The Limits of Liberal Views of the Bible

Over the last four months, I have posted four foundational articles related to my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010), which I am updating and slightly revising this year. This post is based on Chapter Five, the first specific issue discussed with an entire chapter—and the only one dealing with the same issue as my book on fundamentalism.  

Positive Aspects in Liberal Views

Before elucidating some problem areas in liberal views of the Bible, several positions must first be noted as being commendable.

First, the rejection of biblical inerrancy is an important emphasis of liberalism.

In his 2003 book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg strikingly states that in the last half-century “more Christians have left the church because of the Bible than for any other single reason” (p. 43)—and that is largely because of the conservative evangelical emphasis on inerrancy. Thus, the liberals’ rejection of that is praiseworthy.

Also, as I write in Chapter Five, “As opposed to fundamentalism’s approach to the Bible, in the liberal paradigm there is freedom to revise interpretations and to reject previous views which are obviously no longer valid.” That, too, is commendable.

So, there are clearly some positive aspects in liberal views of the Bible. However, . . .

Negative Aspects in Liberal Views

The starting point of liberalism is one of the main problems, for it begins with reason, not God’s revelation as recorded in the Bible.

Traditional “orthodox” (Protestant) theologians thought we should start with the Bible and form our Christian beliefs and base our actions on it. But liberals tend to think that we should start with reason and accept only what we can rationally understand and accept of the Bible.

That problem was highlighted by Martin Luther in his disputation with the scholar Erasmus. Luther reportedly said, “The difference between you and me, Erasmus, is that you sit above Scripture and judge it, while I sit under Scripture and let it judge me!”

Further, one does not have to be a conservative evangelical to see that there are potential problems with the liberals’ “softness” in speaking clearly about the unique inspiration of the Bible or the authority of the Bible, which were strong traditional Christian emphases long before the rise of fundamentalism.

Questions about Liberal Views

In Chapter Five, I discuss five questions. The first two are, “human or divine?” and “factual or metaphorical?” In contrast to most conservatives’ emphasis on the Bible as divine and mostly factual, most liberals tend to see the Bible primarily as a human book and mostly metaphorical.

Both questions are probably answered best with a both/and position rather than an either/or one. The latter is easier to explain, but the truth is much more likely to be found in the both/and explanation.

The final question of the chapter is this: should Christians speak of the “Holy Bible” or of multiple “sacred scriptures”?

There is a proclivity in liberal theology toward the latter, which means relativizing the Bible. Thus, rather than holding to the Christian Bible as unique, as implied by the words “Holy Bible,” the sacred writings of other faith traditions are seen as more or less of equal value or validity.

In contrast to the contentious past in which Christians tended to vilify other religions and to denigrate their scriptures, liberals are prone to accept the scriptures of all major religions as being more or less of equal value.

Certainly, that irenic attitude of the liberals in this regard is preferable to the belligerent attitudes and actions of many Christians of the past. But it is not necessary to go from one extreme to the other.

Asserting one’s belief in and acceptance of the “Holy Bible” does not keep us from affirming the right of the adherents of other religions to believe in and accept the sacredness of their scriptures.

But affirmation of religious freedom does not mean relativism. It is simply a matter of respect for others with different traditions. Or, we might say, it is a matter of loving others as we are commanded to do by the Holy Bible.

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“The Bible Is Like a Rorschach Test” was the title of my 9/20/17 blog post, and it has received more than 350 pageviews; if you would like to read it (again), click here.

The Decline and Resurgence of Theological Liberalism

Chapter Two of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am updating and slightly revising this year, is titled “Contemporary Liberalism.” Please think with me about the decline and resurgence of theological liberalism, two of the matters discussed in that second chapter. 

From the cover of the 2010 book; the pictures (clockwise from the bottom right) are of Schleiermacher, Bushnell, and Rauschenbush (from Chapter One) and Marcus Borg (from Chapter Two)

The Decline

Liberal theology began to fall upon hard times in the 1920s. The widespread scope of the Great War (World War I) and the extensive suffering and carnage caused by that war called into serious question the central tenets of liberalism.

Those tenets included emphasis on the innate goodness of human beings, an optimistic view of social progress, and the intention to realize the kingdom of God in society through human effort.

European theologians such as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner began to develop a theology that avoided what they saw as the errors of the failed liberal theology of the time but that also affirmed some of the progressive elements in that theology.

That new emphasis was often called crisis theology in its beginning, but in the U.S. it came to be known mostly by the rather paradoxical name of neo-orthodox theology.

Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian who early began to question theological liberalism. His Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) struck a blow at the optimistic view of humanity long held by liberalism.

My own theological education in the 1960s was largely shaped by neo-orthodox theology, which was regarded as the bulwark against both a failed fundamentalism and a failed liberalism.

Elsewhere, though, conservative theologians were criticizing neo-orthodoxy for being liberal, not acknowledging that it was a position developed in opposition to the liberal theology that had been prevalent in Germany.

The Resurgence

The resurgence of liberal theology began in the last half of the 1960s. In the following decades, that resurgence was seen in many active theologians, especially the three I have written about in Chapter Two of The Limits of Liberalism. (Two of them have died since the book was first published in 2010.)

Englishman John Hick was long an influential contemporary theological liberal, particularly in the fields of the philosophy of religion and religious pluralism. His writings have had considerable influence, and current Christian thinkers must seriously grapple with the issues he raised.

Among the important books by Hick (1922~2012) are God and the Universe of Faiths (1973), God Has Many Names (1980), and A Christian Theology of Religions (1995) as well as two that he edited: The Myth of God Incarnate (1977) and, with Paul F. Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (1987).

It is probably safe to say that John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop, has been the most widely read Christian liberal over the past thirty years. As Hick also did, much of his writing was done in opposition to fundamentalism. In fact, his bestselling book is Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991).

Other significant books by Spong (b. 1931) are Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) and A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born (2001).

While more moderate than the previous two, Marcus J. Borg is the third of the contemporary liberal leaders I have written about in Chapter Two. Borg (1942~2015) wrote in such an evenhanded and convincing manner that in some ways he is the most “dangerous” of the contemporary liberals.

From my perspective, Borg (1942~2015) is “ dangerous” because his moderate position is easy for non-liberals to accept even though his position contains some misleading aspects that threaten what has long been, and still generally is, widely considered to be orthodox theology.

Jesus, A New Vision (1987), to mention only one of Borg’s many books, contains much that should be affirmed. Still, I find much that is questionable in that book, as in many of his other books, and I refer to him several times in later chapters.

In chapters three and four, I look first at the appeals of liberalism and then consider the problems with liberalism, and I look forward to sharing blog posts about those chapters in the next two months.

How Should We Read the Bible Today?

Although he wrote it back in 2001, eminent biblical scholar Marcus Borg declared, “Conflict about the Bible is the single most divisive issue among Christians in North America today.” We don’t know if he would say the same thing now, for, alas, he died in January. (In March I wrote about him here).

Today, though, it seems to me that the most divisive issue among Christians is same-sex marriage—but that squabble is largely because of opposing understandings of how to read and interpret the Bible.

Borg’s book is titled “Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally.” In many ways it is similar to another good book written three-quarters of a century earlier: Harry Emerson Fosdick’s “The Modern Use of the Bible” (1924).

Recently, I have looked through another excellent book on this subject: N. T. Wright’s “Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today” (2011). And then there is a new book which I haven’t seen yet: Harvey Cox’s “How to Read the Bible”—but I have read Jonathan Merritt’s informative interview with Cox about his book. (That interview was published last month here.)

If more people had read and heeded Fosdick’s book, many of the needless “Bible wars” of recent decades could have been avoided—and maybe the newer books would not have been necessary.

Fosdick wrote about two parties in the churches: one which thinks that “the essence of Christianity is its original mental frameworks; the other party is convinced that the essence of Christianity is its abiding experiences” (p. 102).

There are some who still today see the Bible as a rulebook. That seems to be their primary “mental framework.” The issue of same-sex marriage, for example, is decided by the rules, the prohibitions, the condemnatory words found in the Bible and considered binding at all times and places.

Others of us see the Bible as a record of God’s grace, a book abounding with the good news of life, love, light, and liberty—the 4Ls that I have emphasized for years. Those are the “abiding experiences” that we find in the Bible and seek to live by today.

When I read the many anti-gay or anti-same-sex marriage arguments from conservative Christians, I see that they are legalistically holding on to the mental framework of the past, but I have trouble seeing how they are upholding the abiding experience of a gracious God.

Certainly the Bible contains condemnation of sin, that which destroys a proper relationship with God and which injures others as well as oneself. That is, the Bible condemns such sins as pride, greed, idolatry, and injustice.

All human actions that devalue others—treating people like things, exploiting them, using them for one’s own selfish ends, etc.—are all expressions of human sinfulness. It is most likely that the only type of homosexual activity condemned in the Bible were those kinds of actions. And there was, no doubt, that kind of activity then.

And there still is. But that certainly doesn’t mean that all homosexual activity is of that nature.

The Bible’s condemnation of the sinful treatment of others is not a reasonable basis for rejecting same-sex marriage between consenting adults who seek to live a life of covenanted commitment to each other.

The abiding experience of God’s grace for all people, including those who wish to be in a committed same-sex relationship, should surely not be defined by people who read the Bible with the mental framework of an era long past.

In Memory of Marcus Borg

Marcus Borg was born on March 11, 1942—eight days after my little sister. But whereas my sister is alive and well—in celebration of her birthday June and I had a good visit (and a good meal) with her and her husband in St. Joe last week—Borg passed away on January 21 of this year.

Borg’s death was a great loss to the Christian academic world, for he was a good scholar and a prolific writer. He will be especially missed by many non-conservative Christians, for whom he was long a noteworthy spokesman.

The New York Times referred to Borg as “a leading evangelist of what is often called progressive Christianity.” His interpretation of the Christian faith convinced many people to remain a Christian.

That article related how Borg spoke at a packed church in Colorado a few years ago. Then, on the day Borg died, the pastor of that church said he received an email from a young woman in his church. She wrote “Without Marcus, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a Christian.”

Similarly, the author of an article in The Christian Century avers that many Christians “identify Borg as the person who made space for them to return to—or remain in—the Christian faith.” To the extent that that is true, Borg is certainly praiseworthy.

Borg’s contribution to contemporary Christianity was much like that of Henry Emerson Fosdick in the 1920s. In the first chapter of my book “The Limits of Liberalism” (2010) there is a brief section on “the liberalism of Fosdick.” Then in the second chapter, Borg is presented as one of the “contemporary leaders of liberalism.”

Borg, like Fosdick, was able to interpret the Bible and Christian beliefs in ways that appealed to those who were no longer able to accept or to abide in the teachings of fundamentalism or restrictive conservatism.

Borg’s picture is also one of four liberal Christian theologians on the cover of my book. Because I thought some of his theological views were too liberal, in the section about him I said that Borg “writes in such an evenhanded and convincing manner that in some ways he is the most ‘dangerous’ of the contemporary liberals.”

Borg began writing his last book when he turned seventy. He called it “Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most,” and it was published less than a year ago. It is a fine book and I enjoyed reading it—and I think it is more balanced theologically than his earlier books.

In the introduction of “Convictions,” Borg writes, “Seventy isn’t a guarantee of wisdom or a license to be dogmatic. It’s quite easy to be an opinionated old fool.” It was generous of him to say that—and yours truly needs to remember that also!

If all I had known of Borg was what he wrote in this book, he wouldn’t have been used as an example of contemporary Christian liberalism. And I find that now I am much more in agreement with Borg’s “convictions” than with the theological stance of my own sister.

During the meal at Ryan’s last week, she began asking questions about my theological beliefs. It became quite evident that my views have changed considerably from what we both believed back in the 1950s. But her beliefs seem to be much the same—and she most likely sees that as a positive thing.

But many realize that a broader theological worldview is needed. So they, and I, are grateful for the life and work of Marcus Borg.