Modernism and Liberalism
Andrew Levick
news....@mcfarland.co.uk says...
>
>On 7 Sep 1999 12:26:21 GMT, andrew...@npl.co.uk (Andrew Levick)
>wrote:
>
><snip>
>>Liberalism is putting human reason equal or above the Bible (or traditional
>>Christian doctrine).
This 'definition' is often given by 'fundamentalists' or conservative evangelicals.
I am thinking of liberal protestantism in particular here. It may be an unpopular
and over-general definition, but I feel that it is the most accurate to give in a few
words. Can anyone come up with an better definition?
>
>Liberalism is not "putting human reason equal or above the Bible" by
>any stretch of the imagination. I consider myself to be liberal and I
>certainly do not put human reason above the Bible.
How do you 'define' liberal then?
>
>What do you mean by "traditional Christian doctrine"?
I would say traditional Christian doctrine is that described in documents such as
the Ecumenical creeds or the historic Confessions.
There as been a considerable downgrade in Christian doctrine by many in recent
times. Doctrines such as the Trinity, original sin, creation ex nilo, inerrancy of
Scripture etc etc have all been challenged and attacked by many liberal thinkers
who profess to be Christian. The result is utter confusion and a poor church
witness to the world.
> Why is putting
>human reason above it liberal?
>
Human reason, *submissive* to the infallible, higher Word of God (the Bible), is
what should be used to assess Christian doctrine. Not human reason judging the
Word of God and therefore Christian doctrine.
I am sorry that I may be unpopular in my views and appear naive by many on this
new group, but someone as to speak up for conservative ideas.
Andrew
Andrew Levick
>Liberalism -- like most interesting things -- is multifaceted,
>so no one definition is likely to be adequate.
I agree.
>
>1. A liberal is someone who attemps to make as few assumptions
> as possible when deciding theological questions. (So, e.g.,
> a liberal will not assume the Bible to be inerrant without
> some actual evidence that it is;
Doesn't this depend on the source of the evidence and how it used? If it is
Biblical data, this is not what I understand as liberalism. If it is from outside
the Bible, eg human philosophies, scientific discoveries, then liberalism
occurs when this 'evidence' is used to judge the truthfulness of the Bible. For
example, science may say that miracles (eg water into wine) do not occur. If
you then use science to judge the Bible, the passages about miracles are
judged to be untrue. This thinking is similar to your definition 2.
There are many truths in the Bible that simply cannot be proved by
non-biblical evidence, but must be taken on trust. You can not prove by
science or philosophy the resurrection or the virgin birth, you must just
accept them by faith.
> a liberal will not feel
> obliged to believe any doctrine simply because their church
> affirms it.)
This is exactly what the Reformers thought when countering medieval Roman
Catholic church and yet I would not call the reformers liberal by today's
standards! They rejected baggage of church tradition and attempted to go
back to Bible basics.
>
>2. A liberal is someone who disagrees with a substantial number
> of traditional Christian teachings in favour of ideas more
> congenial to those outside the church. (So, e.g., a liberal
> might reject the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, or the idea
> that God is omnipotent. By the way, I don't mean to suggest
> that those who are liberal in this sense adopt the views they
> do in order to conciliate those outside the church, though
> perhaps some do.)
>
In other words, humans philosophies are given more credence than the Word
of God. This is basically what definition of liberalism says.
>These are entirely different issues, and confusion results when
>they are, er, confused. There are some people -- me, for instance --
>who are rather liberal in the sense of definition 1, but decidedly
>conservative in the sense of definition #2. There are people who
>are liberal in sense 2 but not in sense 1: those who take it for
>granted that miracles don't happen, that the writers of the Bible
>weren't concerned with truth in the sort of way we expect them
>to be, etc
My explanations suggest 1 and 2 could be similar.
Andrew
Brian Stewart
>
> Andrew wrote
>
> >Human reason, *submissive* to the infallible, higher Word of God (the Bible), is
> >what should be used to assess Christian doctrine. Not human reason judging the
> >Word of God and therefore Christian doctrine.
> >
> >I am sorry that I may be unpopular in my views and appear naive by many on this
> >new group, but someone as to speak up for conservative ideas.
>
I read a nice thing last night; Luther's phrase that
`the Bible is the cradle of the Word of God'.
Spot on, I'd say. So does this make Luther a liberal? (In the context of urc, maybe;
but of course at the time he was speaking up for the conservative pre-reformation view
of scripture against the new-fangled human-invented infallibilism of his co-reformers!)
B.
_
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Brian Stewart Tel: +44 1865 279628
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UK eve: +44 1865 760629
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Steve Cleary
> Different Christians, and different Christian groups, have different
> Bibles. Some of them are quite significantly different -- e.g., the
> Protestant and RC canons. Therefore, God has allowed many Christians
> to use an imperfect Bible.
Which is imperfect, the Protestant or RC one and why??
Steve Cleary
http://www.cleary.dircon.co.uk/sermons.htm
Mark Goodge
<heaven...@fanged.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>ABEND Absent By Enforced Net Deprivation (see AFK)
I wonder if this is a deliberate "reverse acronym" (ie, fitting words
to an existing set of letters) based on the IBM error code ("ABEND" =
"ABnormal ENDing"), or if it's pure coincidence.
"Abend", like "grep", is one of those wonderful words that really
ought to have a place in real life as well as computer terminology.
Some people do use them in that way - eg "just grep through the filing
cabinet for the Adworks papers, will you" or "we had to abend our
holiday when Suzy went down with flu" - but only among computer geeks
who are self-consciously using them as jargon. The day when they make
it into the OED will be cause for celebration indeed.
And you missed a few very common ones from the list:
WTF
FOAD
AFU
RTFM
which I'm not going to spell out, but keen observers will note the
common presence of "F" in all of them, which should give the necessary
clue :-)
Mark
--
Visit Mark's World at http://www.good-stuff.co.uk/mark/
K.HAIGH-HUTCHINSON
>
> Steve Cleary types:
> >Gareth McCaughan wrote:
> >
> >> Different Christians, and different Christian groups, have different
> >> Bibles. Some of them are quite significantly different -- e.g., the
> >> Protestant and RC canons. Therefore, God has allowed many Christians
> >> to use an imperfect Bible.
> >
> >Which is imperfect, the Protestant or RC one and why??
>
>
Kathy HH
John Ross
Gareth wrote
>As it happens, I don't think the NT is "perfect"; I'm not
>even sure what it means to say that a book, or collection
>of books, is "perfect". I'll happily agree that it's inspired
>by God, useful for teaching, etc, etc., if that makes you
>any happier :-).
Oh, it does, it does :-)
>
>> (1) I`m not sure the omission / inclusion of a small number of OT
>> books would constitute this, anyway.
>
>Well, what do you mean by "perefct"?
Perfect was, perhaps, the wrong word. What I mean`t was (taking NT as
the example) the books included are there because thats what God
intended. The contents in the books ditto. Its when people start
questioning the contents (i.e. did that bit really happen etc) that I
object. Inspired by God is probably a better way of descibing it.
As far as our interpretation goes, well thats a different matter!!
Love in Jesus
John
K.HAIGH-HUTCHINSON
>
> In article <37DD23...@bradford.ac.uk>, "K.HAIGH-HUTCHINSON"
> <K.Haigh-H...@bradford.ac.uk> writes:
>
> >> >Which is imperfect, the Protestant or RC one and why??
> >>
> >>
> >Both. They both differ from the Orthodox Canon don't they?
> >
>
> Archimandrite(sp?) still lurking?
I am afraid I don't know! I just have a vague memory that one of the RC
canon is not in the Orthodox, but they have other books that are not in
the RC.
Will have to try to track down what I was reading when I came up with
that one.
Hope someone more knowledgeable than me can explain! Or say that I am
talking (typing?) nonsense!
Kathy HH
Rowland Croucher
interchangeably (and pejoritavely)...
For a summary of the issues (and some interesting quotes from here and
there) see...
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/athe/athe0156.htm
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/athe/athe0183.htm
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm/athe/athe0173.htm
Dave Hyden wrote:
>
> During my readings of the postings on this newsgroup I have often come
> across the terms modernist and liberal.
> What exactly are meant by these terms?
> Are they the same ?
> Dave.
--
Shalom! Rowland Croucher (rowl...@mira.net)
JOHN MARK MINISTRIES - resources for pastors/leaders
(Bookroom, library, and worldwide F.W.Boreham Trading Post)
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Malcolm Jenner
>
>Richard Emblem wrote:
>
>[RC and Orthodox canons differ...]
>> In what way? (information would be interesting) - is ukrc's resident
>> Archimandrite(sp?) still lurking?
>
>ecumenical RSV:
>
>RC = Protestant plus Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther,
> Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus[1],
> Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah (= Baruch 6),
> Additions to Daniel, 1,2 Maccabees.
>
>Greek = RC plus 1 Esdras[2], Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, 3 Maccabees.
>
>Slavonic = Greek plus 2 Esdras[3].
>
>Plus, there's an appendix to the Greek Bible containing 4 Maccabees.
>
>
>[1] also known as "Sirach", or in full "Wisdom of Jesus the
> Son of Sirach".
>
>[2] called 2 Esdras in the Slavonic Bible, and 3 Esdras in
> the appendix to the Vulgate -- Ezra and Nehemiah are called
> 1,2 Esdras in the Vulgate.
>
>[3] called 3 Esdras in the Slavonic Bible, and 4 Esdras in
> the appendix to the Vulgate. I'm not sure who actually
> calls it 2 Esdras[4].
>
>[4][5] Do you feel as if you'll scream if you see the name "Esdras"
> again? I do. :-)
>
>[5] This footnote is numbered 2 in the Greek Bible and 17 in the
> Slavonic Bible.
>
>--
>Gareth McCaughan Gareth.M...@pobox.com
>.sig under construction
>
>
As a footnote to this can I point out that the Orthodox Church did not even
find it necessary to define a Canon of scripture until the seventeenth century
(in response to dialogue with Protestants). Until then it had simply been
accepted as to what was and what was not part of the Bible, allowing the minor
variants between Greek and Slavonic, etc.
Archimandrite Kyril Jenner.
Malcolm Jenner
mtc...@globalnet.co.uk says...
>
>
>
>[1] e.g. in Isaiah 7:14 where the Hebrew says "a young woman will
>conceive..." but the Greek says "a virgin shall conceive"
A subtle point, but the Greek actually says (both here and in the quote in
Matthew) "THE virgin ..." not "A virgin ...". This suggests that Isaiah was
referring to a particular person.
Archimandrite Kyril Jenner.
Mark Goodge
wrote:
>In article <7r57qi$frr$1...@batman.npl.co.uk>, andrew...@npl.co.uk
>(Andrew Levick) wrote:
>
>> Human reason, *submissive* to the infallible, higher Word of God (the
>> Bible), is what should be used to assess Christian doctrine. Not human
>> reason judging the Word of God and therefore Christian doctrine.
>
>How does one determine that the Bible is the "Word of God" (a title used
>/in/ the Bible for Jesus)
It's also a phrase used to describe the scriptures, as well as being a
shorthand term for prophecy. Matthew 15:6, Acts 18:11, Romans 9:6, 1
Corinthians 14:36, Hebrews 4:12 and Revelation 20:4 are a few
examples.
It's possible to make a distinction in modern English by capitalising
"Word" when referring to Jesus, but that wasn't the case in the Greek
NT. You need to make a decision based on context; some of the above
are more likely to refer to the Bible than others, but none of them
seem to refer to Jesus.
Viv, Pete, Geordie
dig...@cix.co.uk (Tim Rowe) wrote:
>Others have had a go at this and been torn to pieces; I may as well go
>singing into the same lion's den!
Excellent analysis from my POV Tim clarified a few gray areas of my
understanding for me.
Peter R