我们可以从自由派的历史中学到什么 （附英文原文）

今天的福音派正处在通往新自由派的道路上。在福音派里普遍存在着一种危机感。我们感觉到教会出了一些问题，尤其是教会似乎与我们想要用福音得到的人群并无关系。基督教似乎在社会中失去了所有名誉。这些问题与旧的自由派中衍生出的问题如出一辙。

自由派是一种福音派的异端。而福音派往往忽视了这一点。我们虽正确地认为自由派对福音和教会具有破坏性，但是我们却错误地把自由派所造成的后果当成了它的起初目的。我们因此在错误的地方寻找自由派，比如在福音派之外的阵营中寻找。但当它反而出现在教会这大本营内部时，我们就不知所措了。我们不知所措，因为我们误解了自由派的特性。我们认定自由派信徒是那些拒绝圣经、教会和耶稣的人。然而，这些人并不是自由派信徒。自由派信徒总是将他们最强烈的追求放在尊崇圣经、教会和耶稣上。而自由派正是源于教会内部的。

自由派信徒面临的问题：教会缺乏公信力

旧的自由派起初是对攻击基督教信仰所作出的回应。在十八、十九世纪，欧洲的一些学者把圣经放在科学的——或者说是自然主义的——历史批判法之下。历史科学得出结论，认为圣经的许多部分并不像基督徒所宣称的那样。圣经的许多部分的成书时间比基督徒所宣称的要晚，并且充满了散乱的神话和不现实的描述。学术研究因此败坏了基督教的名声。为回应关于教会缺失公信力的问题，弗里德里克•施莱尔马赫（Friedrich Schleiermacher）发起了自由派运动，并认为教会是这一切的罪魁祸首。施莱尔马赫认为教会对教义和律法的痴迷与教会最初的属性无关。毕竟教会真正的属性存在于有限的被造物与无限的上帝之间关系的经历，教会可以经受住对传统教义和道德的批评，基督教本身并不会因此丧失一丝一毫的真理。

对基督教可信度的另一个毁灭性打击出现在1859年，出自查尔斯•达尔文（Charles Darwin）关于所有生物进化的论点，这一论点在知识分子中得到了广泛的接纳。达尔文对物种的起源提出了一种自然主义的假说，而这一假说与圣经中声称上帝创造万物的观点相左。如果达尔文是对的，那么圣经就是错的。基督教信仰就被科学证明是不可信的。

对于许多正统的基督徒来说，这些观点的发展带来了个人的信仰危机。如果他们想保持他们对圣经的信心，他们就不得不拒绝科学在历史和生物学中的发现。如果他们想接受科学，他们将不得不拒绝圣经。

但是对于许多基督徒领袖来说，宣教方面的危机比个人信仰上的危机更加强烈。受过教育的人不仅仅认为基督信仰是不可信的，他们还把它视为声名狼籍的和荒唐的。基于进化论的思想，知识分子越来越认定基督教如其他宗教一样，属于人类进化初期的产物。而现在人类进化已经达到顶峰，人类将坚信文明与科学，并且破除宗教迷信。

因此，大概在1900年，教会面临着自2世纪以来最具威胁的知识危机。而自由派兴起是为了应对这场危机。自由派的核心目标是为了拯救圣经和教会免于自然科学主义的攻击。它清除了信仰中哲学和迷信的杂质——好心的神学家百年来所强加在信仰中的。是时候改革教会回归基督了。自由派将在现代社会中恢复基督、圣经和教会的知识智慧以及道德信用。

自由派信徒的解决之道：一种新的圣经默示观

自由派信徒的解决之道是发展出一条在自然科学与正统信仰之间的折衷路线，这个方法既肯定了新科学又肯定了圣经真理。这个解决方法的关键点是一个新的圣经默示观。

虽然福音派经常在这个方面歪曲自由派，但是自由派确实不否认圣经的默示。我们指责他们“拒绝圣经”，是因为自由派拒绝或者重新定义了正统信仰中的一些基本信仰；或者逻辑一致性似乎要求自由派拒绝整本圣经；再或者我们想强调自由派所造成的严重危机。但是事实上，他们的计划是以圣经为默示以及权威的前提下进行的。

事实上，自由派明白基督信仰是真实的。他们打心眼里知道。他们在福音派的教会里得到喂养。他们经历转变并付出一生侍奉耶稣。他们接受圣经作为他们的信仰标准和行为准则。他们的归信，他们的祷告，以及他们的圣经阅读塑造了他们的生命，这一切界定了他们的生活的目的，并且赐予了他们生命的意义。他们不可能抛弃那启示与塑造他们生命的信仰和圣经。

然而，按照传统的解释，圣经被新科学贬得一文不值。圣经宣称上帝通过一种直接迅速的方式创造了人类，并且用同样的方式创造了大量的植物和动物。但达尔文主义据说证明了上帝并非直接创造了物种。圣经还宣称以色列人出埃及后，上帝在西奈山颁布献祭和敬拜的律法。但是按照历史批判的说法证明了那些律法是以色列人出埃及几百年后才发展起来的。

大多数福音派信徒拒绝达尔文主义和历史批判法的断言，并且继续坚持传统圣经的默示和教义。然而另外一些人，他们接受了新的科学并且拒绝相信圣经：也就是他们放弃了基督信仰。自由派提供了第三种方式，他们承认科学但也不拒绝圣经。但是他们必须自圆其说。为了达成这一目的，他们发展出了圣经默示的一种新的理论。

自由派信徒提出，圣经的默示是认信其宗教启示层面的真实性，但不保证其在历史信息的真实性。如果圣经的历史性陈述被证明是不可能的话，那么圣经的真实度会大打折扣。但这也不意味着它们不是被神默示出来的。他们含有宗教或者属灵意义，而这不依赖于历史的真实性。这一历史形态只是传递宗教信仰的载体。而教义中的核心意义并不需要与历史载体相混淆。信仰真理的核心启示是深藏在历史之下的。因为圣经只默示其宗教意义，所以一段经文里面可能含有正确的宗教真理，却同时记载有错误的历史事实。自由派学者认为科学并没有伪释圣经，他们只是纠正了默示中的错误观点。

他们认为仅仅是跟随理性科学的指引，这样的自信使得大多数自由派信徒没有意识到他们的方法陷入了极大的文化妥协。卡尔•巴特（Karl Barth）在二十世纪初期著的批评文章帮助很多人认识到了这一事实，但是他们也不可能回到正统的道路上来了。只要他们还坚持认定达尔文主义和历史批判法，自由派信徒对圣经默示的观点就仅仅提供了一个看起来似乎有道理的方法，而这方法是为了让圣经和耶稣基督在现代世界中还保有余地。随着现代科学的进步，古旧正统的信仰不再可靠。

旧的自由派试图让那些接受自然主义世界观的人认为基督教信仰是可信的，从而想拯救基督教，而这意味着他们主要基于自然主义重新定义基督教信仰。自由派确信他们可以在这些基础上仍保守真理——超自然真理。但是他们错了。他们企图拯救他们的信仰，但是把基督教变得适应这个世界，就恰恰是用属世的宗教替代了它。

我们今天仍面临相同困境

当今的福音派信徒会发现他们自己也仍处在同样的境况中。许多福音派学者发现旧自由派关于历史批判的观点十分让人信服，尽管他们普遍视而不见自由派的结论。其他人则提出了新的方法，可以既接受进化论又不拒绝圣经。最严重的是，今日许多福音派信徒觉得古老正统的信仰不再吸引人。教会的信息对于那些受过教育的、聪明的或者有教养的人士来说是虚假的。信仰在现代的文化中被视为虚伪的。

那些希望去除基督教中不可靠信息的福音派信徒，是在追随旧自由派的步伐。如果自由派的历史证明了些什么的话，那它正是证明了福音必须按它原本的方式被接受，无论接受者有没有教养、受教育或者成功。

如果福音派信徒无法忍受来自不信者的鄙视和辱骂，那么我们就会企图建立一个折衷的基督教，然后希望可以通过这样的方式把教会和它的信息从文化危机中拯救出来。然而，新自由派的观点并不比旧的好——它的基本目标和它的批判原则会吞噬信仰的内容，直到启示信息所剩无几。它的信徒无法明白它的信息，或者使信徒共同体的生活失去见证，更无法认信这一信仰。一两代之后，它会导致无数人迷失方向，并对教会以及福音的拓展造成永久性的伤害。

作者 Gregory A. Wills

格利高里·A·威尔斯（Gregory A. Wills）是肯塔基州路易维尔市美南浸信会神学院教务长和教会史教授，著有《美南浸信会神学院史，1859-2009》（牛津，2009）以及《民主的宗教》（牛津，1997）等书。

【英文原文】

What Lessons Can We Learn from the History of Liberalism?

Evangelicalism today is well positioned for a new liberal departure. There is a widespread sense of crisis among evangelicals. We sense that something has gone wrong with the church, not least because the church seems irrelevant to the persons we are trying to reach with the gospel. Christianity seems to have lost all credit in society. These are the same conditions from which the old liberalism emerged.

Liberalism is a heresy of evangelicalism. Evangelicals often miss this point. We rightly view liberalism as destructive to the gospel and the church, but we mistake the results of liberalism for its intentions. We consequently look for liberalism in the wrong places, among those who are outside the evangelical camp, and are confused when it instead appears within the citadel of the church itself. We are confused because we misapprehend the character of liberalism. We identify liberals as persons who reject the Bible, the church, and Jesus. However, such persons are not liberals. Liberals have always made it their first ambition to honor the Bible, the church, and Jesus. Liberalism does not originate from without the church but from within.

LIBERALS’ PROBLEM: CHRISTIANITY’S LACK OF CREDIBILITY

The old liberalism was a response to attacks on the credibility of Christianity. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries European scholars subjected the Bible to scientific—that is, naturalistic—historical criticism. Historical science concluded that many parts of the Bible were not what they claimed to be. Many parts of the Bible were written much later than they claimed, and were littered with fables and fanciful accounts. Scholarship thus discredited Christianity. In response to the church’s loss of credibility, Friedrich Schleiermacher initiated the liberal movement when he proposed that the church itself was to blame. Schleiermacher believed that the church’s preoccupation with dogma and law was foreign to its original character. Since its true character inhered in the experience of the relationship between dependent creatures and the infinite God, it could suffer the criticism of its traditional doctrine and ethics without any true loss to Christianity itself.

A more devastating attack on Christianity’s credibility arose in 1859 from Charles Darwin’s arguments for the evolution of all living organisms, which gained wide acceptance among intellectuals. Darwin advanced a naturalistic explanation of the origin of the species that seemed to contradict the Bible’s assertion that God created them in manifold array. If Darwin was right, then the Bible was wrong. Christianity now stood discredited by science.

For many orthodox Christians, these developments brought about a personal crisis. If they wanted to retain their faith in the Bible, they would have to reject scientific discoveries in history and biology. If they wanted to accept the science, they would have to reject the Bible.

But for many Christian leaders, the missiological aspect of the crisis was more compelling than the personal aspect. Educated persons did not merely reject Christianity as untrue; they also scorned it as disreputable and absurd. Based on evolutionary thinking, intellectuals increasingly concluded that Christianity, like religion generally, belonged to the childhood of the human race. But now that humanity had reached its majority it would stand upon enlightened and scientific reason, and would discard its religious superstitions.

As a result, by around 1900 the church was facing its most perilous intellectual crisis since the second century. Liberalism developed as a response to this crisis. Liberalism’s fundamental purpose was to save the Bible and the church from the attacks of scientific naturalism. It would save the faith by purging it of the philosophical and superstitious impurities that well-meaning theologians had imposed upon it over the centuries. It was time to reform the church and return to Christ. Liberalism would restore the intellectual and moral credit of Jesus, the Bible, and the church in modern society.

LIBERALS’ SOLUTION: A NEW VIEW OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION

Liberals’ solution was to develop a middle way between scientific naturalism and traditional orthodoxy, a way that would affirm both the new science and the Bible. The key to this solution was a new view of biblical inspiration.

Although evangelicals have often misrepresented liberals at this point, liberals did not reject the inspiration of the Bible. We accused them of “rejecting the Bible” because liberals rejected or redefined many fundamental beliefs of traditional orthodoxy, because logical consistency seemed to require liberals to reject the entire Bible, and because we wanted to emphasize the grave danger that liberalism posed. But in fact their program stood on the premise that the Bible was inspired and authoritative.

Liberals in fact knew that Christianity was true. They knew it in their hearts. They were raised in evangelical churches. They experienced conversion and gave their lives to the service of Jesus. They accepted the Bible as their standard of belief and conduct. Their conversion, their prayers, and their Bible reading shaped their identity, defined their purpose, and gave meaning to their lives. They would not—they could not—abandon their faith or the Bible that revealed and shaped it.

As traditionally interpreted, however, the Bible stood discredited by the new science. It asserted that God created humans by a direct and sudden act, and that he created the vast array of plant and animal species in same way. But Darwinism had allegedly proved that God did not create the species by a direct act. The Bible also asserted that God gave the laws concerning sacrifice and worship at Mt. Sinai upon Israel’s exodus from Egypt. But historical criticism had now allegedly proved that these laws did not develop until hundreds of years after the exodus.

Most evangelicals rejected the premises and conclusions of Darwinism and historical criticism and retained a traditional view of the Bible’s inspiration and meaning. Some, however, accepted the new science and rejected the Bible: that is, they abandoned Christianity. Liberals offered a third way. They accepted the science but did not reject the Bible. But they had to square the Bible with the science. To accomplish this they developed a new theory of inspiration.

The Bible’s inspiration, liberals proposed, guaranteed the truth of its religious message but did not guarantee the truth of its historical message. The Bible’s historical statements could thus be discounted if proven improbable. This did not mean that they were uninspired. They had a religious or spiritual meaning that did not depend on the veracity of the historical meaning. The historical form of the message served as a vehicle to deliver the religious message. The vital meaning should not be confused with the vehicle. The inspired kernel of religious truth was hidden beneath the human husk of historical statement. Since the Bible was inspired in its religious meaning only, a passage could be true religiously but false historically. Liberals held that the scientific discoveries did not falsify the Bible, they merely corrected false views of inspiration.

Their confidence that they were merely following the dictates of rational science prevented most liberals from recognizing that their approach involved cultural accommodation of vast proportions. Karl Barth’s critique in the early twentieth century helped many recognize this fact, but there could be no going back to traditional orthodoxy. As long as they remained convinced of the validity of Darwinism and historical criticism, liberals’ view of inspiration offered the only plausible way to preserve a place for the Bible and for Jesus Christ in the modern world. The old orthodoxy was no longer credible in light of modern science.

The old liberalism sought to rescue Christianity by making it credible to persons who had adopted a naturalistic worldview, which meant redefining Christianity in largely naturalistic terms. Liberals were convinced that they could preserve the transcendent spiritual truth—supernatural truth—on this basis. They were wrong. They intended to rescue the faith, but in making Christianity more credible to the world, they replaced it with a religion according to the world.

WE FACE THE SAME DILEMMA TODAY

Evangelicals today find themselves in a similar place. Many evangelical scholars find the historical critical arguments of the old liberals compelling, though they generally stop short of their conclusions. Others are proposing new ways of accepting evolution without rejecting the Bible. Most important, many evangelicals today sense that the old orthodoxy is not particularly compelling. The church’s message is no longer credible to the educated, intelligent, and cultured classes. It stands discredited in the light of modern culture.

Modern evangelicals who wish to remove Christianity’s discredit among its cultured despisers are retracing the steps of the old liberals. If the history of liberalism has proved anything, surely it has proved that the gospel must be accepted on its own terms, not on the terms of its despisers, however cultured, educated, and successful they may be.

If evangelicals prove unable to bear the scorn and reproach of cultured unbelievers, then we will attempt to construct another mediating Christianity that aspires to save the church and its message from its cultural crisis. The new liberalism, however, will fare no better than the old—its fundamental aim and its critical principles will devour its content until there is little left of its message. Its children will not find its message or its community compelling, and will not identify with it. But for one or two generations, it will lead millions astray and do permanent damage to the church and the advance of the gospel.

延伸阅读（点击即可阅读）

健康教会九标志

长按二维码关注

---

许可声明：你可以各种形式使用、复制与分发本文，但不允许修改文中内容（更正翻译错误除外），不允许收取超过复制成本的费用，并且分发不得超过1000个拷贝。如果要在网络或邮件中转贴，请务必保留译文链接。任何例外需征求九标志中文事工的许可。请在分发时保留本许可声明和以下信息：9Marks网址：http://cn.9marks.org，电子邮件地址：[e-mail]

▼▼博客里更多阅读