The beginning of time

The Legitimacy and Content of the Bible

The question of the legitimacy and content of the Bible has generated debates concerning Christians’ religion since the dawn of time and even today. Numerous illegitimate manifestations of nature and power have emerged from various movements and even specific people. The Neo-Orthodox, Evangelical, and Liberal theological movements will be compared and contrasted, along with their implications and strengths and shortcomings, in order to determine which theological movement is the best of the three. Evangelicalism is the earliest of the three religious movements which have a connection with Pietism and Puritanism and took place in Britain and her colonies. The people who are in agreement with the evangelicalism movement are under the following convictions; they consider the Bible as the ultimate authority of practice as well as the Christian faith and also believe in the essence of the new birth which is characterized by the conversion of people through the grace. More so, evangelicals believe the work of Christ to be redeemed, need to evangelize every person on earth, that the Holy Spirit dwells among the believers, and while doing all of their duties, the Gospel of the Bible should not be distorted whatsoever (Torrance, 2016). However, despite being united by the same doctrine of the scriptures, not all Evangelicals follow it to it; some of them represent the top, middle and lower ground representation of the doctrine.

Liberalism and Its Views

Liberalists, on the other hand, consider themselves as the saviors and modifiers of the outdated traditional faith and Christianity. Its founder, Fredrick Schleiermacher, defined liberalism to be the religion’s true essence, and the state of being and feeling depended on God entirely (Vidler, 2014). The conscious of a person should make them feel connected and in a relationship with God. People convicted by this movement lack unifying propositional beliefs, thus embrace other methodologies of the aspect of enlightenment of science like the use of reason and empirical evidence to interpret the scripture, theology, faith as well as life. To the Liberalists, the Scriptures does not create a genuine trustworthiness, not even the inerrancy and verbal inspirations that they contain.

Neo-Orthodoxy and Its Uniqueness

The most recent of the three theological movements is the Neo-Orthodoxy which was established by Karl Barth and was referred to as the “strange new world within the Bible.” This movement, unlike the other two movements, introduced a discrete aspect of the scripture by discarding modernism as the dominant theology. Sin, in this movement, is neither ignorance nor error, therefore impossible to overcome by social institutions or but reason, rather by the grace of God through His son. The movement was a Liberalism reaction which opposes fundamentalism and modernism. More so, unlike the other two movements, Neo-Orthodoxy holds that the Bible is a record of the revelation but not a revelation by itself. Additionally, the Neo-Orthodox believe the Bible to be an objective document that is neither inspired by God. To them, the Bible only becomes the Word of God only when He decides so (Kalaitzidis, 2014).

The Implications

Each of the three approaches or rather theological movements has their constituent strengths and weaknesses in their approaches to the scripture, making them unreliable and accurate as well. The evangelicals, for instance, are ever concerned about scripture’s candor whereas debates on inerrancy and infallibility as well have been on the rise. The science of Bible interpretation and hermeneutics approach used by the evangelicals has attracted more public attention and scrutiny (Torrance, 2016). Despite the weaknesses of the movement, one strength for sure is their notion of spreading the gospel all over the world, alongside all other Christians.

The liberal movement, on the other hand, is attributed to several orthopraxy and orthodoxy Christian aspects. Despite the founder of liberalism, Schleiermacher being influenced by Pietist thought in his bringing which states that religion is beyond doing right things, theology, action, knowledge, and ethics, he said that religion is more than action and knowledge (Vidler, 2014). As per the liberalism, the region is a different entity from theology as per the doctrine used. However, liberal is much of a combination of inadequate on the sinful nature of man, defecting the view of Christ hence His person which is lowly regarded.

Lastly, on Neo-Orthodoxy, has had major contributions in the twentieth century and up to now, impacting orthopraxy and orthodoxy as well. The movement has often emphasized the unification of the scripture as well as the renewal of hermeneutics’ interests (Kalaitzidis, 2014). The movement has shared some of its perspectives, practices, and thoughts to Neo-Orthodox as well as on the living faith of the Christians. The approach is only in God’s word, and not human philosophy or natural theology that is based on human reason and creation.

The Superior Approach

On a personal perspective, I side with evangelism movement even though some of its aspects are somehow out of line. The convictions mentioned above make a lot of sense to me. I second the perspective the movement puts across that it is the duty of all Christians to spread the gospel across the world to all people despite the religious movement they belong into. Evangelism should be done whether in first world nations or even in third world countries so as to make more people know about God and Jesus Christ. The other two theological movements, Neo-Orthodox, and Liberal both have some aspects I agree with, but the advantages of evangelism appealed the most to me than the disadvantages or even the other two movements.

References

Kalaitzidis, P. (2014). New trends in Greek Orthodox theology: challenges in the movement towards a genuine renewal and Christian unity. Scottish Journal of Theology, 67(2), 127-164.

Torrance, T. F. (2016). The trinitarian faith: The evangelical theology of the ancient catholic church. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Vidler, A. R. (2014). The Modernist Movement in The Roman Church. Cambridge University Press.