1. True religion is not based on external authority
Since the eighteenth century, liberal Christian thinkers have argued that religion should be up-to-date and progressive
and that the meaning of Christianity should be interpreted from the standpoint of modern knowledge and experience.
Such rejection of authority is something new in the history of the church.
All premodern Christian theologies made claims to authority-based orthodoxy.
Protestant theologians took for granted the view of scripture as an infallible revelation
and the view of theology as an explication of axiomatic revelation.
Reformed orthodoxy heightened the Reformation principle that scripture is the sole and infallibly sufficient rule of faith,
teaching that scripture is also strictly inerrant in all that it asserts.
2. Liberal Christianity is a movement of social reconstruction.
It is the movement in Protestantism which tries to bring Christian thought into unity with the evolutionary world view,
the movements of social reconstruction, and the expectations of a better world, which dominates the general mind.
It is a form of Christian faith which culminates in the expectation of the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.
3. Christianity must be credible and relevant.
Liberal theology is defined by its openness to the verdicts of intellectual inquiry,
and is committed to the authority of individual reason and experience.
It is a conception of Christianity as an ethical way of life;
It favours moral concepts of atonement and so tries
to make Christianity credible and socially relevant in the world today.
4. Truth can be know only through changing symbols and forms.
All our difficulties and controversies” regarding the truths of revelation are caused by a basic failure
to face up to what was known about the clothing of truths in signs and analogies.
Throughout the world, people mistake the symbolic forms of their truths as the truths themselves.
5. Theological controversy is about language, not about truth.
In debating doctrinal points disagreements are commonly about language usage, not lack of belief:
The concept of heresy is derived from the arrest of speculation and the disallowance of constructive judgments,
so that mysteries that are most significant when taken only as symbols,
are made to affirm something more literal than what they express.
6. The historical accuracies of biblical facts and events are not crucial.
The faithful reader of scripture is not obliged to assume the truth of the Gospel narrative
by which the manner and facts of the life of Jesus are reported to us.
The biblical narrative is not very impressive aside from the extraordinary character of its pivotal figure,
but the more that we study the figure of Jesus,the more clearly we are brought into the source and light of all truth:
7. True religion is the way of Christ, not any particular doctrines about Christ.
The Word of Christ is not a doctrine or the end of an argument, but a self-authenticating life;
Liberals lift Jesus’ teaching above any claims about his person.
The true religion is the way of Christ.

This kind of religion is a departure from historic orthodoxy.
Traditional Protestant orthodoxies place the substitutionary atonement of Christ at the center of Christianity,
conceiving Christ’s death as a propitiatory sacrifice that vicariously satisfied the retributive demands of divine justice.
Christian Liberalism understands Christianity quite differently.
It asserst that Christianity is essentially a life, not a doctrine.

Liberalism is a diverse, but identifiable approach to Christianity, one that differs significantly from historic orthodoxy,
Liberals believe they are making Christianity relevant, credible, beneficial, and humane.
Evangelicals believe Liberals are making something other than Christianity.
That was the dividing line a century ago, and the division persists.