Biblical Hermeneutics
Lesson Three—The Liberal School of Interpreation
Introduction
What is a “liberal”? In the Bible, the word is often employed in a positive way to describe the commendable tendency of the saints to be “liberal”, or “generous” with their substance, rather than being niggardly or stingy. In politics, a “liberal”, by definition, is one who desires change in the policies of government in opposition to a “conservative” who desires the status quo. But in Theology, a “liberal” means something altogether different than either of these two definitions.
Classic Liberalism
The late eighteenth century saw the height of an age termed the “Enlightenment”. Three themes flowed from this era—a confidence in the power of human reasoning and enquiry to discover truth in all fields; the willingness to explore the possibility of a universal, ‘natural’ religion common to all men; and the desire to promote social and educational changes in order to produce an enlightened society. The first of these themes, called “Rationalism”, took root especially in Germany. In matters of religion, rationalism refused to accept as truth that which rested by faith on revelation alone, but ascribed to man’s own reason the role of supreme arbiter in determining the meaning of truth. The supernaturalness of God was no longer seen as supplying man with the answers he sought. Increasingly, man now looked to his own reason, especially as reflected by science, for the solutions to the problems he faced.
This new way of thinking was reflected in theological circles by the rise of “Liberal Theology”. Frederick Schleiermacher (1768-1834), a German theologian, is generally considered to be the ”father” of Liberal theology. Schleiermacher taught that blessedness consisted in a strengthening of the God-consciousness which exists, to some degree, in the heart of every man. Sin is an obscuring of that consciousness. Christ was unique in the constancy and strength of His God- consciousness, and redemption consists in the impartation of Christ’s God-consciousness to the believer. Salvation consists in this mystical, subjective experience.
In general, Liberal theology, at heart, is man-centered, as opposed to the God-centeredness of Orthodox theology. Man is taught that he must trust his own rationality in understanding theological truth rather than blindly adhering to the Bible. Liberals see within every man a “spark of Divinity” which simply needed to be fanned and developed.
As the nineteenth century rolled along, there was a tide of optimism that arose reflecting the thinking that man, through science, would ultimately solve the great scrouges of humanity, such as famine, war, disease, etc. That optimism was bolstered by Darwin’s hypothesis that man as a specie was in the midst of constant, upward change, and that now, by understanding the process of evolution, he could direct that change himself. The human race, through the discovery of these facts about itself and the basic laws of the cosmos, was on its way—so it was thought--to a higher level of existence than it had ever known before. Utopia was right around the bend.
This rosy picture was soon shattered by the events of the twentieth century with its wars and genocide—centered, of all places, in the very nation from which these ideas had emerged! One might think that this would be a death blow to Liberalism. However, the basic ideas arose shortly after the first World War in a new dress.
Neo-Orthodoxy
In 1919, Karl Barth (1886-1968) published a commentary on the book of Romans. In it, he reintroduces the notions of man’s sinfulness and his separation from God into liberal circles. The movement growing out of this new emphasis (new, at least, to liberal circles!) was termed “Neo-Orthodoxy”. Though this was a direction that shocked adherents to classical liberalism, Barth still embraced many of the methods of liberalism. His basic emphasis was on the “experiencing” of God. Barth viewed the Bible, not as God’s revelation to man, as a guide to experiencing that revelation for one’s own self. To a large degree, this movement reflected the philosophical school of thought known as “Existentialism”. The philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Fredrich Nietzsche paved the way for this mode of thinking, more fully embodied in Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Existentialism is a very difficult term to define, even by its own adherents. In general, it teaches that one must validate or autheticate one’s own existence through the contemplation of the special questions relating to one’s existence—e.g. the meaning of my own existence, death, how God relates to my existence, the importance of self-knowledge and value, etc. In Existentialism the emphasis is not on objective reality, but on one’s subjective experience; not on the social dimensions of life, but on the individual; not on external standards determining the value of an act, but on my own creation of value by what I affirm and how I act upon those affirmations. Some will immediately recognize many of these ideas in our culture today with its emphasis on determining “what’s right for you” and then acting upon it.
Liberal Interpretation
As the Liberal or Neo-Orthodox adherent approaches the scripture, he always does so with a certain devaluation of the supernatural and an elevation of human reason. Because of this, both reject the Bible as being the inspired, inerrant Word of God. The supernatural, in both Testaments, is contrary to reason and therefore to be rejected as authoritative and relegated to the category of myth. To the liberal, the Old Testament is simply the human production of an assortment of literature growing out of the Hebrew tradition. As such, as with any other ancient body of literature, its histories are filled with myth, inaccuracies and downright fabrications. The school of “higher criticism” treats the Bible as any other book, applying to it the same methodology for determining its derivation, authorship, date, original text, etc., as one would to, say, the writings of Homer.
The Hermeneutic applied is sometimes referred to as the “Historical-Critical” method. This approach more or less assumes that most of the Biblical text is not historical—i.e. it never really happened. What is focused upon is not so much the history of the events described by the text, but the history of the text itself. This method treats the text as a purely manmade production and seeks to explain the trail by which that text arrived in the form in which we have it today. As such, this method begins with “Source Criticism”, i.e. an attempt to identify the original sources that lie behind the text. Note that the presumption is that the text is not the product of the author identified by the text itself. Source Criticism is an attempt to identify the “evolution” of the text into what we have today. “Form Criticism” attempts to identify any pre-existing oral traditions that eventually became embodied in the text itself. Finally, “Redaction Criticism” stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from “Source Criticism”. Rather than being interested in identifying the sources from which the source sprang, it instead focuses upon the finished product. It is assumed that some human agent with his own agenda served as the editor/assembler (i.e. the “redactor”) of the existing materials and traditions. Thus, this human agent shapes, molds, changes, or invents the material that ultimately winds up in the final text.
The Liberal and Christ
The end result of these methods are especially noticeable (and appalling!) when they are applied to the Gospel and the Person of Christ. The focus of liberalism is upon the ethical teachings of Christ completely divorced from any kind of supernatural explanation of His Person or miraculous affirmation of His ministry. The liberal is constantly in search of the “historic Jesus”—i.e. the man by that name spoken of in the record of the New Testament (if there actually was such a man) stripped of all the myths and embellishments laid upon Him by the early church. The most obvious modern example of liberalism in action is the so-called “Jesus Seminar”. According to the findings of liberal-biased group, the actual Jesus only uttered a few, short, pithy statements contained in the Gospel record. The rest of the Gospel record concerning His teachings, and all of the material concerning His miraculous doings, were simply legends and stories that grew up about Him after His death by His followers. According to liberalism, Jesus may well have been a frist century guru, martyred for His beliefs by the Jewish and Roman power structures, but nothing more than that, and certainly, not Divine!
The Neo-Orthodox Approach
Within Neo-orthodoxy, it’s claimed that the text must be “de-mytholigized”—i.e. methods are to be employed to, not so much rid the text of its supernaturalism, but to interpret the meaning behind them. Thus, we wind up with a method very similar to the allegorical method employed by Jewish and Christian Hellenists when handling texts dealing with the supernatural. And this method is employed for the very same reason: to make the text more palatable to the mind of modern man. Consider the following quote from Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) from within the camp of Neo-orthodoxy:
“For modem man the mythological conception of the world, the conceptions of eschatology, of redeemer and of redemption, are over and done with. Is it possible to expect that we shall make a sacrifice of understanding, sacrificium intellectus, in order to accept what we cannot sincerely consider true -- merely because such conceptions are suggested by the Bible? Or ought we to pass over those sayings of the New Testament that contain such mythological conceptions and to select other sayings which are not such stumbling-blocks to modem man?”
While Bultmann insisted upon using the Bible in his existential search for “self-authentication”, he, at the same time, shows his utter disdain for the supernatural teachings of scripture which are at the very heart of evangelical faith.
Post-Modern Developments
It should come as no surprise that a method that fixates on our own subjective experience rather than on objective truth is ready made for Post-Modernism—with its emphasis on the fact that there really is no such thing as objective truth or reality. Reality becomes, to the Post-Modern man, what is real to me. Likewise, to the Neo-orthodox, what the Bible originally said and meant to the man to whom it was first given is of little interest or value. What is supremely important is what it means to me today. Therefore, the Bible is not the revelation of God’s Word, but merely a witness to the fact revelation has taken place in history. It is not the Word of God per se, for Liberalism claims that only God can speak for God and thus revelation comes only as He speaks to me in a personal sense. What part of the Bible is inspired? Simply put, only the part that speaks to me. And the meaning of the part that speaks to me is not what it meant to the man to whom it was originally spoken, but what it means to me today.
Examples
Many examples of the liberal hermeneutic could be given, but a few will serve as illustrative of the approach:
The book of Jonah is relegated to the category of pure fiction.
The dating of the book of Daniel is assumed to be the second century B.C.
“Liberation” proponents find texts with words they interpret to support their views.
Feminists and homosexuals ignore texts contrary to their agenda.