THE EFFECT OF THE NEW STARTING ASSUMPTIONS IN THEOLOGY

      In Germany, Liberal Theology first became popular when scholars began to apply materialistic starting assumptions to the study of theology and the Bible.  Since genuine predictive prophecy, and two-way communication between God and man were arbitrarily pronounced "impossible," books like Daniel had to have their authorship late dated in order to explain away the fulfillment of detailed prophecies found there.  The flimsiest of textual writing-style "evidences" were advertised as rock-solid, and continue to be, even though we now have manuscripts of Daniel that are over a century and a half older than some of the most notable of its historically fulfilled prophecies -- the arrival time of the Messiah, his death for sins, the destruction of the second Jewish temple, and the Diaspora of the Jews in 70 AD, to name a few (see Daniel Chapter 9).¹⁴  As a writer, I often change my style when I switch subjects, or even approaches to one subject.  It is silly to base whole schools of theology on the assumption that differing writing styles automatically mean different authors (as Liberal theologians do to avoid this same issue with Isaiah's prophecies), or that the presence of a few Greek-based words in the Daniel text mean that it had to have been written later, when Greece was an empire (Babylon traded with the Grecians long before the time Daniel claims for itself -- words could have been borrowed just as easily in that way, as words like “soufflé” and “hamburger” entered English usage).
       Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian and a leading apostle of Liberal Theology, tried to strip Christianity of all supernatural elements in favor of an ethical order based on an imaginary "historic Jesus" long before the so-called "Jesus Seminar" came along just a few years ago to try to resurrect this kind of already long defunct theory.¹⁵  Yet all around Schweitzer fermented a turn of the century Germany and Austria mired in the social cesspool that was allowed to fester through the spiritual impotence of the Liberal Theology that had come to dominate German Protestantism at that time.  A god without the power to act beyond the normal work-a-day laws of his own creation could provide no real hope or strength to the individual for which to bear up under the dreary and violent conditions that existed in Central Europe at that time.  The divorce rate was sky-rocketing.  Illegitimate births were at unprecedented numbers.  The popular composers, like Wagner, had put to music a romanticized return to the old Norse paganism.  The novelists gave voice to the self-destructive nihilistic philosophies of Nietchze, who died of syphilis in an insane asylum.  Homosexuality ran rampant through the Austro-Hungarian and German governments and military to the point where it was referred to politely as "the German vice."¹⁶  Sound familiar?  It was in this social climate that a disillusioned young man named Adolf Hitler came of age.  I often look sadly at many of today's young, with the bitter, violent sense of meaninglessness expressed in their Gangsta Rap, Grunge and Heavy Metal music, or at the growing militia movements, and the renewal of white supremism, and wonder if I am not catching a prophetic glimpse of the global brown shirts of the not so distant future.  If this century has taught us anything, it’s that tyranny can come from either the left or the right once there is an abandonment of divinely established moral absolutes to cement society together at the grassroots level.  For how can there be freedom without factions of anarchy in a democratic system unless there is a near universally recognized sense of what is right and wrong to which even the government can be held accountable?  How can “the people” hold a government accountable to do what’s right if they themselves have no sure way of knowing or agreeing on what’s right themselves?
      So many of today's churches seem so impotent in reaching the young in this area.  So many have bought into spiritual and sociological conclusions which have been choreographed into place by the arbitrary starting assumptions of Enlightenment-based philosophy.  We need to ask ourselves if the conclusions we accept as “that which goes without saying,” upon which we base our actions, are really built on the foundations of what we say we believe?