On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 07:35:21 -0000, "Michael Roberts"
<michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> said:
> Dick Fischer wrote; What I advocate now, that Genesis 2-11 does appear
> to have historically integrity, can be substantiated. There is no
> other method of apology that will come close, because something has to
> be left out. Liberal theology, starting in 1860 with Barth, Bultmann,
> and so on, leaves out history. YEC methodology ignores science. If
> Bible, science, and history are all given full face value (I'm not
> saying equal value) then this is the method that works.
>
> I had a good chuckle at this as I haven't read any liberal theology
> starting in 1860 with Barth and Bultmann. My reason for that is that
> Barth and Bultmann were born in the 1880s so hadn't written anything
> by 1860.
>
> With elementary howlers like that we can safely ignore what Dick
> Fischer has to say.
Dick got the date right but conflated it with the names of the more
famous latter liberals. Let me rephrase for him:
Liberal theology started in the 1860 with Essays and Reviews, a manifesto
for the so-called broad church movement. Essays and Reviews was written
by a group of six clergymen and one layman. It was not initially well
received with the writers being labelled as the Septum contra Christum.
The origins of liberalism can be said to go back even further to works of
the German theologian Schleiermacher, and his sense of subjective
dependence upon the infinite ground of things. The best way to spell his
name is to sneeze on the keyboard. :-)
A century later Rudolf Bultmann popularized the so-called demythologizing
movement and form criticism. Bultmann's attitude towards the text of
Scripture can be best summarized by the following quote:
There is no historical-biographical interest in the Gospels, and that
is why they have nothing to say about Jesus' human personality, his
appearance and character, his origin, education and development....
...they do not tell of a much admired human personality, but of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, the Lord of the Church, and do so because they
have grown out of Christian worship and remain tied to it. [The
History of the Synoptic Tradition, (ET Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963),
pp. 372-73].
Karl Barth's theology while sometimes lumped with liberalism actually is
a reaction against liberalism. F.F. Bruce called Barth's 1918 Der
Romerbrief a bombshell dropped on the theologian's (in this case liberal
theologian's) playground. Barth is the founder of neo-orthodox theology.
Neo-orthodoxy differs from liberalism in that it rejects liberalism's
extreme anthropological approach and the so-called Quest for the
Historical Jesus. Neo-orthodoxy differs from orthodoxy in that orthodoxy
believes the Bible *is* the Word of God while neo-orthodoxy believes that
the Bible *contains* the Word of God. This equivocating is the basis for
some to lump the neo-orthodox with the liberals.
Received on Mon Feb 16 11:39:29 2004
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