Liberals welcomed higher criticism because they recognized a radically different view of the Bible was necessary for intelligent moderns. They felt free from the need to defend the whole Bible as the infallible Word of God. They no longer had to take into account a God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians or who ordered the Israelites to kill their enemies to the last woman and child or who sent bears to maul children who poked fun at a prophet.
The studies of the higher critics, said the liberals, make it clear that God has revealed himself through an evolutionary process. It began with primitive, bloodthirsty ideas of a tribal God and showed how the Jews slowly came to grasp the idea of a righteous God who can be served only by one who does justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with his God. This evolutionary revelation of God, they said, finds its fulfillment in Jesus, where God is portrayed as the loving Father of all humanity.
"Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student
gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for
a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best
thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one. This is not what young people do today, because everyone around them has long since lost faith in a definite world. No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball."
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Luther believed that the human will was enslaved, totally unable, apart from grace, to love or serve God. But Erasmus considered this a dangerous doctrine since it threatened to relieve a person of his moral responsibility. What Luther regarded basic to biblical religion, Erasmus dismissed as inhumane.
The differences in the Reformation and the Renaissance lie right there, in the view of humanity. The Reformers preached the original sin of humanity and looked upon the world as fallen and under God’s curse. The Renaissance had a positive estimate of human nature and the universe itself.
This denominational view of the church found only limited acceptance in England, where the Church of England retained a favored position, even after the Act of Toleration in 1689 recognized the rights of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers to worship freely. In the English colonies of America, however, the denominational theory gained increasing acceptance. It seemed to be God’s answer for the multiplying faiths in the New World.
Calvinism’s emphasis on the sovereignty of God led in turn to a special view of the state. Luther tended to consider the state supreme. The German princes often determined where and how the gospel would be preached. But Calvin taught that no one—whether pope or king—has any claim to absolute power. Calvin never preached the “right of revolution,” but he did encourage the growth of representative assemblies and stressed their right to resist the tyranny of monarchs.
"There is no view without a viewpoint."
Bir görüş açısı olmadan görüş olmaz. İşadamının bakış noktası menfaatinin olduğu yerdir.
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