FROM RATIONALITY TO SUBJECTIVITY
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that the Bible is the sole authority in spiritual and religious matters, as a
profession, they are unable to come to any agreement on what the Bible
says. Practically speaking, there is no consensus in the application of prin–
ciples of inerrancy or infallibility to biblical understanding. Biblical
hermeneutics is a discipline in utter disarray. One illustration of this is the
way in which the origin of the world is now regarded by Evangelicals. No
consensus now exists. Indeed, large numbers of Evangelicals in America
have abandoned the popular, early twentieth-century view that evolution
was a denial of God's creation. Instead more and more view evolution of
one sort or another as an explanation of how God works
in
creation.
The same tendencies toward fragmentation can be observed in the
Evangelical view of other-worldly salvation, another defining element of
Christian theology. For Evangelicals traditionally, faith in Christ is the
only, exclusive, and final way to heaven. All other religious faiths and world
views are either misdirected or else patently false and, therefore, ideologies
of destruction and delusion . There is only one absolutely true faith.
Historically speaking, there is no orthodoxy without this particular creedal
affirmation. But here too we observe a kind of break up of the older tra–
ditionalist consensus. Today an increasingly large number of Evangelicals
believe that there may be alternative ways to heaven, especially for those
who have not had the opportunity to hear of Jesus Christ. The difference
between the traditional soteriology and this somewhat softened perspec–
tive is, from the vantage point of historical orthodoxy, very important.
Those holding to the latter imply that some form of alternative arrange–
ment is provided for those not exposed to the truths of Christianity. God's
dealings with the unevangelized are somehow different from his dealings
with those who have heard the "good news." Accordingly, views of heav–
en and hell are changing. Fewer and fewer Evangelicals believe in the
existence of hell as an objective location and damnation as physical pun–
ishment.
The fragmentation of the traditional consensus within Evangelical
theology even extends to the ways Evangelicals view themselves theologi–
cally. What does it mean to be an Evangelical? While there has always been
a measure of imprecision and debate about this among all Protestants, the
imprecision has expanded in recent decades. Today the term includes
everyone from Jerry Falwell to Karl Barth.
Religious authority has been privatized. There its coherence as a
world-view has been fragmented. But even more interesting still is that
this authority has also been de-objectified and "subjectivized."
This is clearly seen in the case of the Evangelical orientation toward the
Bible, the trend involves an accommodation to modern epistemologies–
philosophical rationalism, even shades of positivism. Traditional literalistic
renditions of the biblical literature are simply not quite so believable
