The polarisation of the church: liberalism and fundamentalism

Israel was unique in understanding itself as an historical entity. Its literature, and the New Testament inherits this, is likewise historical. This does not mean biblical texts conform to modern standards of history writing. Rather, they are historical in that they were written from the particular historical circumstance to the universal.

For example, the creation narratives are clearly legend. However the first creation story, depicting the seven days of creation, was written in the historical context of exile in Babylon (which had its own creation stories). The stories of Israel are historical, not because they described what actually happened at the beginning of the universe, but because they were written in the historical context of Israel confronted by creation stories that were truly mythical and hence deeply unhistorical. We may make the general statement that all biblical texts were inspired by particular historical events or circumstances, even those written as story, like Job or Jonah, or as prophesy, like Isaiah or Ezekiel.

The mistake of liberalism, which so offends fundamentalists, is to adhere lightly to the biblical texts on the basis that historical-critical research shows them to be written by men in a wide range of contexts. If these documents bore the imprint of historical contingency, how could they be “The Word of the Lord”? If they bore the mark of time how could they be eternal? But one may pose a similar question about Jesus - if he was a real historical person, how could he also be the eternal son of the father? These are examples of how the contingent leads to the universal through thought. When fundamentalism limits this progression it ends up with a dry husk, the dead soul of all religion. When liberalism is loosely bound to the person of the historical Jesus it loses its foundation in the actual.

Healing of the fundamentalist/liberal divide will require moves from both sides. Fundamentalists need to understand there is no such thing as an un-interpreted fact. Any experience, be that reading the Bible or attending worship, will automatically lead to intellectual extension of that experience. Any attempt to absolutise a text or an experience will close us off to theological development.

Theology is always a work in progress, more like a bird in flight than one in a cage. So, for example, when we cling to an interpretation of the resurrection as an actual resuscitation of Jesus, we limit its meaning to a nature miracle, easily demolished by modern man, and we also limit the meaning of the resurrection for us. We also entertain a story whose inner contradictions tear it apart: we are left with the question of what became of the body of Jesus. According to Luke it must be in low orbit around the earth. Any attempt to maintain the exclusively realist position by suffocating theological questioning will eventually fail through simple logic. The reform of fundamentalism must happen through intellectual work.

The reform of liberalism will be found in a return to the Bible as the basis of theology, and a revival of orthodox theology. The return to the Bible does not mean all the past several hundred years' work in historical-critical research must be abandoned. But it does mean theology takes precedence over that work. Biblical research may go no further than the various historical-critical methods, but the theologian must go further. He must ask what a particular text reveals to us about God. How is it “the Word of the Lord”? This is the crucial question, without which biblical study may satisfy academic curiosity but will never breathe the fire of the spirit.

It is a theological commonplace to point out that the great liberal theologian Frederick Schleiermacher relegated the doctrine of the Trinity to an appendix. In Protestant theology it was Karl Barth who restored it to its proper place at the centre of how we think of God. Liberalism must retrieve pre-Enlightenment theology, and go back not only to the Bible, but to the fathers and the reformers. Too much has been lost in our apologetic, intended to seduce modern man into church. Rather than appealing to the man in the street we must look at our own theological heritage, and recover both the Gospel and the depth of theological thinking.

The modern schism in the church makes it an easy target for its persecutors. Fundamentalism ghettoises Christianity, liberalism trivialises it. Both are held in place by their suspicion of each other. But the theology that will push the church past these two positions has already been written. Growing out of a recognition of the deficiencies of liberalism, it has come to be called post-liberalism. It can also be used to reform fundamentalism. The barriers to this are visceral rather than intellectual -  just to listen to the other side fills us with nausea. But unless we start doing so, the split in the church will remain.