Readers of Themelios could well be attracted to Ritschl’s attempted integration of history, criticism and verification with ethics and doxology. But they are likely to be disappointed with Ritschl’s ‘brief account of the relationship between basic concepts in theology’. The book dismisses a transcendent God, rejects an informational revelation, and minimizes Christ’s atonement and resurrection.

Ritschl’s ‘theology’ is not about God, or God’s cognitive revelation, but his own religious insights concerning some Jews and Christians. He has no theism because it allows him no freedom (p. 140), no supernatural being (or two-storey reality, p. 104). Ritschl has discovered that God has not attained, but is ‘on the way to his goal’ (p. 148).

Ritschl’s discoveries turn up no supernatural revelation. ‘The term “revelation” in the traditional sense should be avoided in theology’ for in that construct ‘Something is said to human beings which they cannot say themselves’ (p. 103). The traditional statement that the meaning and goal of every living being are to know God is no longer ‘correct’ (p. 197). Although God himself apparently cannot communicate truths to us, ‘God himself is discovered with the discovery of implicit axioms’ (my emphasis). As he admits, ‘this raises a mass of difficulties’. The mass of difficulties does not keep people from talking about God, however. ‘The task of theology is not to be seen in the direct explanation of God but in the explanation of language about and to God’ (p. 35).

What Ritschl discovers in the Bible is Jewish and Christian talk about and to God. ‘The expectation that the Bible contains a collection of uniform tangible doctrinal statements of which direct use can be made in a “biblical theology” is a fiction’ (p. 68). In place of revealed information he claims ‘verification through the Spirit’ for his ‘rediscoveries’. These may occur on the ‘occasion’ of studying traditions which rest in the biblical writings. If many experiences or manifestations are arranged in the memory of believers, the totality of these experiences and their connections can be described as ‘the revelation of God’ (pp. 103–104). Ritschl’s ultimate concern seems to be to avoid any ‘devaluation of secular wisdom and empirical knowledge’ (p. 104). In the process, however, he loses the heart of the information revealed through specially prepared, gifted, and inspired prophets and apostles—the gospel. Uncritically he endorses the conclusions of higher criticism for the last 200 years and relegates the Bible to pre-scientific and mythical ways of thinking (p. 11).

Ritschl’s ‘linguistic phenomenalism’ (p. 105) enables him to seek truth in whatever language leads to his particular ecumenical goal. The insight that becomes regulative for him finds that YHWH chose the people of Israel from all the nations and in Jesus Christ the church from the Jews. Hence only toward the Jews is Christian missionary activity illegitimate (p. 164). But Ritschl does not have a primarily missionary orientation with anyone because that ‘would lose sight of human beings’ (p. 199).

Who was Jesus Christ? The basic question is answered with extreme brevity and little clarity. Jesus is ‘God’s participation in the suffering and death of humanity’ (p. 177). A basic part of a theological statement about the death of Christ includes the concept of ‘representation’ (p. 189).

The ‘story’ of Christian beliefs focuses on the coherence of religious insights to the effect that God is the one who elects, who with Jesus shares in suffering and heals in the Spirit (p. 174). The hope of the future lies in overcoming what separates humanity through the hope of unifying Jews and Gentiles (p. 262).

Unfortunately Ritschl’s hope of unifying Jews and Gentiles minimizes the one sound foundation which spiritually united the Jewish apostles with the first-century Samaritans and Gentiles (Acts): the living triune God, the Father sending the Son, the incarnation, God-man’s reality as the Messiah, his sacrifice once for all providing justly for forgiveness from sin’s guilt, redemption from sin’s power and reconciliation of sinners, his supernatural resurrection from the dead and courageous proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.

For an evangelical attempt at integrating historical, biblical, systematic, apologetic and practical theology, see G. Lewis and B. Demarest, Integrative Theology (vol. 1, Zondervan, 1987).