A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

Liberalism and Neo-Orthodoxy
5. Its religious pluralism. . . . Its official preassembly
study guide [said], “In the end the great
communities of faith will not have disappeared. None
will have ‘won’ over the other. Jews will still be Jews;
Muslims still Muslims; and those of the great Eastern
faiths, still Buddhists or Hindus or Taoists. Africa will
still witness to its traditional life view; China to its
inheritance. People will still come from the east and
the west, the north and the south, and sit down in the
Kingdom of God without having first become
‘Christians’ like us.”. . . [A] stern warning [was] presented
by World Council official D. C. Mulder against
evangelizing because it imposed an obstacle to dialogue
with other religions.
Moreover, the World Council study guide on the Bible
stated: 214
There are diverse literary traditions in the biblical
writings. . . . Some of these traditions may be contradictory.
The church is in dialogue with Scripture, but
has been fed from many sources, in the light of which,
biblical statements may have to be declared inadequate,
or erroneous. . . . We are not to regard the
Bible primarily as a standard to which we must conform
in all the questions arising in our life.
In 1998, the WCC held its eighth assembly in Harare,
Zimbabwe. It faced considerable dissent from Orthodox bodies,
which make up about 30 percent of the membership and
are concerned about the increasingly liberal drift of the organization.
Christianity Today reported, “Both Orthodox and
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