What Went Wrong: The Roots of Today's Social Gospel

A primary cause of the Church’s decline today is its promotion of a social gospel in place of the Gospel; free justification in Christ Jesus.  The social gospel became more popular throughout Europe and the United States after the Second World War, largely due to extreme economic hardships and the social injustices of the time.  The Church’s widespread abandonment of the Gospel, however, did not occur in a vacuum.  So what went wrong?  The social gospel, as it is embraced by the Church today, is the direct descendent of 19^th and early 20^th century Biblical criticism, which led to the denial of miracles, a resurgence of Marcionism, and eventually the denial of the substitutionary atonement, the very heart of the Gospel itself.

Biblical Criticism

While Biblical criticism has been around for centuries, 19^th century Europe, specifically in Germany, became a hot spot for this form of study.  The German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), became well known for his development of Higher Criticism, the study of the origin of ancient texts.  As he did so, Schleiermacher began to superimpose his own philosophies with a Christian twist onto the Scriptures. 

The philosophy of Schleiermacher was eventually made evident when he said that he believed the Bible “…is the original translation of the Christian feeling, and, for this very reason

[it is] so firmly established that it permits us only to understand it and unfold it more.”   Eventually, Schleiermacher even went so far as to reject the New Testament wonders as being miraculous.  This early 19^th century criticism of the Bible and the “unfolding it more” according to the reader’s conscience made an impact on the next generation of German theologians.

Resurgence of Marcionism

Part of the next generation after Schleiermacher was German theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) who sought to make Christianity more practical to the Christian’s life.  In order to promote his view, Ritschl focused on what he believed to be the concrete historical aspects of Jesus.  What mattered in a practical sense was action based on love, a theme that would carry over into the generation to follow Ritschl. 

As Ritschl scoured the New Testament in search of the historical Jesus, Ritschl eventually became increasingly critical of the Scriptures, especially those that had a high view of the Old Testament.  This began a 19^th century resurgence of Marcionism, where texts like the Gospel of Luke came under attack and the apocryphal Gospel of Marcion was upheld as cannon.  Regarding this, Ritschl stated that, “Marcion’s Gospel is not a mutilation of the Gospel of Luke, but rather its basic root.”  He went on to say that “one should conclude that Luke has added that which was missing from Marcion’s Gospel rather than conclude that Marcion excised anything from Luke.”

While studying at the University of Tuebingen, Ritschl began to influence Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), who in turn founded what became known as the Tuebingen School at the University, a center for New Testament criticism.  While 20^th century historical research shows the Tuebingen School’s research of the 1840s to be false, it would not prove soon enough for those theologians of the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  The damage had been done.

Denial of Substitutionary Atonement

What started as mere literary criticism eventually became an attack on the Gospel itself.  It was in a world confused by Higher Criticism and angered by the social injustices of slavery and the Industrial Revolution that American Baptist theologian Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) came on the scene.  While born in the United States, Rauschenbusch was the son of German immigrants and was fluent in their language.  When he went to Rochester Theological Seminary, Rauschenbusch was immersed in the literature of the Tuebingen School of Higher Criticism.  It was not long before he rejected his prior belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.

Reminiscent of Schleiermacher and Ritschl before him, Rauschenbusch began to seek a practical Christianity based on experience and feeling, permitting him to unfold what he believed to be the truth of the Christ’s death.  This lead to his denial of orthodox Christianity, specifically the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, that Christ conducted an atoning sacrifice – His death on the cross – as payment to the Father for the sins of His people.  Christ was the substitute on the cross for His people.  On the substitutionary atonement, Rauschenbusch believed, however, “…it was not taught by Jesus; it makes salvation dependent upon a trinitarian transaction that is remote from human experience; and it implies a concept of divine justice that is repugnant to human sensitivity.”  Instead of the Gospel, Rauschenbusch had something new in mind.

Rise of the Social Gospel

With the sins of society and institutions in mind rather than each individual’s sins, Rauschenbusch stated that Christ died “…to substitute love for selfishness as the basis for human society.”  Rauschenbusch’s compliant about the Gospel was that “…it has not evoked faith in the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.”  Rauschenbusch found the Gospel’s focus on the individual to be the problem.  He went on to say that the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven." Schleiermacher and Ritschl’s goal for a practical Christianity had finally reached its fulfillment in Rauschenbusch’s social gospel.

Rauschenbusch eventually published his magnum opus regarding his social gospel in his 1917 book, Theology for the Social Gospel.  In this work, Rauschenbusch stated that "Jesus did not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton who beat up his wife in B. C. 56, or of some mountaineer in Tennessee who got drunk in A. D. 1917. But he did in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of organized society, and they in turn are causally connected with all private sins."  Later he added that “Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered."

While not all churches and Christians today agree with these late theologians, their inherited errors are still present in contemporary ecumenical documents, e.g. the Manhattan Declaration of 2009, where Christian churches have confused the social gospel with the Gospel.