The problem with liberal theology

[jseek21]

Excerpt from Francis Schaeffer's "A Christian Manifesto"​

​

CHAPTER ONE The Abolition of Truth and Morality​

The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.

They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, inappropriate contentography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality — each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world view — that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different — toward a world view based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this world view has taken the place of the one that had previously dominated Northern European culture, including the United States, which was at least Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not individually Christian.

These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results — including sociological and governmental results, and specifically including law.

It is not that these two world views are different only in how they understand the nature of reality and existence. They also inevitably produce totally different results. The operative word here is inevitably. It is not just that they happen to bring forth different results, but it is absolutely inevitable that they win bring forth different results.

Why have the Christians been so slow to understand this? There are various reasons but the central one is a defective view of Christianity. This has its roots in the Pietist movement under the leadership of P. J. Spener in the seventeenth century. Pietism began as a healthy protest against formalism and a too abstract Christianity. But it had a deficient, “platonic” spirituality. It was platonic in the sense that Pietism made a sharp division between the “spiritual” and the “material” world — giving little, or no, importance to the “material” world. The totality of human existence was not afforded a proper place. In particular it neglected the intellectual dimension of Christianity.

Christianity and spirituality were shut up to a small, isolated part of life. The totality of reality was ignored by the pietistic thinking. Let me quickly say that in one sense Christians should be pietists in that Christianity is not just a set of doctrines, even the right doctrines. Every doctrine is in some way to have an effect upon our lives. But the poor side of Pietism and its resulting platonic outlook has really been a tragedy not only in many people’s individual lives, but in our total culture.

True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful — which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ’s miracles, Christ’s substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.

When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality — the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God . Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth — Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually — and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is — brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.

Now let’s go over to the other side — to those who hold the materialistic final reality concept. They saw the complete and total difference between the two positions more quickly than Christians. There were the Huxleys, George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950), and many others who understood a long time ago that there are two total concepts of reality and that it was one total reality against the other and not just a set of isolated and separated differences. The Humanist Manifesto I, 106published in 1933, showed with crystal clarity their comprehension of the totality of what is involved. It was to our shame that Julian (1887-1975) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), and the others like them, understood much earlier than Christians that these two world views are two total concepts of reality standing in antithesis to each other. We should be utterly ashamed that this is the fact.

They understood not only that there were two totally different concepts but that they would bring forth two totally different conclusions, both for individuals and for society. What we must understand is that the two world views really do bring forth with inevitable certainty not only personal differences, but also total differences in regard to society, government, and law.

There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that liberal theology, the very essence of it from its beginning, is an attempt to mix the two. Liberal theology tried to bring forth a mixture soon after the Enlightenment and has tried to synthesize these two views right up to our own day. But in each case when the chips are down these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally as a ship coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious humanist. They do this with certainty because what their liberal theology really is is humanism expressed in theological terms instead of philosophic or other terms.

An example of this coming down naturally on the side of the nonreligious humanists is the article by Charles Hartshorne in the January 21, 1981, issue of The Christian Century, pages 42-45. Its title is, “Concerning Abortion, an Attempt at a Rational View.” He begins by equating the fact that the human fetus is alive with the fact that mosquitoes and bacteria are also alive. That is, he begins by assuming that human life is not unique. He then continues by saying that even after the baby is born it is not fully human until its social relations develop (though he says the infant does have some primitive social relations an unborn fetus does not have). His conclusion is, “Nevertheless, I have little sympathy with the idea that infanticide is just another form of murder. Persons who are already functionally persons in the full sense have more important rights even than infants.” He then, logically, takes the next step: “Does this distinction apply to the killing of a hopelessly senile person or one in a permanent coma? For me it does.” No atheistic humanist could say it with greater clarity. It is significant at this point to note that many of the denominations controlled by liberal theology have come out, publicly and strongly, in favor of abortion.
106 Humanist Manifestos I and II (New York: Prometheus Books, 1973).







Liberal theology is really no theology at all. It is secularist, humanist, and altoghether unbiblical!

 

[tulc]

Liberal theology is really no theology at all. It is secularist, humanist, and altoghether unbiblical!

Technically it IS a theology because it's how some view God. Just because you (or Francis Schaeffer) don't agree doesn't make it wrong just different from what you believe.
tulc(different isn't wrong, just...different)

 

[Boanerge]

True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful — which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

Whoever wrote this is right. All i can say is that only true christian can understand this. a False christian are christians who decieve themselves.

I do not know what liberal Theology is, I do not know what is the underlining foundation of Liberal theology. All i know that it seems to be a like a Falling away from the truth.

a Liberal seems to me like someone who sits in the bleechers yelling at the players for not playing correctly or cheering for those who do. Instead, those sitting in the bleechers should be in the Field NOT the bleechers.

 

[Boanerge]

Because this life this reality. The Eternal and the Temporal concerns us all.

 

[tulc]

"a Liberal seems to me like someone who sits in the bleechers yelling at the players for not playing correctly or cheering for those who do. Instead, those sitting in the bleechers should be in the Field NOT the bleechers."

That is a caricature not the reality. Liberals are like everyone, some are good, some aren't, If I said all Christians are narrow minded bigots trying to make up for their own inadequacies by condemning everyone else to hell, you would think that was I was making assumptions and you would be right. To condemn everyone you think of as liberal sight unseen with statements like those above are no better, you can dress it up all you want it's still wrong. Anyway that's my opinion.
tulc(eschew caricature thinking, see people not prejudices)

 

[seebs]

I do not know what liberal Theology is, I do not know what is the underlining foundation of Liberal theology. All i know that it seems to be a like a Falling away from the truth.

If you don't know what it is, how can you know where it stands in relation to truth?

a Liberal seems to me like someone who sits in the bleechers yelling at the players for not playing correctly or cheering for those who do. Instead, those sitting in the bleechers should be in the Field NOT the bleechers.

Hmm. So, for instance, instead of sitting around claiming that the world is getting screwed up by all the gay people and single parents, we should go out and do what we can to fix the world? Sounds practical. Sounds liberal, too.

 

[Boanerge]

Oh so i must be mixed up. I am think that Liberal means to accept everything as truth. I thought Liberals do not believe in Absolute Truth. I assumed that Liberals believe Either the Bible is absolute or it is obsolete.

What am i confusing Liberal with?

If a liberal person is not a person who sits back and let the devil have his way with the World. Then i am a Liberal. I am a Rebel. Children of Light will forever be Rebels in the World of Darkness.

 

[MissFirerose]

Since we're having fun with the "cut and paste" function, I decided to chime in. The idea that Christian fundamentalists believe their ideals are authentic with the Bible is quite disturbing, really, if you really think about it...

Modern Christian Fundamentalism: A Contradiction in Terms
​

Most of modern Christianity assumes that what it believes and practices was what was taught by Christ and the apostles. Few people realize that the religion they practice is actually nothing like the faith that was taught and practiced by Jesus Christ and the apostles or the early church.


Many Protestant churches deny the authority of the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church and yet are totally dependent upon the Councils of the church for the doctrines they hold.



Most so-called Modern Fundamentalist Christians believe that they hold a body of doctrine that is derived from Scripture alone and that this doctrine called sola Scriptura by the Reformation Protestants, such as Calvin and Martin Luther, is the basis of their belief.



What they do not realize is that the Reformation did not go back to the Bible and Scripture alone. It failed in its objectives and did not go beyond Augustine and the Councils of the fourth century. So-called Modern Christian Fundamentalism is totally dependent upon the Councils of the church for the validity of its doctrine. Most do not even know what the history of the church is and what took place from the time of Christ and the apostles up until the formation of the so-called orthodox Christian position as determined by the Councils of the fourth century.



There are some major false assumptions made by these so-called fundamentalists. Our task is to present a simple overview of the problem and show that fundamentalism is anything but that and is totally dependent upon the Councils of the church under the authority of the Roman empire.



False Assumption 1: The Trinity


Most people assume that the Trinity is found in the Bible. It is not found there. Both Catholic and Protestant theologians agree that the Bible and the logical belief system which is called rational theism are Unitarian. That is, they do not have three personalities vested in God.



Bishop Shelby Spong in his book Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism said simply: Paul was not a Trinitarian. None of the apostles were Trinitarian.


No official of any of the major churches believes or argues that Christ and the apostles were Trinitarian. They acknowledge that the Triune god was grafted onto the God of the Bible (see, for example, LaCugna God For Us). How then do the fundamentalists deal with this fact? They simply ignore the history and use Scripture selectively.



The truth is that the view that Christ was God in the same co-equal and co-eternal way as the Father was God was not accepted in the church until the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and then under duress of the Roman emperor.


This was three hundred years after the ministry of Christ. They had to use armed force to achieve it.



The Holy Spirit was not defined as a person and a third part of the Godhead until the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. The full doctrinal position was not agreed until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE.



Even then, there was not agreement as to the way in which it operated. The Catholics would later claim (from the Council of Toledo) that it proceeded from the Father and the Son, and the Orthodox would disagree saying it proceeded from the Father only.



How then did we get to this extraordinary state of affairs where the God decided on in the fourth century was not the God of the early church?


What other important changes took place that we do not know about? The answer is that there were a multitude of changes. These changes involved the changes from Sabbath to Sunday worship and from keeping the Passover to keeping the pagan festival of Easter. The pagan festival which we now call Christmas had not even then been adopted by the church.



Fundamentalists try to argue that Sunday worship was kept by the early church – but all scholars know that this is not true. It is a lie or, more correctly, a self-delusion of the people who say they are fundamentalists. They say they only do what the Bible says and so they have to try to find some basis in the Bible for the things they do – such as going to church on Sundays.



How did it all start?



False Assumption 2: Sunday worship

The early church came under attack from a number of religions. The chief enemy of the church was a religion called Gnosticism – this name comes from the Greek word gnosis meaning knowledge. These people thought they had a secret knowledge which they labelled as Mysteries and they derived much of their views from the Mystery cults.



These cults invaded other religions and took over the beliefs but adapted themselves to the system.



Some of the Mystery cults, especially in a country called Phrygia in Asia-Minor, spoke in what is now called tongues. No one could understand what they said but they pretended that it was some important message from the higher powers. They later argued that this was done by the apostles at Pentecost. That was not so. The apostles spoke in other languages that could be understood, but the Gnostics claimed they did not and the practice is now in what is called Charismatic churches. These churches also claim to be fundamentalist. The practice called speaking in tongues came from the early Gnostics (see the papers The Nicolaitans (No. 202) and also The Tongues Question (No. 109).



These Gnostics undermined the church from within. Their biggest success was in Rome. They did not come from there originally but they went there as it was the centre of power in the Roman Empire.



In Rome, from about 140-152 CE, they began to worship on Sundays. It was not done anywhere in the church until then and the first record we have of the practice is with Justin Martyr writing about 140 CE, but in his Dialogue with Trypho he says they also worshipped on the Sabbath.



False Assumption 3: Easter


From about 152 CE under the bishop Anicetus, the Romans started to worship on Easter Sunday. Up until that time, the church kept the Passover which would fall on any day of the week. It was determined by the early Hebrew calendar which was determined by the moon and the sun and not just the sun alone, as came to be adopted by the Romans from the Egyptian system.


This change caused a lot of problems and many people would not adopt it. Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John, argued with this bishop of Rome and refused to change the practice of the early church. He and the churches in the east refused to keep this pagan festival called Easter named after the goddess Easter or Ishtar with a Friday death and Sunday resurrection. This Easter festival was also derived from the Mystery cults. These cults were based on sun worship and, hence, they kept Sunday.



Up until that time, it was never thought that Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. The accepted time was a Wednesday, but the early church writers and the calendars had the date of 25 March for the Hebrew date of 14 Nisan – the correct date of Christ’s death according to the Hebrew calendar. The only time this fell on 14 Nisan around the death of Christ was on a Sunday in 31 CE.



So Easter not only depends upon the later Councils of the church but is pagan in origin and was not the time when Christ was crucified.


Again, the fundamentalists have it wrong and depend upon the Gnostics in Rome for their authority.



This problem continued more or less continuously up until 190 CE. It was called the quarto-deciman dispute and was called that because quarto-deciman means 14th which was the date on the Hebrew calendar on which the Passover lamb was to be killed. Christ was killed as our Passover lamb on that day.



From 190 CE, they began to punish people for not keeping Easter and keeping the old Passover that the apostles had kept. This Passover went from 14 Nisan up until the Sunday of the week which was known as the Wave-sheaf Offering when Christ was understood to have ascended into heaven to the Father after his resurrection and before he appeared to the apostles as the risen Christ later that Sunday afternoon.



False Assumption 4: The law was done away by another true God who was Christ


The disputes went on and on with the Roman system always coming up with some new idea derived from the influence of these Gnostics. They first decided that they wanted to eliminate the laws of the Bible. These were all in the Scriptures which we now call the Old Testament. The New Testament was the writings of the apostles recording the sayings of Christ and the letters they wrote concerning the disputes in the church. Many of these disputes were caused by these Gnostics. These letters of the apostles were written to show how the Scriptures were to be interpreted.


In order to eliminate the laws of the Bible which the Gnostics hated, they had to produce the idea that the law of God was changed by another God equal to the first God who they called the God of the Jews. Initially, the Gnostics tried to say he was a bad God but that would not work. Their followers in Christianity then said that the God was the same God who simply appeared as Father and then as son and then as Holy Spirit but they were all only one God. This was called Modalism. This idea was altered later and ultimately became the Trinity.



The Modalists in Rome did not have full power and were opposed from other sources.



The idea, however, was logically necessary to remove the law of God and, so, Christ had to be made equal to God. To do that they had to claim first that he had always existed beside or with God and was not a product of the Father as any other son would be and as the other sons of God were products of the Father. They tried to say that the other sons of God were not really sons but creations that were different to Christ and he was not a product of the Father in the same way. This became the Roman view which came to be established at Nicaea in 325 CE.



As we can see, the so called fundamentalism of modern churches is not in accordance with the Bible as is claimed. Fundamentalism is not biblical literalism. It is dependent upon the Councils of the church for its basic doctrines which do not appear in the Bible. The doctrines are derived from ancient sources within Gnosticism and the Mystery cults involving sun-worship.



[url]http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/ccg.htm[/url]

 

[tulc]

See? All the predjudice isn't one sided!
tulc(eschew caricature thinking)

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Oh so i must be mixed up. I am think that Liberal means to accept everything as truth. I thought Liberals do not believe in Absolute Truth. I assumed that Liberals believe Either the Bible is absolute or it is obsolete.

What am i confusing Liberal with?

If a liberal person is not a person who sits back and let the devil have his way with the World. Then i am a Liberal. I am a Rebel. Children of Light will forever be Rebels in the World of Darkness.

Liberal Christians, which are not equivalent to the socially or politically liberal, believe that there is one Truth. They differ from their more conservative brethren (and they do consider them their brothers and sisters in Christ) in that they are more cautious and more conscious of their limitations as well as more open to the possibility that they are wrong.

They also tend to be concerned with the Jesus' call for us to serve one another, but many Christians generally labeled conservative do this as well.

Also, there are definitely some liberal Christans who take these things too far, but that is the same as any other group.

 

[East Anglican]

To me liberallism means everything goes. Liberal theology is an attempt to butter up to the world which we are not of.

 

[tulc]

To me liberallism means everything goes. Liberal theology is an attempt to butter up to the world which we are not of.

...and that is you defining someone elses relationship with God. Maybe you should listen to liberals and not propaganda about liberals? There is no "one type" of liberal just as there is no "one type" of conservative. Until we are willing to see others as people first, you'll never truly have a heart after God.
tulc

 

[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

To me liberallism means everything goes. Liberal theology is an attempt to butter up to the world which we are not of.

But since that's not what it means to any of the liberal Christians here, it's not all that relevant, is it?

If I said "To me conservatism means oppressing minorities and bringing back slavery", would that mean that conservatism did mean that? No, it wouldn't.

It might be advisable to find out what liberals actually think liberalism means.

 

[Polycarp1]

While it’s anyone’s privilege to believe as he or she sees fit, a Christian is prohibited from bearing false witness against another by God’s commandments. And it strikes me that a lot of “Bible-believing” conservative Christians are probably in violation of just that commandment on a regular basis, as regards those who call themselves “liberal Christians” (like Karl, Miss Firerose, and me.).



If I may be permitted a short essay here, I’d like to outline a theology that targets what I gather the majority of “liberal Christians” believe. Their motivations are probably many; this is also true of conservative Evangelicals. (How many evangelicals can honestly claim to be motivated by love of God, as opposed to fear of Hell, in clinging to so-called “orthodox doctrine” – which any actual Eastern Orthodox would denounce as heretical, BTW?)



First, one’s commitment is to follow God through Jesus Christ – His atonement, His teachings, and His example. That, not an adherence to a particular system of Scriptural exegesis, is key.



But having made such a commitment, one then is faced by the question that, ironically, Francis Shaeffer asked, “How should we then live?” And Christ pronounced the two rules that were for Him the absolutes, to which all others must conform: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”; and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In parable after parable He details how to do this: “Who is my neighbor? Well, contemplate the story of this guy who went towards Jericho, was assaulted by robbers, and was saved by this half-breed heretic whom any good Jew would loathe. Who was his neighbor? When the Son of Man comes in His glory, He will separate men into the sheep and the goats. What’re His criteria? “Inasmuch as you did it unto one of the least of these, you did it unto Me.”



Ah, but if God hates sin, isn’t it really loving sinners to tell them how sinful they are? That one’s covered, too: “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the measure with which you judge, you yourself will be judged.” Everyone sins; everyone falls short of the perfection God calls us to. And He set the bar impossibly high for the very good reason that we need to have the humility to admit our dependence on Him, and avoid us-vs.-them, saints-vs.-sinners dichotomies.



Isn’t repentance required? Well, maybe so – but it’s God, not us, who judges whether someone has repented. Only He can see into people’s hearts. And we don’t get to pick and choose which sins to focus on, or whether or not they are actually sins. It’s really easy to truck out a Bible translation and identify something as a sin – and 95% of the time, what you think is God’s condemnation of a particular behavior as sin, is your own cultural beliefs being substituted for God’s Law.



Because His mercy is greater than anything we can imagine, and His compassion understands when we would condemn.







Now, as regards the Bible, miracles, and such: It is a well-known fact that human beings do see patterns where they aren’t, do see God’s hand in places it may or may not be. We do create idols out of the strangest things.



Look at the Book of Mormon, or the Koran. Sincere and devout people, who live “good” lives according to their precepts, believe sincerely that God inspired them as Holy Writ. And back in the 1920s, the idea of a woman wearing pants was considered a sin on a par with premarital sex. And people claim to have seen Mary the Mother of our Lord appearing hither and yon.



What criterion can we use for evaluating this stuff? Well, scientific method and historical criticism will be a start. Some of their assumptions may not be totally valid – if Jesus is indeed Son of God, He may well have worked miracles, when miracles are ruled out by a practical examination of everyday life. If God inspired the Bible, then there may well be truths in it that are not acceptable by the standards of historical criticism.



But we can work with them. We can look at a given book or passage, try to figure out exactly what the author meant by it, at whom the message was directed, what cultural significance the terms he used might have had, and to what extent its message is meaningful to us today. We can look at a miracle story, decide what its underlying meaning is (remember that for John the Beloved Disciple, there’s no such thing as a “miracle” – they’re “signs” of Christ’s role, nothing more), and whether it might have reasonably happened. One of the most startling things to me was that nowhere in the Gospels, all four of which contain the story, does it say that Christ multiplied the loaves and fishes to a quantity sufficient to feed the 5,000. It says that He took them and with them fed the multitude – but it doesn’t say how.



The Resurrection is another item. Probably the most important single event in Christianity, but we don’t get a word about the how – just that it happened. And we’re specifically told that it was not merely a resuscitation of Jesus’s mortal body – see Paul’s detailed analysis in I Corinthians 15.



“If you love Me, keep My commandments.” And what is the first and greatest commandment? And the second, like unto it? If your behavior does not match up to these two – and not to your rationalization of “how Jesus would judge those gay people / abortionists / liberals / whoever” – then you’re breaking His commandments.

 

[James Sez]

It might be advisable to find out what liberals actually think liberalism means.

I think most people, myself too at times, do not want to find out what the people they are bashing actually think. It takes too much work and too much thought -even worse, we might begin to see them as people first (thank you tulc), as human beings rather then concepts to be destroyed.

Also, nice post polycarp1-thank you!

 

[freespirit2001]

We live in this country with so many people with so many different faiths, so many different religions and so much religious freedom we face challenges on how we can best interpret doctrine to fit our own particular human needs---

I think we have to be concerned more about the behaviors of liberal christians ( if they are heathly and promoting a healthy quality of life ) and less with the rhetoric of the laws of doctrine...

In my Business management class, Maslow's Heirarchy of basic human needs suggests:

The first of our basic human needs are our survival needs, then there are safety needs and needs for good well being, then we have needs for social acceptance and belonging, then there is the need for good self esteem, and the last of all our basic human needs is the need for self-actualization....

Much in our society living in a world of social hierarchies ( perhaps religious ones as well) much is reflected in the social arena around me...I notice there is alot of "middle- class" class struggles that go on in the life around me and many people forget the need for basic healthy self-esteem in their behaviors with others. Many are not self-aware of their behaviors at all...Even in many churches...the fellowship arena is mostly social with an emphasis on status, image and assumed roles...Very few of the people around me are role models for good self-esteem in mind and spirit, unless they are spirit-led and have good discernment about the emotional and behavioral dimensions going on in their own life and in others around them...alot of people are not self-aware of their behavior issues in their walk of faith---I realize this after reading the book "Emotional Intelligence" Daniel Goleman...once you get past issues of class struggle and hierarchy and the emotional drama arena of the work day world and if there is good quality of life in your faith...you may be able to see what self-actualization is...reflected in your faith and in your spiritual coincidences in your life....

In every church the "procedures of salvation" and the "substance of doctrine" may be different but the Lord will work with us in other ways to keep us close with those we love---its God's plan for us and His gift of faith to us---

I'm glad to read in this forum about Liberal Christians, and I understand more that liberal christians are led more by Christ working through their minds and intellect while more conservative christians observe Christ working more through their emotions....

I also think of the Lord moving others we care for, who may not be as religious, through "synergism"---the active motivating force of Holy Spirit. ..any information about synergism interests me now...(?)

...I'm all for believing to be "wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove..."

" Man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity."
---Paul Tillich
"Freedom and Destiny" Rollo May

Rollo May writes other books about paradoxes of life: "Love and Will"; "Power and Innocence"; "Freedom and Destiny"; "The Cry for Myth"


(?*) freespirit

 

[tulc]

Well put freespirit!
tulc

 

[atoborch]

Liberal theology is really no theology at all. It is secularist, humanist, and altoghether unbiblical![/size]

you only provide one persons opinion with no substation of fact or logic to back it up just mudslinging, as far as the "liberal" idea of aboration being something that women can parciate at will, i as a conservative would say big deal, how really cares that is there choice, a sad one yes, do i wish that people would not make that choice yes but i would never deprive someone from there right to choice, in any way shape or from, besides there are many liberal and far right consevatives that don't believe that aboration should be illegal for a meriad of differant reasons one example of what some liberals believe does not in any way shape or from completely my the way of thinking bunk at all, it does not even migagte the way of thinking at all, you are going to have to do a lot more foot work on this possition before anyone gives it any cridablity at all

 

[Bob Moore]

Most people assume that the Trinity is found in the Bible. It is not found there. Both Catholic and Protestant theologians agree that the Bible and the logical belief system which is called rational theism are Unitarian. That is, they do not have three personalities vested in God.

yada yada and so forth.

When you quote a source you must give credit. You didn't write this nonesense. Who did?

 

[atoborch]

some one that lost there MLA hand book