LIBERAL, LEGALIST, CONSERVATIVE; WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

Dear Bro. Waddey:
Can you clarify what you mean by the terms, liberal legalist and conservative? Alman (Australia).

Dear Bro Alman:
Thanks your question about modern religious categories.  It is a fact that language is always imprecise, especially when one communicates with a person in another nation. I have visited England and several her former possessions and have experienced first hand the truth that Winston Churchill expressed that we are one people separated only by our common language.

Here in America we also use the terms liberalism, modernism and higher criticism in religious discussion.  Generally, higher criticism is used in reference to those scholars who set their human wisdom over the Word of God and feel free to dismantle and discount any portion of it they choose.  Such men are seldom preachers in local churches but are most often found in Colleges and Universities. Their thoughts are found in their books and articles.  They now dominate many of the religious schools and seminaries in Protestant America.  We have tried to keep them out of our Christian schools.

Modernism was a term more frequently used in the first half of the 20th century to describe a type of preacher and teacher who felt that the Bible and  Christianity were obsolete and needed to be revised and adapted to fit modern society's needs.  They generally denied the inspiration of and the miraculous element of Scripture and felt free to pick and choose only those portions of Scripture that met with their approval.  Most modernists denied the great fundamentals of Christianity. They questioned or denied such foundational doctrines as the virgin birth of Christ, his miracles, his vicarious death, his resurrection and ascension.

When modernism gained the ascendency in the Protestant world the term liberalism became the common word to identify them.  It reflected the fact that they took liberties with the Word of God.  They felt no constraints   on their faith and practices by the old Book of God.  They tended to be preachers who had absorbed the doubt and skepticism of their university professors. The message they preached was the "social gospel."

Here I must note that such words as liberal and legalist are always relative in application. To legalists I am a liberal. To liberals I am a legalist.  This is true because I think both of them are wrong and   actively oppose their efforts to impose their ideas on the church.

Sad to say, within the churches of Christ we have a relatively small group of men whom we often identify as liberals, but our definition is more pointed.  These are men who feel at liberty to challenge and change the faith and practices revealed in Scripture which our people have long accepted and followed.  It would be most difficult to find one of them who would openly question the inspiration of the Bible, the miracles, the atonement, resurrection and ascension of Christ, our resurrection, heaven and hell. Yet they do argue that the New Testament of Christ is not a pattern we are expected to conform to (See II Tim. 1:13).  They do not feel constrained by Biblical prohibitions such as "I suffer not a women to teach or have authority over a man" (I Tim. 2:12).  They like to say the Bible is a love letter, not God's law or standard for us.  As a consequence these "liberal" brethren are causing confusion among some churches here and abroad.  They are promoting a new agenda they call "change."  There goal is to reshape  and restructure the worship, faith and practices of churches of Christ according to the prevailing patterns of the evangelical Protestant churches.  That most of us view as apostasy from the Biblical standard given us by Christ.

Legalists are the opposites of liberals. They are radically conservative. Generally speaking they have a very narrow and caustic spirit and make war on any and all who will not conform to their ideas.  Tolerance has no place in their vocabulary.   Legalism is a way of looking at Christianity and the Bible.  It tends to look for what is wrong rather than what is right. It looks for reasons to reject other Christians rather than reasons to accept them. It tends to be tyrannical. If you can visualize a highway with a deep ditch on either side.  The road is the path of truth which God wants us to travel. The ditch on the right is legalism.  The ditch on the left is liberalism.  If you get off the road of truth and into either ditch you wreck your vehicle and will suffer harm. (See Prov. 4:25-27).

When we speak of conservativism in religion we think of the brother who is traveling on the middle road of truth avoiding either ditch.