liberals and the bible

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Excursus A

LIBERALS AND THE BIBLE

Most mainline Protestant Churches today subscribe to some forms of liberal-

modernist theology. Liberal or modernist theologians are those who would accept that

the Bible is not inerrant, that many, if not most, of the stories related about Jesus in

the gospels are not historical and, in fact, many of them would probably reject theTrinitarian doctrine of God and some would even dispense with belief in the existence

of God altogether. Yet, strange as it may seem to the average person, these

theologians still consider themselves Christians.

These theologians would happily admit to most of the findings in this book so

far, but would certainly dismiss them as insignificant objections to their faith. Our

aim in this excursus is to examine how liberals view the Bible and Jesus. But before

we begin our investigations, an historical summary of the liberal-modernist movement

would be of great benefit in appreciating this phenomenon.

HISTORY OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY

From a theological point of view, the 19th century inherited a great number of

problems from the preceding centuries. Thus the skepticism of philosophers such as

David Hume (1711-1776) and to a certain extent, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

presented many difficulties for Christian theologians. In his book, An Enquiry

Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume demonstrated the philosophical

implausibility of miracles. And in his posthumously publishedDialogues Concerning

Natural Religion (1779), Hume showed that the traditional arguments for Gods

existence, especially the argument from design, cannot lead to the conclusions

believers want them too. Immanuel Kant, in his monumental masterpiece, Critique of

Pure Reason (1781), showed that none of the traditional arguments for Gods

existence have any validity.

Even more troubling to theology than philosophy was naturalphilosophy, or, as

it eventually became known, science. Science was making embarrassing

encroachments into what had traditionally been regarded as the theologians turf. TheCopernican revolution showed that the sun, not the earth, was the center upon which

everything in the then known universe revolves. It took away the earths, and thus

mans, place from the center of the universe. It became harder to believe how man

could be the crowning glory of creation when he is placed in an insignificant corner of

the universe.1

The plight of the theologians continued to pile up in the 19th century. The

publishing of Charles Darwins (1809-1882) treatise on evolution, The Origin of

Species (1859) meant that science had gone one step further against the theologian.

The theory of evolution presented by Darwin showed that man is an evolved animal,

no more and no less. If evolution is true, and the evidence marshaled by Darwin in

1 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p31-33


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his book was compelling, then Genesis is false; far from being created in Gods

image, mankind bore all the marks of an animal ancestry.

Within Christendom, the development of biblical criticism, especially in its

higher form, began to show that the Bible was not a unique document. Using

critical historical methods common in the study of other historical documents, the

higher critics showed that the first five books of the Bible were not written by the

Hebrew prophet, Moses, as was traditionally believed. These books show traces of at

least four separate documents. They also showed that some prophetic books such as

Daniel were actually written afterthe events it purports to prophesy about. Even theNew Testament was not spared. It began to be seen that the gospels were not written

close to the events they describe but were written decades and perhaps even up to a

century later. The fundamental result of higher criticism was that it revealed that the

belief in Bible infallibility was no longer tenable.2

Thus by the second half of the 19th century, it was clear to most theologians that

it could no longer be business as usual for their profession; the monolithic fabric of

Christian theology was torn, never again to be mended. Christian theology bifurcated

into fundamentalist/conservatism on one side and liberal-modernism on the other.3

The fundamentalists took the overtly irrational route and rejected all scientific

findings that contradicted the literal reading of the Bible. Higher criticism was

condemned as a tool of the devil.4 The liberals on the other hand rationally accepted

the findings of science and biblical criticism. They tried many different methods tokeep their faith meaningful and alive by employing various interpretative methods on

the Bible and the traditional concepts of orthodox theology.

The first steps of liberal5 theology were made by the German theologian

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). In trying to win back the educated classes to

Christianity, he taught that the debate over proofs of Gods existence, biblical

inerrancy and miracles are, at best, peripheral issues. The most important issue,

according to Schleiermacher, was the feeling present in a believer in experiencing

God. Another German theologian, Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), preached that faith,

2 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p40-423 While this section concerns mainly Protestant liberal theology, it should be mentioned

that there was a similar movement in the Roman Catholic Church towards the end of the19th and early 20th century, which was also called Modernism. Its advocates openly

accepted the findings of biblical criticism and generally rejected the traditional Catholic

scholastic theology. This group was eventually suppressed by an Encyclical in 1907 by

Pope Pius X. [Bullock, Dictionary of Modern Thought: p540, Livingstone, Oxford

Dictionary of the Christian Church: p341] Although Roman Catholic scholarship is

nowadays quite liberal, its scholars tend to treat central Roman Catholic dogma (e.g.

Marys Perpetual Virginity, Jesus Resurrection) with kid gloves and tend not to study

these critically.4 In fact, this whole book up to now has been mainly a critique of the funda-

mentalist/conservative position.5 I have used the term liberal loosely to refer to theologians of the liberal-modernist

tendencies: this would include those the systematic theologians normally group under

liberalism, modernism, neo-liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, Christian existentialism, empirical

theology, radical theology and crisis theology to name a few. Their similarity lies in their

acceptance of biblical criticism and their rejection of fundamentalist doctrines.


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not reason, must be the bedrock of true religion. Religion, to him, concerns value

judgment whereas reason, which includes science and higher criticism, concerns

matters of fact. Thus, even if biblical criticism shows that stories about Jesus virgin

birth, his miracles and his pre-existence are false, it does not change the value of the

person Jesus. The important thing about Jesus, according to Ritschl, was that he led

mankind to the God of values; in other words, Jesus made his followers conscious

of the highest values of life. Ritschls views were popularized by another German

theologian Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). Harnack criticized most of traditional

Christian dogmas and blamed the apostle Paul for corrupting the simple teaching ofJesus by changing the religion ofJesus to a religion aboutJesus. Harnack denied the

miracles in the gospels and taught that Jesus never claimed to be divine. Harnack

taught that Christianity can be reduced to a few simple elements: the belief in God the

Father and the gospel of which Jesus was the personal realization. Towards the end

of his life, Harnack even campaigned for the ejection of the Old Testament from the

Christian canon.6

The conservative-fundamentalists hit back in a way that has become a hallmark

of their style: in the US, they resorted to political action to remove liberal preachers

from the pulpits of Protestant churches and liberal professors from their academic

postings in theological seminaries. They had some initial successes but eventually in

the third decade of the 20th century, due primarily to the sheer number of non-

fundamentalist theologians, they were forced to retreat into the small denominationsand their related seminaries.7

Despite this victory against the fundamentalist, it was quite clear, even to

theologians steeped in the liberal tradition, that liberalism cannot continue in its

course. That would eventually lead to a complete repudiation of the whole bible and

the whole tenets of Christianity: the surefire path to atheism. What was needed was a

shift of focus, so to speak; to put the fruits of critical thinking in soft focus and to

concentrate on squishy issues such as the problems of human existence. This they

found in the writings of the 19th century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813-

1855). His philosophy, which eventually became known as existentialism, ostensibly

dealt with the problems of human existence. He taught that human existence cannot

be rationalized. Therefore God, being inextricably linked with our existence, cannot

be rationalized by an objective system of rational truths. Thus being a Christian

means embarking on a leap of faith in the dark, to commit ones whole life to Christ.8

Thus when the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) reacted to the more

extreme doctrines preached by the liberals and affirmed much of traditional

theology such as the doctrine of the trinity and the belief of Jesus Christ as the

incarnate Word of God, he did not repudiate higher criticism. He merely shifted the

focus away from this into existentialist issues. In line with many liberal theologians

he did not believe that reason has much use in the field of theological thought.9

6 Cunliffe-Jones, Christian Theology Since 1600: p144-145

Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p44-497 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p52-548 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p113-1189 Bullock,Dictionary of Modern Thinkers: p43-44

Cunliffe-Jones, Christian Theology Since 1600: p146-147


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Another important theologian in the liberal tradition was the German Rudolf

Bultmann (1884-1976). Bultmann was certainly one of the greatest New Testament

scholars of the 20th century. He was renowned for introducing two powerful tools

into biblical criticism: Demythologization and Form Criticism. According to him,

and his followers, the myths in the Bible were an obvious reflection of the worldview

of the early Christians. As they stand, the myths in the Bible can no longer be

honestly believed by modern man. Thus, these myths: such as the belief that

supernatural beings (Satan, angels, demons and God) regularly interfere in the natural

working of the world and that Jesus was a pre-existent being sent to a sacrificial deathto atone for mans sins are all not objective history. They are myths which reflect the

early Christians understanding of the world. Demythologization was a program of

getting to the kerygma, or the proclamation, of the early Christians behind the myths.

In this sense he differs from the early 20th century liberals that simply jettisoned the

myths form their theology. Form criticism is the method that aids in the

demythologization process. Recognizing that the stories in the bible were originally

handed down orally and that oral tradition has certain structural forms, the form

critics were able, in many cases to find the historical setting in which the stories were

first told. Form criticism showed that much of the stories about Jesus in the gospels,

even the non-mythical ones, were not historical and were the results of the early

Christian community belief or expectation about him. Yet from this position

Bultmann, like Barth, affirmed his belief in Jesus via an existentialist viewpoint. Heclaimed that all the Christian need to know was that Jesus once existed and that he

was crucified. It is irrelevant whether the stories about Jesus in the gospels were true

or false. What was important about these stories was that it showed what the ideaof

Jesus meant to the early Christians who first circulated those stories. For Bultmann,

the gospels present, not an historical or scientific truth, but an existential one.10

Bultmanns contemporary, Paul Tillich (1886-1965), developed his own

existentialist brand of theology. The interesting aspect, for our purpose, is Tillichs

assertion that God, as he is formulated by traditional Christian theology, does not

exist.11

The development of liberal thinking eventually led to thinkers such as Dietrich

Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). He believed that traditional Christianity has outlived its

usefulness and called for a religionless Christianity. Bonhoeffer, who died in a

Nazi concentration camp, seemed to believe that there is no afterlife, no message of

personal salvation in the Bible. Bonhoeffer, and his intellectual heirs, repudiated the

traditional body of the Church, its liturgy and its metaphysics and called for a

complete secularization of Christianity.12 This radical theology as it came to be

called, is the modern flag bearer of Christian liberalism.

Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p130-14910 Bullock,Dictionary of Modern Thinkers: p111-112

Cunliffe-Jones, Christian Theology Since 1600: p150-151

Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology:p130-14911 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p170-19012 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p210-229

Zaehner, The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Living Faiths: p126-127


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With this we end our short excursion into the historical background of

modernist-liberal theology. It should be mentioned that the liberals did not reach their

position by abstruse theological reasoning: they were forced by external

circumstances - the findings of science, comparative religions, enlightenment

philosophies and historical criticism - to resort to such a method of reasoning for the

only other available alternatives are the collapse into complete irrationality of

fundamentalism and the theological resignation of atheism. Our main concern here is

to examine the validity of the fundamental epistemological assumptions of the liberal

theology. We will examine below the liberal views on the Bible and Jesus.

LIBERAL VIEWS ON THE BIBLE

The fundamentalists believe that everything in the Bible, except when the allegorical

intent is clear, is literally true. Therefore to these biblical literalists, there really was

an Adam and an Eve, there really was a worldwide Noachian flood and there really

was a resurrection event in the first century CE. While the fundamentalists are

ultimately wrong on all these claims, they are right on one important issue: the Bible

was written by the authors with an overt intention of conveying historical facts, not

myths.

The position of the liberals on the Bible can be divided into two broad, not

necessarily mutually exclusive, categories: the first is that the biblical myths conveysymbolic truths; the second is that the Bible is a very human and fallible document

but someportions are inspired by God and these show the way to the truth. We will

look at each of these positions in turn.

Bultmanns position is of course a good representation of the first position.

Demythologization admits openly that many of the stories in the Bible are not true

literally. Form criticism attempts to find the symbolic truths behind these myths. Just

in case the reader thinks that this position is uncommon, I will give below a quote

from a report published in 1938 by the Commission on Christian Doctrine - a report

sanctioned by the Anglican Church:

Statements affirming particular facts may be found to have value as pictorial

expressions of spiritual truths, even though the supposed facts themselves do not

actually happen. In that case such statements must be called symbolically true...It isnot therefore of necessity illegitimate to accept and affirm particular clauses in the

Creeds while understanding them in this symbolic sense.13

The report above, probably on purpose, never made it clear which clauses of the

Anglican creeds were to be understood in the symbolic sense.

The second position asserts that the Bible, while being fallible - with many parts

untrue and some unacceptable - is, in general, the inspired word of God. In their

book, The Bible Without Illusions (SCM Press, London, 1989), two English liberal

theologians, R.P.C. Hanson and A.T. Hanson adumbrated this idea. I quote below a

summary of their position as given by Carl Lofmark:

13 quoted inKnight, Honest to Man: p172


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They recognized that the Bible contains errors and cannot be divinely inspired, that

its world view is pre-scientific and its accounts of history mainly myths, legend

or fiction, that its miracles never happened and that parts of it is unedifying if not

disgusting. They see that it is no good trying to read symbolic truths or higher

significance into much of Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy or even into the

second epistle of Peter. They agree that the Bible text is unreliable and the original

words (including the words of Jesus) have often been altered. Yet they still believe

that the Bibles general drift or impression is a true witness to the nature of

God. The unedifying texts are balanced by others, which reveal the truth. Deep

significance is not found everywhere in the Bible, but only in its high spots

(p138). They disapprove when God commands the massacre of the Amelekites (I

Samuel 15) or Elijah slaughters the priests of Baal (I Kings 18), but the story of 2

Samuel 12, where Nathan condemns King David for his treatment of Uriah, reveals

an insight into Gods nature (p93). This approach is eclectic: they select from the

Bible those passages which they find edifying and construct from those passages

their own impression of the Bibles general drift, while rejecting the bulk of what

the Bible contains. Only the better parts are a true witness to the nature and

purpose of God.14

With regards to the myths-symbolic truths position, the first thing that comes to

mind is that Christians for two millennia had always believed that the Bible, where

there is no hint of allegory, is literally true.15

Now if the modern liberals assert that

the many parts of the Bible cannot be taken literally, they are saying that for close to

2,000 years Christians have failed to understand Gods true message. It is up to these

brilliant 20th century liberals to discover it. Put in this way, the liberals position

sounds smug and pretentious - even ludicrous.

The second problem is that the question remains as to whichpassages are to be

taken literally and which are to be taken symbolically. If the clear intent of the

biblical authors is rejected as the method of selection (which leads to the

fundamentalist position), then it leaves the door wide open for selecting which

passage should be symbolic and which should not. Thirdly, howare those passages to

be interpreted symbolically? There is no guide or generally accepted method of

symbolic interpretation. How does one know which symbolic interpretation is

correct? All the prominent theologians, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich and Bonhoeffer,

disagree on many broad categories in their interpretation of the biblical message.Fourthly, just because the stories are definedas symbolic by the liberals, it does not

mean that the issue of the criterion of truth has been successfully avoided. What

happens when two liberal theologians come up with two mutually exclusive symbolic

truths from the same biblical passage? How is one to chose from the symbolic truths

of the Bible and, say, the symbolic truths mentioned in the Hindu scriptures? And

14 Lofmark, What is the Bible?: p61-6215 While there were a few early Christian theologians such as Clement of Alexandria (c150-

220) and Origen (c185-254) who tried to interpret the Bible figuratively; they methods

were that the Bible contains layers of truths with the literal meaning being the surface

layer. There was no explicit rejection of the literal messages. At any rate, the allegorical

interpretations by these theologians never gained widespread acceptance in the Church.

[Chadwick, The Early Church: p107-108 Smith,Atheism, Ayn Rand And Other Heresies:

p93]


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finally, many so-called interpretations of the symbolic truths of the bible are actually

devoid of any cognitive meaning. Take for instance an Ascension Day sermon written

for an English newspaper by an Anglican bishop:

[The ascension of Jesus is] not a primitive essay in astrophysics, but the symbol of

creative intuition...into the abiding significance of Jesus and his place in the destiny

of man. It might be called a pictorial presentation of the earliest creed, Jesus is

Lord...Creed and scripture are saying in their own language that here is something

final and decisive, the truth and the meaning of mans life and destiny-truth not intheory but in a person-life in its ultimate quality, that is Gods life.16

From the above passage, only one thing is clear; the good bishop does not believe that

the ascension story as depicted in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is to be

taken literally. But apart from this, it is very difficult to fathom what it is he is trying

to say and how what he is trying to say is derived from that story told in three verses

in Acts. The rest of the passage is, literally, meaningless. It should be mentioned

here that if one reads the book of Acts it can clearly be seen that in no way was the

story meant by the author to be taken in any other except in its literal sense. The

author was wrong, of course, for there was no heaven above the clouds for Jesus to

ascend to. But while we can forgive the author of Acts for his lack of knowledge of

astrophysics, it is hard to know what to do with the bishop.17

As for the take some and leave some approach to the Bible, the central

question remains: if some parts of the Bible are false or unacceptable, what guarantee

do we have that the other parts are true or of any special value? And even if these

other parts are true, how does this make the Bible any different from the sacred

scriptures of other religions? If the scriptures of other religions are to be dismissed as

a collection of myths, legend, some history and some moral teachings; shouldnt the

same be done for the Bible? Thus the moment one admits that some parts of the Bible

are untrue or unacceptable, the position of the Bible as the inspired word of God

becomes impossible to defend. For it becomes more probable that where the biblical

authors got it right, whether it be an historical fact or a profound moral insight, they

got it right because they were bound to hit the jackpot once and a while amidst so

many mistakes.18 In many cases these liberal theologians simply do not think about

the passages that trouble them in the Bible. Take for instance this passage from thebook The Christian Agnostic (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1965) by the American

liberal theologian Leslie Weatherhead :

...when Jesus is reported as consigning to everlasting torture those who displease

him or do not believe what he says, I know in my heart that there is something

wrong somewhere. Either he is misrepresented or misunderstood...So I put his

alleged saying in my mental drawer awaiting further light. By the judgment of the

court within my own breast...I reject such sayings. 19

16 quoted in Knight,Honest to Man: p17317 Knight,Honest to Man: p17318 Lofmark, What is the Bible?: p62-6319 quoted in Smith,Atheism, The Case Against God: p79


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The question here is simple: if he could use his own judgment to accept and reject

biblical passages, why rely on the Bible at all?

LIBERAL VIEWS ON JESUS

This leads us into the liberal theologians views of Jesus. It is obvious that since the

late 19th century these theologians, by whatever fashionable names they call

themselves, whether liberal, neo-liberals, neo-orthodox or modernists, have ceased to

believe that the main events of the gospels are historical: the virgin birth and theassociated nativity stories, the miracles and the resurrection accounts are all accepted

as mythological with no grounding in history. Take for instance this comment by the

Episcopal Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong in his book, Resurrection: Myth or

Reality(1994):

As I first studied the birth narratives, it was clear that no major scholar of any

persuasion took them literally...how long could the educated folk of the twentieth

century continue to be literal about such things as the conception that occurred for a

couple when both were well beyond menopause, the visit of the angel Gabriel, a

pregnancy without a male agent, an angelic choir that sang in the sky, a star that

roamed through the heavens, shepherds that have no trouble finding a baby in a city

crowded with people called for a special census, and a king named Herod who

would rely on three men he never met before to bring him an intelligence reportabout a pretender to his throne who was said to have been born just six miles away?

If the divinity of Jesus was attached to the literal details of the birth tradition, then it

was a doomed concept.20

What sort of meaning do theologians find in the nativity story then? Well here is one

interpretation of this symbolic truth:

The virgin birth stories are mythical attempts to express the meaning of Jesus for

faith. They say that Christ comes to us from the action of God.21

One is tempted to do a double take over here. If the myths are unhistorical, what does

it mean then when it is asserted that Christ comes...from the action of God? Just

what action of God is the passage referring to, if not the virgin birth? It is obvious

that the above statement on the supposed message of the virgin birth tells us nothing.

But it is mainly on the resurrection that the liberals spun their yarn of

meaningless words. It is obvious that allthe major liberal theologians do not take the

resurrection account literally: i.e. they all accept that it is historically false. Karl

Barth, for instance, denied that historical verification is of any importance to the

verdict of God which is the resurrection.22 Paul Tillichs theory of the resurrection

is called the restitution; so-called because the resurrection, as Tillich understands it

is the restitution of Jesus to the dignity of the Christ (Jesus is one with God) in the

minds of his disciples. This according to Tillich is an ecstatic experience of the

20 Spong,Resurrection: Myth or Reality: p14, 1821 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p20522 Hordern,A Laymans Guide to Protestant Theology: p142-143


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disciples.23 It is obvious that Rudolf Bultmann, although he believed in the actual

historicity of the crucifixion, was convinced that the resurrection was not an historical

event. One of Bultmanns theological disciples has this to say about the resurrection:

the resurrection is to be understood neither as outward or as inward, neither

mystical nor as a supernatural phenomenon, nor as historical.24

Now, one may ask, if the resurrection is not any of the above, then it can only mean

that the resurrection cannot be understood in anysense.25Take another example, thisone from Bishop Spong in his bookResurrection: Myth or Reality. Claiming that he

has found theMidrashas a method of understanding the symbolic truths of Jesus life,

he proceeds to explain what the method does:

It was a way to think mythologically about dimensions of reality for which the

language of time and space were simply not appropriate. It is an attempt to gather

rational words and concepts around those moments where eternity broke into the

consciousness of men living in time.26[Italics added]

I have italicized portions of the above to bring the passage into focus. Now, what is

actually meant by dimensions of reality that cannot be appropriately described by

the language of time and space? Dimension is a term used in science and everyday

speech to refer to measurable things: thus time can be measured by a watch and space

can be measured by a ruler. Now the language of time and space obviously means

the realm of measurable things. Therefore, the good bishop is saying that his

theology talks about dimensions of reality that cannot be measured. Now,

dimension, by definition, implies the realm of the measurable. A dimension of

reality that cannot be measured is simply nonsense talk!27

The last sentence is even more intriguing: what can it possibly mean to say that

eternity broke into the consciousness of men living in time? The use of words like

eternity, consciousness and time tends to delude one that something really

profound is being uttered. But let us break the passage down into its constituent parts.

In everyday speech, eternity means, whether literally or figuratively, time without

end. Broke into the consciousness of can only mean forced an understanding of.

Men living in time simply means some men; since all men, by definition, live intime. Thus the passage simply means The understanding of time without end was

forced onto some men. So while we would not say that this is meaningless; it is, at

best, a trivial statement with no profundity. Examples of sentences like these are

plentiful in liberal literature.

It is obvious that the liberals trip all over themselves trying to avoid saying the

actual truth: that if the resurrection is not historical traditional Christianity, in any

form, is no longer valid. This is the skeptics position, of course. But the liberals

added that the resurrection is to be understood in a different sense, but just exactly

23 Hughes (ed), Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology: p461-46224 MacKinnon et.al., Objections to Christian Beliefs: p7725 MacKinnon et.al., Objections to Christian Beliefs: p7826 Spong,Resurrection: Myth or Reality: p1627 Clements, Science Vs. Religion: p146


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what sense is not clear. Their writings contain so much garbled speech that it is

difficult to see even if they agree or disagree with one another! The central issue is

this: if the resurrection is unhistorical, simply proclaimingit as true in another sense

does not mean that the proclamation has successfully absolved the burden of proof

from the liberals. Most of the liberal interpretation involves accepting the

resurrection as some kind of internal revelation of the disciples. This experience, they

proclaim, is what really matters, not the actual historical fact of resurrection. But why

should it, we ask? Why should the hallucinations of a few ill educated first century

Galilean peasants be of any significance and be treated any differently from otherhallucinations all over the world and throughout history? Because it is about Jesus?

But take away the historical claims about his supposed supernatural powers, his

miracles and his resurrection, what do we have? A first century, xenophobic, ignorant

Galilean peasant who thought the world was going to end. 28If it takes the theologians

so many volumes to reinterpret his teaching for the 20th century and still only come

up with, at best, a very vague collections of doctrines, why not just dispense with it

altogether? The liberal theologians will, no doubt, have an answer or answers ready

for these questions; but chances are only theywill understand it.

* * * * *

In short modernist-liberal theology has no rational basis whatsoever. Their continuedattempts to couch their ideas in vague terms reveal what can only be described as an

intellectually dishonest streak and an unwillingness to face the common sensical truth

- that the natural and historical sciences have shown that Christianity, as it has been

understood for 2,000 years, is false.

28 See chapter 13 for a critical evaluation of the teachings and person of Jesus.

liberals and the bible

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