Gisle et al: Three Theologians in Comparison

Gisle was a continentally-trained theologian: before proceeding to lecture at the University of Kristiana, he toured Europe studying with and under the world's most renowned theologians in the 1840's. During Gisle's lifetime he was contemporary with two other major theological names, Hans Lassen Martensen (1808-1884) and Herman Bavinck (1854-1921). Together, the three theologians handle the intellectual contours of their time remarkably similarly, yet with different emphases. Here are passages of their works side-by-side to demonstrate both consistency and variety in handling difficult strains of philosophical and theological concepts.

Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, §51

The kingdom of love is established on the foundation of HOLINESS. Holiness is the principle that guards the eternal distinction between Creator and creature, between God and man, in the union effected between them ; it preserves the Divine dignity and majesty from being infringed by the Divine love ; it eternally excludes everything evil and impure from the Divine nature (Isaiah vi. 3 : " Holy, holy,

holy, is the Lord of Hosts." See also Deut. vii. 21 ; James i. 13 ; Heb. x. 27 ; xii. 29). The Christian mind knows nothing of a love without holiness. Error has been fallen into

relatively to this subject, both in a speculative and practical direction. The speculative error we find embodied in pantheistic mysticism, which converts the free moral necessity which moved love to create man, into a mere metaphysical, natural necessity. For example, Angelus Silesius says :

'God has as much need of me, as I of Him ;

His nature I help Him to guard and He guards mine.

I know that without me God cannot live a moment,

If I should perish, He too must needs give up the Ghost.

Nothing there is save I and Thou ; if we two cease to be,

God then is no more God, and heaven falls to ruin.'

These mystical paradoxes are true indeed, so far as they give expression to the element of necessity in the divine love -the necessity under which it lies of willing to reveal itself by an infinite communication of itself. But the position that God needs man as much as man needs God, is true only so far as it is accompanied by the recognition of the majesty of God as revealed in His holiness; so far as reverence is guarded in the midst of love. The holy God testifies to us in our consciences, that He has no need of man, in order that He may be able to say to Himself 'I.' The holy God testifies to us in conscience, that love is not an indefinite flowing over of the nature of man into that of God, but a community of persons, the purity of which depends on strict regard being paid to the limits separating the one from the other. The practical error is antinomism, which consists in rending asunder gospel and law, and in pouring contempt on the law and God of the Old Testament, a contempt which we find expressed by several Gnostic writers, who, supposing that love gave something of the license commonly awarded to genius, set at naught the idea of duty as something appropriate solely to subordinate beings. We acknowledge, indeed, that holiness without love, as embodied in the Pharisees, is no true holiness ; that mere duty, the mere categorical imperative 'thou shalt,' apart from the promises of the Gospel, is not the spiritual law of Christ; but we must at the same time maintain with equal distinctness, that a gospel of love without law, is a false and impure gospel. The true Gospel confirms and is itself the fulfilment of the law.

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:566-569

The Christian religion seems to hold two irreconcilable positions, the heterosoterical and the autosoterical, when it attributes the acquisition of salvation completely to Christ and still exhorts us to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling 209 There are, accordingly, two submerged rocks on which the ship of the Christian order of salvation is always in danger of suffering shipwreck: antinomianism, on the one hand, and nomism, on the other.

Nomism (Pelagianism in its various forms and degrees) not only collides with the decrees of God, but also fails to do justice to the person and work of Christ.

To the degree that in the acquisition of salvation it expands the activity of hu-mans, it shrinks that of Christ. It is clear, certainly, that if faith, repentance, and perseverance are in whole or in part within the powers of human beings and their work; if the decision concerning one's actual salvation ultimately, when it comes to the crunch, lies in human hands, then Christ can at most have acquired the possibility of our being saved. Then he has indeed created the opportunity for us to be saved, but whether a person, or a few, or many, or all persons will take advantage and continue to take advantage of that opportunity ultimately depends on the people themselves. God has left them free and put the decision in their hands. It follows, then, that Christ has in fact fallen far short of accomplishing everything; and that the most important thing, namely, what is decisive in actual salvation, still has to be done by us humans. Christ, accordingly, steps down from the unique position he occupies in the work of salvation. He is reduced to the level of all the prophets and teachers by whom God has taught and nurtured humanity.

His work is then akin to and joined into all those preparatory and pedagogical activities that God has expended on the human race. The gospel of grace is only distinguished in degree from the law of nature. And humans themselves, though aided and supported by all that God has done to nurture them, are summoned to  

self-activity. It depends on them whether they will seize the opportunity God offers them and thus obtain salvation.

The Pelagian order of salvation, therefore, wipes out the specific distinction between Christianity and the pagan religions, comprehends them all in a single process, and can at most honor the Christian religion as first among equals. It falls back into paganism and has people gain salvation by their own wisdom and strength. And in so doing it undermines the certainty of faith as well. Of the Gentiles, Paul testifies that they are without Christ and therefore also without God and without hope in the world (Eph. 2:12). By the works of the law, no one is justified nor is there certainty of salvation. To the degree that people examine themselves and their work more carefully, they make the sad discovery that even their best works are imperfect and stained with sin. They must therefore content themselves with an appeal to the love of God, who overlooks what is lacking and accepts the will for the deed, or with the authority of their church and priest and surrender themselves to a false security. But they do not have and will never have certainty for themselves. Indeed, since grace— to the degree it is granted to them and necessary for them—is not only resistible but also always remains amissible, they at all times run the danger of losing what they have and the hope of salvation. On this position no steady course, no development of the Christian life, is even possible. It is even quite uncertain what the outcome of world history will be, whether there will even be a church or a kingdom of God. With respect to the most important point, that is, [the world's] eternal destiny, the management of the world rests in human hands?

The errors of this rationalistic nomism are unmistakably clear. But they are no less present when it dresses itself in Pietistic or Methodistic clothing. Like so many other efforts at reforming life in Protestant churches, Pietism and Methodism were right in their opposition to dead orthodoxy. Originally their intention was only to arouse a sleeping Christianity; they wished not to bring about a change in the confession of the Reformation but only to apply it in life. Yet, out of an understandable reaction, they frequently went too far in this endeavor and swung to another extreme. They, too, gradually shifted the center of gravity from the objective to the subjective work of salvation. In this connection it makes essentially no difference whether one makes salvation dependent on faith and obedience or on faith and experience. In both cases humanity itself steps into the foreground.

Even though Pietism and Methodism did not deny the acquisition of salvation by Christ, they did not use this doctrine or relate it in any organic way to the application of salvation. It was, so to speak, dead capital. The official activity of the exalted Christ, the Lord from heaven, was overshadowed by the experiences of the 

subject. In Pietism, instead of being directed toward Christ, people were directed toward themselves. They had to travel a long road, meet all sorts of demands and conditions, and test themselves by numerous marks of genuineness before they might believe, appropriate Christ, and be assured of their salvation. Methodism indeed tried to bring all this--conversion, faith, assurance--together in one indivisible moment, but it systematized this method, in a most abbreviated way, in the same manner as Pietism. In both there is a failure to appreciate the activity of the Holy Spirit, the preparation of grace, and the connection between creation and re-creation. That is also the reason why in neither of them does the conversion experience lead to a truly developed Christian life. Whether in Pietistic fashion it withdraws from the world or in Methodist style acts aggressively in the world, it is always something separate, something that stands dualistically alongside the natural life, and therefore does not have an organic impact on the family, society, and the state, on science and art. With or without the Salvation Army uniform, Christians are a special sort of people who live not in but outside the world. The Reformation antithesis between sin and grace has more or less made way for the Catholic antithesis between the natural and the supernatural. Puritanism has been exchanged for asceticism. The essence of sanctification now consists in abstaining from ordinary things

On the other side of the spectrum stands antinomianism. Over against nomism it stands for an important truth, a truth that — to overcome antinomianism— we must fully acknowledge. It is true that Christ has accomplished everything and that humans have not added, nor can add, a thing to his sacrifice for our salvation.

But antinomianism (not to be confused with the antineonomianism of England and the Netherlands) only employs this truth to gain acceptance for a completely different doctrine. Surely, Christ has accomplished everything. Does this mean that not just we but Christ too has nothing left to do after he has suffered and died? No, for Christ has also been raised and glorified. By his resurrection he has been appointed Ruler and Savior, the Lord from heaven, the life-giving Spirit. In the state of exaltation there still remains much for Christ to do. He must also apply and distribute to his church the salvation he acquired, and to that end he has sent his Spirit to regenerate the whole church and lead it into all truth.

Antinomianism ignores this application of the work of salvation. In principle it denies the personality and activity of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, in keeping with the law that opposites attract, it agrees with nomism. But precisely because it was inwardly motivated by an interest other than that of the perfect sacrifice of Christ, it proceeds even farther and so arrives at the denial and criticism of the objective atonement (satisfaction).

Christ, says antinomianism, did not acquire eternal salvation by his suffering and death but only made known the love of God. Atonement and justification are eternal. Just as in nomism, Christ here descends to the rank of a prophet and teacher. But whereas nomism is driven to these errors by its Deistic principle, antinomianism fundamentally arises from pantheism. It resembles, like two peas 

in a pod, the philosophy of Gnosticism, of Spinoza and Hegel. God is essentially one with humankind. From all eternity he has been reconciled. Wrath and righteousness are human notions, except that, as a result of their finiteness and limita-tions, humans feel far removed from God. They think that he is far removed from them, that he is filled with wrath against sin and demands satisfaction. That is an incorrect idea that humans have formed of God. God is eternal life, eternally reconciled, eternally one with humankind. And the whole of redemption is that humans, through the preaching of the prophets, be better informed and enlight-ened, that they abandon the illusion of the wrath and the punitive righteousness of God, that they acknowledge God as their Father and themselves as his children.

Nothing is needed for this redemption other than this enlightenment. It consists in enlightenment. It embraces nothing other than faith. There is no repentance, no contrition, no regret over sin, no fear of hell, no dread of judgment, no prayer for forgiveness, no sanctification: those are all Pelagian errors, which fail to do justice to the objective facts of God's grace and atonement. On a low and legalistic position, people still feel a need for them, just as they still construe the atonement as coming about by Christ's sacrifice and still speak of God's wrath and his righteousness. But these are religious notions, symbolic phrases, which have their value for the common people but which, on the position of the pneumatichoi (the "spirituals"), the philosophers, make way for the pure idea and the fully adequate concept. Like nomism, so also antinomianism ends with a total rejection of the essence of Christianity, sinks back into paganism, and locates salvation from sin in the rationalistic enlightenment or moralistic improvement of humans. Both, either in an Arian or a Sabellian sense, reject the confession of the Trinity.

Gisle, Systematic Theology, §60

It is in the essence of the Christian faith that its truth and soundness, both as actual and as habitual faith, are conditioned by the fact that it is really a matter of the heart, an expression of man’s personal relationship with God and thus also of an existence [Existents] in which all the different sides of his personal life have their essential, definite share. As soon as one or the other of these different functions of personal life here will make itself one-sidedly applicable, the resulting disruption of the organic unity of faith will also lead to a weakening or distortion of it, to some unhealthy and false form of religion, which then, carried out to its utmost consequence, will find its final outlet in the old essence of natural man. Where one thus, proceeding from the essence of faith as conviction, as truth-knowledge [Sandheds-Erkjendelse], overlooks the meaning that also the feeling and the will have here and makes Christianity predominantly or exclusively a matter of knowledge [Erkjendelssag], there will be such an intellectualistic misunderstanding of the essence of faith under the presupposition [Forudsætning] that one holds fast to the revealed truth, evoking a Christianity of reason [Forstands-Christendom] in which the living faith is reduced to a dead orthodoxy [død Rettroenhed], an orthodoxy [Orthodoxisme], which then again, as soon as that presupposition falls away, will turn into revealed, critical, or speculative rationalism [Rationalisme].[1] Where, on the other hand, in the knowledge [Erkjenslen] that faith is the heart’s willing remembrance of the gospel, one one-sidedly places the emphasis on the will of man, the fruit will be a works-Christianity, a pietism [Pietisme] which, forgetting that faith as precisely a matter of the will is essentially a product of the influence of the revealed truth on the heart, more and more passes into Pharisaic nomism [Nomisme],[2] until finally, with the complete abandonment of the gospel’s truth and God’s grace, it reaches its ultimate consequence in a lifeless and barren moralism [Moralisme]. Where Christianity is ultimately essentially in the feeling of the impression that the gospel’s testimony of God’s grace and the personal appropriation of this testimony make on the heart, such a misunderstanding [Miskjendelse] of the essence of faith as a matter of knowledge [kjendelsens] and will will lead to an Christianity of emotion [Følelses-Christianity], in which one constantly chases after and, as far as possible, revels in sweet feelings, which are by no means always the fruits of faith, a mysticism [Mysticisme], whose ultimate consequence is again a pantheism [Pantheisme], in which not only the Christian faith itself, but also its necessary presupposition, the acknowledge [Anerkjendelsen] of the specific  difference between God and man, is abolished in heathenism.

[Sw. §33] Note. Only there is a true and healthy life of faith possible, where faith encompasses the whole heart, simultaneously in understanding, will, and feeling. The exclusion or abolition of one or the other of these aspects of the personal life leads to disruption of the faith-life and, consistently carried out, to spiritual death. Thus a one-sided emphasis on the search for truth leads to an orthodoxism—to be distinguished from orthodoxy, which is essential for faith as true belief. Faith is understood here only as an understanding’s perception of objective truth. Pure doctrine is here the first and the last thing; the holiness of life is overlooked. Not only in science, but also in practical life we find such a direction, namely as dead Christian faith, dead orthodoxy, a shell without a core. But one does not stop at this position. As a purely impersonal relation to truth, reason wants to assert itself more and more, independently of faith, and to negate what it cannot recognize as truth. Orthodoxy naturally turns into rationalism, which at a lower intellectual level becomes more negatively critical: everything that does not agree with reason is rejected (Deism); at a higher point of view, a speculative rationalism in which the negating reason is able to posit something new through an independent operation of reason: a thinking, as well as a construction of a new relationship between God and man, which there then remains a bare identical relationship from a pantheistic standpoint, and man has fallen back into the old death. On the other hand, the will of faith can be emphasized one-sidedly, and the resulting distorted form of Christianity we call pietism—distinguishable from piety, which is a life in holy devotion inseparable from faith. The holy life of faith is here emphasized at the expense of the life of knowledge, and the consequence of such a one-sidedness is that the life of will, abandoned by the light of Christian doctrine, will sink more and more into darkness and make mistakes in its appearance in life. Man is in danger here of abandoning objective truth as the foundation of his hope, of building on his own striving and running, and thus of falling more and more back to the standpoint of the law. The undue emphasis on the will-life leads to a constant anxiety, a never-satisfied sorrow for sin, a heavy struggle for repentance without result, because the eye is closed to the real source of salvation, looking solely at oneself and not at the objective grace of God. Where the knowledge of sin is less deep, nomism will cast itself upon the practical life in order to seek its peace there and appear as a moral strictness, where mankind’s ἔργα [work] is its motivating principle (ergism). In the long run, however, this ascetic position will weigh heavily on the man: one begins to gradually look away from the inner will-life, to place importance on the outer—an external legality and development that has then brought man into the arms of hollow moralism, back to the old heathenism. Grace is now cast overboard as useless ballast, one is the “smith of one's own happiness”[3] and is content with one’s natural honor and decency. A third unhealthy form of Christianity finally emerges when emphasis is placed unilaterally on the emotional life of faith, and the danger here is all the greater because one emphasizes one-sidedly something that does not necessarily belong to the essence of faith. It is very close to man, and certain personalities in particular, to seek blissful feelings in Christianity. But it is striking that it is only the old flesh, the old egoism, that reappears here, only in a more hidden way. This craving for the pleasant is basically only a fine eudaemonism. One is accustomed to call such a trend mysticism, which is to be distinguished from a mystery [mystik] (Christianity itself is a holy mystery), in that it places the essence of Christianity in the immediate feeling of union with God. It usually develops largely into absolute pantheism (man is included in God) and we have the old heathenism again. Just as pietism easily unites with indifferentism in doctrine and critical rationalism, mysticism often forms an alliance with speculative rationalism.[4]

[1] This clearly demarcates Gisle as lying within the Pietist tradition, which Skarsten notes is “an old cliche of Pietism” (104). It was implemented to great effect by the Pietists in their critique of institutionalized Christianity.

[2] This seems to be the older term for what would be called “legalism,” which is how Koren translates it.

[3] ‘Sin egen lyckas smed’: an old Scandinavian proverb, something similar to ‘pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.’

[4] Observations also made by Martensen, §51; Bavinck, RD 3:564-569.