Old liberal

Ross Woods, 2022

The “Old Liberal” view is an extreme, and perhaps very few people really believed everything in this category. However, some of these views have been very pervasive and many of them still survive in “Neo-othodoxy.”

It is a kind of rationalism; it is a belief that their view of logic will reveal the “truth.” It depended on its academic credentials although it is now academically quite weak.

The idea of a continuum is helpful, ranging from fundamentalists on the far right and liberals on the far left. In this mentality, liberals characterize anything to the right of themselves as some kind of fundamentalist.

1. The Bible is only literature, and unknown people assembled Bible books a long time after the named authors using various other documents. For example:
1. The Pentateuch is a compilation of sources called J, E, P, and D. It was compiled after the exile to Bablylon, and included a collection of middle eastern myths.
2. Two or perhaps three people wrote the book of Isaiah.
3. Matthew, Mark and Luke used an unknown gospel as a source, called “Q.”
4. Paul probably didn’t write most of the letters using his name.
2. With so many myths, we don’t really know what happened then.
3. Based on the assumption that the gospels were incorrect, they went on the quest for the historical Jesus to find out what Jesus was really like and what he really did.
4. It denies the supernatural, for example:
1. Jesus was an ordinary human. (The Ebionite heresy.)
2. There was no virgin birth.
3. There were no miracles.
4. There is no Devil.
5. Christ was not physically resurrected.
6. There is no heaven and especially no hell.
7. The Bible has lots of mistakes.
5. Other religions have lots of truth. Evangelism is unethical because Christian don’t have the right to impose their beliefs on others.
6. The Bible is culture-bound. Some of its teachings might not be true any more. Our modern culture is sometimes a better guide in ethics and morals.
7. They are associated with the World Council of Churches.

Did anything good come out of it?

It did a lot of harm, and most of its ideas have been proven either baseless or incorrect. It has, however, had several good effects:

1. Evangelicals were interested in checking the claims through archeological findings and other ancient writings.
2. Evangelicals were interested in the literary forms of Scripture.
3. Evangelicals could agree that some parts of Scripture were the results of editors or compilors. The best example is Psalms, which were collated into five volumes.
4. Evangelicals can admit that they can't always explain everything in the Bible, such as some of the differences between the synoptic gospels.