Liberal Theology: The Conservatives Fight Back

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:31 pm by Scot McKnight

Liberal Theology: The Conservatives Fight Back 2015-03-13T22:31:19-05:00 Scot McKnight

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Liberal theology emerged in the 19th Century and regularly drew response from the traditionalists, the orthodox or the conservative. Trials just prior to the 20th Century favored the conservatives but in the 2d and 3d decade of the 20th Century the liberals began to win. This story is told in Roger Olson, The Journey of Modern Theology. Conservatives “won” the well-known Scopes Trial but lost the public; J. Gresham Machen was tried by his own Presbyterian denomination for his opposition to liberals and was suspended from its ministry in 1935.

Roger Olson’s theme is that conservatives fought back in a “modern” way or as another form of modernity. In other words, in many ways the fundamentalist posture came by way of assuming modernity’s assumptions in order to speak against it.

Olson focuses on Charles Hodge (for a study of Hodge, see Paul Gutjahr). He taught more than 3000 students at Princeton and his 3 volume systematics was a major theological textbook or reference book for 20th Century’s pastors and professors. He was part of what is often called Old Princeton School Theology that, when it lost out at Princeton, moved to Westminster Theological Seminary. A. Alexander, C. Hodge, A.A. Hodge, and B.B. Warfield and then J.G. Machen. Hodge may have been its most influential theologian.

The theology at work here is often called fundamentalism, and is marked by maximal conservatism vs. maximal modernism (in liberal theology): orthodoxy morphed into the term fundamentalism and then later into neo-evangelicalism and then evangelicalism (Olson, p. 215). Original fundamentalism was not originally politically aligned (William Jennings Bryan was a progressive).

Olson: one cannot limit “modern” to “liberal” for it also includes “fundamentalism” since it too was a modern expression of theology. Hodge formed orthodox theology shaped by modernity’s themes and methods. Furthermore, he is modern in that he responded to and fought against modernity. In particular (see below), he wanted theology to be “scientific” et al..

1. Hodge constructs a modern form of Protestant orthodoxy. Olson’s paradigmatic quotation: during his time, Hodge said, “a new idea never originated in this seminary” (217). With the world changing, he wanted to hold firm. They not only abhorred liberalism but also revivalism.

2. Hodge became a success story: grew up there, went to school there, and established his career there. He edited The Princeton Review for forty years (name changes included). He wrote a famous devotional book called The Way of Life. He was well liked, gregarious, and did not tolerate ambiguity. He was famous as a polemicist. Deeply devout.

3. Hodge was influenced by Reformed scholasticism and confessionalism. He was not always aware of the difference between his inherited theology and what the Bible actually said. He inherited a highly rational and logical method from Reformed scholasticism, and he was influenced by Francis Turretin’s famous scholastic theology, though with more modesty in approach. One Hodge scholar calls his method “rational orthodoxy” or “supernatural rationalism” (224). Hodge did not like the term rationalism since it was devoid of revelation etc.. His confessionalism is the First and Second Helvetic Confessions.

4. Hodge was influenced by Scottish common sense realism. This is a rather common statement about Hodge, and some debate the extent of the influence. He imbibed it without recognizing it. That is, a belief that the mind apprehends objective external realities naturally. As there is a self-authenticating nature to reality so there is one to revelation. E.g., in the common appeal to common human experience. That is, when he claims “all normal people” believe this (228).

5. Hodge set down a biblical foundationalist method. He did not separate facts from faith or between facts and values and he saw theology as factual. His Systematics begins with theology as having a scientific status because it follows a similar method of knowing: induction. The Bible is a “store house of facts” (230). This is a kind of Enlightenment approach to knowledge. Noll says the Princeton School can be “scientific postitivists” at times (231).

6. Hodge defended the Bible as the foundation for the science of theology. He opposed subjectivism by the objectivity of God’s Word. [This is still a very common claim.]

7. Hodge sought to reconcile theology and science. They listened to science within the bounds of theology and Bible. This remains a common feature among many evangelicals/fundamentalists. Here is Hodge: the Bible must “bow to the facts of science, but the facts of Scripture may never give way to mere theories of science” (237). Olson says Hodge taught that theology must at times be reinterpreted to fit the facts of science. “the Bible should be interpreted under the guidance of the facts of science” (237). E.g., “day” in Genesis 1 — since the world/universe is so old, cannot be 24 hour days and must be an indefinite period. But he thought there was no final conflict.

8. Hodge left a legacy that led to fundamentalism. (1) Hodge saw the Bible as a reservoir of facts; (2) he was largely non-comprehending of his own culture’s influences upon him; and (3) he lacked a historical consciousness about Bible and the development of theology.

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