Liberal Protestants v. Evangelical Protestants

There are always two sides to a single story. There are always two views of the same picture, and there will always be (at least) two views of what it means to be a “Christian.” Throughout the history of Christianity, this has held true in regards to Christ’s substance, humanity, deity and even His presence in communion. As years have gone by and the “major issues” of Christendom were either brought to a single conclusion or unhappily deemed as irreconcilable, the debates morphed into “how” to view and live a life of faith, whatever that faith might be. As the Church neared the 18^th century of its existence, the debate within Protestant theology between the “Liberals” and the “Evangelicals (Fundamentals at the start)” began. As the liberal Protestants debated the evangelical Protestants, they exchanged truth for human feelings while the evangelical Protestants created truth from human thought.

Concerning liberal theology, their greatest failure is something being mirrored today in how some are responding to supposed “Postmodernism”: they did not think that the truth of the Gospel was enough. What has happened (and is happening) is that they have taken the truth of the Gospel and measured it up to the standards of their own thoughts. This creates a glaring inconsistency in regards to evaluating if they are even correct in their assessments. As a whole, they focused their attention on modernity and its influence on Christianity, as opposed to Christianity’s influence upon modernity.

While none of the classical liberal Protestant thinkers of the nineteenth century were willing to place modernity explicitly on a par with Scripture, all of them saw modern thought as a necessary tool of interpretation and most of them gave it a guiding and even controlling authority in determining the essence of Christian truth. (Roger Olson, 1999, 538)

This view of modernity is reminiscent of the Roman Catholic view of tradition. Though there is something to glean from tradition for the Christian, modernity offers little to be applied to faith. One of the chief proponents and the “father” of modern liberal theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher still attempted to infuse the two thoughts to form one belief system.

This man’s thoughts and understanding regarding what faith is about was betrayed in his use of a German word Gefühl. “Schleiermacher removed authoritative, objective revelation from the center of religion and replaced it with Gefühl- an untranslatable German word. The closest English translation would be ‘deep, inner awareness.’” (Olson, 1999, 543) This method towards faith is a frightening one as it can quickly turn into one person’s feelings having lordship over another’s. Though this was a philosophical movement of the time, it does not equate with sound logic. Aside from placing too much weight on feelings, Schleiermacher also attempted to tiptoe around claiming the absolute truth of Scripture and Christian belief.

“Schleiermacher’s intent in The Christian Faith was to present a specifically Christian theology that would... [take] fully into account the advances of modern thought and [avoid] conflicts with them.” (Olson, 1999, 544) For a person to avoid conflicting with an idea or set of ideals, they would inevitably have to compromise themselves at some point. This is why it makes no sense for a person to always agree with everything they read of a certain author or like every piece of music produced by a certain artist. He presupposed that what modernity brought to the table was relevant and true, which begs the question: “What did he use to determine its truth?” The answer is that he used feelings.

Schleiermacher did not find his link to God through Scripture, but through Gefühl, or “God-consciousness”. (Olson, 1999, 544) In regards to Christianity, he argued that “the ‘essence of Christianity’ [is] a deep awareness of being dependent upon God (God-consciousness) and upon Jesus Christ as one’s link to God.” (Olson, 1999, 544) On the outside, this thought doesn’t seem as heretical as it truly is. Christ is deemed the mediator of the Faith in the New Testament. What brings this comment to an awkward state is his argument that “there is both a universal and God-consciousness in humanity and specific religious forms of it in the positive religions.” (Olson, 1999, 544) Here Schleiermacher makes a fatal error in deeming truth to be found in many religions, through (assumedly) different avenues, not one faith through one man: the Son of God. As Schleiermacher began to define the thoughts and views of this movement, another man influenced it enough for it to bear his name: Albrecht Ritschl.

One of Ritschl’s primary goals was “to disentangle Christianity from science. By ‘science,’ he meant not only the natural sciences but any objective discipline whose stock-in-trade is ‘facts.’” (Olson, 1999, 547) In doing this, Ritschl blatantly challenged any authority Christianity had over the modern worldview. Like Schleiermacher before him, he saw “Christianity’s true essence as completely compatible with the modern worldview.” (Olson, 1999, 547) He also saw that science dealt with facts, religion dealt with values. Each of these views places religion as a whole (let alone Christianity) into a subordinate role. When a person places religion/Christianity within parameters, it betrays their true understanding of what religion is. Yes, values are a part of Christianity, but it presents facts as well, some of which the liberal Protestants like Ritschl and Schleiermacher have deemed as mere thoughts, suggestions even. By doing this, they betrayed the solid truth presented in the Gospel for human feelings. As has been proven by time (and stated in the Bible): human feelings are deceiving.

In regards to the evangelical Protestants, their movement was greatly influenced by a few people, but not to the same degree as the liberal Protestants. Where the latter can lay claim to Schleiermacher and Ritschl, the former laid claim to J. Gresham Machen and common features. Machen laid a very decisive blow to the liberal Protestant thought. Through his Christianity and Liberalism; he “argued that liberal Protestant theology represented a different religion from Christianity and that its proponents ought to be honest enough to admit that.” (Olson, 1999, 562-3) This hit the liberal Protestant thought hard, and even brought about secular affirmation to part of the evangelical Protestant argument. (Olson, 1999, 565) Through this and the common features, they had a base for debating the liberal Protestants.

“Early fundamentalism (pre-1925) was marked by belief that the ills of modern theology stem from defections from strong belief in supernatural, verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible.” (Olson, 1999, 566) This is perhaps the greatest point of contention between the two movements. Where the liberal Protestants saw Scripture working with (and almost under) modernity, the evangelical Protestants saw it as superceding everything else. This idea of sola scriptura is not a new one to Christianity, but the way they described Scripture as coming through verbal inspiration and being inerrant were more than had been claimed before. “Conveniently ignored was the fact that in spite of strong affirmation of sola scriptura, many early Protestant Reformers as well as the Pietists did not teach anything like verbal inspiration or meticulous inerrancy of Scripture.” (Olson, 1999, 566) Here is an example of their creating truth from human thought in an effort by some to promote loosely held theological beliefs and others to further disprove the liberal Protestants. Which brings about the second common feature of the evangelical Protestant movement: a defense against the liberal Protestant movement.

It is always a danger to take a purely defensive stance from the start. By doing so, it is not uncommon to reach beyond even one’s own beliefs to prove a point. This is the place that the evangelical Protestants found themselves in as they were largely unprepared to fight for something that had been simply assumed for centuries, almost millennia (namely the supremacy of Scripture). When they did rally themselves, they held to a “militant opposition to liberal, modernist Protestant theology in all its forms. Militant does not mean ‘terrorist’ or ‘violent,’ of course. It only means ‘stringent, vocal and unrelenting.’” (Olson, 1999, 566) They fought, tenaciously and in doing this, another common feature occurred: “the identification of authentic Christianity with a coherent system of doctrinal propositions called Protestant orthodoxy.” (Olson, 1999, 567) There needed to be a set standard and “guidebook” for this movement to judge the other movement by. To simply try and meet the liberal Protestants point for point in arguments proved fruitless as the “liberals could claim to have [religious experiences], and there was no object text for orthopathy.” (Olson, 1999, 567) In answering the liberal Protestant’s use of modernity as a plum line, the evangelical Protestants held firmly to Scripture, even creating some doctrines to rebut them. They also fought tenaciously and created a Protestant orthodoxy. By doing these three things, they held off the liberal theologians’ advance, but they also created an avenue for disruption within their ranks.

The American Council of Christian Churches was formed in the 1940’s by a “Bible Presbyterian” to separate the “pure” fundamentals from the others. This man was following the footsteps of others who themselves seemed to be taking a step away from the common thread of the fundamentalist (or evangelical Protestant) thought. The mainline fundamentalists in turn formed the National Association of Evangelicals, which later prevailed as the organization to speak for the majority of evangelical Protestants in later years. (Olson, 1999, 565) Both groups were close-minded and had a hyper separating mentality, which hurt them, and weakened them to the point that they were not able to give the decisive blow to the liberal Protestants. Before this all happened, the “Scopes Monkey Trial” put the evangelical Protestant movement on trial as much as it did evolution. Through the events of the trial, a weakness within the movement was shown. It ended up being the literal death of an emerging leader within the movement: William Jennings Bryan.

Neither side truly came out as perfect in this debate. Therefore, like a boxing match, this must come down to the judge’s decision, though not a difficult one at that. The liberal Protestants’ chief pitfall was their view of Scripture and religion as a whole. Machen was right in deeming them a different religion altogether as neither Schleiermacher nor Ritschl placed Scripture and religion above modern thought or personal feelings. They might both even be accused of reducing Christianity to moralism. (Olson, 1999, 548) In doing this, they knocked themselves out of the fight. The evangelical Protestants did not leave the ring unscathed though; they divided themselves and created doctrines out of their own thoughts. In doing this, they weakened themselves and did not deliver the knockout blow. Even today, modernity has morphed into a supposed “post modernity” which plagues Christendom, waiting for a worthy foe to deliver the final blow.