Is your theology liberal?

[philadiddle]

There are verses in the bible that explain that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above. There are also verses that explain that there are windows in the sky that let in the rain.

The immediate audience would have interpretted this literally, and for many centuries the church fathers and major theologians, such as Martin Luthar, interpretted it literally. This is the classic conservative way of understanding these passages.

So my question is, do you interpret it the same way or do you have a liberal theology about this where you understand it in a different way?

Please note, I don't use the word "liberal" here lightly. "Liberal" in theology means that you are automatically wrong. That single word is being used as a means of disregarding your theology without really having to put much thought into it.

So please let me know, are you a liberal Christian who has compromised the word of God to fit your own standards? Or will you join me in rejecting our current scientific cosmology in order to protect our proper conservative understanding of scripture in order to protect the Gospel message from the false teachers out there?

 

[Siyha]

Evangelicalism is a very liberal theology, stemming largely from work done in the 1700's that undermined the conservative orthodoxy of the day. When your beliefs have only been around for about 1/8th of a religion's history, it seems they are anything but conservative.

 

[philadiddle]

Evangelicalism is a very liberal theology, stemming largely from work done in the 1700's that undermined the conservative orthodoxy of the day. When your beliefs have only been around for about 1/8th of a religion's history, it seems they are anything but conservative.

Sure, but the point I'm trying to make is that attaching "liberal" and "conservative" to different theologies isn't an argument for or against them.

 

[Walter Kovacs]

I like science. I love God. I see no reason why the two are incompatible.

 

[mark kennedy]

There are verses in the bible that explain that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above. There are also verses that explain that there are windows in the sky that let in the rain.

The immediate audience would have interpretted this literally, and for many centuries the church fathers and major theologians, such as Martin Luthar, interpretted it literally. This is the classic conservative way of understanding these passages.

So my question is, do you interpret it the same way or do you have a liberal theology about this where you understand it in a different way?

Please note, I don't use the word "liberal" here lightly. "Liberal" in theology means that you are automatically wrong. That single word is being used as a means of disregarding your theology without really having to put much thought into it.

So please let me know, are you a liberal Christian who has compromised the word of God to fit your own standards? Or will you join me in rejecting our current scientific cosmology in order to protect our proper conservative understanding of scripture in order to protect the Gospel message from the false teachers out there?

Evolutionists never define 'evolution' or 'science' so why would they define 'liberal theology'?

The theology of Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich are 'liberal theology'. Here are a few definitions that you may or may not find informative.

Literary Criticism - another historical-critical method which contemplates underlying literary sources, stylistic variances, types of literature and questions relating to authorship, unity, and dates of Biblical texts (Biblical Criticism: Historical, Literary and Textual, p. 20).

A priori assumptions are made about what Jesus must be like, what His message must have been. Scriptural authors were not allowed stylistic changes or innovative or novel teachings without being rejected as genuine.

Liberalism - a recurring impulse throughout the history of Christianity currently assaulting historical Biblical Christianity. Liberalism receives its philosophical inspiration from the dialecticalism of Immanuel Kant and religious thought from Friedrich Schleirmacher, Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich.

Liberalism in seminaries reflected social Darwinism's influence in our culture, believing that the Bible merely reflects man's evolving ideas about God and reality. It therefore directly challenged and denied the Bible's accuracy and God's providential design. It rejects God's revelation to man in propositional truth and is instead man centered.

Liberals contended that experience and feeling, not creeds and doctrine, provide the foundation of Christianity. Liberals embrace naturalistic and rationalistic views of interpreting Scripture, employing form criticism, literacy criticism, documentary hypothesis, and redactionism to understand the Bible.

The result is that they deny Moses wrote the Pentateuch, a denial of Christ's virgin birth, penal substitutionary atonement, resurrection, miracles, etc. Instead they teach that the Bible reflects only man's basic "inspired" purposes which will be reflected in any age. Therefore, religion, or doctrine, is dynamic and will change to reflect contemporary trends and ideas. (Dictionary of Christianity in America, pp. 647-648, 1063).

Paul Tillich went so far as to teach that God is an impersonal "Ground of Being", giving impetus to the beliefs of the New Age Movement. (Ibid., p. 810). Schleirmacher, too, placed supreme theological importance upon man's inner consciousness; his feeling of the divine, direct, intuitive contact or experience with God. This becomes a greenhouse for new age occultism (A Layman's Guide to the Inerrancy Debate, p. 43.).​

Glossary of Liberal Theological Terms

 

[juvenissun]

There are verses in the bible that explain that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above. There are also verses that explain that there are windows in the sky that let in the rain.

The immediate audience would have interpretted this literally, and for many centuries the church fathers and major theologians, such as Martin Luthar, interpretted it literally. This is the classic conservative way of understanding these passages.

So my question is, do you interpret it the same way or do you have a liberal theology about this where you understand it in a different way?

Please note, I don't use the word "liberal" here lightly. "Liberal" in theology means that you are automatically wrong. That single word is being used as a means of disregarding your theology without really having to put much thought into it.

So please let me know, are you a liberal Christian who has compromised the word of God to fit your own standards? Or will you join me in rejecting our current scientific cosmology in order to protect our proper conservative understanding of scripture in order to protect the Gospel message from the false teachers out there?

You've being hanging around this literal vs. nonliteral problem for ages. From this post, I don't think you've ever moved forward a single inch on the issue. Now you further complicated the question by introduced another undefined word "liberal".

No hope. Absolutely no hope.

 

[Siyha]

Its interesting because most scholars and theologians who use those methods of criticism (mentioned in Mark's post) still believe in virgin birth, ressurrection, doctrine and dogma, atonement, miracles, etc. etc. (i.e. Peter Enns and NT Wright)

So I guess he's not liberal?

Reagent Seminary, a highly evangelical school and I would argue the top seminary in Canada teaches those types of critcism, and among their ranks are J.I. Packer, Gordon Fee, and other champions of evangelical theology.

In a lecture I attended by Gordon Smith in Calgary he said that Fee often lamented, "It doesn't bother me that other scholars find out I am a pentacostal and believe I can't be a good scholar at the same time; what bothers me is when pentacostals find out I am a scholar and believe I can't be a good Christian."

 

[Willtor]

Evolutionists never define 'evolution' or 'science' so why would they define 'liberal theology'?

A wee bit of projection, maybe?

 

[shernren]

There are verses in the bible that explain that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above. There are also verses that explain that there are windows in the sky that let in the rain.

The immediate audience would have interpreted this literally, and for many centuries the church fathers and major theologians, such as Martin Luthar, interpreted it literally. This is the classic conservative way of understanding these passages.

I'm not sure where the Bible says that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above.

For what it's worth, I have no problem taking a geocentric interpretation of the Bible "literally". Isn't it everybody's everyday experience that the sun rises from the east and sets in the west? Doesn't the ground feel flat beneath our feet, and the sky resemble a great dome overhead? Nobody has ever seen stellar parallax with the unaided eye, and so the stars are indeed fixed overhead for anybody who cares to remember their positions. Nor does the earth ever move beneath our feet - except when earthquakes and tsunamis happen, and even then we know enough to know that these are localized events.

For that matter, within my lifetime I know that cats will always give birth to cats, dogs will always give birth to dogs, apple trees will always bear apple fruit, and humans will always have human children. Does that mean I don't believe in evolution? Of course not! But it does mean that, as a direct process (instead of as a causal explanation for certain phylogenetic patterns), it is quite irrelevant to my particular embodied experience.

We have both an objective perspective of the world, as an external reality, and a subjective perspective of the world, as an ensemble of internal sensations. The approach of using science as a powerful rational augmentation to our understanding of objective reality is a relatively recent approach. But God wanted to save all people, not just post-Enlightenment goons and buffoons like you and me. Why should He make His word scientific?

Therefore, the Bible's description of the world is the subjective, embodied description. It is a description in which the sun moves across the sky (and can be stopped), in which the mountains do not move and the boundaries of the sea never change, in which animals and plants of each kind receive the blessings of God to be fruitful and multiply.

But we need to get the idea out of our head that this subjective, embodied description of the world is somehow "less real" than the objective, disembodied description of the world which modern science has afforded us. After all, my only direct access to the world is via my embodied self. I never experience the sun to be fixed in the sky above a moving earth, and I never get to compare its motion to that of the fixed stars. These observations are no less real than Kepler's mathematics and Newton's laws.

And the Bible is no less real, and no more primitive than any other profundity in the world, for stooping to our embodied understandings of reality.

 

[Greg1234]

You've being hanging around this literal vs. nonliteral problem for ages. From this post, I don't think you've ever moved forward a single inch on the issue. Now you further complicated the question by introduced another undefined word "liberal".

No hope. Absolutely no hope.

The literal v non-literal fight appears to be vital. You can just make a materialistic conjecture and if the person is in denial you just ask if they take it literally. For example:

Materialist: God is a term for what people didn't understand. It means materialistic processes.

Theist: No it isn't

Materialist: Do you take the bible literally?

Today you are either taking it literally or you can turn in the direction of an interpretation at your own peril and stare down the barrel of materialism.

And note that the movement of the earth in relation to the sun is an experimentally verified event while Darwinian evolution is not. They seem to forget that every time they venture outside of Darwinian science based on purely naturalistic unintelligent processes.

 

[juvenissun]

The literal v non-literal fight appears to be vital. You can just make a materialistic conjecture and if the person is in denial you just ask if they take it literally. For example:

Materialist: God is a term for what people didn't understand. It means materialistic processes.

Theist: No it isn't

Materialist: Do you take the bible literally?

Today you are either taking it literally or you can turn in the direction of an interpretation at your own peril and stare down the barrel of materialism.

And note that the movement of the earth in relation to the sun is an experimentally verified event while Darwinian evolution is not. They seem to forget that every time they venture outside of Darwinian science based on purely naturalistic unintelligent processes.

Literal is a confusing word. I like to take what Gluadys gave to me a while ago: the first meaning of a word in a dictionary is its literal meaning. If so, the meaning of a word given by dictionary will be non-literal in most cases.

So, if people asked me about literal understanding of the Bible, I would simply say yes first, then if chances are given, go ahead to debate about "various" ways of literal interpretation. This will blow the mind of philadiddle away. How could I be literal and non-literal at the same time?

 

[philadiddle]

Evolutionists never define 'evolution' or 'science'

You can google the definitions, it's pretty easy to find them.

so why would they define 'liberal theology'?

You're right, "evolutionists" would not need to define "liberal theology". Why would we expect them to?

The people who throw the term around as if it means something should define it, so it's good that you defined it since you are the one using it to try to undermine other views. From your post on the Peter Enn's thread [emphasis mine]:

Ken Ham is right, this is Liberal Theology. Removing the historicity of the Scriptures is not just a compromise it's a sell out. The solution for Dr. Enn is to abandon the historical character of the Genesis account and to discount the explicit teaching of Paul as a creative illustration.

Ken Ham did the right thing is taking his stand on the historicity of Scripture and the inspiration of the Word of God. This lecture is classic Liberal Theology commingled with Evangelical Theology. Ken Ham was right to warn people of it's dangerous content.

So back to my original question, do you believe that the sun, moon and stars are in the firmament above as many early Christians did or have you changed how you understand this based on our current scientific knowledge? Or in other words, are you a liberal in your views of the bible because you accept modern science or do you hold true to the word of God the way it was written?

 

[philadiddle]

You've being hanging around this literal vs. nonliteral problem for ages. From this post, I don't think you've ever moved forward a single inch on the issue. Now you further complicated the question by introduced another undefined word "liberal".

No hope. Absolutely no hope.

I didn't throw it in there, I heard MK repeat it over and over in another thread as if it meant something, so I was making a post that demonstrated how calling something "liberal" theology isn't really an argument for or against it.

 

[philadiddle]

Literal is a confusing word. I like to take what Gluadys gave to me a while ago: the first meaning of a word in a dictionary is its literal meaning. If so, the meaning of a word given by dictionary will be non-literal in most cases.

So, if people asked me about literal understanding of the Bible, I would simply say yes first, then if chances are given, go ahead to debate about "various" ways of literal interpretation. This will blow the mind of philadiddle away. How could I be literal and non-literal at the same time?

This will blow me away? What would make you think that about me?

 

[mark kennedy]

You can google the definitions, it's pretty easy to find them.

When you are using words with double meanings its not so easy.

You're right, "evolutionists" would not need to define "liberal theology". Why would we expect them to?

Evolutionists do not even define evolution, why would I expect them to define anything else.

The people who throw the term around as if it means something should define it, so it's good that you defined it since you are the one using it to try to undermine other views. From your post on the Peter Enn's thread [emphasis mine]:

Ken Ham is right, this is Liberal Theology. Removing the historicity of the Scriptures is not just a compromise it's a sell out. The solution for Dr. Enn is to abandon the historical character of the Genesis account and to discount the explicit teaching of Paul as a creative illustration.

Ken Ham did the right thing is taking his stand on the historicity of Scripture and the inspiration of the Word of God. This lecture is classic Liberal Theology commingled with Evangelical Theology. Ken Ham was right to warn people of it's dangerous content.

So back to my original question, do you believe that the sun, moon and stars are in the firmament above as many early Christians did or have you changed how you understand this based on our current scientific knowledge? Or in other words, are you a liberal in your views of the bible because you accept modern science or do you hold true to the word of God the way it was written?

What do you mean, 'are in the firmament above', what do you mean by 'firmament'?

More importantly, what do you think other Christians and myself mean by it? Your question is too vague for a substantive answer, see what happens when you don't assign a meaning for the words you use?

 

[philadiddle]

Evolutionists do not even define evolution, why would I expect them to define anything else.

What is Evolution?

Your inability to understand what evolution means doesn't mean that you should insult scientists for not defining things in theology. That just doesn't make sense.

What do you mean, 'are in the firmament above', what do you mean by 'firmament'?

The firmament is the solid expanse (the sky) that supported the waters above.

Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon

More importantly, what do you think other Christians and myself mean by it? Your question is too vague for a substantive answer, see what happens when you don't assign a meaning for the words you use?

My question is to find out what your understanding is. Do you accept that the sun moon and stars are in the solid vault over us or have you rejected that understanding because of modern science? I'm just trying to understand if you accept the bible for how it was written or if you take a liberal view of these things and undermine the word of God.

 

[philadiddle]

I'm not sure where the Bible says that the sun, moon and stars are fixed in the firmament above.

I suppose it isn't worded with the word "fixed", however, Gesenius's Lexison says "to which the stars were supposed to be fixed". (Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon)

Also, if the firmament was solid it must have moved as a whole, which means the heavenly bodies would have been fixed to it.

There are also various references to other theologians and statements of the church that have said that the stars were fixed: Beyond the Firmament: Understanding ... - Google Books

(Maybe it's just the stars that were thought to have been fixed and not the sun and moon?)

 

[shernren]

I suppose it isn't worded with the word "fixed", however, Gesenius's Lexison says "to which the stars were supposed to be fixed". (Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon)

But Genesius doesn't supply a verse reference for the clause "to which the stars were supposed to be fixed", as compared to the other clauses; so what if this is just his own projection?

More importantly I don't know if the Israelites ever really thought through their cosmology. They certainly didn't believe (at least if they believed their Scriptures) that the universe was basically a giant corpse, with various stuff being placed like a giant CSI relic. They understood that there was water above their heads from which rain came (and they knew rain was from clouds - see Elijah after the Mt. Carmel fight, for example), and that birds flew in the same space, and if you went higher you got sun and moon and stars.

Now trying to systematize that knowledge is silly. That is just my simple, embodied observations of what I see in the sky day after day. When the creationists try to map "the way to the dwelling of light", in the words of Job 38:19, they appear patently silly. But I'm not sure that the ancient Israelites ever had a similar tendency to systematize.

Vern Poythress points out in Redeeming Science that most primitive cultures lack a sense of "clock time" - they order their lives not by the mechanical ticking of a watch but by the natural rhythms of day and night, month and year. He then says that this is part of the confusion surrounding Genesis 1 - we want to measure those times by the clock, where the pre-clock cultures would simply have perceived day and night as being nothing more than natural rhythms of time.

Could it be that a similar concept applies to their perceptions of space and structure? Maybe they didn't have such an elaborate system of layers and parts in their actual, day-to-day cosmogonies. Maybe they just thought of things around them as being nearby, other things on the ground as being far away, and things in the sky - with the exception of birds - as being really far away.

 

[Willtor]

The Book of Enoch somewhat systematizes the order of the world. It does it in a way that is consistent with Genesis and makes good use of the particular choices of words (e.g., firmament) used therein. As to whether it is the same cosmology...

But I think scholars generally accept that Genesis describes a flat world with a solid dome overhead on which the stars move.

The "waters above" are an interesting case, however, in that it seems that the flood waters, in part, came through doors in the dome. As you say, (and as is required in any agrarian society) the people knew that rain came from clouds. The simplest way I can reconcile this in my mind is to say that the cosmology described in the creation narrative is purely figurative and intended to convey theological truths -- from the outset.

 

[philadiddle]

But Genesius doesn't supply a verse reference for the clause "to which the stars were supposed to be fixed", as compared to the other clauses; so what if this is just his own projection?

I believe it comes from other artifacts and manuscripts that give us more insight into the cosmology of that time, but I'm not sure. After all, the bible isn't the only way to understand that culture.