In recent reading on the old theological liberalism, I am reminded about how much not much has changed. What so many today are “recovering” is simply old theological liberalism with a new hairdo. (Just look at the leaders of this group for evidence.)
It doesn’t look any better in books with fancy covers and cool page layouts than it did a century ago. It doesn’t sound better coming from a guy with a weird ’do sporting a trendy set of specs.
It’s the same old elevation of man and devaluation of revelation. It’s the exaltation of experience over revelation. It’s foolishness masquerading as epistemological humility. It’s unbelief parading about as relevance.
It’s Schleiermacher with a sound system. It’s Bushnell with blog. It’s Fosdick with Facebook.
And it provides no more hope today than it did then.
Only if the Bible contains objective, propositional truth can there be hope in this fallen broken world.
Reading this liberalism reminds me that there are some things that we just do not need to know. It just doesn’t help.
Yet there is some profit in knowing it. It reminds us that there are not really any new battles—nothing new under the sun.
So we should know some of the history of theological liberalism. It will help us to see the new liberalism is answered the same way the old liberalism was—by faithful exposition of the Scriptures as revelation.
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