And so it is today. In order to answer this question we must of course have the courage not to over-simplify. A vital liberalism has within it tensions, struggle, a dialectic if you will. With a self-denying ordinance which disclaims finality or authoritativeness, we venture the following characterization of the essential elements of liberalism.
First liberalism holds that nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.
Liberalism itself, as an actuality, is patient of this limitation. Stating this principle in religious terms, we may say that liberalism presupposes that revelation is continous in word, and in deed, and in nature, that it is not sealed, and that it points always beyond itself. Not only is significant novelty both possible and manifest, but also significance is itself inchoate and subject to inner tensions of peril and opportunity, of self-assertion and dependence. Second, liberalism holds that all relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual free concent and not on coercion. Obviously, this principle cannot be advocated in any strict or absolute sense.