50 Key Concepts in Theology

Liberal Theology
Liberal theology emphasises the importance of reason, individualism and
human freedom.
The term ‘liberal theology’ is generally used to describe a very specific
trend in theology which followed the rational and scientific developments of
the Enlightenment.
For many in the age of the Enlightenment, it felt as if (to use Kant’s
phrase) human beings were at last ‘growing up’ and uncovering the real truth
about the world and our place in it. In particular, Newton’s achievements in
science had dazzled the whole of Europe. As Alexander Pope famously put it:
‘God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.’ The sciences made religious
belief look obsolete and superstitious.
Rather than simply restating the traditional faith, nineteenth-century
liberal Protestant theologians tried to modernise Christian theology to make it
intelligible and acceptable to this new ‘enlightened’ culture. In biblical
scholarship, critics like D. F. Strauss and H. Paulus subjected the biblical texts
to ‘scientific’ analysis, trying to uncover the ‘facts’ beneath layers of myth
and superstition. (See ‘Biblical Criticism’.) Schleiermacher defended
Christianity against its Enlightenment critics, arguing that religion is not a
system of knowledge which can be ‘disproved’ by reason, but an intuitive
feeling-reaction to the wonder and magnitude of the cosmos. Albrecht Ritschl
followed Kant in seeing Christian faith as essentially ethical and concerned
with human ‘value judgements’. Paul Tillich, writing in the twentieth century,
said that theology must begin with questions of human existence. In general,
the liberal theologians tried to make theology more worldly, less
metaphysical, more rooted in human experience. As Harvey Cox, a 1960s
liberal, put it: ‘we speak of God to secular man by speaking about man.’
In the twentieth century there was a powerful backlash against liberal
theology. Karl Barth was, and remains, the figurehead of anti-liberal
sentiment. He argued that God cannot be understood in human categories, and
that we must submit to God’s will and accept his sovereign Word. The Church
must not accommodate itself to human culture – not even Enlightenment
culture – but must articulate with authority the distinctive Christian message.
Barth’s anti-liberal banner has been carried by a number of theologians since,
notably in recently years by Stanley Hauerwas.
The current consensus about the failings of liberal theology has made the
word ‘liberal’ almost unusable, except as a term of abuse, in some church

---

circles. Liberal theology is taken to be the self-defeating attempt to save
Christianity by betraying its unique identity. Hauerwas, for example, credits
liberal theology with the destruction of Christianity.
So-called ‘post-liberal’ theologians now argue that the modernist,
Enlightenment paradigm is collapsing and that any theology based on
Enlightenment values must also collapse. As people search for new values
and a new world-view, there will be opportunities for Christian renewal, if the
churches can remain faithful to the historic Christian message.
However, the critique of liberal theology does not work so well if we
acknowledge that the history of liberal Christianity goes back beyond the
Enlightenment to the New Testament itself. There were many liberals before
the nineteenth century. The latitudinarian Anglicans had strong liberal
instincts, as did Renaissance theologians such as Ficino and Petrarch. The
Christian mystics – for example, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt and
Nicholas of Cusa – emphasised the primacy of spiritual experience over
doctrinal purity. Justyn Martyr argued for the centrality of reason in faith. And
St Paul, despite popular misconceptions, was a liberal, arguing for the
equality of slaves and women, and insisting that the Christian truth lies in the
spirit of Christian life and not in the words of Christian dogma.
THINKERS
Joseph Glanvill (1636–80): an English clergyman and philosopher who
attacked dogma and championed science. He wrote: ‘The belief of our Reason
is an exercise of Faith: and our Faith is an act of Reason.’ ‘The denial of
reason in religion hath been the principal engine that heretics have used
against the faith.’
Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) argued in The Essence of Christianity
that Jesus taught a simple Gospel of essential truths which was distorted by St
Paul and other theologians into unnecessarily complex doctrines and rigid
dogmas.
Stanley Hauerwas (1940– ): the most robust and celebrated living critic
of liberal theology. He argues that it is simply ‘disguised humanism’: ‘I claim
that Christianity has died as a result of its love affair with liberal democracy. I
think that liberal democracy, in many ways, took as its fundamental task to
kill Christianity by domesticating its strongest views.’
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that God must be understood as an
ethical and aesthetic ideal.
John Locke (1632–1704): an English empiricist philosopher who argued

---

for the importance of reason in religion (The Reasonableness of Christianity).
Justyn Martyr (100–165) argued that Christ is the Logos or rational
principle behind all creation, and that the worship of Christ was therefore a
supremely reasonable act.
Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) saw God’s love, shown in Jesus Christ, as the
basis of our human efforts to transform society.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) tried to defend Christianity
against its ‘cultured despisers’ in the Enlightenment era, representing theology
in terms of a human ‘sense of absolute dependence’ upon God.
Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) argued that Christianity is concerned with
individual religious life and the human social order.
Edward Young (1683–1765) commented in his Night Thoughts that
religion is ‘the proof of common sense’.
IDEAS
Aufklärung: the German word for ‘enlightenment’ used by Kant.
Latitudinarianism: a seventeenth-century English liberal approach to
theology, typified by Archbishop John Tillotson (1630–94). Latitudinarians
emphasised reason over authority in theology.
Post-liberal theology: a term coined by George Lindbeck to describe
theology after the collapse of modern liberal ideology. Post-liberal theology is
criticised for having no guiding identity except its rejection of ‘liberal
theology’.
BOOKS
Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining
Progressive Religion: 1805–1900 (Westminster/John Knox, 2002)
Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism,
Realism and Modernity: 1900–1950 (Westminster/John Knox, 2003)
Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony,
and Postmodernity: 1950–2005 (Westminster/John Knox, 2006)

---