Liberal Theology, Neo-Orthodoxy, and Existential Interpretation

Introduction

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought a seismic reconfiguration of Christian theology and biblical interpretation. As historical consciousness matured and the natural sciences transformed Western plausibility structures, theologians asked anew what it meant to read Scripture faithfully. Three large (and interrelated) movements organized much of that debate: liberal theology, neo-orthodoxy (dialectical theology), and existential interpretation. Each arose from distinctive philosophical currents, responded to particular crises, and generated characteristic hermeneutical strategies. Each also produced exegetical fruit—some ripe, some overripe.

This chapter traces the intellectual genealogy and exegetical practice of these movements with particular attention to how they answer four questions vital for doctoral exegesis: What is revelation? Who is the subject of theology? What is Scripture’s status and function? How do historical method and faith’s confession relate? We will proceed historically—from liberal theology’s confidence in culture and human religious consciousness; through neo-orthodoxy’s Christological “No” and “Yes” to modernity; to existential interpretation’s focus on decision, selfhood, and the kerygmatic event—while repeatedly pausing for worked exegetical soundings in representative texts (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount; Romans 1–3; John; the resurrection narratives). We conclude with a critical synthesis and doctoral-level assignments designed to deepen methodological discernment.

I. Liberal Theology: Religion within the Bounds of Modernity

1. Intellectual and Cultural Background

Kant’s critical philosophy redirected theology from metaphysics to practical reason: God cannot be known as an object of theoretical knowledge, but the moral law within points to freedom, immortality, and God as “postulates” of practical reason. Romanticism added a turn to feeling, intuition, and self-consciousness, elevating lived religious experience over scholastic dogma. Historicism (Ranke to Troeltsch) taught that all ideas—including doctrine—arise in history and must be explained historically. In this environment, it seemed both necessary and possible to articulate Christianity as the essence of a universal religious consciousness, freed from mythic encrustations and ecclesiastical absolutism.

2. Schleiermacher: Piety as “Feeling of Absolute Dependence”

For Friedrich Schleiermacher, the essence of religion is neither moralism nor metaphysics but “the feeling of absolute dependence”—a pre-reflexive awareness of finite existence before the infinite (Schleiermacher, 2016). Doctrine is a second-order articulation of the church’s experience of redemption in Christ; Scripture is the normative witness to this communal life with God. Exegetically, Schleiermacher’s program encouraged rigorous historical-philological work (his hermeneutics lectures helped found modern interpretive theory) while orienting theological meaning toward the corporate life of faith rather than infallible propositions.

Exegetical sounding: The Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–12). A Schleiermacherian reading highlights Jesus’ naming of conditions of radical finitude (poverty, mourning, meekness) in which God-relation is experienced as blessedness. The moral content of the Sermon derives from, and returns to, God-consciousness rather than legalistic performance.

3. Ritschl and Harnack: Moral Value and the Kernel of the Gospel

Albrecht Ritschl rejected metaphysical systems in favor of value-judgments: theology should clarify the moral kingdom of God revealed in Jesus’ filial relation to the Father and enacted in the community (Ritschl, 1900/1999). Miracles and metaphysics become adiaphora compared to the ethical shape of Christ’s message. Adolf von Harnack distilled Christianity to “the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul,” stripping away dogmatic hulls (e.g., Nicene metaphysics) to retrieve the kernel of Jesus’ proclamation (Harnack, 1957).

Exegetical sounding: Luke 4:16–21 (Nazareth manifesto). Liberal readings foreground Jesus’ ethical-social program—good news to the poor, liberation for the oppressed—while interpreting Isaianic fulfillment as moral renewal rather than eschatological inbreaking. The Social Gospel tradition extended this trajectory by reading the prophets and Jesus as mandates for structural reform.

4. Troeltsch: Historicizing Everything

Ernst Troeltsch radicalized historicism: every religious claim is historically mediated; Christian uniqueness must be argued probabilistically within the comparative history of religions (Troeltsch, 1991). For exegesis, his “maxims” (criticism, analogy, correlation) entrenched the historical-critical posture: prefer explanations continuous with ordinary experience; correlate events with social-psychological causes; hold conclusions revisably.

5. Strengths and Fault Lines

Gains. Liberal theology honored the ethical core of Scripture, dignified human experience, and institutionalized serious philology and historical method. It widened Christianity’s public intelligibility and energized reform.

Fault lines. Rendering revelation as heightened religious consciousness and reducing doctrine to ethics risked domesticating the scandal of cross and resurrection. Critics charged that “man writ large” displaced the living God, and that excision of myth left a moral residuum insufficient to explain the church’s kerygma (Barth, 1968).

II. Neo-Orthodoxy (Dialectical Theology): God’s “No” and “Yes”

1. The Shock of 1914 and a Theological Turn

World War I shattered the optimism underwriting much liberal thought; cultured Protestant nations marched into carnage. In that rupture, Karl Barth (soon joined by Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others) launched a dialectical theology that refused any straight line from human religious aspiration to God. God is the Wholly Other, who addresses sinners in revelation and judges all culture, church included.

2. Barth’s Hermeneutics: The Word of God in Threefold Form

For Barth, revelation is God’s free self-speech in Jesus Christ. Scripture is the witness that God sovereignly uses to speak again; the church’s preaching becomes God’s Word only as God chooses to employ it (Barth, 1968). Consequently, exegesis is neither historical positivism nor projection of religious feeling; it is listening for God’s address in the canonical text under the rule of faith. Barth did not reject historical-critical tools; he relativized them under a doxological and ecclesial end.

Exegetical sounding: Romans 1–3. In Der Römerbrief (1919/1922), Barth reads Paul’s diagnosis of universal sin as a divine krisis that levels Jew and Gentile and destroys every human righteousness. The event of justification in Christ breaks into history, not as cultural uplift but as apocalyptic judgment and grace. The result is a Christologically centered reading that refuses moralizing reductions.

3. Brunner and the Point of Contact?

Emil Brunner agreed that revelation is God’s free act but argued for an imago Dei “point of contact” whereby human existence remains addressed and summoned (Brunner, 1943). Barth thundered “Nein!,” fearing any anthropological bridge would reintroduce liberalism. Exegetically, Brunner’s pastoral emphasis on conscience and encounter tended to draw more explicitly on natural signs; Barth’s exegesis more relentlessly tracked Christ’s self-disclosure as the sole light.

4. Bonhoeffer: Word, Church, and Discipleship

Dietrich Bonhoeffer supplemented dialectical themes with an ecclesial and ethical concreteness: Christ present for us and as community. In Discipleship, exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount resists reduction to ideals, insisting on costly obedience to the living Lord (Bonhoeffer, 2001). In Sanctorum Communio and Life Together he reads Pauline and Johannine texts to stress that revelation creates a visible people whose life is a sign.

5. Strengths and Fault Lines

Gains. Neo-orthodoxy re-centered exegesis on God’s initiative and the Christological canon, restored sin and grace as hermeneutical controls, and checked the hubris of culture-Christianity.

Fault lines. Critics worried that bypassing historical questions could slide into docetic reading—Scripture as sheer oracle. Others claimed Barth’s theology could overshadow particular texts (does every pericope say Christ in the same way?). Still others charged an ecclesial insularity insufficiently engaged with plural publics.

III. Existential Interpretation: Decision, Kerygma, and Demythologizing

1. Heidegger and the Turn to Existence

Into the ferment stepped Rudolf Bultmann, steeped in form criticism and shaped by Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein (being-there). For Bultmann, the New Testament bears a mythic worldview (three-storied cosmos, demons, miracle causality) that modern people cannot literally inhabit (Bultmann, 1984). Yet the kerygma—the preached message of God’s decisive act in the cross and resurrection—summons persons to authentic existence: faith as decision (Entscheidung) that frees from self-reliance to future-oriented trust.

2. Demythologization

“Demythologizing” is not discarding the gospel but interpreting mythic language into existential self-understanding. Resurrection, for instance, is not a report of a resuscitated corpse but the eschatological event wherein the crucified is proclaimed Lord, confronting hearers with God’s judgment and grace. History as Historie (critical reconstruction) cannot bear faith’s weight; history as Geschichte (event that addresses me) is the arena of salvation.

Exegetical sounding: John 11 and John 20.

• In John 11, rather than anatomizing the physics of Lazarus’ return, existential interpretation hears Jesus’ “I am the resurrection and the life” as present disclosure: eternal life is not an otherworldly datum but an “authentic life” in trust now.

• In John 20, the Easter narratives’ proclamation matters: “these are written that you may believe…” (20:31). The text’s telos is decision, not antiquarian curiosity.

3. Bultmann and the Synoptics: Form, Kerygma, Faith

In the History of the Synoptic Tradition, Bultmann mapped pronouncement stories, miracles, and sayings as units that took shape in the early church’s preaching. The point is not to dissolve Jesus into community faith but to disclose how proclamation formed. Exegetically, the parables invite self-implication: the hearer becomes the prodigal or the unforgiving servant when confronted by grace.

4. Critiques and Replies

Barth feared that demythologizing domesticated God’s objective act to human inwardness. Conservatives charged Bultmann with evacuating historicity, while others noted that existential categories are themselves historically located. Bultmann’s students (e.g., Käsemann) pushed back against over-subjectivism by renewing interest in apocalyptic and the continuity between Jesus and the early church. Yet even critics admitted Bultmann forced interpreters to clarify what claims biblical texts make and how they address readers.

IV. Comparative Theological and Hermeneutical Analysis

1. Revelation and Subject

• Liberal theology identifies revelation primarily with religious consciousness and Jesus’ ethical-filial relation to God (Schleiermacher; Ritschl; Harnack).

• Neo-orthodoxy anchors revelation in God’s sovereign act in Christ, with Scripture as witness God freely uses (Barth).

• Existential interpretation locates revelation in the kerygma’s event, where mythic language is reinterpreted as self-understanding under God (Bultmann).

This yields divergent stances toward historical criticism. Liberals often embrace it to separate kernel from husk. Neo-orthodox employ it instrumentally but subordinate it to hearing the Word. Existential interpreters both advance critical tools (form criticism) and retheologize their results via existential categories.

2. Scripture and Authority

For liberals, Scripture has normative status as the classic witness to the essence of Christianity, but not as infallible oracle. For neo-orthodox, Scripture’s authority is functional and Christological: it becomes God’s Word as God addresses us in it. For existentialists, Scripture preaches—its truth-claim is enacted when hearers are placed under judgment/grace and summoned to faith.

3. Exegetical Tendencies

• Texts emphasized. Liberals: ethical teaching (Sermon on the Mount, parables), prophecy’s social justice. Neo-orthodox: Romans, John 1, Isaiah—texts that foreground revelation and judgment/grace. Existentialists: the sayings and kerygmatic forms that press for decision; John’s “I am” sayings; Pauline justification as existential liberation.

• Miracle/Resurrection. Liberals often marginalize miracle as pre-critical. Neo-orthodox insist on the objective act of God (resurrection as history with eschatological density). Existentialists reinscribe miracle as existential disclosure rather than empirical anomaly.

4. Strengths to Receive, Limits to Resist

From liberal theology, retain moral seriousness, historical honesty, and concern for public reason; resist reductions of gospel to ethics. From neo-orthodoxy, retain Christocentric canon and theology of the Word; resist neglect of historical particularity and the risk of a single master-theme overshadowing textual plurality. From existential interpretation, retain existential address and genre/form sensitivity; resist any hermeneutic that sidelines bodily, communal, and eschatological dimensions into mere inwardness.

V. Worked Comparative Exegesis

1. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)

• Liberal: The Sermon articulates the ethos of the kingdom—neighbor love, integrity of heart, justice—model for societal reform (Harnack). The “perfection” command (5:48) sketches moral horizon grounded in the Fatherhood of God.

• Neo-orthodox: The Sermon is the call of the living Christ to discipleship under grace (Bonhoeffer). It is not an ideal but a performative Word that creates obedience within the forgiven community.

• Existential: The Sermon addresses authentic existence—freedom from anxiety (6:25–34) as decision to entrust one’s future to God; the antitheses disclose the self before God’s searching claim.

2. Romans 1:16–3:26

• Liberal: Paul’s argument reveals the moral failure of humanity and the gracious acceptance of God; justification expresses the value-judgment of divine love that grounds the ethics of the kingdom (Ritschl).

• Neo-orthodox: Paul announces the apocalyptic righteousness of God that judges and saves in Christ—no continuity from human religious striving (Barth).

• Existential: The text confronts the reader with decision: abandonment of self-boasting to receive life by trust. “Faith” is not assent to a theory but existential posture under the Word.

3. Resurrection Narratives (Luke 24; John 20–21)

• Liberal: Often minimized as mythic accretions or interpreted as symbolic vindication of Jesus’ message.

• Neo-orthodox: Treated as the objective, sovereign act of God inaugurating new creation; theological priority over the mechanics of Historie.

• Existential: Interpreted as the kerygma’s event—the disciples are encountered by the risen Lord in proclamation; faith is born where the Word seizes the hearer. Yet for many existential interpreters, bodily characteristics of the narratives are not the point of the claim.

VI. Building a Critical Framework: How Doctoral Readers Navigate These Traditions

1. Practice double accountability. Submit exegesis to both historical disciplines and theological norms (canon, rule of faith, ecclesial use). Neither theological zeal nor critical rigor alone suffices.

2. Interrogate your metaphysic. Ask what implicit ontology of God, world, and language you are assuming. Liberal, dialectical, and existential trajectories each embed metaphysical judgments: about causality, personhood, and divine action.

3. Name the genre of a claim. When a text says “God raised Jesus,” what is the illocution? Report? Proclamation? Both? Your answer shapes what counts as verification.

4. Preserve the pluriform voice of Scripture. Let Romans be Romans, John be John, Matthew be Matthew. Even robust Christocentrism must honor canonical diversity.

5. Keep the church in view. Reading is not merely private understanding but ecclesial formation. Liberal ethics, neo-orthodox proclamation, and existential decision each address practice—justice, worship, discipleship. Integrate these registers rather than isolating them.

Assignments (Doctoral-Level)

1. Historiography and Exegesis Essay (4,000 words). Choose one pericope (e.g., Luke 4:16–30; Romans 3:21–26; John 20:24–31). Write three disciplined readings: (a) liberal theological, (b) neo-orthodox, (c) existential. For each, (i) state the underlying theory of revelation, (ii) identify what counts as evidence, (iii) show how the reading handles a crux (e.g., miracle, justification language, signs). Conclude with your critical synthesis. Cite primary figures.

2. Barth and Bultmann in Dialogue (3,500 words). Using Barth’s Romans and Bultmann’s “New Testament and Mythology,” analyze their divergent readings of the resurrection. Where do they agree on the kerygma? Where do metaphysical or epistemic differences force hermeneutical divergence? Propose a mediating account or argue for a side, defending methodological consequences.

3. Schleiermacher’s Legacy and the Sermon on the Mount (3,000–3,500 words). Assess how Schleiermacher’s account of God-consciousness would shape an ethics of Matthew 5–7. Engage Bonhoeffer’s critique of “cheap grace” and propose how liberal and neo-orthodox insights might be integrated in contemporary discipleship.

4. Research Colloquy Presentation. Prepare a 15-minute conference paper that traces a single motif (e.g., “kingdom of God,” “justification,” “resurrection,” “Word of God”) through one representative of each tradition, with two pages of handout comparing exegetical moves and stakes for the church.

Conclusion

Liberal theology, neo-orthodoxy, and existential interpretation are not museum pieces; they are live options and live cautions. Liberalism’s moral seriousness and historical candor belong to mature Christian scholarship, even as we resist reductions of gospel to ethics. Neo-orthodoxy’s fierce theocentrism and Christological focus rightly curb modernity’s self-confidence, even as we guard against a flattening hermeneutics that neglects the textures of history and genre. Existential interpretation forces us to face Scripture’s address—that the Bible is not only about the past but about us before God—even as we insist on the bodily, ecclesial, and eschatological thickness of the gospel beyond interiority.

For doctoral exegetes, the task is not to pick a team once for all, but to learn to hear the distinctive truths each movement has articulated, to name their blind spots, and to craft a method that is historically honest, canonically attuned, theologically confessional, and pastorally wise. The history of modern theology thus becomes a school in discernment: learning to say “Yes” and “No” in the right places so that the church might again hear the living Word of God in the Scriptures.

References

Barth, K. (1968). The Epistle to the Romans (E. C. Hoskyns, Trans., 6th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Bonhoeffer, D. (2001). Discipleship (B. Green & R. Krauss, Trans.). Fortress Press. (Original work published 1937)

Brunner, E. (1943). The divine–human encounter (A. W. Loos, Trans.). Westminster Press.

Bultmann, R. (1984). New Testament and mythology and other basic writings (S. Ogden, Ed.). Fortress Press.

Grant, R. M., & Tracy, D. (1984). A short history of the interpretation of the Bible (2nd ed.). Fortress Press.

Harnack, A. (1957). What is Christianity? (T. B. Saunders, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original lectures 1899–1900)

Ritschl, A. (1999). The Christian doctrine of justification and reconciliation (H. R. Mackintosh & A. B. Macaulay, Trans.). Wipf & Stock. (Original work published 1870–1874; English trans. 1900)

Schleiermacher, F. (2016). The Christian faith (T. N. Tice et al., Eds.). Westminster John Knox. (Original work published 1821/22)

Troeltsch, E. (1991). Religion in history (J. L. Adams & W. F. Bense, Eds.). Fortress Press.

Soulen, R. K., & Soulen, R. N. (2011). Handbook of biblical criticism (4th ed.). Westminster John Knox.