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Compromised (Lukewarm) Liberal Theology

By Carman Bradley
 

We believe that the Word contained in these books has proceeded from God, and receives its authority from Him alone, and not from men.  And inasmuch as it is the rule of all truth, containing all that is necessary for the service of God and our salvation, it is not lawful for men, nor even angels, to add to it, to take away from it or to change it.  Whence it follows that no authority whether of antiquity, or custom, or numbers, or human wisdom, or judgments, or proclamations, or edicts, or decrees, or councils, or visions, or miracles, should be opposed to these Holy Scriptures, but on the contrary, all things should be examined regulated and reformed according to them.  

- Reformed Confession of 1559

Liberalism refers to a broad array of related ideas and theories that consider individual liberty  to be the most important goal.  Liberalism has its roots in the Western Era of Enlightenment.   The belief that traditions do not carry any inherent value and social practices ought to be continuously adjusted for the greater benefit of humanity, is a common component of liberal ideology. Liberalism is also strongly associated with the belief that human society should be organized in accordance with certain unchangeable and inviolable “individual” rights.  Different schools of liberalism are based on different conceptions of human rights, but there are some rights that all liberals support to some extent, including rights to life, liberty, and property.  Political liberalism is the belief that individuals are the basis of law and society, and that society and its institutions exist to further the ends of individuals, without showing favor to those of higher social rank or majority status.  Cultural liberalism focuses on the rights of individuals pertaining to conscience and lifestyle, including such issues as sexual freedom, religious freedom, cognitive freedom, and protection from government intrusion into private life.  Political and cultural liberalisms, in the era of homosexism, have failed to fully acknowledge a collision of “rights” between trumpeting individual freedoms and protecting collective religious freedoms.  Sameness and differentiation, equality and discrimination are trade-off dynamics; it is impossible to defend the rights of alternative lifestyles while still championing the virtues of traditional ones.  Liberal ideology unwittingly denies the obvious implications that promotion of common law habitation undermines marriage; promotion of same-sex parenting undermines motherhood and fatherhood; indifference to promiscuity undermines fidelity; indifference to abortion undermines the value of human life.

Religious liberalism, sometimes called “modernism” and “neo-Protestantism,” was a post-Enlightenment development in an attempt to harmonize Christian theology with popular tenets of the Enlightenment Era (see the secular humanist worldview in the table below).  Religious liberalism contains implicitly or explicitly, in whole or in part, a denial of  historic doctrines of Biblical revelation.  Religious liberalsim says “nuts” to the line of thinking captured in the Reformed Confession of 1559 (above), and it does this in two ways: (1) religious liberalism places higher authority on current scientic postulates than on scripture; and (2) liberal methodology places elevated importance on free religious experience as a basis for interpretation of Christianity. Religious liberalism is a move in one or many ways away from the orthodox Christian worldview toward the secular humanist worldview.  In this respect religious liberalism is compromised theology, characteristically lukewarm doctrine (see Revelation 3:16).   The table below reveals the gaps in thinking between tenets of the two (polar opposite) worldviews, which religious liberals attempt to span through innovative or novel theology:

 
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