Theological Liberalism

Religious liberalism (sometimes called “modernism” but more appropriately “neo-Protestantism”) was a post-Enlightenment development in German theology which arose as a protest against the intense rationalism of the Enlightenment and to confessional orthodoxy; and on the positive side was an attempt to harmonise Christian theology with the divers elements of the so-called new learning. It is presumed to have commenced with Schleiermacher’s Uber die Religion: Reden an die gebildeten unter ihren Veraechtern, and ended with the publication of Barth’s Epistle To The Romans.

It spread to France, and America, and then to the mission churches throughout the world. In each country it took upon itself a peculiar national impress of that country. Coleridge’s ‘Aids to Reflection’ was very influential in introducing neo-Protestantism into both England and America. It appeared in late nineteenth century Roman Catholicism as “modernism” and was efficiently stamped out by the papacy. In America it became virtually synonymous with the social gospel.

Liberalism had a fourfold rootage. First, philosophically it was grounded in some form of German philosophical idealism (e.g., Schleiermacher in Romanticism; Ritschl in neo-Kantianism; Biedermann in Hegelianism). Secondly, it placed unreserved trust in the new critical studies of the scriptures which contained implicitly or explicitly a denial of the historical doctrines of revelation and inspiration. Thirdly, it believed that the developing science of the times antiquated much of the scriptures. Fourthly, it was rooted in the new learning and believed in a harmony of Christianity with the new learning. In this sense it is modernistic (preference for the new over the traditional) and liberal (the right of free criticism of all theological claims).

Methodologically it first accepted one of the current philosophies for its conceptual framework, and out of that philosophy developed a doctrine of religious experience. With this philosophy and this doctrine of religious experience in hand, it proceeded to Christianity, wherein it performed a double action:

a) It gave this philosophy and religious experience a concrete interpretation in terms of Christianity; and

b) It altered Christianity to suit this philosophy and the doctrine of religious experience.

Following this it reinterpreted all the major Christian doctrines in the same fashion. For example, the traditional doctrine of the Trinity was rejected and replaced by some form of functional Trinity; the transcendence and wrath of God were replaced by over-emphasised doctrines of divine imminence and love. The incarnate Lord of Chalcedon was replaced by Jesus, the first Christian, whom God used in an unprecedented way for an example of unmatched piety. The kingdom of God was regarded as no longer founded upon the death and resurrection of a Saviour, but upon the spiritual and ethical quality of the life of Jesus. Salvation was seen no longer as freedom from wrath and sin, but from sensuousness or a materialistic or selfish ethic. The kingdom of God was shorn of its transcendental and eschatological elements and converted into a religious and ethical society.

In that the radical division of saved-or-lost was denied, and all men held to possess the same religious potentiality, all men formed the so-called brotherhood of man whose corollary was the Fatherhood of God. And in that the purpose of the church was to bring all men under the Christian ethic in every aspect of their lives, it preached the so-called social gospel.

Theological liberalism is a satanic device to cloud and distort the scriptures and to blind the eyes of the unsaved to the truth of God’s Word.