By Schubert Ogden
...
Evangelical critics of "liberalism" allege that its hallmark was-and
isand is-Ita a cognitive relativism." By making experience the one and only primal
(noetic) source of theology, liberalism condemned theology to be like all other
human efforts to know and to understand. It thereby became simply one
more part of "the human quest for understanding, ... which is one
undertaken from within the flux of human experience employing the tools
available to human experimenters" and never yielding "any certainty beyond
that of an interim report offered from within the fallabilities of the fragile,
human psyche." In thus becoming "relative and fallible," like all other
human knowledge, theology becomes quite different from "the kind of
knowledge given by revelation" (David Wells: 179, 174).
Evangelical critics of "liberalism" allege that its hallmark was-and is-a "cognitive relativism." By making experience the one and only primal (noetic) source of theology, liberalism condemned theology to be like all other human efforts to know and to understand. It thereby became simply one more part of "the human quest for understanding, ... which is one undertaken from within the flux of of human experience employing employing the tools available tools available to human experimenters" and never yielding "any certainty beyond that of an interim report offered from within the fallabilities of the fragile, human psyche." In thus becoming "relative and and fallible," like all other human knowledge, theology becomes quite different from "the kind of knowledge given by revelation" (David Wells: 179, 174).
...