What sources do Liberal Christians accept as authoritative?

[2PhiloVoid]

I believe in a blend of all of the above (except number 1 and 2).

Ok. That's interesting to know. Which of these views do you feel is most likely?

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Ok. That's interesting to know. Which of these views do you feel is most likely?

Good question. That would depend on the passage, if God is being quoted directly or if it is someone saying do this or do that .. but God is not being quoted directly.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Don Thorsen and Keith H. Reeves in their book, What Christians Believe About the Bible (2012):

1) Dictation (or Mechanical) Theory - God dictated exact words for certain people to write.
2) Verbal, Plenary Theory - God inspired the words which each writer chose to use.
3) Dynamic Theory - A dynamic is involved between the Holy Spirit and the writers; the bible is God's Ideas using human abilities.
4) Concursive Theory - Like the Dynamic Theory, but maintains that the dynamic is a mystery which can't be fully explained.
5) Sacramental Theory - Generally, God uses physical things and people to signify His meanings to and through His people.
6) Partial, Limited or Degrees Theory - Some parts of the Bible may be directly influenced by God; other parts are people's attempts to represent what they have experienced or learned about God.
7) Dialectical Theory - The biblical authors write under the influence of God in and through the experience of their lives.
8) Humanized Theory - Just as it sounds: humans write what they think God is and thinks.
9) Existential, Critical Theory - We find the Bible in this world, such as it is from the past, with its claims of divine influence; and we have to wrestle with these claims as best as we can, and we do so now, in THIS current life and time.

This is a good start to reflect on who we think God is and how God interacts with us. It really takes us each into our personal metaphysics even though we may not call it that or recognize the process. How does reality work? How well does what I believe align with my experience of real life?

I go with most of these except #1

I think God speaks to us all every day but it is not an explicit verbal communication. Rather, it takes a quiet heart to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
The Bible is a very complex collection of all sorts of genres. It is more like a library that a book. In either case, our own inner experience or the Bible we can always err in our interpretation. So I think we all look to others for guidance who have earned our respect and trust. But even then it comes down to us alone to decide for ourselves what we believe and how we choose to understand the Bible.

 

[FireDragon76]

In surveys, most members of the UCC (United Church of Christ, Congregationalists) say common sense or reason is their guide to know what is right and wrong. I think that's typical for many liberal Protestants.

Most members of the UCC consider the Bible a sacred book that is still an important source of theology and inspiration, and a liturgical text, but they don't consider it an infallible or inerrant authority the way conservative or fundamentalist Protestants do. There's alot of emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit and Christian experience.

 

[FireDragon76]

The Bible is no ordinary book. Along with the great number of prophecies that were fulfilled in history hundreds of years later, the actual original Hebrew and Greek show evidence of intricate design, which would take thousands of years of random tries to replicate.

Scholars in the middle ages and renaissance believed the language of the Bible was peculiar or odd because of some supernatural reason, but that was before we knew more about the original languages. In reality, much of the language of the New Testament is not well written, from the standpoint of good Greek literature. Particularly the Johanine corpus and Revelation. It has all the evidence of being a second language for many of its writers. It's not the high Greek we associate with classical literature, but the kind of lingua franca that we commonly found in artifacts from the period, where people often knew just enough Greek to get by.

The best Greek in the New Testament, BTW, is in Luke and Acts. Whoever wrote it was probably familiar with Greek literature, because they took many of the writing conventions from travel stories and biographies of the period.

 

[FireDragon76]

I agree, but rather than going down the line from Luther and Calvin, I prefer to start with Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Pascal... then maybe make my way to some Kierkegaard, a little Barth, a little Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, and Langdon Gilkey (just to name a few). These are those whom I count as the main 'reformers.'

... basically because the World is bigger than just the Bible.

I think Luther was a significant reformer, but more for the approach he took to religious epistemology in general, in terms of a humanistic reinterpretation of medieval religion, rather than specific doctrinal exactness. What the Protestant scholastics did wasn't so good for the vitality of the movement. Fundamentalist Protestants are largely heirs to that legacy, and the ensuing conflicts and increased irrelevancy of religion in our culture are its fruits.