A Good Look at Liberalism
Graeme Hunt
its castles on the shifting sands of the so-called "assured results"
of "critical Scholarship." But the true origin of this deadly heresy
can be traced back to the garden - which garden all liberals do their
best to legendarise - therein the first tragedy of
modrenism/Liberalism took place.
"As for Modernism," said the Warden of Madras College, people make a
mistake when they think it is a new fad or that it is of a mushroom
growth. Liberalism/Modernism, as a certain mode of thinking, is as old
as Mother Eve." How very true, for Satan was the first of a cult and
on his first introduction to - or rather intrusion on - the human
race, his first words were: "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden?"
Herein lies the very essence of liberalism:
"Yea" - a diplomatic affirmative.
"Hath God said" - an artfully expresed doubt immediately negativing
the affirmation, presented in the form of a question.
""Ye shall not eat of EVERY tree of the garden?" - a falsification of
God's utterance: "Thou shalt not eat of IT."
Are any of the germs of liberalism missing?
Its modern revival can be traced through Spinoza, a Dutchman, who
lived towards the end of the 17th century and wrote a book to prove
that Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch: through Jean Astruc, who
lived in the middle of the 18th century: Eichhorn, who took up his
theories, and De Wette the German, soon followed by Julius Wellhausen,
of whom it is asserted that, when he was told that British higher
critics still believed in the Old Testament Scriptures as inspired, he
said: "I knew the Old Testament was a fraud; but I never dreamed of
making God a party to the fraud as these Scotch fellows do."
The most charactersitic marks of liberalism can be clearly traced in
some heresy, in well-nigh every century. A reader of the 'Southern
Methodist' tabulated some of the chief features of the Gnostic Heresy
of the first century, of the Marcionites of the second century, of the
Neo-Platonic Heresy and the Manichean Heresies of the third, and the
Pelagian Heresy of the fourht century. It is almost monotonous
repetition! Here is his oultine describing the Gnositc Heresy of the
first century:
"Claimed to have a deeper and truer view of Christianity.
"Rejected the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures
"Belief in one's self is belief in God.
"Christ delivers men by His coming and not by an atonement.
"Rejected the virgin birth of Jesus.
"Ridiculed orthodoxy.
"Salvation by illumination.
Anyone writing a thousand years hence might fairly summarise the
teachings of liberalism as found above.
Dr Earnest Gordon in 'The Leaven of the Sadduccees' (p. 221) says:
Strauss gathered up in a masterly fashion the whole literature of free
thought which preceded his day. It would be a fruitful undertaking to
examinw whether there is a single objection, argument, sneer, wound in
Christ's body, to be found in American theological literature which
cannot be traced back to the 'Leben Jesu' or to Strauss' minor
writings.
In a footnote he says: "These sections (of 'Leben Jesu'), says
Schwetzer, marked out the ground that is now occupied by modern
critical study."
In the face of the above, well may the reader marvel at the repeated
claims of the liberals to new light, etc., which so constantly is
found in their writings.
Before entering further into the subject it might be well to give a
few utterances of conservative scholars concerning
Modernism/Liberalism. That parctically all scholarship, as many
liberals have claimed, is simply untrue. We can find space for but a
few.
A.H. Finn, whose monumental work, 'The Unity of the Pentateuch," is
still unanswered, says:
"In a very careful study of the criticism of the Pentateuch, I have
found reason to object to strained interpretations, circular
arguments, beggings of the question, unsubstantiated assertions, and
other questionable methods; and similar blemishes are not absent from
the criticism of the New Testament."
Robert Dick Wilson, Ph.D., D,D., whose erudite knowledge of classical
and biblical languages was unequalled by any living scholar, said:
"I've seen the day, when I have just trembled at undertaking a new
investigation, but I've gotten over that. I have come now to the
conviction that **no man knows enough to assail the truthfulness of
the Old Testament**. Whenever there is sufficient documentary evidence
to make an investigation, the statements of the Bible, in the original
texts, have stood the test."
Sir William Ramsay, whose research work is well known, said:
The Liberal theologian knows all that I do not know. He has no
hesitation; he fixes the limits of the possible and knows exactly what
is impossible ... He knows all things, and he is content and happy in
his utter ignorance ... he believes in the so-called laws of nature,
and thinks that he knows ... The liberal is no more than a survival
from the remote past."
Sir William Ramsay was a one-time higher critic, but through his own
discoveries in the realms of archaeological reserach he became a firm
believer in the inspiration and innerrancy of Holy Writ.
The same writer quotes the following by Professor Sayce in his great
work 'Monument Fcts and Higher Critical Fancies':
"In dealing with the history of the past we are confronted with two
utterly opposed methods, one objective, the other subjective, one
resting on a basis of veritable facts, the other on the unsupported
and unsupportable assumptions of the "modern" scholar. The one is the
method of archaeology, the other of the so-called higher criticism.
Between the two the scientifically trained mind can have no hesitation
in choosing."
This is rather bitter medicine for those who are constantly making the
assumption that their "assured results" are the findings of modern
science.
Sir Robert Anderson, K.G.B, LL.D., in the sixth edition of "The Bible
and Modern Criticsm,' writes:
"The Higher Criticism at once degraded into what it is today - a
sketical crusade against the Bible, tending to lower it to the level
of a purely human book."
J. Gresham Machen, D.D., in "What is Faith?" says:
"The retrograde, anti-intellectual (sic) movement called Modernism, a
movement which really degrades the intellect by excluding it from the
sphere of religion, will be overcome, and the thinking will again come
to its rights."
James M. Gray, D.D., in 'Modernism', states that:
"Modernism is a revolt against the God of Christianity.
Modernism is a revolt against the Bible of Christianity.
It is a revolt against the Christ of Christianity.
H.H. White, D.D.,:
"Some day we may recognise that Liberalism is Bolshevism, and descends
to the lowest methods of fighting the Gospel."
We conclude with a severe but unquestionably true censure of
liberalism, by Dr. T.T. Shields of Toronto, who has long and
faithfully contended for the Faith:
Liberalism, when it is finished, is sheer lawlessness; it rejects all
aurhority except the authority that resides in the individual himself.
Liberalism is the "Old man," and the Old man, even though he wear the
Gown and Hood of a Professor of Philosophy, is always an Anarchist, he
"is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." It grows
out of the pride of the human mind that magnifies men and minismises
God; it holds that in religion is in **man's own consciousness,**
rather than objectively in the Book as the revelation of God Himself."
Graeme Hunt
invi...@ihug.co.nz
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~invictus
Robert Davidson
> J. Gresham Machen, D.D., in "What is Faith?" says:
>
> "The retrograde, anti-intellectual (sic) movement called Modernism, a
> movement which really degrades the intellect by excluding it from the
> sphere of religion, will be overcome, and the thinking will again come
> to its rights."
Neo-modernism is, on the contrary, seeking to use intellectual inquiry in
the study of religion. Science will be delving more and more in the
coming years into how religion functions, why we have it, what it achieves
etc. Steven Pinker's summary in "How the Mind Works" seems to me to point
to a rich future of research. We are beginning to move beyond the
anti-scientific relativism of postmodern thinking (at last).
> Liberalism, when it is finished, is sheer lawlessness; it rejects all
> aurhority except the authority that resides in the individual himself.
This is not true in my opinion - liberalism recognises as many authorities
as any field of scholarship (scientific method, historical method etc
etc), but seeks to study religious materials without the presumptions of
religious belief. It has little to do with individualism (at least in its
present form) and much to do with making as objective a study as
possible. This cannot be said for those who approach the subject with
religious presuppositions.
Robert Davidson