Review 'Theological liberalism has tended to destroy positive belief … aggressive Christianity' By Jeff McDonald Special to The Layman Online Wednesday, January 24, 2007 "Theological liberalism has tended to destroy positive belief, distinctive experience and aggressive Christianity," liberal-turned-evangelical theologian P.T. Forsyth wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, foreshadowing many of the disputes that have plagued mainline Christianity in the years since. Forsyth (1841-1921), a British Congregationalist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, criticized theological liberalism in the academy and in the church in a series of books. Recommended Reading Books by P.T. Forsyth The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London; Hodder and Stoughton; 1909). Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (London: Hodder and Stoughton; 1907). Books about P.T. Forsyth Hart, Trevor; ed.; Justice the True and Only Mercy: Essays on the Life and Theology of Peter Taylor Forsyth (Edinburgh; T&T Clark; 1994). Sell, Alan P.F.; ed.; P.T. Forsyth: Theologian for a New Millennium (London; United Reformed Church Publications; 2000). A graduate of the University of Aberdeen who studied liberal theology in Germany, he returned from those studies a committed liberal who suggested, as did many liberals of that era, that liberalism could be a substitute for classical evangelical faith. Forsyth, however, later rejected liberalism and adopted an evangelical theological stance – writing in 1891, for example: "What has been called the New Evangelicalism seems ... to be in some danger of ceasing to be evangelical at all." Concerned about liberalism's constant focus on God's love and its downplaying of sin, Forsyth noted: "In either case we cease to be Evangelical, for that word loses its meaning when the love of God takes the place in religion which is due to His holiness, and when the divine justice is conceived to be more engaged with wrongs than in the war with sin." Later in the late 1890s, Forsyth became increasingly uncomfortable with liberal theology. He disapproved not of advances in Biblical criticism but, rather, of the conclusions being reached by liberal Biblical critics. Theologian Mark Husbands writes that Forsyth's break with liberal Protestantism "resulted from the growing incompatibility between his own understanding of Christian life and theology and that of [Albrecht] Ritschl." Forsyth was appalled at the elitist orientation of liberal theology, which he felt sought to undermine the traditional beliefs of the laity in favor of what was described as enlightened liberal instruction. He rejected the idea that the Christology of the laity should be different from the Christology of the critical scholars. He notes: "It is quite misplaced patronage to condescend to lay experience of the Gospel as if it were good enough for most, and the only one they are yet fit for, but if they passed through the schools they would be able to put their belief on another or better footing." And again: "All Christology exists in the interests of the evangelical faith of the layman who has in Jesus Christ the pardon of his sins and everlasting life. We are all layman here." Foundational basis He asserted that there is a foundational basis for Christology: "It is the evangelical experience of every saved soul that is the real foundation of Christological belief anywhere." Forsyth's comments are consistent with the populism of other evangelical thinkers, and his anti-elitist attitude also was a hallmark of the evangelical movement. Unlike noted liberal German theologian Wilhelm Herrmann, Forsyth did not separate Christian faith from history. Herrmann claimed that, "If we have experienced His power over us we need no longer look for the testimony of others to enable us to hold fast to His life as a real thing." In Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (1907), Forsyth asserted that the spiritual life cannot be made independent of the Bible. Christ has an impact on people's lives today because of what he did in history. Forsyth wrote: "He acts on us through what He was and did in history once for all." For Forsyth, the difference between positive and liberal theology is "infinite," and that the only place liberal theology has tended to go is "backwards." He felt that liberal theology "relapses to the outgrown Deism of the eighteenth century," and that liberalism within Christianity can cause the church to become too comfortable with the surrounding culture. He argued: "An ultra-liberalism in a historic religion like Christianity has always this danger – that it advance so far from its base as to be cut off from supplies, and spiritually starved into surrender to the world. This is what happened to most of the Jews in the Exile." He believed, however, that liberalism helps the faith because it "elicits a positive reaction which rallies the Israel of faith." Forsyth wrote that the greatest threat to the church does not come from the outside world, but from within the church itself: "The greatest issue for the moment is within the Christian pale; it is not between Christianity and the world. It is between theological liberalism (which is practically Unitarian) and a free but positive theology, which is essentially evangelical." Positive theology for Forsyth is evangelical theology. He was a Calvinist, and writes that Christ, "is the living God, the Saviour, who chose us to choose Him, and whom we find here, in his history, or not at all." This comment shows his Calvinist leanings and his belief that we cannot experience a Christ who is different from the one found in New Testament history. For Forsyth, the Christ whom we participate in is the same Christ as the one found in the Bible. Forsyth's chief concern Forsyth was not a strict confessional conservative, nor was he an evangelical rationalist. Although he disagreed with the theological methods of many conservative evangelical theologians, conservative evangelicals were not the primary targets of his polemical attacks. His writings clearly indicate that his chief concern was the ascendant theological liberalism that was beginning to dominate the theological world and church life. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberal theologians argued that the church needed a new worldview. They sometimes urged the laity to abandon what they considered to be their crass conservatism and pre-modern supernaturalism. Many liberals believed that a "new" Reformation would come to the Christian church when the church discarded orthodox theology. Forsyth had a different view and, in 1907, wrote, "What is needed is no mere change of view, but a change and deepening in the type of personal religion, amounting in cases to a new conversion." Unbelieving scholarship, according to Forsyth, should be confronted with spiritual renewal and personal conversion. He believed the best way to combat liberalism within the church was with "evangelical experience," "experimental religion," or with a "new conversion" of the church. His rejection of liberalism came about through an evangelical "conversion" of his own, of which he writes: "There was a time when I was interested in the first degree with purely scientific criticism. Bred among the academic scholarship of the classics and philosophy, I carried these habits to the Bible ... [but] it also pleased God by the revelation of His holiness and grace, which the great theologians taught me to find in the Bible, to bring home to me my sin in a way that submerged all the school questions in weight, urgency and poignancy. I was turned from a Christian to a believer, from lover of love to an object of grace. "And so, whereas I first thought that what the churches needed was enlightened instruction and liberal theology, I came to be sure that what they needed was evangelization, in something more than the conventional sense of the word." Forsyth's emphasis on the need for a spiritual conversion certainly was, in many ways, the foundation of his thought. His transition from liberalism to evangelicalism made him a unique figure within the history of the modern church. Even though he does not have a strong legacy within American evangelicalism, he still has some influence. The scholarship that Forsyth produced after his transition is the product of a spiritual awakening that affected his mind and heart. Few evangelicals produced work similar to Forsyth's due to the fact that his life and education were different from what most evangelicals experienced. He learned liberal theology from liberals and understood liberal theology from the inside. All of these circumstances contributed to his unique evangelical position. Forsyth's pioneering efforts, theologian Geoffrey Bromiley has written, were "largely lost in the cacophony of competing voices." Many mainline Protestants have forgotten his warnings and sage advice. Perhaps a rediscovery of Forsyth's thought could bring an evangelical renaissance to the church today. Jeff McDonald is a graduate student in history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Respond to this article

Home · Archives · The Layman · PLC Publications Presbyterian Lay Committee · Feedback · Links