EVANGELICAL PRAGMATISM: AN OLD PATH TO LIBERALISM
It should never be forgotten that a passion for evangelism, and a seemingly genuine desire for a relevant Christianity that “worked,” is what motivated Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of liberal Protestant theology. As best we can tell Schleiermacher did not labor away in some dark den of intrigue, intentionally plotting to ruin the faith of German Christians. No, his initial, 1799 publication was an evangelistic/apologetic book entitled, “On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers.”
In the introduction to the 1926 edition of that work, Rudolf Otto writes, “The intention of the work is crystal clear. It aimed to recapture the position that religion had lost in the intellectual world where it was threatened with total oblivion.”[7]
But in Scheiermacher’ s desperate efforts to rescue the work of the church and make the Christian religion relevant to modern intellectuals, he devised a system that placed the locus of authority in “experience” or “piety” rather than in God’s Word. He wanted an approach that would produce results among Enlightenment intellectuals. And it did work! His book was an instant sensation and many in his target people group responded visibly to his method. And the damage done to true biblical faith by this successful error has continued to cascade onward, wrecking souls and churches for more than two centuries now.
Would it not be ironic and deeply sad were we to discover years from now that many conservative evangelicals have, in regard to missions, unwittingly gotten onto a similar downgrade? So absolutizing the goal of immediate, visible results that our locus of authority is shifting? Read the rest HERE
See also Putting Contextualization in its Place
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