God of the Burning Bush
For a great many modern liberal theologians God, if there is a God, is not the God of the Bible, the God of the burning bush, the God whose name is Yahweh. They find the God of the Bible too anthropomorphic to be believable. Where the tradition of Judeo-Christianity has been to speak of both the transcendence and the immanence of God, liberal theologians prefer to think of God solely as transcendent –– as a spiritual energy or cosmic consciousness that is totally benevolent. Of course, as soon as they speak of benevolence or love they are logically themselves engaged in the use of anthropomorphic language. In Process Philosophy (a form of modern liberal theology) God is a creative process, a process in which we are all participants, making the world –– making ourselves. The influential theologian, Paul Tillich, thought of God as the “ground of all being.” God, he thought, is not a being but rather is the ground or basis upon which all being exists. He understood God as a symbol, as a good way for people to talk about that which concerns them “ultimately.” Tillich thought that to speak of God as a being, or as personal, easily led to our having small thoughts of God –– reducing God to no more than a human person –– a super person but still just a person. And, in fact, this is often seen to be true in the preaching of fundamentalists. But, I find myself more in tune with the great Jewish mystics and scholars Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber who both argued, similar to Tillich, that God is not a being but a mysterious reality,  in the face of which all our descriptive words and phrases become mere clichés. However, both Heschel and Buber also  insisted that the only meaningful way of talking about this reality is in the sort of language that pertains only between persons.

One of the things most liberal theologians want to avoid is any suggestion that there is a God “out there” who intervenes in human affairs. I love the movie O’ God starring George Burns, and I think it makes some important points. The scene in which God shows up as a Bell Hop is marvelous––as is the one in which John Denver is sent as God’s messenger to tell the self-aggrandizing evangelist to shut up and quit taking people’s money. But the overall portrayal of God in this film is as a heck of a nice grandpa who wants us to be nicer to each other, and to take better care of the planet; but, who is irrelevant and impotent in the presence of real suffering and useless to humanity in crisis. This, it seems to me, epitomizes quite well the God of liberal theology. Now, if you prefer George Burns’s film version of God rather than that of the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism or of Christ, and Saint Paul and all the Apostle’s, I have nothing mean or derogatory to say –– the world could certainly use a lot more congenial cigar smokers. What I am rather curious about is why the bother to claim the Christian “brand?” Humanism is a perfectly respectable, positive, and compassionate philosophy to live by –– and you don’t have to explain all the Christian stuff you don’t really believe.

Paradigm Christology
The attempts of liberal theology over the last 250 years to discover through logical analysis of the Gospels who Jesus was as a historical figure, have resulted in numerous variations of what is known as paradigm Christology.  A paradigm is a pattern or model, so paradigm Christology looks for something unique, “special” is perhaps a better word, about Jesus which constitutes some higher ideal to which human beings may aspire. It might be said , for instance, that “Jesus was truly the person for others,” especially, the poor, the outcasts, and the oppressed, that “Jesus loved as no other has loved,” or that “Jesus was a completely authentic existential person.”

The famous German theologian. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1835), who was in a sense the father of paradigm Christology, said that what was special or unique about Jesus was that he represented the perfect consciousness of God. The essence of the Christian religion, he argued, is the feeling of “absolute dependence” on the Father that Jesus felt. This, thought Schleiermacher, was the pattern to be followed in living the Christian faith; that is, he did not believe Christ to be “true eternal God,” but he did think Jesus had a unique spiritual consciousness we ought all to cultivate. Since the time of Schleiermacher modern liberal theology (modernity) has come up with a long list of ways in which Jesus serves as a model, pattern, or paradigm for humankind. Marcus Borg’s picture of Jesus as a wise philosopher, as a holy or “spirit person,” and as a political activist is a more contemporary example.

Borg is actually a fairly good example of contemporary liberal thinking about Jesus. But before going further let me say that what I am about to say is my best understanding of Marcus Borg, and I hope not to misrepresent him in any way. Borg was an emotionally compelling writer whose books resonated with many. Having said that, his work was also confusing at times. He frequently caricatured Christian tradition and parodied what he called “the old model or paradigm” of Christianity. He would then present a new model or paradigm, what he referred to as an “emerging” Christianity; and, then, at times pivot again to acknowledge that what he had been criticizing was not the actual ancient Christian tradition itself, but the harsh, authoritarian, and intellectually unsophisticated perspective of the conservative Lutheran Church of his youth in North Dakota.

At other times it is difficult to logically hold Borg’s ideas together. In one online exchange he accuses another theologian of misrepresenting him in saying he does not believe in the resurrection. There he seems to assert that while he does not believe in a “bodily” resurrection he does believe in a “spiritual” resurrection. He also noted that he had affirmed many times that Jesus’s disciples experienced him, as have many since that first Easter, as living. Yet, I once asked Borg in an e-mail if the disciples experienced Jesus as alive because he is in fact alive, or whether that was simply a mistaken psychological experience. His rather coy response was that “we cannot know Jesus’s present ontological state” –– the state of his current existence or non-existence. In his brief response Borg simply ignored the question of whether Jesus was experienced alive because he was indeed alive, or whether those who have claimed to have experienced him as the Living Lord were merely describing an entirely subjective psychological state. It is difficult to see how, other than in some purely metaphorical sense like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, one can think of Jesus both as having been resurrected in any real sense, even “spiritual,” and yet as nonexistent since that dark Friday afternoon. So, Borg is not always easy to understand, and I do not want to misrepresent him. Nevertheless, he is something of a portrait of contemporary theology in the following respects:

For liberal Christianity Jesus Christ differs from other men and women only comparatively, and not absolutely. Certainly Jesus was not, according to modernity,  in any sense divine. He may have healed some people through psychological means but did not perform any “spectacular” miracles, and did not rise from the dead. Borg saw Jesus as an extraordinary person, “one of the two most remarkable human beings who ever lived,” but again only different or extraordinary comparatively speaking. In response to a reader who wrote asking if he believed Jesus was God, Borg replied like this:

No. Not even the New Testament says that. It speaks of him as the Word of God, the Son of God, the Messiah, and so forth, but never simply identifies or equates him with God. . . . He is the Word incarnate—not the disembodied Word. . . . He shows us what God is like—reveals God’s character and passion. But none of this means that the New Testament teaches that Jesus was God—as if all of God was in Jesus during his historical life. To use the language of the Trinity, God the Father did not cease to be while Jesus was alive. Jesus was “God’s Son,” not God the Father. Was the Son like the Father? Yes. Was the Son the Father during the life of Jesus? No. Are they in an important and complex sense one? Yes. But to equate God and Jesus during his historical lifetime is bad history and bad theology.

Borg was not a top tier scholar, but he possessed excellent academic credentials (an M. A. in Theology and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Oxford university, and was a professor of Religion at Oregon State University. But when he writes this sort of thing it just boggles the mind. It is absolutely stunning because Borg most certainly knew that what he wrote to this inquirer was not true––not true historically, biblically, or theologically. Well, I suppose it is possible to say in one’s opinion it is just bad theology but in that case one is arguing that bad theology has been the norm for the Christian faith for two thousand years.

Thomas G. Long comments on Borg’s own theology as expressed in the above letter like this:

If we are to give any weight to Borg’s use of trinitarian language here, two things become clear. One, Borg unsurprisingly finds it important to distinguish his vaguely Arian view of the pre-Easter Jesus from traditional trinitarian thought (which he would undoubtedly have seen as an unfortunate development of the post-Easter view of Jesus), and two, Borg misunderstands classical formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity. He seems to assume that claims about the divine nature of Jesus carry the implication that Jesus was God the Father walking around in history and that divinity is a zero-sum formula such that, were Jesus to be divine in any sense, then God the Father would have to cease being so. The result is a misrepresentation and a reduction of the Christian tradition.

Modern liberal theology by interpreting the Gospels as stories and sayings of Jesus composed by the church and projected backward has provided the means by which modern liberals have been able, with pseudo intellectual sophistication, to discredit the primary themes of classic Christianity. As Thomas Oden noted: “According to such “Christ”–ological speculation, the memory of Christ is largely a history of mistakes. There is a strong smell of hubris that accompanies this sort of critical pretense. It seems to be historically sophisticated while putting a spin on the historical evidence so as to make it align with presuppositions acceptable within certain circles of modern consciousness.

Scripture
For modernity the Bible is not a divine record of revelation, but a human record of the religious experiences of a nation. Doctrinal or creedal statements based on Scripture are therefore of no continuing significance for Christians. Only the broadest moral and ethical teachings of Scripture remain relevant. Not only that, but the New Testament, in particular the Gospels, have undergone such extensive editing that they are hopelessly corrupted. Borg therefore wrote:

The Bible is thus both Sacred Scripture and a human product. It is important to affirm both. To use stereotypical labels, both conservative and liberals within the church have sometimes been reluctant to do so. Conservative Christians resist affirming that the Bible is a human product, fearing that doing so means it will lose its status as divine authority and divine revelation. Liberal Christians are sometimes wary of affirming that the Bible is sacred Scripture, fearing that to do so opens the door to notions of infallibility, literalism, and absolutizing. But a clear vision of the Bible and its role in the Christian life requires seeing it as both sacred Scripture and human product. It is human in origin and sacred in status and function.

I agree somewhat with Borg––it is important to see the Bible as both a sacred and human book.Where the person rooted in the ancient orthodox faith will find Borg unsatisfying is in his defining down the meaning of “sacred” as the Bible’s “status” and the way in which it “functions” in the Christian community, rather than having originated in the Spirit of God.

What Borg does not want to say, perhaps because he erroneously believes it will lead to literalism, notions of inerrancy, and absolutizing, is that Scripture is holy because its origins are to be found in the Holy One––in God. He cannot allow himself to say Scripture is sacred because it is inspired––or as the writer of 2 Timothy 3:16 literally put it––”God breathed”. It can, of course, be a tricky business to say that Scripture is true because it comes from God. Indeed, it should be noted that in the original Greek Paul does not say all Scripture is inspired, but that all Scripture that is God breathed is spiritually transformative. Be that as it may, what I want to emphasize here is that if God is not passive but active in any way in the divine human encounter, and if true truth ultimately comes from a source deeper than or from beyond the human condition, then the Bible is sacred, not because I give it a cherished status or find it foundational for my tribe, or because it is inerrant, but because it has been breathed forth by the Mysterious Beyond.

Liberal Christianity like conservative American fundamentalism trivializes Scripture by focusing on a literal factual understanding –– in spite of its claim to read Scripture metaphorically. Here are two examples of what I mean:
(1) Barth Ehrman tells how as a graduate student at Princeton he was asked to write an interpretive paper on Mark 2:25-26. In that pericope, Jesus asks the Pharisees, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those who were with him; how he entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” Jesus was referring to the story in 1 Samuel 21:1-10 where in fleeing from King Saul who wanted to kill him, David entered the tabernacle and ate consecrated bread. However, in 1 Samuel it is not Abiathar but his father Ahimelech who assists David. Later Saul murders Ahimelech in revenge and Abiathar then succeeds his father. Ehrman found this technical discrepancy so troubling that he became an agnostic. Now, there is a logical explanation but that is not my point here. The simple point I want to make is that while Ehrman lost his faith that day he did not lose his fundamentalist attitude and perspective; that is, the idea that Scripture is either absolute word-for-word truth (inerrant) or it is not true at all. This, it seems to me, defies ordinary reality––defies common sense. There are very few places where we look at things in such all or none terms–– maybe when reading a bank statement which must be true to the last decimal to be really true. But not in the telling of anecdotal stories.
(2) In his intriguing book, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture  Has Made Us Unable to Read It, Peter Enns tells of an intellectual turning point in his own life that came in a class taught by a Jewish professor. The professor turned to an episode in Exodus where at a place called Rephidim Moses miraculously provides water for the people in their desert trek by striking a rock with his shepherd’s staff. Later in Exodus, the professor pointed, out there is a similar story of Moses again striking a rock with his staff and obtaining water, this time at Kadesh. The professor, as Enns explains it, informed them that some ancient Jewish interpreters believed that the rock at the end was the same as the rock at the beginning. He then had Enns and his fellow students turn to 1 Corinthians 10:4 where Saint Paul says of the wandering Hebrews, “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” That moment was, for Enns, as if he were watching his whole view of the Bible collapse like “a house of cards.” What Enns seems to miss is that his essential problem then and continuing into now, is not with the text itself but with reading every line as a literal fact to be accounted for in the work of interpretation. I can’t imagine, even as a young conservative boy, thinking that a stone drinking fountain, as Enns’s parody goes, followed the Hebrews around the desert. I grew up with two much older mischievous sisters and a brother and so I have been, before a time I can remember, quite a skeptical person. I never believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny; or, that Lash LaRue was a real character. If someone had told me that Saint Paul believed there was a magic rock fountain that travelled around the desert on its own, kind of like the chest of gold in The Color of Magic, I would have assumed I was being teased. I knew that Moses had spent forty years tending sheep in the wilderness so naturally I assumed that, like many of my Native American and mountain men heroes, he was good at finding water in the desert. As a child I also heard lots of sermons on Biblical typology (a type in scripture is a person or thing in the Old Testament which symbolizes or foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament), and so would have quickly grasped from my mother, who was always explaining such things, that Paul wanted me to think about how Christ is always with us in whatever desert we find ourselves–– how Christ is our drink and very breath.

The liberal orientation to Scripture, as Marcus Borg acknowledged, can be just as literal and one dimensional as any conservative fundamentalist. And fundamentalism, whether of the conservative or liberal variety tends to trivialize, misunderstand, and misuse Scripture.

The Difficulty of Explanations
This is the first of a three part post. It is in three parts because it just got too long as one piece to impose on innocent browsers. And it got too long because explaining the meaning of liberal turned out not to be as easy as I thought it would be. So why is it a difficult explanation?
In the late 15th century all of Europe was intensely curious what this strange fruit Columbus had discovered in the Caribbean, the pineapple, might taste like. In fact, the difficulty in describing the taste of the exotic pineapple came to exemplify the difficulty we have in discussing the nature of knowledge itself. The philosopher John Locke asserted that true knowledge can only come from actual experience. “If you doubt this,” he wrote, “see if you can give by words, anyone who has never tasted pineapple, an idea of the taste of that fruit.” Trying to describe what it means to say someone is a liberal Christian is about as challenging as trying to explain the taste of pineapple to someone who has never tasted one. It is not, of course, that it is any easier to say what constitutes a conservative Christian. The problem is that the words “liberal” and “conservative” are both too imprecise to say anything definitive. As Marcus Borg pointed out in his book the Heart of Christianity:

The familiar labels of “conservative” and “liberal” do not work very well, because both are imprecise. Conservative covers a spectrum ranging from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to C. S. Lewis to (perhaps) Karl Barth. The latter two would find the first two to be strange bedfellows. “Liberal” can be applied to a range of Christians from those with a strong sense of the reality of God and a deep commitment to the Christians tradition to advocates of a nontheistic Christianity for whom “tradition” is a negative term. Thus “conservative” and “liberal” don’t tell us much.

Borg’s use of C. S. Lewis as an example is especially helpful in that many American conservatives would not consider Lewis to be an evangelical since he did not embrace a number of doctrines they consider essential, such as biblical inerrancy. On the other hand, most liberals do categorize Lewis as conservative. So, neither the word “conservative” nor the word “liberal” tell us much; yet, they are among a handful of words we have to use as instruments to get at something we may really want to know for our own personal spiritual progress.

A Working Definition
Unfortunately, while there are plenty of lengthy academic essay like answers to the question, “What is liberal Christian theology?” there are not many concise and simple (workable) definitions. Consequently, I have attempted to come up with one of my own. Here it is:

Liberal Christian thought, or theology, is a movement emerging out of the Age of Enlightenment which, with relatively few exceptions, attaches prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters, believes in the primacy of reason rather than Scripture; and places a high value on scientific method, individual human experience, freedom, and social justice.

I use the qualifying term “generally” here in this definition because there are liberal Christians who most certainly believe in God, who embrace the Christian tradition, and who affirm, in some form, the resurrection of Christ. In fact, it is liberal in this second sense with which I would identify myself. But this, it seems to me, although I have no statistical data on the subject, is not the most prevalent sort of liberal. More common is the Episcopal priest I knew who led his congregation in reciting the Nicene Creed each Sunday, but acknowledged in the Adult Sunday Study that outside that formal recitation of the liturgy he could not bring himself to affirm God as “creator of heaven and earth.” As for Christ, he said he supposed: “His spirit is alive and exists out there somewhere.” When I asked him why, then, was he a Christian and an Episcopal priest? he said, “Because it’s a good way to live. And I love the beauty of the liturgy.” It is liberal in this sense with which the three parts of this essay (“What Is Modern Liberal Theology”) is primarily concerned. It is my intention to write another blog dealing with a liberal perspective that is identifiably Christian and thoroughly orthodox. So, with this acknowledgement of my definition’s limitations I will try to elaborate in a way that may bring some further clarification to that form of liberal theology, or what scholars sometimes refer to as modernity, that is problematic for many thinking men and women of faith.

Primacy of Reason
Liberal theologians in this sense of modernity believe that the ultimate authority for all ethical, moral, political, religious, and for matters of what is factual, is reason and common human experience. Marcus Borg, who is perhaps the best known and widely read of contemporary liberals, therefore wrote of what he called “the limits of the spectacular.”

I think Jesus really did perform paranormal healings and that they cannot be explained simply as faith healings. I am even willing to consider that spectacular phenomena like levitation happen. But do virgin births, walking on water, multiplying loaves and fish, changing water into wine, bringing genuinely and definitely dead people back to life, ever happen anywhere?

For Borg, and many other liberals, some miracles, such as those named here, just do not, in light of reason and common experience, seem believable. For those Christians who would consider themselves both liberal and orthodox this represents no great problem. For such Christians what constitutes their faith is not believing the literal factuality of every miracle, but entrusting their life into the hands of Christ. But the further one looks to either the right or the left of the theological continuum the doubting of any biblical miracle story is seen as a diminishment of the Christian faith. This, of course, is simply one area in which reason is given primacy.

Scholarly Objectivity
For liberal Protestants of the Enlightenment to subject all truth claims to reason and common human experience meant Christian doctrine, tradition, and the Bible itself were to be studied with complete objectivity and according to scientific methodology. However, Paul Ricoeur, Michael Polanyi, William Poteat, and Abraham Maslow have all, among others, convincingly demonstrated that the sort of Enlightenment objectivity once thought possible is a delusion. But perhaps even more significantly they have shown that there are other ways of thinking and knowing than those of school book science or formal logic.
There is a wonderful film based on the real life story of the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, Ramanujan made substantial contributions to the field, including solutions to problems considered to be unsolvable. His work opened entirely new areas of research. He was a profoundly religious Hindu who credited his mathematical insights to something akin to divine revelation.
In the film, Ramanujan explains his fascination and devotion to mathematics: “Mathematics,” he says is a beautiful painting of images you cannot see.” And to H. G. Hardy, his mentor and collaborator who was known for his work in number theory, mathematical analysis, the ascetics of mathematics, and genetics, Ramanujan says: “You want to know,” how I get my ideas. My God speaks to me. Puts formulas on my tongue when I sleep, sometimes when I pray. An equation,” he says, “has no meaning to me unless it expresses a thought of God.” The lack of academic rigor in Ramanujan’s work –– his frequent inability to demonstrate how he reached a conclusion while asserting he “just saw” it –– is unbearably frustrating to Hardy and the other British mathematical scholars at Cambridge. My point, without going into an academic discussion of scientists and philosophers like Polanyi or Ricoeur is that there are other ways of knowing reality other than mathematical logic or empirical observation––a way that is less linear and more intuitive, and that frequently has to do with the ability to apprehend beauty. The Copernican revolution came about when Copernicus saw the universe not from a more scientifically logical perspective, but from what was for him a more wondrously beautiful perspective. Albert Einstein insisted that, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” And he thought that it was important for mathematical equations to be beautiful since, like the Greeks, he believed that the true, the good and the beautiful are one and that what is beautiful is likely to also be true. Here, again, is a sign post pointing to knowledge as something that transcends scientific understanding.
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason or Science, with its emphasis on objective reasoning has obviously led to many scientific and technological advances for which gratitude is the appropriate response. But it has also given us poisonous air, fouled oceans, polluted waters, and the contaminated soil of a dying planet; the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads capable of obliterating the planet; endless genocidal wars, new opportunities for violence, oppression and greed; murder and terror in our streets, schools and homes, rising suicide, depression, and anxiety rates; a world in which the loss of moral reasoning, the capacity for genuine commitment, delayed gratification and self-sacrifice is sucking humanity into a dystopian vortex of insanity. Particularly in the social sciences, including theology, or what is now usually called religious studies, liberal thought has become a kind of psychic scalpel for removing the conscience so that no disturbing questions emerge from the depths of the soul. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden they took their new knowledge with them –– but not wisdom.

Open-mindedness
At least one more thing needs to be said about the liberal ideal of scientific objectivity, and it is this. Liberal Christians and scholars frequently pride themselves on being open minded, accepting, and objective. The reality is they can be as biased, closed, angry, and rejecting as any fundamentalist. When I was doing my graduate work in Counseling Psychology a woman came up to me during a class break and asked, “Aren’t you a pastor?” When I confirmed that I was indeed a pastor she went on to ask: “Doesn’t that mean you believe some things are wrong and some things right? How can you become a professional counselor? You can’t show unconditional positive regard for everyone.” I told her I didn’t know how to respond, that I had never run into that problem. After the break the professor set up a role play, and this woman volunteered to play the role of therapist while two other members of the class played a married couple coming to see her for marriage counseling. The problematic issue the couple presented in this role play was that the wife was wanting to go to work and the husband thought women should stay at home. They were into the role play less than three minutes when the woman who had told me I could not be a therapist because I believed in right and wrong, was yelling at this student playing the role of a chauvinistic husband. It was so bad the professor had to stop the role play.

The Limits of Reason and Debunking
One Christmas season an Episcopal priest was telling the story of the visit of the Magi. In Matthew 2:11 it says that they came to the house were Jesus was and paid him homage. The priest who delighted in finding what he thought were incorrect details in biblical stories pointed out that in Luke Jesus is born in a stable: “But, here in Matthew,” he said, “Jesus and his parents are in a house. How,” he asked with a smirk, “did they suddenly get from the stable into a house?” Had that been a genuine question leading him to consult a basic commentary, he would have learned that there is a difference of about eighteen months between the two events. He might have also learned that it is not really all that clear exactly what the word “stable” means in Luke, or that the lower floor in many homes served as a place for animals. Of course, even without that much time between the two events it would be possible to name all sorts of logical ways in which Jesus might have been born in a stable, but moved into a house soon afterwards.
What this Episcopal priest was doing is an entirely common practice by liberal teachers. “scholars,” and the media. It’s just that it’s usually done with more sophistication and intelligence. I think it was last Easter that a story appeared with the headline: Jesus May Not Have Been Nailed to a Cross! The article noted that in some places the evidence seemed to indicate that crucifixion victims may have been tied rather than nailed to crosses. The story was meant to make Christian believers gasp as if this somehow changed everything modern day followers of Christ believe about the crucifixion and resurrection. The reality is it changes nothing. If I were to learn today that Jesus was tied rather than nailed to the cross, and that this was an indisputable fact, it would change absolutely nothing. Debunkers as Edwin Friedman, the rabbi and psychologist who was a pioneer in systems therapy noted, are operating out of their own inner anxieties.
Karen King, Professor of Divinity, and Harvard University were scammed by Walter Fritz (a man with a long history of producing fake antiquities and a sometimes pornographer), who sold them what appeared to be a papyrus fragment the size of a business card with what was purported to be a quote from Jesus containing the words “my wife.” King had two imminent scholars (AnneMarie Luijendijk at Princeton and Roger Bagnall at the New York Institute for the Study of the Ancient World) look at the supposed fragment and tell her it looked genuine. She quickly dubbed the “fragment” the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” A tiny scrap of paper, with too many missing and indecipherable words to make real sense, and of unknown origins, but in the mind of King and Harvard an important discovery revealing what early Christians believed about Jesus’ marital status. It was all sensationalized in the popular as well as academic media. There were numerous headlines declaring it to be authentic. Even National Geographic rushed in to do a television documentary. However, it wasn’t long before other scholars, and investigative journalists proved the so-called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife fragment, along with other New Testament texts provided by Walter Fritz, to be fraudulent. So much for scholarly objectivity applied to textual studies. Not even “The Tick” would have been so easily fooled. Neither Dr. King nor Harvard University, nor National Geographic, ever had the integrity to acknowledge they had simply been duped. Let me also add that if it were ever determined beyond doubt that Jesus was married with two children, a dog and a cat it would change nothing essential. Well, I guess the Roman church would be under greater pressure to allow its priests to marry, but that’s about it.
Here is one more. The Jesus Seminar, composed of fifty lower tier Bible scholars and 100 lay people (people with no real expertise) promoted itself as a scientific investigation of the historical Jesus––what did Jesus actually say and do? Using criteria for authenticity which defied formal logic The Jesus Seminar eventually reached its predetermined conclusion –– Jesus did not say 82% or do 84% of the things attributed to him in the Bible. But no one with even a rudimentary knowledge of its work would ever mistake the Jesus Seminar for representing the kind of scholarly rigor advocated by the enlightenment. The participants had all taken intractable negative positions of what Jesus was “really” like long before the seminar began its work. Their method of voting with colored beads among themselves, for or against the sayings and deeds of Jesus as authentic or inauthentic, caught the imagination of the media but was pure theater. That is, it was weighted in such a way that positive votes were not of equal value to more negative votes. The well-known scholar William Herzog noted of the Jesus Seminar: “They portrayed themselves as doing inductive science because they courted the aura of authority associated with the scientific method. However, they were in fact doing deductive and at times intuitive historical work all along.” Much of what passes for liberal scholarship today, far from having anything to do with reason and common human experience, is based on clever marketing, hyperbole, good writing skills, and imaginative conjecture.
Liberal Christians, then, quite often assert the doctrine of the primacy of reason with the same force that fundamentalist assert the primacy of Scripture. But human reason as an infallible guide is inadequate precisely because in, of, and by itself it is inherently inadequate. As the ancient Hebrew sage observed: “There is a way that seems reasonable, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). The most perplexing and difficult questions of life and reality are not entirely amenable to reason as if they could be reduced to logical syllogisms, but rather are questions involving attitudes, values, feelings, commitments, and spiritual discernment.
Transition
In Part II I will continue with the modern liberal conception of God and of Christ, but I thought it important to begin, as I have done here, by reflecting on the place of reason and its often unrecognized limitations in liberal thought. If you have not read my early post on the Evangelical Movement you might want to do so before reading Part II of “What Is Modern Liberal Theology?” Finally, I want to stress my strong and passionate conviction that what matters more than anything else is not whether you are a conservative or liberal Christian, but what kind of person the faith you have professed makes you