Abstract

My subject is the idea of naturalism in liberal theology, an idea that Robert Corrington has taken far beyond liberal Christianity and religion in his many brilliant books on aesthetic naturalism. I am going to tell this story in a way that leads to Corrington without saying that liberal theology itself leads to Corrington. Liberal theology, liberation theology, religious naturalism, and progressive Christian social ethics are precious to me, and these things are taught almost exclusively in liberal theological seminaries.The entire tradition of liberal theology is naturalistic in the sense of accommodating naturalistic explanation. Some traditions of liberal theology are not historicist or pragmatic; some...