自由主義神學
维库，知识与思想的自由文库
|
自由主義神學, 是当代基督教的“激进的”或“现代主义”运动，通常有以下特征：
[编辑] 难以定义的基督教自由主義自由派基督教的一个重要特点在于其观点的多样化，这也使得如何确切界定何为基督教自由主義变得十分困难。由于思想上接近進步主義，自由派也时常被称为基督教進步主義。事实上，从保守到温和乃至自由的各种观点之间还是存在一定连续性的。在神学自由主义者中，有些可能比其他更『自由』（Liberal），而在保守的福音派或许比基要主义者更『自由』。一个人既有可能在政治上持左派『自由』的观点，同时在神学上保持正统和保守。 无论如何，『自由』（Liberal）一语总是意味着基于个人主义的一种对基督教的激进态度。这种态度主要体现在对个人主体经验和自由主义的强调，以及尊重个人在传统的保守正统以外的观点。自由派基督徒有时认为保守派缺乏同情、怜悯、爱心和包容，而后者有时认为前者抛弃了基督教的信仰。保守派与自由派基督徒之间的争议通常就出于这样的原因。 [编辑] 历史基督教自由主義的一些原则体现在许多基督教的传统中：从早期教会，修道运动，教会的医治事工，天主教和新教教会，一直到罗斯福新政背后美国19世纪的社会福音运动，以及20世纪反种族主义的民权运动和南美洲的解放神学运动。 Since the 1900s Progressive Christianity has formed a major portion of Americans' traditions for what constitutes the values by which a good society is run. Christian Progressives were among the first to advocate equal treatment of Jews and Catholics from within the Protestant establishment, basing their understanding of human rights on a faith in the worth of other human beings derived from the gospel. PRogressives formed the Progressive Era and were pivotal in the Temperance movement. Progressive Christianity stresses fairness, justice, responsibility, and compassion, and condemns the forms of governance that wage wanton war, rely on corruption for continued power, deprive the poor of facilities, or exclude particular racial or sexual groups from fair participation in national liberties. Progressive Christians have continued to be active in the peace movement, anti-racism, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, various denominational committees on relief, Habitat for Humanity, and a wide variety of other outreach programs. [编辑] Characteristics of liberal ChristianityDifferent and varied views are encouraged in liberal Christianity as part of the goal of experiencing Christianity on a personal level. Self-avowed Liberal Christians may even over-define conservatives as taking a "hard-line" approach towards doctrine in order to distinguish themselves as having "unorthodox," "fresh," or "unique" ways of approaching God and talking about Christianity. With this sense of personal freedom and emphasis on individual experience, dogmatic statements and claims of absolute truth on fine doctrinal points are not part of liberal Christian discourse. Liberal Christians can, and not infrequently do, hold to conservative positions; the contrast between liberal and conservative Christianity that appeals to history, tradition, or authority carries substantially less weight among liberal Christians. The search for truth is an ongoing task rather than something that has been completed. A non-literal view of Scripture is common among liberal Christians. Many view the Bible as a book written by people who were inspired by God, rather than endorsing an inerrant view of the Bible as a book written by people who were directly guided by God. Historical contexts and scholarly criticism of the Bible play an important part in how liberal Christians relate their faith and beliefs to the modern world. The freedom to construct one's personal view of God is another hallmark of liberal Christianity. Each person comes to their own understanding of the who, what, how, and why questions relating to the nature and purpose of God. Each person has their own perception of how God moves and works in their life. Liberal Christianity tends to have a wider scope in its views on salvation (including universalist beliefs). This inclusiveness characteristically extends to those outside of mainstream Christianity who do not declare themselves as "Christians" in the orthodox sense of the word. Right action generally takes precedence over right belief: integrity and love are regarded as more important than assent to a particular set of theological propositions. Many nontraditional views on heaven and hell are prevalent among liberal Christians. These range from ideas about separation from God or temporal punishment to the belief that there is no hell. Views on heaven are similarly diverse. There is an emphasis on inclusive fellowship and community amongst liberal Christians. With their more inclusive views on God, anthropology, salvation, women, homosexuality, Scripture, and creation, emphasis is placed on community-based life centered around values of compassion, mercy, and affirmation of human dignity; this is seen in contrast to the focus on sinfulness and moral rectitude one is more likely to find in conservative Christian thought. [编辑] Liberal theologyTemplate:Christian theology Liberal theology is a branch of religious thinking which emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in the wake of The Enlightenment. Like political liberalism that was emerging at the same time, liberal theology stresses the value and importance of the individual's freedom of thought and expression. Liberal theology became dominant in the mainline churches in the 20th century. Although Fundamentalist Christianity has been rejected by the mainline churches, liberalism's dominance was waning by the late 20th century with the rise of the more moderate alternatives, such as Neo-orthodoxy, Paleo-orthodoxy and Postmodern Christianity, and more conservative movements such as Neo-evangelicalism and the Confessing movement. [编辑] The tenets of liberal theology'Tenets' might be a misnomer. Instead ask, "What does liberal Christian theology allow for?" What follows should nevertheless serve as a rough outline of the confines of liberal Christianity. [來源請求]
[编辑] Liberal theology and religious languageLiberal theologians view religious language (i.e., descriptions of God, or of religious experience) as inevitably limited. Our language belongs to the world of phenomena, whereas religious experiences exist in the realm of noumena, so no matter how hard we try, our language can never describe God factually, but only in metaphors and analogies, symbols and myths, etc. These myths, analogies, etc. are important in forming religious communities and traditions, and can be a useful way of expressing a particular thought or feeling about God, but we cannot hope for them to sum up God's nature (God is non-reducible, non-naturalizable, and essentially ineffable). One of the original liberal theologians, Friedrich Schleiermacher, argued that theology's place was to describe internal feelings rather than external truths or facts. [编辑] Liberal hermeneuticsLiberal theologians have been among the most prominent in biblical criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The interpretation of the Bible (hermeneutics) within liberal theology is non-propositional, which means that the Bible is not considered an inventory of factual statements such as "God divided the light from the darkness", but instead documents the human authors' beliefs and feelings about God at the time of its writing, within a historical and cultural context. Therefore, religious models and concepts must be updated to reflect the class, gender, social and political, etc. context from which they emerge, so that they will appear relevant and interesting. Liberal theologians would not make the claim that any particular apostle's account of his religious experiences could be any more true, or more relevant to an individual, than the experience of the individual him/herself. [编辑] Criticisms of liberal ChristianityWatchman Fellowship's 2001 Index of Cults and Religions defines liberal Christianity as "A movement that seeks to retain religious and spiritual values of Christianity while discounting the infallible authority of the Bible." (In their own words, "Watchman Fellowship endorses a biblically based, conservative, evangelical position," and takes an inerrantist approach to the Bible). The origins of liberal Christianity lie in the German Enlightenment[來源請求] , notably in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the religious views of Friedrich Schleiermacher. It does bear mention, however, that some earlier theologians are used to support liberal ideas, Arius and Peter Abelard for example. Liberal Christians may believe that the Bible is divine revelation, but that passages in the Bible often describe events which occurred therein in symbolic rather than literal terms. This is why most liberal Christians see no conflict between the scientific theory of evolution, and the Story of Adam and Eve. In the United States, for example, Roman Catholic schools deal with the confusion by teaching the theory of evolution in science classes, while dealing with theological implications in religion classes. Also, some conservative groups of Christians have stated that liberal Christians deny or reinterpret in mythical terms such doctrines of orthodox Christianity as the virgin birth, atoning death, and even the resurrection of Jesus. Conservative Christian J. Gresham Machen argued in his book Christianity and Liberalism that thoroughgoing liberalism is an entirely different religion than the historic Christian faith, and so should not be called a form of Christianity. Karl Barth reacted against Protestant liberalism during the First World War, and in 1934 as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with the Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity. He developed neo-orthodoxy in response to what he perceived as liberal Christianity's embrace of cultural forces which, in his estimation, should have as little to do with religion as possible. Barth nevertheless did not always find favor with conservatives, evangelicals and fundamentalists. In more recent times, Charles Colson on his Breakpoint radio program, has equated liberal Christianity with a modern form of Gnosticism, an ancient heretical belief system that placed God in a pantheistic/idealistic setting where spiritual truths were separate from the sinful world of the flesh. Colson points out the common liberal position that miracles and other divine interventions as recorded by biblical authors are figurative, which bears similarities to the Gnostic belief of an idealized and ambiguous truth devoid of physical manifestations. Gnosticism conflicts with the traditional Christian view of sacrament, the meeting of the spiritual and the material. [编辑] Liberal Christian theologians and authors[编辑] Protestant
[编辑] Catholic
[编辑] 參看 |
