Theology is a word that comes from the Greek word with the meaning ‘’the study of God.’’ In terms of Christian theology, it is viewed as an attempt to understand God the way He is revealed from the Bible. All the theology that exists may or may not be able to explain what exactly God is but they try to give an understanding about who God is.

Different scholars have existed in the centuries with their view regarding the whole concept of theology. They have given their account about who God is as revealed from the Bible. The early theologians have either faced criticism or support in their view from the theologians who have later emerged, (George W. Davis, 1957). These in a way have resulted to two categories of theologians: The translator and transformers. The translators feels that there is need for expressing the message in a more intelligent form, however their intention is to retain the content just like it is done when translating from one language to another. On the part of transformers, they are determined to make critical changes in the content of the message so that it can be related to the modern world. These theologians include:

Barth

His theology relied on the concept of distinction between the words: Religion and God’s self-revelation just like it is concretely manifested in Christ and preaching. According to Barth the first tend to be the product of human culture as well as aspirations and it should not be identified with saving revelation since the salvation itself cannot come from mankind but only from God. Among the main objectives of Barth is to try and recover the doctrine of trinity in theology from its known loss in liberalism. The basis of his argument is in line with the idea that God is the object of God’s own self-knowledge, and the meaning of what the Bible reveals means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God who is not able to be discovered by the mankind just by its own intuition.

Among Barth’s influencing and controversial view was his doctrine towards election. In his theory he object the fact that God has chosen every person to either get saved or damned in terms of purpose of the divine will, and it is not possible to identify why God decided to choose others and leave some. His doctrine of election entails a strong opposition of the possibility of eternal, hidden decree. Remaining in line with his Christo-centrine of election methodology, the argument of Barth is that in order to ascribe to the damnation or salvation of humankind to an abstract absolute decree is to create some God’s part more final and definitive as compared to God serving act in Jesus Christ.’’

As much as theology of Barth came to reject German Protestant liberalism, this theology failed to find favor with the others who are at the end of the theological spectrum: fundamentalists and confessionalists. For example, according to his doctrine Christ is the word of God, and there is no further proclaimed or argument indicating that the Bible should be scientifically and historically accurate, and then establish the rest of the theological claims on that basis. Even some other fundamentalists critics have emerged to agree with the liberal counterparts in referring Barth to be a “neo-orthodox” due to the fact that as his theology tend to retain many if not all the tenets of their understanding of Christianity, Barth is still viewed as rejecting the belief which is seen as the linchpin of their theological system (Biblical inerrancy). These critics holds a stand that the written text should be considered historically accurate as well as providing room for verification and see this view by Barth a separation of theological truth from historical truth.

Bultmann

Bultmann was mainly concerned with the presentation of the faith, as could be revealed by his project ‘’demythologization.’’ Influenced by Existentialism of Heidegger, his interest was largely concentrated on the difference between the way the early church used to think, according to the New Testament, and modern thought. He held the view that modern man cannot think in the mythological terms as employed within the New Testament presentation of the very Gospel. Based on that fact it is necessary for the New Testament to be demythologize,( Kelley, Shawn, 2002) . According to Bultmann, these mythological elements tend to be the belief in the pre-existence of Christ, heaven, earth, and hell (the three-layer universe) ascension into heaven, demonology, miracles, as well as many other elements of the Judeo-Christian-Hellenistic world view. He holds that the inner meaning of the myths has to be explicated in existential terms and also purged of the objectifications that they are supposed to contain. Therefore his theory is viewed as having empirical claim in terms of the origin function of myths which express existence attitudes through objectified representations.

As much as Bultmann’s picture of Jesus may be considered downright heretical to some extent he tried making Jesus relevant. His intention was to direct attention to faith other than simple facts, a corrective that seemed to be needed at the time. Nevertheless, even as his approach managed to avoid some of the confusions that were generated by previous historic research, to some extent it ended up creating problem somewhere. An example is how can be any existential response to Jesus that does not necessarily involve some objective historical knowledge? Another problem is the driving wedge between faith and history that it totally ignores the idea that Christianity is and has always been a historical religion.

Brunner

Brunner was among other who challenged the whole development of modern theology right from Schleiermacher up to currently.Together with others, he hold the view that it is a study of man but not God, anthropology but not theology. He called for a come back to the great doctrines of the Reformation, viewed as the great doctrine of the word of God. However, it is not a comeback of what currently passes as Reformation doctrine, as Bible doctrine, (Emil Brunner, 1949). They look at traditional theology to have imprisoned God in its narrow formulas, even as ignored by Liberal theology. Falling under the neo-orthodox camp which has been constantly faced criticism to emphasize the immanence of God by liberal theologians, he has reacted in an attempt to fix the imbalance by reasserting the transcendence of God in his theology. In the two likely contradictory truth regarding nature of God there a concept of dialectical theology. Acting as a dialectic theologian, Brunner holds the view that no one could know God without God having divinely revealed Himself to him. Upon such revelation there will be contradictions, such as a Holy God is being revealed to a sinful man, or the idea that the transcended God is being known immanently. These contradictions could only be meaningfully described by speaking of them using the obvious paradoxes which they were.

The challenge faced by scholarly work of Brunner is that his writing needs to be read with awareness that such paradigm is fully existentialist. However without such an understanding one is able to read Brunner intermittently and mistake his theology for a conservative Evangelical. Most of his work, especially his writing on Christ, seems to sound to be consistent with Evangelical positions. However, his writing about conversion or revelation has to be read with his existential presuppositions in mind

Niebuhr

He was considered non systematical theologian. In his intellectual inquiries he stressed a dialectical, problematic approach. He attacked liberal Protestantism dwelling on the fact that it lacked understanding of nature as well as use of power in the society. He echoed the centrality of human sinfulness in explaining and understanding the human predicament and offered crucifixion of Christ as the most profound means of transcending that condition of human, (Bingham, 1993). According to him, there is need of myth as a method for making comprehensible to modern man the biblical world view. He brings out the fact that man was both free and bound, both limited and limitless. He considered Christianity faith, more than other world views, which has openly showed ambiguity and proposed means of coping with it, as well as the way of overcoming the existing anxiety that was inevitably a product of that ambiguity. Niebuhr has also tried to replace his widely important and destructive polemics against liberalism when he tries to constructively restatement of the relation of ethics to politics.

Niebuhr theology cannot be charged within the constraints of a naturalistic view of the world, or even declares that it becomes difficult to think that Niebuhr’s God is anything more or less than an unavoidable aspect of our conscious. However, he can be termed as a complex humanism disguised in the language of Christian faith.

In general each of these groups has tried to criticize the other groups in an attempt to find the most embraced view regarding theology. Modernists have a feeling that the idea of an inerrant Bible is no longer possible and that there has been a demonstration of scientific scientific facts which destroy it as a religious authority, facilitating seeking of religious authoritythrough other channels. Based on these fact it becomes more simple to understand the reasons as to why a Modernist feels that whoever accepts the Bible as religious authority is outmoded, unscientific, and obscurantist, and consider them difficult to speak to since they feel that they are not willing to face what according to them they considers demonstrated facts.

The Liberals on the other hand have held the fact that the Bible is just a record of the religious experiences of people who used to live in the Jewish-Christian tradition, and therefore it should be considered a wonderful record, however, it is definitely human in its production, hence fallible, (Grenz, S. & Olsen, R.,1992). The way it was interpreted showed the need to be in such a way that allows its humanness and for the understanding that religious ideas evolve on a naturalistic basis. Most of the supernatural and the miraculous have to be subtracted at every point.Moreover, the Neo-Orthodox view the Bible to be having more revelation (between the lines) as compared to the way Liberals hold. As much as they as well consider it to be humanly produced and being one of the records of religious experiences, generally they will still allow for more validity within the Bible as compared to the Liberals.

Conclusion

A great danger is revealed in Neo-Orthodoxy as compared to Liberalism due to the fact that they apply normal Biblical terms but with existential meanings, which have been far removed from the truth. On the part of the Old Liberals, they never brought out the idea that the Bible is full of mistakes and that there need for its larger section to be thrown away, the idea was more naturalistic that man came in existence by evolution and that there was no real answers for the serious problems of the mankind. The newer Modernists on their part are able to preach with the Bible’s word and offer what they consider “salvation to sin-sick man.” The mankind is left to think that they are being given the real answers for their needs yet the whole truth of God is still un-founded. Therefore theology has still a long way to bring the truth about God to the mankind.

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