Lesson 3 - Three Major Figures of Liberalism

Question 1

What was Frederick Schliermacher’s agenda?

Answer 1

1. ) Agenda: to ‘save’ Christianity from its Enlightenment and Romanticist critics
   - - Enlightenment: Christianity in the limits of reason alone
   - - Romanticism: Christianity is authoritarian and dogmatic: it stifles human experience

2.) Main Contribution: to shift religious authority from revelation/reason to feeling/experience.

Question 2

Discuss Schleiermacher’s main contribution to Liberal thinking. How is this contribution summarized in his work, The Christian Faith?

Answer 2

1. ) His legacy: the basic impulse of liberal theology
   - - Place religious authority not in divine revelation, but rather in human experience
   - - Christian doctrines must be accommodated to contemporary philosophy/culture
2. ) The Christian Faith
   - - Proper subject of theology is our God experience, not God Himself
   - - Anti-Supernaturalism - no divine intervention, miracles, prayer, Jesus is not divine

Question 3

How would you describe the theological method of Ritschl? What were the major distinctions that characterized it?

Answer 3

1. ) Agenda: resolve the conflict between Science and Religion
2. ) Method: To distinguish between scientific knowledge (factual/metaphysical judgments) and religious knowledge (value judgments)
   - - Science: how things are
   - - Religion: how things ought to be
3. ) Distinctions
   - - Kingdom of God, rather than God (defined by love)
   - - Rejects Christology of Chalcedon (2 natures in one person)
   - - Jesus is God is a value judgment, not metaphysical reality
   - - Divinity of Jesus is not rejected, but reinterpreted.

Question 4

Discuss Harnack’s understanding of the gospel.

Answer 4

1. ) The Kingdom of God and its coming
   - - primarily ethical and social
   - - Ideal society/Utopia
2. ) God the Father and the infinite value of the soul
   - - God is the Father of all mankind
   - - no doctrine atonement, weak view of sin, no distinction between believers/unbelievers
3. ) Higher righteousness and command to love

Question 5

Why did Harnack reject the gospel of John?

Answer 5

1. ) He wanted to separate the kernel of Christianity (the gospel) from the husk of historical religion (both NT and early church tradition)
   - - John was unhistorical because it was too philosophical (too Greek)