Let's use the Bible again as another example of how the right hand approach can be applied to faith. German scholars came along in the late 19th century and said "the Bible is an historical artifact that can be examined with the same critical scrutiny as a rock, a viral disease, or Shakespeare's Hamlet." They ignored what faith had to say about the Bible and studied it purely on its own terms. It subsequently proved to be an ordinary classifiable human document and a product of its times. Scholars could only conclude that if God did have any influence over the Bible it was indirect at best. So the Germans, for the first time, began to examine only the right-hand side of faith (the Bible in this case) and found that it was completely independent of the left-hand side (inner belief) and could thus be treated as a separate object of study. As a result, some Christians ("conservatives") merely denounced this scholarship, and others ("liberals") agreed with the critics but then compartmentalized faith itself in the LH side where it would be immune from further RH critical scrutiny. | Let's use the Bible again as another example of how the right hand approach can be applied to faith. German scholars came along in the late 19th century and said "the Bible is an historical artifact that can be examined with the same critical scrutiny as a rock, a viral disease, or Shakespeare's Hamlet." They ignored what faith had to say about the Bible and studied it purely on its own terms. It subsequently proved to be an ordinary classifiable human document and a product of its times. Scholars could only conclude that if God did have any influence over the Bible it was indirect at best. So the Germans, for the first time, began to examine only the right-hand side of faith (the Bible in this case) and found that it was completely independent of the left-hand side (inner belief) and could thus be treated as a separate object of study. As a result, some Christians ("conservatives") merely denounced this scholarship, and others ("liberals") agreed with the critics but then compartmentalized faith itself in the LH side where it would be immune from further RH critical scrutiny. |