ARE ANY OF THE CHARASTERISTICS OF THE LIBERAL SCHOLARS’ APPROACH TO THE BIBLE VALID?
NONE OF THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE LIBERAL THEOLOGY IS VALID AND APPLICABLE.
Features of the Liberal Theology Misses basic certainty and veracity. A principal distinction between liberals and conservatives theologically is the way they interpret the Bible. The word liberal in liberal Christianity indicates a characteristic willingness to interpret scripture in an intellectually independent manner—with no preconceived notion of inerrancy of scripture when its passages are literally interpreted
The mode and fashion of scriptural hermeneutics within liberal theology is often characterized as non-propositional. This means that the Bible is not considered a collection of resources of factual statements but instead documents the human authors’ beliefs and feelings about God at the time of its writing—within an historic/cultural context.Thus, liberal Christian theologians do not discover truth propositions but rather create religious models and concepts that reflect the class, gender, social, and political contexts from which they emerge. Liberal Christianity looks upon the Bible as a collection of narratives that explain, epitomize, or symbolize the essence and significance of Christian understanding.
Liberals read the Bible symbolically or allegorically, as a collection of interesting stories to take whatever meaning out of that pleases them. This allows them to reject various portions of the Bible they disagree with. Liberals label their interpretation as a “critical” approach, which essentially allows most of their theology to consist of finding ways to “criticize” the Bible, rather than actually trying to determine what it says. Theological conservatives believe the Bible is God’s inspired word to humanity, and therefore believe that the Bible must be studied seriously. Conservatives believe that God does not make errors.
Liberals primarily criticize conservatives’ interpretation of the Bible by accusing them of interpreting it “literally.” Of course, most conservatives who interpret the Bible “literally” are simply reading the plain meaning of the Bible, as opposed to attempting to distort it to fit their own personal shortcomings. Furthermore, they aren’t always interpreting the Bible “literally.”
Liberals have come up with a litany of ways to dismiss the plain truths found in the Bible. Two of their favorite ways include trying to find contradictions and vagueness in the Bible, in order to discredit portions of it. Because of the syntax of language, as well as differences resulting from translation, anyone can find anything “wrong” in any literature. For example, if my friend and I were both at a meeting, and I took copious or plenteous notes, and my friend made sure my notes were precise, there would always be someone later who read my notes and could point out supposed contradictions or vagueness.
Liberals also search for parts of the Bible that address the culture of the time it was written in, in order to discredit the (entire) Bible as “outdated.” For example, liberals insist that none of the Bible can be taken literally, because the Old Testament consists of extremely harsh laws that God once instructed his people to live by. Of course, with the coming of Jesus, who replaced the harshness of Old Testament laws with his kinder teachings, the Old Testament law was replaced. Yet instead of acknowledging this, and accepting the Old Testament without the harshness that Jesus removed from it, liberals would prefer to write off the entire Bible.
Liberals believe in “moral relativism,” which means there is no clear right or wrong, just varying shades of gray. They then try to transfer this belief onto the Bible, focusing on the few verses they can find that can be twisted to support this interpretation. However, the Bible is full of clear moral judgments. A favorite verse liberals overemphasize and exaggerate is “Judge not lest ye be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) Of course, this verse can be interpreted in many ways, and even more importantly, there are hundreds of verses in the Bible that could be considered contradictory to this one verse, if liberals would examine them in the way they do other portions of the Bible where they insist there are contradictions.
bernard kuffuor