From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Progressive Creationism Part 6
Summary: side note on "liberal Protestantism"
Date: 8 Oct 92 21:32:57 GMT
Organization: AT&T

In article <91389@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hamilton@hydra.cs.gmr.com
(William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes:

	[ concerning the backround of some fundamentalist positions ]

> New Testament studies, Machen said, showed that the liberal conception
> of Jesus as "a mild-mannered exponent of indiscriminating love" was not
> at all compatible with modern research that showed the authors of the
> Gospels portraying Jesus as a supernatural person, fully aware of his
> sinlessness and messianic role.

True enough -- all serious study, and most especially all "liberal"
study must start from Schweitzer's exploding the "gentle Jesus, meek
and mild psuedo-moral-philosopher" image that dominated a lot of popular
discussion of Christianity, and which went hand in glove with the kind
of crypto-Protestant establishment in the USA which operated in some
respects as an "Episcopocracy" (read up on the history of Episcopalians
in the US government :-)) while making a great show of "universalism"
as civic virtue.  There are lots of interesting things in this, from a
historical and social as well as religious perspective.

> To be
> truly scientific, then, modern Protestants would have to come to terms with
> biblical scholarship. Such a task would force a choice between the Jesus of
> liberal Protestant fancies or the historic Christ of the Bible.

However, I'm a bit unhappy about the tone of William's constant use 
here of the term "liberal Protestant" -- it has some justification in
the historical context, but what he describes has little or nothing to
do with anything in the modern "liberal" denominations.  There is some
detritus of 19th century propaganda and knee-jerking when people make
(mostly meaningless) noises about "Jesus, the ethical teacher."  But
the only serious advocates of such a position have all migrated towards
Unitarianism (which was indeed drawing off large numbers of folks from
the Protestant churches in the late 19th century, which is one reason
the churches responded by making the sorts of noises which seem to sell)
or further away from any kind of Christianity.  A tone of caution about
our doctrines, and a recognition that doctrine is ALWAYS caught up in
the "traditions of men" that Jesus condemned may look to someone with
20-pages of mandatory "beliefs" as if we had no faith and no doctrine.
But 'tain't true.

The Jesus of liberal churches (at least, those I know about) today is
quite solidly grounded in scripture -- but with the recognition that there
are EXTREME problems in making blithe statements about historicity in all
our documents.  So that inerrantism is, from the "scientific" point of
view that Machen was claiming, at least as much a "fancy" and a cop-out
as Renan's popularization of Jesus (or even Schweitzer's sounder version;
it remains a matter of controversy -- and intellectual fashions on this
swing pendulum-like over the generations -- whether we can find out much
about "the historical Jesus" from our texts.)

> historical content, liberals could perhaps dodge the grasp of science for a
> while, but eventually psychologists and philosophers would subject even the
> affective and moral dimensions of Christianity to criticism.

Of course.  Those who want to "dodge" this are merely wooly-minded.

> Thus, the process of modifying Christianity to accommodate science showed
> a lack of intellectual resolve.

It is perhaps a matter of interpretation just how much "intellectual
resolve" is exhibited by wholesale unwillingness to grant ANY application
of physical, biological or human sciences to religion.   Machen could,
I do not doubt, find plenty of examples to ridicule -- Americans of all
stripes have not generally been known for intellectual rigor, and that
was particularly true a century ago and up through the foibles that
Mencken portrayed (one may find plenty of examples today -- on all sides
of liberal/conservative or any other dichotomies.)  But Machen's point
looks to me more like a debator's ploy -- substitute an easily ridiculed
target to avoid having to confront the REAL liberal thought of his day
(say, in his contemporaries studying in the burgeoning form-critical
schools -- to use biblical scholarship as he seems to have done, to
discredit what his liberal co-students had no brief for, without going
on to what THEY saw as the implications of this study (say, Bultmann's
work) is a bit disingenuous.

> position was unusual among fundamentalists. But Machen's larger point(that
> the compartmentalization of science and religion was in effect an
> admission that Christianity did not correspond to scientific descriptions
> of reality

The "compartmentalization" so far as it existed in someone like Fosdick
was predicated on the American separation of church and state.  Not on
"modifying Christianity to fit <some parts, but not others of> science."

> Fundamentalists were deeply committed to intellectual consistency and
> scorned liberals for abandoning the enterprise.

The political pastors and preachers who dominated in the Northeastern
urban milieu are no more likely to have a commitment to intellectual
consistency than any other politician.  The sorts of people Machen is
attacking were in effect the Jimmy Swaggarts (more genteel, of course)
of their day.  A call to rigor for the faculties of theology was very
much in order -- and I think that most have pulled themselves up to a
considerably higher standard than prevailed a century ago in America.
American schools of ALL sorts were pretty dismal back then -- why do you
think Machen went to Germany to study?

> Machen's way of achieving coherence was
> to defend the historicity of the New Testament.

But at the level which is needed for fundamentalism, this simply cannot
be done, at least not while claiming to be sticking to the best that
"science" could offer in his day about scripture, or about bibilical
history.  A generic "not disprovable" and even "coherent with what we
know about the era" can apply, but not in any way that provides a
foundation for the doctrines involved (Virgin Birth and Resurrection
the most obvious cases here.)  I will myself strongly defend the
historicity of the New Testament -- but my defense is not likely to
seem very helpful to a fundamentalist, in that I see no way whatso-
ever to extend that defense to do more than show that essential dogma
about Jesus goes back to about a generation after his death.
Because, at the very minimum,

> Fundamentalist objections to evolution followed a similar logic.
> Because Genesis
> made particular claims about the origins of the universe and humankind,
> scientific findings on those matters could not be ignored.

No, they can't be ignored (by Christians) -- but neither does this give
us a predefined basis for presuming any simple relationship of scritpural
statements to scientific ones, especially not the presumption of medieval
scholastic sic_et_non debate where all statements enter an artifically
constructed domain of supposed equivalent reference.  A Christian, at
least one committed to intellectual consistenscy, will want to think about
the issues of creation, and of the Fall, in the light of everything we do
know, or suspect, about the natural world around us (and the findings of
a scientifically-oriented history.)  It is a bit odd to PREJUDGE that we
must conclude this examination by talking about these things in the same
terms as people did 1000 years ago, when they DIDN'T know what we know.

The "know" here has a) got to be distinguished from the knowledge of
grace imparted by the Holy Spirit but b) that too has got to stand in
some kind of intellectually honest relation to what type-a knowledge
gives us to understand about ourselves.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."
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