History of the Church II: Week 15

Modern Challenges to the Church  Three challenges to the church emerged in the late 19 th century: liberalism, evolution and high criticism.  Liberalism was the school of thought which attempted to mix orthodoxy with modern thought.  It was a mix of science, emotion and theology to rationalize how man had progressed in the modern age.  They were divided into two camps: evangelical liberals and modernistic liberals.

Modern Challenges to the Church  Modernistic liberals felt like religion had to pass the test of modern science before modern men would accept it.  Men should keep their minds open to all sources of truth even if it contradicts historical faith.  In other words, truth could come from new discoveries in science for example.  If those examples contradicted with known Biblical truth then man must will willing to change his opinion on what is truth.

Modern Challenges to the Church  Evangelical liberals believed that experience could in itself be truth.  What we experience could be truth or more truth than the absolute truth of the Bible.  Distinctions between different faiths were narrowed.  “god” could be spiritual experience that could come through nature.  God could be in all and through all more like a pantheistic view.  Since evolution was gaining popularity, God could have used evolution to create the world.

Modern Challenges to the Church  In 1859, arguably the second most influential book in human history was finished.  Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species shook the Church to its very core.  The Church had no intellectual giants like Augustine, Luther and Calvin to counter Darwin’s theory.  Since formal religion had no argument to counter Darwin from either the Protestant or Catholic churches, liberal views gained even more traction.  This led many Protestant denominations to split into conservative and liberal divisions that are still around today.

Modern Challenges to the Church  The last challenge to the Church came in the form of higher criticism which originated in Germany.  What is meant by criticism is essentially a way to find the exact meaning of the Bible through rational or scientific methods.  There were two forms of criticism: high and low.  Lower dealt with what text was the most reliable and had the least amount of errors.  Higher dealt with the text in its background.

Modern Challenges to the Church  From these deductions, scholars challenged all kinds of assumptions about the Bible.  For example, Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible and there were at least two different versions of the creation story.  Jesus was not God. Miracles can’t happen. Jesus couldn’t been born of a virgin. Jesus was not resurrected.  None of these can be proven by science.  These critics basically said Christianity is no different than any other belief.

Modern Challenges to the Church  The Church did not respond to any of these very well.  Individual books challenged these theories at different times but the perception was defeat.  It looked like the Church was not the answer at the beginning of the 20 th century.