DON'T LOSE THE SUPERNATURAL THRUST OF CHRISTIANITY

'Once the supernatural thrust has gone from Christianity, what remains? Well-meaning sentiment and a set of commandments found to be crushing, the finality of change they were meant to serve having been summarily dismissed.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.114.

BEING TRULY PROGRESSIVE

'We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.28.

CHRISTIAN WORD PLAY

'Historic Christianity and either the old or the new liberal theology are two separate religions with nothing in common except certain terms which they use with totally different meanings.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.35.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

'The real difference between liberalism and biblical Christianity is not a matter of scholarship but a number of presuppositions. Both the old and new liberalism operate on a set of presuppositions common to both of them, but different from those of historic, orthodox Christianity.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.12.

BAD FOUNDATIONS

'...while racial equality, minority rights and women's rights are among the best products of liberalism, they make the most destabilizing foundations. Attempting to make them the foundation is like turning a bar stool upside down and then trying to balance on top of it. The products of the system cannot reproduce the stability of the system that produced them.'

Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds, p.8.

THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY

'Like a team of suicide bombers who obliterate themselves yet irrevocably change the cultural atmosphere, liberal Christianity has essentially destroyed itself as an ecclesiological, institutional force, yet has won the culture over to its vision of a Christianity reshaped for contemporary tastes.' 

Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience, p.23. 

HUMANS EXCLUDE

'Cultural exclusion seems to happen almost universally. People are shamed and punished in our modern, pluralistic societies if they do not conform to the reigning parties. For all our talk of tolerance, we demand that others adopt our characteristics and beliefs. They must express no difference from us, or we will name them as beyond the pale of engagement. It is common for us to insist that everyone "respect difference" - allow people to be themselves - but in the very next moment we show complete disrespect for anyone who diverges from out cherished beliefs. We sneer at people more liberal than us as social justice warriors; we disdain those more conservative than us as hateful bigots.' 

Timothy J Keller, The Prodigal Prophet, p.171. 

TRUE LIBERALISM

'...liberalism is not a partisan claim for the universal authority of a particular morality, but the search for terms of coexistence between different moralities. In this alternative view, liberalism has to do with handling the conflicts of cultures that will always be different, not founding a universal civilization.' 

John Gray in Adam Phillips, On Balance, p.56. 

THE DANGERS OF CHURCH PURITY

'...once the Machenites found themselves in a "true Presbyterian church" they were unable to moderate their martial impulses. Being in a church without liberals to fight, they turned on one another.' 

John Frame, 'Machen's Warrior Children' in Alister E McGrath & Evangelical Theology: A Dynamic Engagement, p.143. 

UNITING CONSERVATIVES & LIBERALS AROUND GOD'S ORDER OF THINGS

'At present "conservative" Christians are often vociferous on issues like abortion and homosexuality while embodying a Western consumer lifestyle and laughing off global warming. Liberal Christians tend to take environmental issues more seriously but are more cautious on "sin" and tend to be pro-choice and in favor of blessing same-sex unions. A recovery of the biblical notion of creation order and its allied motif of the antithesis that runs through the whole of creation would go a long way toward challenging this polarity. God's order applies as much to marriage and sexuality as it does to how we care for the earth. So, just as it is important that Christians hold onto God's order for marriage and sexuality and thus refuse to affirms same-sex relationships as normative, and just as they uphold the sanctity of human life and refuse to condone most practice of abortion, so too Christians must be clear that environmental destruction and Western-style consumerism is downright sin.' 

Craig G Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, p.312. 

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES

'Why has modern criticism remained so especially defensive toward the Pastorals? What about them was so offensive to modernity? Why were they singled out for some of the most unreasonable and virulent attacks and speculative pseudo-scientific treatment of all New Testament documents? Is it because they were concerned with transmission of tradition, with the ordering of the church and its leadership, and with the rigorous resistance of false teaching?'

Thomas C Oden, First and Second Timothy and Titus, p.11. 

LIBERALS

'Liberals stand up for victims of oppression and exclusion. They fight to break down arbitray barriers (such as those based on race, and more recently on sexual orientation). But their zeal to help victims, combined with their low scores on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push for changes that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital. For example, the urge to help the inner-city poor led to programs in the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births, and weakened African American families. The urge to empower studets by giving them the right to sue their teachers and schools in the 1970s has eroded authority and moral capital in schools, creating disorderly environments that harm the poor above all. The urge to help Hispanic immigrants in the 1980s led to multicultural education programs that emphasized the differences among Americans rather than their shared values and identity. Emphasizing differences makes many people more racist, not less.

On issue after issues, it's as though liberals are trying to help a subset of bees (which really  does need their help) even if doing so damages the hive. Such "reforms" may lower the overall welfare of a society, and sometimes they even hurt the very victims liberals were trying to help.' 

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, p.361. 

ETHICS TODAY

'One of the ironies in the story of Western theology during my lifetime has been the way in which the"liberal" tradition, which used to pride itself above all on clear, rational thinking, has quietly been taken over by emotivism, not least in the area of ethics. Meanwhile, the "conservative" tradition, which used to pride itself on carefully articulated ethical as well as doctrinal stances, has often been so worried about the danger of "work-righteousness" that it has turned a blind eye to the nature of moral understanding and effort upon which Paul is doing his best to insist, and has effectively ruled out virtue before it begins, lest people should suppose themselves to be contributing to their own salvation. No wonder that, when we try to debate key issues, we find ourselves in a dialogue of the deaf.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.138.  

LIBERALISM

'...the language of liberalism fails to engage on common terms with the communion of saints and the Lordship of Christ. Arguments about sexuality that dispense with the theological logic and that are premised on human autonomy and experience are incongrous in debates within the churches, even when glossed with appeals to justice or love, for such liberal arguments suggest that we can know ourselves sufficiently apart from revelation and doctrine, as if there were parts of life removed from God's grace, address, vocation, command, judgment, or teleology.'

Christopher C Roberts, Creation & Covenant: The Significance of Sexual Difference in the Moral Theology of Marriage, p.3.

LIBERALISM

'I don't think I can agree that the Churches are empty because the teach that Jesus is God. If so, the ones that teach the opposite, i.e. the Unitarians, would be full wouldn't they? Are they? It seems to me that the ones which teach the fullest and most dogmatic theory are precisely the ones that retain their people and make converts. While the liberalising and modernising ones lose ground every day.'

CS Lewis in Walter Hooper (Ed.), The Collected Letter of CS Lewis Volume III, p.1554.  

LIBERALISM

'"You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice. We didn't want the other to be true. We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes."'

CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, p.38.

LIBERALISM

'A god without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.'

H Richard Niebuhr in Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission, p.109.

A LIBERAL

'...a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.'
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, p.617.

LIBERALISM

'Theological liberalism...is a man-centered, earth-centered system that denies eternal realities. The "good news" is that somehow a God without holiness helps a man without sin by a Christ without a cross. God is not taken seriously but is simply used to promote a human agenda. The fact that this agenda may include some benevolent causes doesn't eliminate its exclusive focus on the present life...Denying the heart and soul of the gospel, liberalism's attempts to help the world without addressing its ultimate spiritual problems have the same effect as rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.'

Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions & Eternity, p.62.

LIBERAL HUMANISM

'Liberal humanism is itself very obviously a religion - a shoddy replica of Christian faith markedly more irrational than the original article and in recent times more harmful.'

John Gray in Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.113.