Definition - Neo-Orthodoxy (sometimes referred to as the Theology of Crisis) was a twentieth-century theological movement among the liberal Protestant denominations that sought to re-establish the "themes" (i.e., language) of the Reformation, but without the original meanings or thoughts of the Reformer's. A classic example of "form over substance"

"In comparison to Liberalism, Neo-Orthodoxy seemed quite conservative; but when correctly compared with Fundamentalism and the Word of God, it was simply the new modernism."

"Most of the Liberal denominational colleges and seminaries were converting to Neo-Orthodoxy, so that it appeared to the undiscerning that there was a trend toward historic, conservative Christianity. All the more so because Neo-Orthodoxy employed much Fundamental terminology, glibly speaking of 'revelation,' 'atonement,' and 'resurrection.'

"The catch is--and it has caught many--that they do not mean by those terms what the Bible means, what the true Fundamentalist believer means. Despite the fact that Neo-Orthodoxy is more realistic than Liberalism, and that it quotes Scripture, it is not a biblical theology for the simple reason that it denies the verbal inspiration of the Word of God!"

Major names of theologians connected with Neo-Orthodoxy are:

Karl Barth (1886-1968) - considered the "Father" of Neo-Orthodoxy, Neo-Orthodox theology is often referred to as Barthianism.
Emil Brunner (1889-1966) - the "less extreme colleague of Barth", Brunner saw "revelation essentially in terms of personal encounter with God. Brunner opposed...evangelical orthodoxy with its concept of revealed truth."
Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) -
Paul Tillich (1886-1965) - heavily influenced by German existential philosophy and wrote focused on the meaning of "being". A forerunner to postmodern philosophy.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-mmmm) - late professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York. A major voice of the Social Gospel, Neibuhr's theological thinking was largely in terms of the social and political ethics of his day.

With every individual (caught in the snare of religious liberalism), there was a crisis of knowledge since truth was unknowable, and the truth of 1 Corinthians, chapter two fell on deaf ears. We end this brief review with the following letter written by a lost, Liberal Methodist minister.

Many of my Liberal colleagues are guilty of going through the process of rethinking the meaning of the traditional words and phrases of historic Christian faith, often radically reconstituting them with meaning which negates Christian faith in its historical sense, but they do not let this be known to their congregations.

They use the phrases without indicating that they do not mean by them what the typical parishioner thinks they mean. This, of course, is blatant intellectual dishonesty. The crime is compounded, furthermore, because it is committed most often by those who speak most strongly in favor of intellectual honesty.

One is appalled to learn, repeatedly, that when I tell those who resent my Liberalism that I represent, for good or ill, the overwhelming majority of Protestant ministers, most of them refuse to believe me. They haven’t the slightest idea what is currently (1946) being taught in the seminaries they support “for Jesus’ sake,”

One experiences a wistfulness about all this, to be sure. There was a time, in one’s cumulative educational experience, when one felt that it was not only possible, but necessary, radically to reshape what was meant by Christian faith.

But one comes, reluctantly but logically, to see that true Christian faith cannot be reshaped: ‘it must either be accepted in its biblical and historic form, or it must be rejected. And if, after taking what were once exciting and highly stimulating and, hopefully, incisive looks at Liberalism, at Neo-orthodoxy, at Bultmannism, etc., it is impossible to accept any of these in the place of Fundamentalism which itself has been rejected, then a wistfulness takes over; for one is lost in the most profound existentialist sense of that word.

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