132. Newton’s mathematical physics, for example, presented nature as a rational, unified order where there were no “hidden purposes” (of God) to discover. “As a result of Newton’s work, ‘God’ was no longer needed as the hypothesis to authorize the world; ‘God’ became a projection of nature. . . . This shift led to a heightened stress on reason as a primary authority for interpreting all human experience. It meant as well that traditions (as promoted by the Church) or supernatural appeals to the ‘Spirit’ were suspect” (McKim, “Authority,” 47).
133. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought, 2.
134. Erickson defines “Modern Theology” as simply the “Theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beginning particularly with reaction to the thought of Immanuel Kant” (Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, 107).
135. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 123.
136. Schleiermacher, On Religion, 36.
137. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love, 112.
138. Ibid., 112.
139. Inch, Saga of the Spirit, 241.
140. Johnson, Authority in Protestant Theology, 78.
141. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 2:13.
142. Ibid., 4:35.
143. Ibid., 4:256–68.
144. For example, Henry states that “[Howard J. Loewen’s] implication that ‘the authority of the Bible can . . . be . . . truly demonstrated only in the context of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit who is essential to the personal appropriation of the Word of Scripture’ is highly questionable, if this means that inner personal experience establishes the truth and/or the authority of the Bible” (Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:268).
145. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:289.
146. Champion, “The Baptist Doctrine of the Church,” 38.
147. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 1:244.
148. Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2:356 (emphasis mine). In agreeing with Barth’s idea that the Holy Spirit “seems to be behind a wall” and hidden from humanity, Pentecostal theologian Burton Janes asserts that, for believers, “our actions can either enlarge or destroy the barrier, revealing the Spirit for all to see” (Janes, “Taking a Step Toward Pentecost,” 24). Janes particularly finds comfort in Barth’s three cautions regarding the Spirit in revelation: (1) Barth holds that subjective revelation must never override the objective. Here Janes quotes Barth, “Subjective revelation is not the addition of a second revelation to objective revelation”; (2) Barth cautions against specifying the precise way man experiences the Holy Spirit. Barth says that we can never express or state that which lies behind our experiences of the Holy Spirit because it is not revealed to us, because it is revelation itself; (3) Barth steers clear of sectarianism, which perceives the testimony of the Spirit in terms of an immediate spiritual inspiration and bypasses the Word (26).
149. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.
150. Barth’s pneumatology “elevated the long-neglected role of the Holy Spirit to new significance in its exposition of divine revelation” (Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:256).
151. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:536–39.
152. Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84. Barth’s response to the “subjectivism” of Schleiermacher is particularly penetrating: “Were the Spirit, the mediator of revelation to the subject, a creature or a creaturely force, we would be asserting and maintaining that, in virtue of his presence with God and over against God, man in his own way is also a lord in revelation” (Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God, 535).
153. As a result, Barth becomes not only one of the greatest defenders of Filioque in modern times, but he also links this doctrine with divine revelation by making Christ the true revealer of the Word. In this way the Spirit, not the human subject, is the authoritative interpreter of the Word. Rosato explains, “By welding pneumatology to Christology, Barth removes even from the subjective appropriation of the Christ-event by the believer every trace of subjectivism. Thus, the existential experiences of Christian consciousness, which are the direct result of the Spirit’s presence, are ultimately rooted in the objective election of Jesus Christ, which alone lends their noetic quality ontic significance” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 84).
154. See Barth, Evangelical Theology, 53ff.
155. Rosato adds that, in doing so, the Spirit “continually fashions the Church into the contours of the incarnate Word” (Rosato, The Spirit as Lord, 80–81).
156. Thompson, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth, 198.
157. Indeed Barth has been criticized by many evangelicals for promoting a “transcendent” Spirit that seems remote, abstract, and divorced from history and humanity.
158. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 4:258.
159. Ibid., 258.
160. Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13.
161. Rogers, Biblical Authority, 29.
162. Ramm, The Pattern of Authority, 57 (emphasis his).
163.