Critique of Fundamental/Liberal Theology

This is something I read today that hit me in a very personal way as I have lived very clearly on both sides of this fence. It is a quote from Proper Confidence, by Lesslie Newbigin.

“The confession of the truth will be part of a continual indebtedness to grace. It will never be the kind of certainty which supposes that I can become a possessor of the truth by the exercise of my own natural powers. It will mean that my understanding of the truth must be constantly open to revision and correction, but only and always within the irreversible commitment to Jesus Christ… the strength of the liberal tradition is its willingness to be open to new truth. And the gospel itself makes this liberal mind possible; for if we know that Jesus is indeed the Word made flesh, the visible and knowable presence in the midst of history from whom and for whom all things exist, then we shall meet new experiences of any kind of reality with confidence that we are given the clue for their understanding. But if that clue itself is questioned or abandoned, then we become clueless playthings in the winds and waves of fashion… The fundamentalist critique of liberal theology must be taken seriously. But fundamentalists do a disservice to the gospel when… they adopt a style of certainty more in the tradition of Descartes than in the truly evangelical spirit. This can show itself in several familiar ways. Sometimes it is an anxiety about the threat that new discoveries in science may pose to Christian faith – an anxiety that betrays a lack of total confidence in the central truth of the gospel that Jesus is the Word made flesh. Sometimes it leads to a refusal to reconsider long-held beliefs in the light of fresh reflection on the witness of Scripture... (refer to Acts 17:11) And it can manifest itself in a claim for the objective truth of the Christian message that seems to depend on the acceptance of the false dualism of Enlightenment thought… Perhaps liberals would be more ready to listen to the very serious question put to them by fundamentalists if the latter were more manifestly speaking as those who must think, as they must live, as debtors to grace. There is much wisdom in the simple words with which Herbert Butterfield concluded his study of Christianity and history: ‘Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted’” (70-71).