Liberal Scholarship

It is rather suspect that some Christians anathematize scholarship they deem as “liberal” when that scholarship undermines some of their traditional and cherished beliefs. These opinions are not generally an idiosyncratic or iconoclastic endeavor on the part of scholarship, but rather due to developments in textual understanding, manuscripts and greater availability of materials in the hands of more than just a few select individuals. Of course, those who maintain vigilance in their traditionalism amidst indisputable and insurmountable evidence suppose themselves to take their “just rendering” from Scripture itself all the while unaware that their understanding of the Scripture is anachronistic, having been influenced and formulated by reading later tradition and dogma into its actual content.