ’ in his book What is This Treasure (Harper and Row, 1966). The presupposition is that the space age man can “no longer accept the antiquated, mythological view of the world held by the biblical writers, and the Christians must therefore recast the faith in modern, secular terms” (Pg 50). “Modern man becomes ‘new in Christ’ as he endeavors to exist for others in love as Jesus did” (Pg 51). Montgomery quotes Alasdair MacIntyre, “…his book testifies to the existence of a whole group of theologies which have retained a theistic vocabulary but acquired an atheistic substance” (Pg 51). “Thus, in reading the Bishop one is actually not reading theology at all; one is reading autobiography—the autobiography of a sinner who endeavored to restructure God’s nature, revelation, and moral law in the image of his own preferences and those of his cultural epoch” (Pg 60).

Chapter 3: Dialogue on the New Morality

This chapter features a panel discussion of the New Morality (situational ethics).

Chapter 4: The Gospel According to LSD

This chapter focuses on claims that LSD offers special qualities that will lead to ultimate religious reality.

Chapter 5: The Death of the “Death of God”

This chapter deals with Theothanatology, where the demise of God serves as the starting point for theology. The “death of God” theologians believe the issue of whether God is or not is secondary, but rather that the Christian tradition is now culturally irrelevant. Especially insightful was the manuscript of the Altizer-Montgomery debate (pg 143-166).

5) What is the cause of this demise of God? Vahanian finds the basic issue in “the leveling down of transcendental values to immanental ones…i.e. the worship of the idolatrous gods of cultural religiosity.” Pg 80

6) [parable that illustrates that if you hold unsound presuppositions with sufficient tenacity, facts will make no difference at all] Once upon a time (note the mythical cast) there was a man who thought he was dead. His concerned wife and friends sent him to the friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. The psychiatrist determined to cure him by convincing him of one fact that contradicted his belief that he was dead. The fact the psychiatrist settled on was the simple truth that dead men do not bleed, and he put the patient to work reading medical texts, observing autopsies, etc. After weeks of effort, the patient finally said, “All right, all right! You have convinced me. Dead men do not bleed.” Whereupon the psychiatrist stuck him in the arm with a needle, and the blood flowed. The man looked with a contorted, ashen face and cried: “Good Lord! Dead men bleed after all.” Pg 122

7) Karl Barth attempts to find God in the realm of “supra-history rather than ordinary history. This is a realm of “metahistory” for which no criteria seems to exist. Rudolf Bultmann attempted to find God in internal experience, but it is very difficult to distinguish the Holy Spirit from stomach trouble. Paul Tillich attempted to solve this problem in the realm of religious symbolism. Pg 161.

Chapter 6: Theological Education Today

Montgomery explains why he sought a doctorate from Europe and his wonderful experience at Strasbourg. He also deals briefly with biographical bigotry, where he demonstrate that liberal seminaries do not recommend conservative authors very often.

8) He list numerous staunchly “conservative” authors: O.T Allis, Robert Dick Wilson, Edward Young, G. Ch. Aalders, Theodor Zahn, A.T. Robertson, J.G. Macken, H.E. Dana, J.R. Mantey, R.C.H. Lenski, W.F. Arndt, Merrill Tenney, W.C. Robinson, F.F. Bruce, and Leon Morris. He also list seventeen authors in dogmatics and philosophy of religion: Orr, Warfield, Bavinck, Berkhof, Chafer, Pieper, Walther, J.T. Mueller, Sasse, Van Til, Cailliet, C.S. Lewis, Gordon Clark, Ramm, Packer, and Carnell,.

9) Others I found while searching above: Walter Bauer, F. W. Gingrich, D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, Everett F. Harrison; Donald Guthrie, Wayne A. Grudem, William G. T. Shedd, Victor P. Hamilton, W. J. Dumbrell, J. Oliver Buswell Jr.

Chapter 7:Why Churches Decline

His basic premise in this brief overview is, “doctrinal liberalism and social conservatism are the two best ways to insure the secularization of the Church” (Pg 186).

Section 2: Reporting and Reviewing

A: The Theologian as Reporter

This section had brief reviews of selected theological conferences

B. The Theologian as Reviewer

Montgomery gives brief reviews on several authors

10) Until modern theology faces the epistemological issue—the basic question as to how one validates theological assertions—it will forever wander in a speculative labyrinth.

Section 3: Reconstructing

Chapter 1: Is Man His Own God?

Montgomery satirizes to show his theme by saying, “Currently making the rounds on American college campuses is the question, “How are you going to to recognize God when you get to Heaven?” Answer: “By the big ‘G’ on His sweatshirt.” This litany has more metaphysical profundity than meets the eye, for it reflects the contemporary philosophical dilemma as to the meaningfulness of God-language” (Pg 251).

11) [Dealing with pantheism] We had little doubt that the universe was here anyway; by giving it a new name (God) we explain nothing. We actually commit the venerable intellectual sin of Word Magic, wherein the naming of something is supposed to give added power to the thing named or to the semantic magician himself. Pg 252

12) [Dealing with humanism] For the humanist, man is himself the proper “ultimate concern,” and human values are the only eternal verities. Pg 252

Chapter 2: The Theologian’s Craft: A Discussion of Theory Formation and Theory Testing in Theology

Montgomery addresses the question, “What is it to ‘do theology’?” He considers a theologian as “one who engages in forming and testing theories concerning the Divine” (Pg 268). He shows that both science and theology test their respective theories in the same basic way. A big part of his essay concerns his perspective of the three main components of “doing theology”: Scientific, artistic, and sacral. “In common with science, theology formulates its theories with a view to the objective fitting of facts [facts of Scripture]; in common with the arts, theology seeks by it theoretical formulations to enter personally into the heart of reality (God’s revelation in the Bible) (Pg 292). The sacral was the incomprehensibility and mystery of God. Thus, “Sacred Scriptures offers the sole criterion for testing the scientific, the artistic, and the sacral health of theological theories. Does a given theory represent objective truth? Does it incorporate the proper kind of subjective involvement? Does it adequately preserve the sacred dimension? To all three questions sola Scriptura holds the answers” (pg 294). He shows the dangers of an improper balance of these three components:
Reduction of Into Produces

Artistic & Sacral scientific dead orthodoxy

Scientific & sacral Artistic pietism

Scientific & artistic sacral mysticism

Sacral scientific & artistic anthropocentrism

Artistic scientific & sacral “theology of Glory”

Scientific artistic & sacral existentialism

Chapter 3: Biblical Authority

Montgomery details the current (remember the book was written in 1970) debate over the authority of the Bible. He claims it is a division over the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. He further claims that the two are dependent characteristics of each other; you cannot separate them. Montgomery states a few of the claims of anti-errantists and shows the weaknesses of their arguments.

13) A nonsense objective statement is a statement that cannot provide verifiable sense. [In other words there is no way to validate its truth claims] Pg 327 my wording

14) [dealing with concepts similar to those proposed by M. Scharlemann who wrote, Biblical “knowledge is not a matter of acquiring information but of being confronted with God Himself as He is revealed in His Son” (Pg 339).] The idea here is to raise biblical inspiration beyond the level of historical, scientific judgment by focusing it upon a Christ-figure who stands above the realm of verifiability. Pg 339. However, meaningful “confrontation” is possible only on the basis of verifiable data—for otherwise , there is no way whether one has engaged in a real confrontation at all! Particularly in the realm of religion it is desperately important to know the difference between Christ-in-the-heart and heartburn. Apart from an objectively reliable, inerrant biblical description of Christ, the result is always, on the part of sinful man, the creation of subjective Christs to fit one’s needs. Pg 340

15) Advocates of the anti-inerrancy positions are united in their contention that the Bible itself, and Christ its Lord, present a “dynamic,” “personalized” view of truth, which is irreconcilable with the prepositional, objectively historical approach to truth characteristic of plenary inspirationists. Pg 342

16) Fundamental to the entire biblical revelation are the twin convictions that subjective truth is grounded in and verifiable through objective truth, and that the eternal has been made manifest in the temporal. Pg 342-343

17) [Danger of making theology “relevant”] They take modern man as normative and endeavor to reconstruct Christianity and the Bible in his cultural image. Pg 360

18) A common failing of men in every era is their naïve belief that their own time constitutes a qualitatively different situation from all others, rendering the biblical Word somehow irrelevant for them. Pg 360

19) The 19^th century was characterized by philosophical idealism (Hegel and Bradley come immediately to mind) that confidently endeavored to set forth absolute truth apart from revelation, and, when these endeavors hopelessly failed, 20^th century existentialism (Heidegger, Sartre) gave up in principle the search for absolutes and substituted for objective truth and value a subjective relativism in which the individual determines the nature of his world through his own decisions. The 19^th century tried to reach God through human reason, and the early 20^th century, having failed in constructing this Tower of Babel and finding its language confused, gave up all hope of eternal truth and saw no other recourse than to make a philosophy of life out of the hopelessness of a confused existence. Both idealism and existentialism had been right and wrong simultaneously: idealism had been right in believing that man desperately needed an absolute Word, but wrong in thinking that man could attain it by pulling himself to heaven by his own ideological bootstraps; existentialism was right in recognizing man’s inability to arrive at absolute truth and value through philosophical efforts, but wrong in giving up all hope of an eternal Word. Pg 364

Chapter 4: Politics and Religion

Montgomery does not see this as a Christian nation or even with an especially strong Christian political foundation. He does note several factors why Christianity is the best supporter of democracy.

Chapter 5: Wisdom, Love, and Law

Montgomery traces the revelation of wisdom through the scriptures and shows how it culminates in the person of Jesus Christ. He also spends time analyzing and defending why some older commentaries are very beneficial.

Chapter 6: Can We Recover the Christian Devotional Life

Montgomery claims, “An analogous gulf seems to separate Christians of the present day from the great saints and devotional writers in the church’s past” (Pg 466). He gives a list of a 100 great devotional books.

20) Of faith, hope, and love, love is indeed the greatest (1 Cor 13.13), for God Himself is love (1 John 4.8), and His plan of salvation was motivated by love (John 3.16),; but faith and faith alone appropriates God’s love personally (John 5.24; Rom 10.9). Pg 471

Chapter 7: The Descent and Ascent of God

Montgomery shows how the current Christmas traditions do not endanger or diminish the birth of Christ.

21) [Relating to the paperback history of philosophy series published by the New American Library] The 18^th century volume is of course entitled, “The Age of Enlightenment”; the 19^th century is “The Age of Ideology”’ and the 20^th century is significantly represented as the “The Age of Analysis.” I believe that I am safe in saying that the perspective of our era is in many respects a “subjective” one—involving inner probing of our thought, motives, and experiences. Pg 497

22) Brunner claims that subjectivism is the basic problem in marriage today. He asserts that most modern marriages are built on the sand of emotional attachment. The Greeks had a word for this—eros. Love someone to satisfy your own emotional needs—and if the person no longer accomplishes this purpose, find a new partner at will. Pg 497

23) [Talking about the state of education…remember he wrote this in 1970] Few would deny that in the last several decades, American education has in many quarters undergone a shift from objective, prepositional learning to subjective adjustment. Instead of stressing “dry, academic” disciplines such as history, languages, and the sciences, educators of the progressive stamp have concerned themselves with courses in everything from beauty care to flycasting—all in the interests of personal adjustment. The result has been, as one of Life’s editorials soundly put it, “U.S. high school students are plain ignorant of things grammar school students would have known a generation ago.” And one of the tragic results is that many students arrive at college with no real understanding of what academic work involves—and make every effort while they are in the institution not to find out. Vocationally, the person educated in the current subjectivistic, individualistic system seldom views the choice of career from any other standpoint than personal satisfaction—which is generally identified with salary. Pg 498

24) [Subjectivism effects on Christianity] What is true in religion? Why, obviously, that which satisfies the religious needs of the people. A “living Christ” has been set over against the Christ of Scripture—an “living Christ” is frequently created in the image of the theologian who describes Him—or at a minimum reflects the latter’s religious presuppositions. The general result of all of this religious subjectivity has been a Christianity of adjustment rather than of saving, transforming power. And if all else fails, we are told, one can buoy up his spirits with Christianized positive thinking. Pg 498-499

25) What has the Biblical revelation to say to all of this? Scripture would have us change our perspective radically. It would have us stop looking within ourselves—like Buddha staring at his navel, or Aristotle’s prime mover contemplating himself because there is nothing greater to think about—and “lift our eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh our help,” for “our help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” With Luther, we are to shift our perspective from subjective wallowing in our sins and our psyche to an objective concentration on the Lord who saves by grace through faith. We are to deal with other persons as objects of our love—not as a means of our own satisfaction. We are to learn as much as we can of God’s world, and seek to serve our fellowmen and God Himself with the knowledge we have attained—not waste in self-indulgence the precious time He has given us. Pg 499

Chapter 8: The Reformation and World Evangelism

Montgomery defends the inadequate emphasis on world evangelism by the Reformers by claiming that their main thrust was establishing a systematic foundation for the Protestant movement.

Chapter 9: Thesis for the 450^th Anniversary of the Reformation

Montgomery gives 95 of his own “thesis” that are in harmony with Luther’s:

26) The lamentable condition Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” can result either from selling grace cheaply or from cheapening the very idea of grace. Pg 505-506

27) A world without a name for God is a world without a name for salvation; all hope in such a world is man-made hope and therefore chimerical. Pg 506

28) Secular towers of Babel, built over the alleged coffin of Deity, invariably produce confusion of tongues. Pg 506

Chapter 10: Renewal and Contemporary Theology

Montgomery summarizes the assaults against biblical theology and shows the inevitable consequences of each.