Accommodation

John Polkinghorne writes that the “human writings [of Scripture] bear witness to timeless truths, but they do so in the thought forms and from the cultural milieu of their writers.” As a result, “we find attitudes expressed in the Bible that today we neither an nor should agree with.”

This description of accommodation is unusually helpful, because it displays the gnostic assumption behind the whole idea of accommodation. That is, accommodation assumes that the writers of Scripture intend to communicate timeless truths, rather than communicating an account of history.

That is, accommodation doesn’t lead to liberalism; it is liberalism.