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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Fundamentalism Revisited -- A Liberal View
Message-ID: <1546@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Dec-84 22:34:50 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1546
Posted: Mon Dec  3 22:34:50 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Dec-84 05:38:47 EST
References: <1124@akgua.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 84

This article is not intended to be a criticism of Bob Brown's views; my
intent is instead to try to present a liberal vision of Christianity.

I should begin by pointing out that there is little unanimity on the
liberal side of the fence.  There are those who would reject almost all
of the "traditional" formulation of the faith; in an attempt to illuminate
the essential differences between the various positions, I will present
here a fairly conservative position, which (I hope) is commonly held by
many Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, et cetera.

Let me begin by recalling Bob's five Fundamentals:

> 1) The Bible is the inerrant Word of God, trustworthy on all
     subjects that it deals with.

> 2) The Deity of Jesus of Nazareth, that He was/is God incarnate
     and the awaited Messiah of Israel.

> 3) The Virgin Birth, that Jesus was fathered by the Holy Spirit. 
     His mother was Mary, Joseph's wife.

> 4) The Crucifixion and shedding of Jesus's Blood as remission
     for everyone's sin problem.

> 5) The Resurrection of Jesus, bodily, and His imminent return.

In what I will refer to as a "radical conservative" formulation, we accept
points 2, 4, and 5 without any reservations as givens. (Number 3 is
accepted too, but is a derived truth.)  Number one is the sticking point.
In its place we have the following two principles:

  A) Together, human reason, scripture, and church tradition are authorative.

  B) No one of these is inerrant or possesses ultimate authority.

Before I discuss these two principles, let me ensure that the meanings of
the terms are understood.  I think we can let human reason pass without
definition, except to note that I DO NOT mean purely logical or scientific
thought as some net.religion-ers would have us take it.  Under scripture,
we can restrict ourselves to the text of the bible as it is aceepted as
canonical by the protestant churches.  Church tradition, however, deserves
some explanation.  By tradition I do not mean merely the teaching of a
denominational body at some point in time.  Tradition consists of all the
thinking of the Church that has gone before us.  In particular, we include
here the various creeds, the chiefest of which are the Nicene and Apostle's
creeds.  In the liberal view it is important to consult our forefathers
(and mothers, I might add; there are some important medieval women) when
we consider a theological problem.

The chief difference between our position and the Fundamentalist position
is, of course, that we do not accept the inerrancy of scripture.  There
are two facts which support our disbelief.  First, there are many differences
between any two ancient sources you care to choose, indicating that,
regardless of the origin of the text, it has been allowed to be corrupted
in transmission.  Second, in any one text, there are obvious internal
inconsistencies.  In the most conservative view, we do subscribe to divine
inspiration-- we also deny that it means that the evangelists were
stenographers for God.

Since we do not ascribe absolute authority to scripture, we must call upon
other authorities in the search for doctrine.  Here is where the other two
authorities come into play.  The normative liberal method for deciding a
point of theology is thus; the appropriate group of christians reads the
scriptures, is advised by church traditions, appeals to the Spirit, mulls
the whole thing over, and makes their decision.  The reason why we believe
in the Virgin Birth is therefore because (1) scripture testifies to it,
(2) chruch tradition agrees with this testimony, and (3) the Spirit
assures us that this is so.

Two things should be clear.  First, it is clear that on any reasonably
difficult question, there isn't necessarily any consensus.  This I feel is
a problem we must live with.  The christian faith is both the simplest and
most difficult of religions: simple, because belief in the resurrection is
the only essential point; complicated, because of the difficulty and depth
of both Gospel and church tradition.

Second, there is no way to gaurantee that we are free of error.  Given the
history of christianity, I see recognition of the fact as a positive good;
we need to keep a LOT of humility in our theology.

[Would someone like to do us the service of presenting Catholic and
 Orthodox theology in a nutshell? Other protestant positions?]

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe