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because they no longer meet certain modern philosophical or scientific cri–
teria of validity and consistency in scripture---which if they cannot be met
at face value, then must be explained. When traditional affirmations of reli–
gious reality are, to whatever degree, undermined by modern forms of
rationalism, they are simultaneously de-objectified. What was "known"
with a taken-for-granted certitude becomes, at best, a "belief." Further
along in this process, it becomes a religious opinion or a "feeling". Thus,
when Evangelicals approach a biblical story which their tradition regards as
an objective historical fact and say that they are "open" to or "comfortable"
with the idea that it is just symbolic, or that it is "not really important (to
them personally) that it happened historically," religious truth devolves to
religious opinion. The reality has been de-objectified.
But the failures of rationalism inevitably lead to subjectivism. This is
reflected in the lessening concern with the proclamation of an objective
and universal truth to a concern with the subjective applicability of truth.
In popular terms, Evangelicals are less concerned with "what the Bible
states" to "what God might be telling us." In this situation, the realities of
biblical truth applicable to all people for all time become a complex of
subjective values; one device among many of therapeutic self-understand–
ing, identity construction, and personal meaning.
The consequences of this transformation in religious authority are
played out in at least two ways. The first consequence is seen in the trans–
formation of traditional religious psychology.
In the Protestant case, inner-worldly asceticism was only possible inso–
far as it was based upon an ethic of renunciation wi th regard to the passions
of this world. It was a psychological precondition for success in vocation
and to the building of moral discipline. But this traditional psychology has
given way to a relatively contemporary one that implici tly venerates the
self. Indeed, most traditional moral prohibitions do not even capture the
attention of Evangelicals much less hold the authori ty they once did. The
meaning is plain: how is self-denial or self-mastery possible when that
which is to be denied and mastered is under almost constant examination?
How is the renunciation of the self possible if it is being "actualized" or
"developed to its full-potential?" In sum, the legacy of austerity and ascetic
self-denial is virtually obsolete in the larger Evangelical culture. The
archetypal Protestant of generations past is gone. His contemporary
descendant is one who, instead, "works out his salvation" not in his voca–
tion but in the private sphere of family, personal friends, and
intersubjectivity, who has either forgotten, repudiated, or "outgrown" tra–
di tional defini tions of worldliness, and who has made a moral and spiri tual
virtue of self-understanding and self-expression.
So, what has happened to religious authori ty as it is experienced by the
individual believer? The authority of traditional religious faith does not so
