Liberal Theology: An Attempt to Understand It

The book, Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision by Peter C. Hodgson (Fortress, 2007) is a rare work of clarity and honesty by a leading liberal theologian, now retired from Vanderbilt. I enjoyed the book immensely, not because I agreed with his understanding of Christianity, but because I appreciated his forthrightness and willingness to declare what he believes. Criticizing liberalism is often like trying to nail jelly to the wall; the resulting mess is enough to convince you that the jelly exists, but precious little of it gets nailed down. In this book Hodgson dares to give it to the reader straight.

Hodgson clearly differentiates Liberal Christiainity from Evangelicalism and Conservative Protestantism, Postliberalism and Radical Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and from secularism and atheism, on the other. His view of the Roman Catholic Church is basically that nothing of note has happened in it since Vatican II.

His vision is that Liberal Christianity stands between Fundamentalism and Atheism as a mediating, correlational theology that strives to preserve a Christian witness in the midst of an evolving and changing society. He strives mightily to incorporate Liberation Theologies (Feminist, Black and Latin American) into Liberalism as legitimate expressions of Liberal Theology's central motif of freedom. In fact, it seems as if everything resolves into freedom for Hodgson. Jesus' message of the kingdom of God is about freedom. God is free. Human beings are free as they emerge from nature to become responsible subjects. Salvation is freedom. The future is freedom. If there is any such thing as sin, it can be defined as that which inhibits freedom. He writes:

"Emancipation from the various forms of evil inflicted by human beings on themselves and nature happens when persons become engaged in the coming of God's kingdom or baileia - a metaphor that is appropriately translated in today's context as God's 'freedom project,' meaning the process and place wherein God's freedom - the freedom of love, forgiveness, and grace - prevails in place of the normal arrangements of domination, retribution, and exchange." (67)

When Hodgson begins his brief narrative of the beginning of Liberal Theology, he begins with the Enlightenment and Kant, accepting the story the Enlightenment tells about itself at face value. He has little time for the patristic-medieval synthesis of theology that culminates in the thought of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. This tradition may be mined for resources, along with heterodox traditions, which may equally well contain nuggets that can be incorporated today into what he terms: "a liberal reconstruction of Christian faith for today." (30) Much of the book (chapter 2) is concerned with a reconstruction of theology along Hegelian lines.

One big problem in the book is Hodgson's struggle to come to terms with the fact that postmodernism, which he finds difficult to refute, has claimed that modernity is passe, when Hodgson's understanding of Liberal Theology is rooted clearly in modernity. He tries to cope with this challenge by arguing that postmodernity has problems too and it is more in continuity with modernity than it tries to let on. His answer is that Hegel's thought is superior to that of the postmodernists. One senses at times that although he is struggling to keep up, history has passed Hodgson (and Liberalism) by.

Hodgson is clear that this reconstructed Liberal faith will differ from orthodoxy at key points:

1. God: He rejects the orthodox teaching on the relationship of God to creation. In orthodoxy, God is simultaneously transcendent (free) and immanent (involved). For Liberalism, God and the universe are interdependent in a panentheism. (44)

As for the doctrine of the Trinity, Hodgson says that "there are no preexisting persons in God but rather potentials for relationships that become actual when God creates the world." These relations, he adds, "should not be thought of mythologically as subsistent persons." That is a brief but efficient demolition job on the most doctrine that makes Christianity what it is.

2. Christ: He rejects the doctrine of Nicaea and the NT that Jesus is one in being with the Father, thus Divine and thus worthy of worship. Describing what he finds of value in Hegel, he writes: "Having a literal divine nature is not what makes Jesus to be the Christ but rather his function as revealer of divinity and mediator of reconciliation." (51) Jesus' prophetic life reveals to the eye of faith that God is present in Christ, but this is "God's speaking, doing, working in a human being." (51)

3. Salvation: Since Jesus is not God in the flesh in the sense of traditional orthodoxy, he is not the saviour of the world either in the sense of doing for us what we could never have done for ourselves to reconcile us to God. Above, I quoted a sentence that describes salvation as freedom. On that page, the next sentence goes on to say:

"Jesus, who employs this metaphor [the kingdom of God] centrally in his preaching, accomplishes emancipation or redemption not in place of us but with us and through us; he does not bring the kingdom on his own but gets us involved in the project. Of course it is God who is involved in our involvement and God's power that empowers our always fragile and unfinished efforts." (67-68)

In the context of inter-religious dialogue, Hodgson speaks casually of God becoming incarnate in "Jesus and other saviour figures," which makes it clear that his concept of "incarnation" is far from orthodoxy and means something more like: a person in whom God works to attain his purposes.

4. Church: Hodgson believes that the Church has a role to play in what he calls "the freedom project" but he is unsure of its long term future. When freedom is attained, will there be any need for the Church to continue? (60) He appears to have no sense of the Church having a primarily doxological function or any sense of the Church as the body of Christ. The function of the Church is reduced to human emancipation projects.

5. Authority: Hodgson approvingly quotes Gary Dorrien as saying that: "Christian theology can be genuinely Christian without bring based upon external authority." (9) He suggests only that this idea needs modification insofar as historical tradition is needed as the raw material upon which the critical reason does its work. There is no real challenge to the Enlightenment concept of the autonomous self (58) or modern critical reason. He writes:

"Liberalism has tended to mistrust external authority, believing that nothing can be taken as true simply because an external authority such as the Bible, the church, or the state says that it is so. Following the philosophical tradition from Descartes to Kant, liberalism has characteristically turned to the subject and internalized authority, assuming that humans are free and morally responsible beings." (59)

The Enlightenment emphasis on the autonomous self as the source of authority is not challenged, but rather embraced by Liberal Theology. Hodgson writes:

"Enlightenment ideas and values - critical rationality, personal freedom and rights, religious tolerance, democratic governance, equal justice - have been internalized by Christian and altered our perception of Christ." (57) [my bolding]

6. Epistemology and Ethics: Not surprisingly, this account of authority leads to a relativistic approach to ethics in which the good is evolving along with the world and an epistemology, which is fluid and corporate. The individual senses the flow of history and moves toward the emerging good and this is understood to be progress.

Analysis and Response:
One astonishing ommission from this book of 130 pages is that with all the dozens of references to freedom as the heart of Liberal Theology, he never once defines "freedom." In trying to figure out why that is I have come up with the folllowing answers: (1) maybe he thinks the definition is so obvious, it does not need to be stated, (2) maybe there is no settled definition; maybe the core of Liberal Theology is itself in constant flux or (3) maybe he does not want to be too self-critical on this point lest he uncover the inner contradiction of Liberal Theology. I tend to lean toward the third explanation as the deeper reason and the first as the superficial reason. Freedom in the Enlightenment is freedom from constraint, the freedom of the will to choose without anything pushing it or pulling it or deternmining it in any way. This unconstrained will, of course, is ultimately nihilistic. If nothing determines value, then one is a nihilist. I think this is a serious inner contradiction that has been hidden in modernity until Nietzsche and even now I think the implications of Nietzsche's thought has yet to be taken with the seriousness it deserves.

What can we say about this account of Liberal Theology? Well, from my perspective it validates J. G. Machen's contention made back in the 1930's at the height of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy that Liberalism simply is not Christianity, but rather a rival religion. When everyone from Justin Martyr to John Calvin must be labeled a "Fundamentalist" you have stretched the word beyond its usefullness and what is termed "Fundamentalism" has become identical with historic, orthodox Christianity - true Christianity.

Liberal Theology is an attempt to re-found Christianity as a new religion based on the Enlightenment and there is a sense in this book that the author is apprehensive about whether or not Liberal Christianity has any future or if its future can in any meaningful sense be said to be continuous with its past. This is the dilemma of Liberalism and this uncertainty contrasts with the words of the prophet that: "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever." (Isa. 40:8)