Theological liberalism as unbelief
Thanks to Pr. McCain, too, for his heads-up on this fine article on the bottom line for "mainline" Protestantism and theological liberalism generally: unbelief.
When the bishop came to visit my last ELCA parish prior to my resignation, he and the retired ELCA pastor who was a member of the congregation both bristled at my suggestion that the historical-critical method was essentially the study of the Bible through the presuppositions of unbelief. They kept trying to cite innocuous examples of higher criticism to make it seem to be what they claimed: "just a tool."
The problem is that literally every example they cited was, in fact, an example of the historical-grammatical method, and not the historical-critical!
A great deal of what I was taught in seminary was really an apologetic for unbelief. Dr. Mohler explains how this works very well.
When the bishop came to visit my last ELCA parish prior to my resignation, he and the retired ELCA pastor who was a member of the congregation both bristled at my suggestion that the historical-critical method was essentially the study of the Bible through the presuppositions of unbelief. They kept trying to cite innocuous examples of higher criticism to make it seem to be what they claimed: "just a tool."
The problem is that literally every example they cited was, in fact, an example of the historical-grammatical method, and not the historical-critical!
A great deal of what I was taught in seminary was really an apologetic for unbelief. Dr. Mohler explains how this works very well.
Comments
The historical- critical method begins by rejecting the Bible's claims about itself. It reads the Bible as simply another ancient Near Eastern text. Is there a prophecy? Prophecy can't happen, so the text must have been written after the event. Does the Bible record God as saying something or acting in a certain way? It's something the (human)author made up, and used to further his own theological argument.
The historical-grammatical method, on the other hand, accepts the Bible at face value as the Word of God. It begins with the assumption that you cannot simply treat the Bible as you would any other ancient text, because it isn't. So prophesies, miracles, oracles of God, and so forth are treated as perfectly reasonable. Not only that, but since the Bible is the Word of God, it is assumed that the events it portrays actually happened, unless there is some compelling reason in the text itself to read it otherwise.
Concluding that the Virgin Birth is a fairy tale told in order to make a point about Christ's divine origin and authority because virgins don't have babies would be higher criticism. So would concluding that there had to be three authors of Isaiah, living in different periods, because there are prophesies in the book that came to pass.
Concluding that Hebrews wasn't written by Paul (it doesn't claim to be, after all!) because the style is different and his favorite themes aren't in evidence is am example of the historical-grammatical method. Or concluding on the basis of internal evidence that the shorter ending of Mark is to be preferred.
Don't be confused, by the way, by the terms "higher" and "lower" criticism. "Higher criticism" makes use of information we know from other sources to interpret the Bible; "lower criticism" is simply interested in what the text itself says.
The historical critical method is always "higher criticism," but sometimes "higher criticism" can be kosher. Example: Isaiah's reference to "the four corners of the Earth" is figurative. He is not teaching that the planet we live on is square. How do we know this? Not because of anything in the text, but because we know that the planet is round because we've seen ships disappear over the horizon, and even seen pictures of it from the Moon!
Does that help?