BeansRBad

I think there have always been professed Christians who did not hold to the prevailing orthodoxy, yet, had to hold their "heretical" opinions privately for fear of retaliation by the ecclesiastical authorities. I further think that with the Rennaissance came a newfound freedom to explore and a yearning for better understanding. Eventually, the door was opened to a more critical examination of the Biblical text without fear of reprisal.

Author, Ian Wilson, had this to say in his book, *Jesus: The Evidence*:

"As different theologians pursued the underlying clues to the gospel writers' psychology revealed by the parallel passage technique, so increasing scepticism developed, particularly in Germany during the nineteenth century. There, a century earlier, a faltering start on a critical approach had been made by Hamburg University oriental languages professor Hermann Samuel Reimarus. In secret Reimarus wrote a book, On the Aims of Jesus and his Disciples, argueing that Jesus was merely a failed Jewish revolutionary, and after his death his disciples cunningly stole his body from the tomb in order to concoct the whole story of his resurrection. So concerned was Reimarus to avoid recriminations for holding such views that he would only allow the book to be published after his death. His caution was justified. Following in the critical tradition, in the years 1835-6 Tubingen University tutor David Friedrich Strauss launched his two-volume The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, making particularly penetrating use of the parallel passage technique. Because of the discrepencies he found, he cogently argued that none of the gospels could have been eyewitnesses, but instead must have been the work of writers of a much later generation, freely constructing their material from probably garbled traditions about Jesus in circulation in the early church............

...........But the incursion into theology of an increasingly scientific outlook of the age was not to be checked so easily, particularly among Protestants. Under the professorship of the redoubtable Ferdinand Christian Baur.... Tubingen University in particular acquired a reputation for a ruthlessly iconoclastic approach to the New Testament, an approach which spread not only throughout Germany, but also into the Universities of other predominantly Protestant countries................

.........If all these new discoveries seemed damaging enough, within two decades on to the scene at Germany's Marburg University stepped Rudolf Bultmann, acknowledged by many as this century's greatest New Testament theologian, bringing with him a new and yet more devestating weapon, Formgeschichte or 'form criticism'.............. Not surprisingly, Bultmann's approach left intact little that might have derived from the original Jesus......

....Bultmann died in 1976, at the age of ninety-two. A whole generation of Modern New Testament scholars, among them his Marburg successor Werner Kummel, Bristol University's Dennis Nineham, Harvard University's Helmut Koester, and others, acknowledge an immense debt to him for introducing a whole new school of thought in theological research...." (Wilson, Ian; JESUS: The Evidence; Harper & Row publ.; San Francisco; 1984; pp.37-39).

So, apparently, usage of the parallel passage technique of studying the gospels had something to do with scholars beginning to question the reliability of the gospels. Perhaps Reimarus' work was the first to be published, perhaps not, I don't know but 19th Century New Testament scholars in Germany certainly had great influence the rise and spread of "Liberal Christianity". Of course, many of these same scholars probably owed some of their approach to an underlying acceptance of the philosophy of Kant and Hagel.

At any rate, the Enlightenment with it's thirst for knowledge and the rise of modern science methodology along with a decreased risk of punishment for questioning religious dogmas brought with it the conviction that the Bible should be critically examined just as much as anything else.

What are the basic tenets of liberal Christianity? I dunno but suffice it to say that one of them is NOT a belief in the verbal plenary and inerrancy of Scripture.

Rusting Car Bumper

It seems that liberal Chrsitianity started with Jesus.

It seems that liberal Christians at least make an attempt to try to discuss what Jesus actually meant, why some stories in the Bible just might be stories and so on rather than taking the Bible as a literalist legal text.

DC

Milton

Funny.

What Jesus? Wouldn't they first have to prove that some kind of Jesus existed, from which they are deriving their beliefs? And, if they can take the Jesus stories, from the Gospels of these fundamentalists, then aren't they just relying on fairy tale? They might as well just create a new story, and go by that story, don't you think?

Normal

Did Socrates really say the things credited to him? Does it matter?

Rusting Car Bumper

Precisely. A few liberal Chrsitians speak this way about Jesus as well.

DC

meritocrat

So some liberal Christians think Jesus never existed?

What then is the basis of their faith?

Normal

The philosophy attributed to Jesus.

Calzaer

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Liberal Christians could be following the philosophy is Jesus, irrespective of whether or not Jesus existed as a real person or as a collection of different people all rolled into one mythical figure. Sort of the same way Confusians (Taoists? I keep forgetting which sect this applies to) follow the philosophy of their founded even though their founder was actually a bunch of different people and the one guy that things get attributed to never actually existed.

That would turn Christianity into a philosophy rather than a religion, however. It would go a long way to explaining why Liberal Christians have a tendancy to ignore Paul and the OT... Jesus didn't say those things. But how does the philosophy of Jesus incorporate the things Jesus didn't explicitly speak of, like the End Times, or even an afterlife at all? He said "My father has prepared a place for you", and he gave a parable that involved Hell once, but otherwise was very vague on the issue.

Further, how does the doctrine of salvation enter into the Liberal Christian philosophy, when Jesus didn't ever once mention anything about having to accept his death and ressurrection in order to be saved?

AJ113

Just the same as all other christians, then.

Proctors_Gambit

I'll take a stab at it.
Liberal Christians are people who need a concept of God in their lives but are uncomfortable with believing all of the improbable and sometimes downright sill parts of the bible.
Usually these people just 'need' to believe in something, perhaps from fear of death, loneliness, whatever.
Christianity is the most touted faith on their block and so they take that ball and run with it.

Ironically liberal christians are oftentimes harder to shake in their faith than their more fundamentalist cousins.
Basically because you can present them with any discrepancy or attrocity in the bible and they can declare that they 'dont believe that bit'. Hell, a lot of them don't believe the bible period.

-Gambit