the truth(?) of liberalism

Hello, Fod. I've finally found the time to sit down and look at the dirty hippy liberal christian home journal. I won't try to address every point it raises, but here are some of my observations. the bible's significance for individual modern lives depends entirely on perspectives and subjective factors brought by the readers to the text. This is true of fundamentalist and liberal alike. Entirely? Hmm. That's quite a statement to make. And it doesn't seem to have any scriptural warrant for it, either. What are the presuppositions revealed by this? Is it conditioned by the liberal perspective and subjective factors Baldwin brings to the discussion, or did he intend it to be a statement of Absolute Truth? If Scripture has no ultimate absolute authority, why should I accept the historically conditioned opinion of this man as being true? Our subjectivity is certainly involved in discerning the meaning of Scripture, but its significance doesn't depend entirely on this. In the discussion of 2 Timothy 3:14-17, I was very surprised that Baldwin didn't point out that when St. Paul wrote this passage, he could only have been referring to what we now call the Old Testament. It was not a self-referential statement! It's a quick and fun refutation of the type of literalism he seems to be targeting elsewhere. That leads to a more (if you'll pardon the expression) fundamental issue: what constitutes Scripture, and in what way is it authoritative? Baldwin's statement that the theology of Biblical Authority will ultimately cause strife among Christians world-wide only holds true for those Protestants who adhere to the unbiblical notion of sola scriptura first introduced in the sixteenth century. (For a fairly sharp critique of this notion, take a look at this article.) However, the existence of 20,000 different Protestant denominations (all basing their teachings on Scripture, and Scripture alone!) certainly demonstrates his point. What's the use of having an inerrant, infallible Book if there's no agreement on how it ought to be interpreted? In the section on God's inspiration of fallible human beings, I think he really misses the mark. Baldwin wrote, "There can be no credible claim that the Bible is anything but a human document. It acknowledges this fact within itself! "I, Paul, write this with my own hand" (Philemon 1:19). This is but one, representative citation." This is just nonsense! The context of Philemon 19 makes it clear that St. Paul wrote this promising to repay any debts which may have been incurred by Onesimus. He was simply not addressing the issue of inspiration. (Baldwin's interpretive move here is known as "eisegesis" -- reading a meaning into the text which is not there.) If this is truly a "representative citation," the case for liberalism is much weaker than I thought! I'm reminded of another passage, wherein St. Peter refers to those unstable and untaught people who twist the writings of St. Paul to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:16). This, in turn, raises the question of canonicity, which hinges on the issue of discernment. Who says we should take the writings of Peter seriously when he commends the writings of Paul as being scriptural? Who says we should accept the verdict of a 1st century Jewish council on what constitutes the canonical "Old Testament," bearing in mind that the Messianic Jews had already been expelled from the synagogue before this decision was taken, and hence were not bound by it? The concluding statement in the section on Christ as canon and creed is as follows: We must what is being said to us by God in his WORD, Jesus, whom we have never met in the flesh, and never will, and of whom only fallible humans have spoken and written. It is true that no-one living has ever met Christ in the flesh, but we know that one day we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. This will involve our bodily resurrection, without which St. Paul said that his preaching was in vain, and our faith useless. And that leads to the only point that I completely, without reservation, agree with him on. Our mission is to preach Christ, and Him crucified. But. (You knew something was coming, didn't you?) Galatians 1:6-12 indicates that there is a specific content to the Gospel of Christ which is not to be tampered with. If historic Christianity is indeed correct in worshipping Christ as "My Lord and my God!" then no amount of modernist claptrap may alter that. (If historic Christianity has been misled, then we have 2000 years of idolatry of which to repent.) All the best, my friend! Dirk