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About Liberalism
According to Earle E. Cairns in his college textbook on church history called Christianity Through The Ages (Zondervan, 1981) the hall mark of modern liberal theology is subjectivity (pp. 410-411). Subjectivity is the attempt to understand and explain the Bible and Christianity on humanistic grounds, with men's own minds being the measure of all things, rather than the pure objectivity of a Divine Revelation. Feelings, emotions, and sentimentalities thus become more prominent and authoritative than logic, reason, and common sense in interpreting the Bible.
Some may wonder how this relates to modern dispensational premillennial end-time Bible prophecy teaching. Well, let me illustrate the relationship between dispensationalism and subjectivity, or liberalism, like this. Dispensationalists claim to see a seven year great tribulation period throughout all the major prophetic portions of the New Testament, and to interpret the details of all these passages around that central idea, when, in fact, no seven year period of time is ever one time mentioned in ANY of those passages. So dispensationalists derive their future seven year great tribulation period idea solely on the basis of the SUBJECTIVITY of the interpreter, and not on any rational or objective statement from the Word.
This specific example could be broadened out to include many other aspects of dispensational teaching as well, none of which truth claims can be rationally and objectively proven by those proof texts from which they are alleged. This, then, in effect, is a very LIBERAL approach to handling Scripture. A seven year great tribulation period exists in the New Testament because the dispensationalist WANTS to see it there, not because it actually exists there in the first place.
The subjectivistic basis by which dispensationalists build their air castles of end-time fantasy merely proves that such interpreters are liberals at heart, whether they even realize it or are willing to admit it or not. When they are forced to objectively prove their notions from the Bible then their system of interpretational fabrications starts to fall apart. That is why there is such an aversion to reason and open and honest Bible study in those circles where Darbyism is still prejudicially entrenched. The following articles will perhaps help to shed more light on this issue.