Subject: Re: A Good Look at Liberalism
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 16:45:27 +1000
From: Robert Davidson >
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Graeme Hunt wrote:
> J. Gresham Machen, D.D., in “What is Faith?” says:
>
> “The retrograde, anti-intellectual (sic) movement called Modernism, a
> movement which really degrades the intellect by excluding it from the
> sphere of religion, will be overcome, and the thinking will again come
> to its rights.”

Neo-modernism is, on the contrary, seeking to use
intellectual inquiry in the study of religion.
Science will be delving more and more in the
coming years into how religion functions, why we
have it, what it achieves etc.  Steven Pinker’s
summary in “How the Mind Works” seems
to me to point to a rich future of research.  We
are beginning to move beyond the anti-scientific
relativism of postmodern thinking (at last).

> Liberalism, when it is finished, is sheer lawlessness; it rejects all
> aurhority except the authority that resides in the individual himself.

This is not true in my opinion - liberalism
recognises as many authorities as any field of
scholarship (scientific method, historical method
etc etc), but seeks to study religious materials
without the presumptions of religious belief.  It
has little to do with individualism (at least in
its present form) and much to do with making as
objective a study as possible.  This cannot be
said for those who approach the subject with
religious presuppositions.

Robert Davidson

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