What is Theological Liberalism and Why Should I Care?

It began benignly enough—a Frenchman, concerned his friends were losing faith in God, began to wonder if he could construct an argument to win them back.  He thought that if he doubted everything that could be doubted he could come to a solid base upon which he could build his case for the existence of God.  Not too many people bought his argument but they really dug his move to doubt everything.

Before Renee Descartes started his “doubtfest 1641,” most folks in the western world looked to the church for truth.  If a philosopher or scientist argued for such and such, the average Joseph, Juan or Johanne looked to the Vatican and asked, “Survey says?”

But poor Renee unwittingly gave cred to looking inward for truth rather than to the papacy.  Not to mention that a crusty Augustinian priest in Germany had already started a theological tussle with Rome more than a century before.  Add the invention of the printing press and the violence and political turmoil that followed the Reformation leaving a lot of people soured on religion in general and boom—you have the flourishing of “the enlightenment,” which spread secularism faster than toilet paper disappears off the shelves during a pandemic.  

This obviously created a quandary for theologians throughout Europe.  The brightest minds were increasingly arguing that they lived in a closed universe with fixed natural laws.  So what do you do if you’re scheduled to lecture on talking animals, a prophet taking a ride in a fish’s belly and a venerated messiah that rises from the dead? 

Undoubtedly many struggled but some caved rather quickly.  They then approached Scripture with the presupposition that, because God did not interfere with the natural order, that the Bible should be analyzed and dissected like any other book and that any witness which testified to the supernatural was not credible. 

A wave of scholarly works from Germany spread across Europe and eventually to North America.  They included titles such as Paul, Apostle of Jesus Christ (1845) by F.C Bauer, in which the theologian argued that the early church was embattled in a civil war between a Jewish faction led by the Apostle Peter and a Hellenistic faction led by the Apostle Paul and that it eventually synthesized into ancient Christianity.  Leading up to his thesis, Bauer argues that the New Testament, especially Luke-Acts is largely a muddled, contradictory work of mostly fiction. 

The works resonated with theologians who felt they were in danger of being left behind in a culture that was barreling toward an age of reason that would produce paradise on earth.  So, eventually, Oxford and Cambridge largely bought in and it produced a domino effect toppling the conservative theology of the Ivy League in America.  

This is just the first chapter of this saga.  I will continue outlining the history, albeit in a simplified fashion once a week over the next few months (hey, what do you want? A book?).  I will give a bit of a spoiler-filled trailer (and nearly all movie trailers these days are jam packed with the best parts of the movie…don’t get me started)—one of the justifications for adopting theological liberalism was that modern people would not accept anything but such a critical approach to ancient “myths.”  Yet, the denominations who did follow this path are dying a slow but inevitable death like cable TV or John Travolta’s acting career.  

It is not just the mainline denominations who drank the German Kool-Aid.  Who has lined up for it? Why? Has it made any positive contributions to the church? What is the proper response? Shun it? Embrace it? Tune back in for more next week. 

Tomorrow’s Blog Post—Why Your Pastor Should Be a Greek Geek!