I have begun reading Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen and my hope is to understand what liberalism is. I hear the term thrown around a lot and I have vague ideas of what it is but I hope this book will help sharpen those ideas. This is increasingly important because I have heard open theism accused of being liberalism in drag and I have personal contact with open theist at work.
Machen says liberalism can be criticized because it is un-Christian and unscientific. The criticism concerning the unscientific part relates to the fact that liberalism is an attempt to resolve the relationship between Christianity and modern culture with its scientific atmosphere. The un-Christian part is the part I am most concerned with because I understand how liberalism is un-Christian but I am uncertain about open theism.
If open theism is heretical, which I think it is, then it must be un-Christian right? Then how do you handle Christians who are open theists? It’s easy to draw black and white lines when you’re dealing with ideas on a page but when you know people whom you see everyday it becomes difficult. These are friendly people who claim Christ as their savior. Of course, the real question is what do they mean when they make that claim. But certainly there are people who genuinely claim Christ as savior while inconsistently believing in open theism. I suppose in an obedient church exercising church discipline these people would be excommunicated in the hope that they would repent of their errors but I don’t work in an obedient church where church discipline is exercised so I’m left working near open theists though I’m unsure of how my relationship to them ought to unfold.
Hopefully as I understand liberalism through Machen’s book I can make the connections to open theism and perhaps if I find myself in a conversation I can point out those connections. I’m not really sure at this point.
The problem with the word “liberalism” is that it has a really wide semantic range. It can mean anti-supernaturalistic higher-critical rooted theology (which is what Machen is objecting to), or it can mean something roughly equal to the political platform of the democratic party, or it can mean the political theory that arose out of Enlightenment philosophy, which would be much closer to what is often called “conservatism”, like libertarianism and free-market driven social ethics.
Machen later regretted calling the book “Christianity and Liberalism”, noting that the word “liberal” can have good connotations and wished that he had called it “Christianity and Modernism”. “Open Theism” is related to “liberalism” (in the first sense above) in that it shares with “liberalism” a set of modernistic philosophical principles as core commitments that irrevocably shape their approach the Scripture.