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.

What Is Theological Liberalism?

The blog posting I made on January 25 was titled “Still Seeing the Limits of Liberalism.” It was based on the Preface of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am updating and slightly revising this year. This posting is based on the book’s first chapter, “What is Liberalism?”  

A Movement Attempting Adaption

The first subdivision of Chapter One is “A Sincere Movement to Adapt Christianity to the Modern Worldview.” Regardless of what negative views one might have about liberalism—and some of you have views much more negative than mine—it must be recognized that liberal theologians and pastors were well-intentioned.

To a large extent, liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries actively sought ways to affirm both a modern, scientific worldview and the Christian faith. They attempted to reinterpret Christianity in order to keep many intelligent, educated people of the contemporary world from rejecting the faith.

Early in the 20th century, one of the leaders of modernism, as it was generally termed then, was the eminent preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, whose 1924 book The Modern Use of the Bible was highly influential.

In his autobiography, For the Living of These Days (1956), Fosdick (1878~1969) asserted that the central aim of liberal theology was to make it possible for people “to be both an intelligent modern and a serious Christian.” That is what he admirably sought to do in his numerous books and in his preaching.

In a 1968 book that I have highly evaluated through the decades, William E. Hordern wrote,

Although the fundamentalists saw the liberals as subversives of the faith, liberals saw themselves as the saviors of the essence of Christianity. For the liberal, it was the fundamentalist who was destroying Christianity by forcing it into the molds of the past and making it impossible for any intelligent man to hold it (Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology, p. 73).

A Threatening “Militant” Movement

Partly to parallel this chapter with the first chapter of my Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I refer here to “militant” liberals, although because of the nature of liberalism none were as militant as some of the fundamentalists.

Nevertheless, there were liberals who sought not just to adapt Christianity to the modern world but to change decisively the content of the historic Christian faith. Two examples of this more radical form of liberalism are Unitarianism and Transcendentalism.

Even though disavowal of the Trinity is one tenet of Unitarianism, that is by no means its main emphasis. The Unitarianism that developed in the 19^th century is now a part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which “affirms and promotes seven Principles grounded in the humanistic teachings of the world's religions.” 

I have no problem with an organization being based on the humanistic teachings of the world’s religions. But I do object to the claim that it is a valid expression of (liberal) Christianity.

The current Unitarians are perhaps farther removed from historic Christianity than those of the past, but the Unitarian tendency from the beginning to radically change Christianity from traditional doctrines is why I have referred to them as “militant,” even though they largely acted in a benign manner.

The Transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, were men of high moral quality. But their beliefs moved farther away from traditional Christianity than even the Unitarians and became a full-fledged humanism.

The Road Ahead

Most of what I treat in the rest of The Limits of Liberalism is related to those who sought, and those who are now seeking, to adapt Christianity. Next month I plan to post an article based on Chapter Two, which focuses on the development of liberalism in the last part of the 20^th century and the first decade of this century.

Still Seeing the Limits of Liberalism

The updated and slightly revised edition of Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism is finally finished and is now ready for purchase at Amazon.com. This article is about the sequel to that book, which I have begun updating and (slightly) revising this month. 

The Search for Balance

For thirty-six years I was a full-time faculty member at Seinan Gakuin University (SGU) in Fukuoka City, Japan. For the last twenty-four of those years, I was a professor in SGU’s Department of Theology, which serves as the theological seminary for the Japan Baptist Convention.

During those twenty-four years I taught the required introductory theology course, and one of my constant themes was theological balance. In Japanese, seat and sheet are pronounced exactly the same, so some of the seminary students nicknamed me Balance Seat, a pun on the economic term balance sheet. 

From before the time I started writing Fed Up . . ., I planned to write a sequel as part of my quest to find, and to forward, a balanced theological position—and I was able to publish that sequel in 2010.

Largely because of having written Fed Up with Fundamentalism, a book clearly critical of the excesses of conservative evangelical theology and practices, I felt the need to balance that emphasis with a book critical of the excesses of liberal theology.

Now after ten years, there are some updates needed and some minor revisions and corrections of keyboarding errors that also need to be made.

An Important Clarification

So that there will be no confusion later, let me make it clear at this point that in this book I am writing only about Christian theological liberalism, not about economic, social, or political liberalism. The words liberal and liberalism are often used in these latter arenas, but that is outside the scope of this book.

Since in recent years so many Christians who have been conservative theologically have also been social conservatives and so many Christians who have been liberal theologically have been social liberals, it is hard to avoid confusing the categories.

Thus, calling Christians progressive or liberal now can, and perhaps most often does, refer to Christians who are social progressives or liberals rather than those who are theologically progressive or liberal.

In Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I was often critical of the stance of fundamentalists and/or conservative evangelicals on social and political issues. That was because their theological positions often led to what seemed to be unbiblical or un-Christian stances on important social justice concerns.

But I find little problem with most theological liberals’ position on social issues. Thus, this book deals almost exclusively with theological matters and not with the ethical issues that were extensively treated in Fed Up . . . .

The Intended Tone

This book, as its prequel, is not meant to be polemical as such. As a historical, theological, and personal appraisal, the intention is to be completely fair. Thus, the tone of this book is decidedly different from books harshly critical of liberal Christianity.

As in the previous book, my intention is not just to criticize. Rather than being a polemical attack on theological positions with which I disagree, I will point out the weaknesses or the limits/limitations of theological liberalism in order that a better position can be grasped, one that is truer to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible as a whole. 

There are ten chapters in Limits of Liberalism. Over the next ten months, I plan to post a blog article each month based on those ten chapters. I would be honored to have you read, think about, and respond to those upcoming postings.

In Memory of Karl Barth

Karl Barth passed away forty-four years ago today, on December 10, 1968. Since he is generally regarded as the greatest Christian theologian of the twentieth century, I am writing this in memory of his life and the significant contributions he made to the world of Christian theology.

Barth was born in Switzerland in 1886. A couple of years after studying at some of the best universities in Germany, learning from the leading liberal theologians of the day, in 1911 he became pastor of a Reformed church back in his home country and served that church for ten years.

In 1919, Barth published a commentary, The Epistle to the Romans (Der Römerbrief). That seminal book resulted from his struggle over what to preach during the difficult years of World War I. What he had learned from his liberal professors did not seem to work, so as he began work on that book in 1916 he turned to what he called “the strange new world within the Bible.”

Despite not having a doctorate, Barth was appointed a professor in Göttingen in 1921, and he taught in Germany until he was exiled from the country (Germany) in 1935. He was exiled partly because of his penning the Barmen Declaration the year before, a document of the Confessing Church that was formed in opposition to the “German Christians” who pledged their loyalty to Hitler.

Barth’s greatest theological achievement was the writing of Church Dogmatics, a detailed exposition of Christian doctrine that ended up being more than 9,000 pages (and six million words!) and which was published in thirteen volumes from 1932 to 1967.

The great Swiss theologian made only one visit to the United States, in 1962. I still regret not being able to go with some seminary friends to hear Barth speak that year when he came to Chicago Divinity School. (I didn’t think I had the time, and as a full-time student with a wife and two children I certainly didn’t have the money to make that trip to Chicago from Louisville.)

April 20, 1962

Many of you have heard the anecdote about a question he answered when he was in the U.S. A seminary student asked him what the most momentous discovery of his long theological life had been. Barth’s terse answer was, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Barth was widely criticized by conservative Christians who thought he was too liberal. But ironically, his theology was developed mainly in opposition to the theological liberalism of the early twentieth century—and the support of the German war effort by some of his former liberal theology professors.

It is true that Barth did not affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, and he accepted the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. But he rejected many of the central emphasizes of theological liberalism and re-emphasized many of the central themes of the Protestant reformers. Thus, in this country, his work became widely known as neo-orthodox theology.

Personally, I was influenced more by another Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner (1889-1962) with whom Barth sometimes disagreed. But they both were advocates of neo-orthodoxy—a theology of the “radiant center,” which I have long emphasized in my teaching and writing.

__________

The brief concluding section of the last chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “Recommending the Radiant Center.” In that book, Barth’s theology is introduced briefly in the first subsection of Chapter Two and the second subsection of Chapter Five.