JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Throughout history we have witnessed liberals creating greater miracles by their relentless
pursuit of explaining away the miracles they find so objectionable in the Bible. In their
attempts at being "modern" they end up with what many of us what consider "fantastic." It takes
more faith to believe in their concocted explanations than it does to believe the Bible.
Experiential-Expressive Theory
Much of liberalism contends that experience provides a foundational resource for
Christian theology. This teaches that all the world religions are essentially the same. The main
difference is that they are expressed very differently. Thus Buddha, Mohammed and other
religious leaders have the same claim as Jesus. This frees Christianity from the "scandal of
particularity" (the belief that Jesus is the only way, truth, and life—the only bridge to find
salvation).
Such a theology is basically human responses to the same religious experience often
called "a core experience of the transcendent." Therefore it is the task of theology to reflect upon
this common human experience since the same experience underlies all religions. This subjective
theology with its emphasis on religious experience fails because, as George Lindbeck argues, "It
is difficult or impossible to specify its distinctive features, and yet unless this is done, the
assertion of commonality becomes logically and empirically vacuous."5 There is little empirical
evidence for a "common core experience" throughout human history. The legitimacy for such a
theological position is virtually impossible to verify.
POSTMODERN THEOLOGY
One of the more positive developments in theology in recent years is the surge of interest
in the developing concept of "narrative theology." This theology brings emphasis to the
narrative literary form which unquestionably dominates Scripture. The origin of this emerging
theology logically goes back to Karl Barth who gave emphasis and meaning to Scripture as "the
story of God" and H. Richard Niebuhr whose book The Meaning of Revelation emphasized the
revelation of God in history and saw that narratives were an especially appropriate way of
expressing that revelation. God chose to become revealed in history and historical forms (such as
in Israel's exodus from Egypt and the history of Jesus Christ). This theology recognizes that both
the Old Testament and the New Testament bear witness to the fact that the literary form most
appropriate to express God's involvement and revelation in human history was narrative—a
story.
Since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century with its emphasis upon generally
available rational truths, the insights of God's revelation in narrative form have been widely
neglected. The Enlightenment reduced theology to general rational concepts and thus showed an
almost total disregard for the narrative quality of the biblical writings. General principles which
could be established by reason and logic pushed the narrative form into virtual oblivion. The
modern and postmodern theology of our day is a clear witness to this devolution of revelation
that is couched in narratives.