A broad and general term embracing several subspecies of theologies characterized by the kind of thinking deriving from the Enlightenment stress on human reason and the finding of science as the basis for truth. Whatever does not agree with reason or science is deemed to be unfit for faith. Liberal theology is, therefore, antithetical to all the historical Christian tenets such as miracles, the incarnation, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Liberal theology is, from an evangelical point of view, spiritually bankrupt, its methodology too restrictive to be of use in understanding the full breadth of truth. Neo-Orthodox theologian Richard Niebuhr reacted to American liberal theology which he describes thus:
The romantic conception of the kingdom of God invovled no discontinuities, no crises, no tragedies, or sacrifices, no loss of all things, no cross, and resurrection. In ethics it reconciled the interest of the individual with those of society by means of faith in a natural identity of interests or in the benevolent, altruistic character of man. In politics and economics it slurred over national and class divisions, seeing only the growth of unity and ignoring the increase in self-assertion and exploitation. In religion it reconciled God and man by deifying the latter and humanizing the former . . . Christ the Redeemer becomes Jesus the teacher or the spiritual genius in whom the religious capacities of mankind were fully developed. . . . Evolution, growth, development, the culture of the religious life, the nurture of the kindly sentiments, the extension of humanitarian ideals, and the progress of civilization took the place of the Christian revolution.
A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministration of a Christ without a cross. (The Kingdom of God in America)
Another scholar, George Tyrrell, put the point more sharply when he said that Harnack (a prominent representative of liberal theology) looked at the Jesus of history down a deep well and saw his own face reflected at the bottom.
Important representatives of liberal theology include Friedrich Schleiermacher (1763-1834), Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89), Adolph von Harnack (1851-1930), F. C. Baur (1792-1860), David Strauss (1808-74), Horace Bushnell (1802-76), and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918).
The horror of the First World War, with its unbelieveable cruelty with which "modern civilized men" could subject each other to, shattered the optimism in human nature celebrated by liberal theology. Liberal theologians began, after the war, to redirect their theological endeavour in a new direction the result of which came to be called "realistic theology" or Neoliberalism
A more stark explanation of liberal theology would be to say that it is the 'ism' of those who see Jesus only as a concept instead of a Master and are trying to make it palatable for a society that cannot get the idea of Jesus walking on water out of its head.
Further Reading & Resources:
Bruce Ware, Systematic Theology I. Lecture 6: Liberalism, Neo-orthodoxy, Evangelicalism. BiblicalLearning.org.
html N 5 (Open on Phone)
Andrew Moore, "Who are the Liberals now? History, Science, and Christology in N. T. Wright and Alistair McGrath," Anvil 20.1 (2003):9-24. Pdf N 6 (Open on Phone)
J. I. Packer, "Encountering Present-Day Views of Scripture," in The Foundation of Biblical Authority, ed. by James M. Boice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Glasgow: Pickering & Inglis, 1979), 61-82.
Pdf N (Open on Phone)
©ALBERITH
300719lch