Excerpts from Protestant Christianity, Interpretated through its development, second edition by John Dillenberger and Claude Welch

Fundamentalism was from the beginning a lost cause, theologically speaking. It was an intellectual rearguard action. It was not simply an attempt to be faithful to the Christian tradition; it was an effort, in the face of the perplexities and shifting currents of a changing world, to fix Christianity in the mold of a particular doctrinal complex and worldview. The doctrinal complex to which fundamentalism clung so tenaciously was not that of the ancient church, or of the Reformation, or of the Protestant development in general. It was essentially akin to the hardened framework of Lutheran and especially Calvinistic scholasticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only in that scholasticism had the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture been carried to such extremes; and in such doctrines as the atonement and the deity of Christ, fundamentalism (often unconsciously) assumed that the Protestant scholastics spoke for the entire tradition. Moreover, in its insistence that doctrine is irreformable, fundamentalism shared the scholastic equation of "faith" with "correct articles of belief." And especially in its notion of "miracle," fundamentalism took over the seventeenth-century view of the relation of Christian faith to science and philosophy. In its own day that view represented a significant attempt to bring religious, philosophical, and scientific thought into harmony; but the effort to perpetuate that adjustment in the world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not only hopeless but violated the intent of scholasticism itself.

At root, fundamentalism sought to preserve a kind of certainty in a world of apparent confusion and flux - a kind of certainty which was simply no longer possible. The movement was part of a general resistance to social change. This was particularly evident in fundamentalism's commitment to legalistic views of personal morality (mostly of the nineteenth-century pattern) and its hostility to the "social gospel." The fundamentalist's bitter opposition to the Federal Council of Churches (and subsequently to the National Council of Churches) was focused as much on the social as on the theological liberalism of those organizations. And the extreme social conservatism was often paralleled by a suspicion of modern education because of its "scientific, skeptical, and secular influences." Here, too, was an attempt to hold on to the familiar, the simple and safe patterns, in the face of new and bewildering problems which the old patterns were not designed to meet.

Insofar as fundamentalism is committed to this sort of program, it is hard to see how the movement can claim the allegiance of thoughtful persons. In the post-World War II period, however, there emerged important signs that in some quarters the fundamentalist position was being modified - by reinterpretations of biblical infallibility, by a more liberal social outlook, and by a more ecumenical attitude.

...

In the new conservatism of the recent decades, we must recognize both a broad range of commonly held positions and some sharp divergences, which in some cases are so extreme as to cause leaders in the movement to raise questions about its identity and future.

Most generally shared is the claim to represent authentic or historic Christianity, particularly as expressed in classical Protestantism, in opposition to atheism and secularism and to modern religious distortion or abandonment of the faith. At this point the interests of the new conservatives with most of earlier fundamentalism, as articulated, for example, by J.G. Machen in the 1920s. The opposition, however, is seen not only in liberal (and of course radical) theology, but also in process theology, neo-orthodoxy (usually), relativistic or "situational" ethics, universalism, feminist and liberation theology (sometimes), and of course in "godless Communism" and secularism generally. There is the familiar emphasis on truths of revelation, given in conceptual-verbal form in Scripture, and thus on correct doctrine as essential to Christian life and community. And the important doctrines include the authority of Scripture, the transcendence of the supernatural God, the sinfulness of humanity and redemption understood as vicarious or substitutionary atonement, the deity and exclusive redeeming power of Christ, the virgin birth, and the physical resurrection and return of Christ at the end of the age (which may be close at hand). With these traditional fundamentalist themes is commonly combined a stress on conversion experience (the "born again" Christian) and emphasis on continuity with earlier revivalism.

Within this spectrum, however, are sharp divisions of opinion. For example, all affirm the importance of the authority of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. But intense debate goes on as to how this is to be understood, and it has been suggested that the basic conflict in the future will be between evangelical biblical rationalism and evangelical mysticism. An effort has been made by some to draw a distinction between infallibility and inerrancy. The idea of biblical inerrancy would mean that the Bible is totally without error (i.e., in the original autographs of the writers). And no biblical critical approach can be allowed except for the textual criticism that seeks the nearest approximation of the original writings. For "detailed inerrantists" like Harold Lindsell and Francis Schaeffer, such a view is the foundation stone and the guarantee of orthodoxy. (At the popular level, this attitude can be extended to include defense of the exclusive authority of the King James translation and even the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible). Other voices (e.g., Bloesch, Carnell, and perhaps Henry) find it possible to affirm the infallibility of Scripture, in the sense of it being the certain and unfailing rule of faith, while affirming the genuinely human characteristics of the inspired biblical writers, the historical situations and cultural limitations of the authors, and the presence on innocent inaccuracies and discrepancies. There is thus a modified openness to recent patterns o biblical criticism, and also a welcoming of such translations as the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, and the Jerusalem Bible, with also an insistence that there are no errors in the hear and substance of what the Bible expressly intends to teach, God's will and purpose for the world.

A related distinction is between the separatist and controversial mood of extreme fundamentalism (which can also lead to divisiveness by elevating sectarian positions such as millennialism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism to the status of essentials) and the more ecumenical or even "catholic" attitude of many recent evangelicals who want to distinguish themselves from "obscurantist" fundamentalists. The latter attitude includes an appreciation for the valid elements in existentialism and in such thinkers as Barth and Brunner, a concern for the unity of the church and for genuine conversation with differing Christian groups, and a more inclusive view of the historical roots of the evangelical position. These are to be claimed in the whole range of Christian history from the early church fathers and creeds through Puritanism and Pietism as well as the Reformers, Protestant orthodoxy, and revivalism. There can even appear, as in the "Chicago Call" of 1977 (by Bloesch and others), a plea for renewal of sacramental understanding of Christianity - though that sort of openness to catholicism has aroused opposition and has not been paralleled by much sympathy for Eastern Orthodoxy.

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Apart from the question of biblical infallibility, no issue has been more divisive in the evangelical camp than the issue of the millennium, the thousand-year reign (of Christ?) referred to in the New Testament (Rev. 20;2.3). To what extent are the events of modern Western history enactments of events foretold in the books of Daniel and Revelation? Could the Second Coming happen at any moment? Will the church suffer through the "tribulations" of Revelation? Is the millennium a messianic kingdom inaugurated by the Second Coming of Christ, followed after one thousand years by the last judgment and the end of the world (as the premillennialists contend)? Or are there two returns, a first to the saints, who are taken up to heaven in the "rapture" before the tribulation that befalls the world, and a second in which the millennial kingdom is set up on earth (as the dispensationalists variously content)? Or is the kingdom of God now present in Christ's rule in the Word and the Spirit, though with an increasing power of the forces of evil and a time of tribulation and persecution for the church prior to the Second Coming (as the amillenialists contend)? Or is the millennium a special time prior to the final return of Christ ad the establishment of the kingdom, a time in which the gospel will be preached to all the earth and the Jews (or at least some of them) will be converted (as the postmillennialists contend)? Though the expectation of the personal return of Christ is a staple of doctrine throughout the evangelical world, probably no other doctrine has been the subject of more acrimony or the cause of more separatism within the strict fundamentalist wing of the movement. And it has been argued with considerable force that the historical origins of modern fundamentalism really lie in the premillennial movement in England in the early nineteenth century, which later combined forces with the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge (see, for example, E.R. Sandee, The Roots of Fundamentalism [Chicago, 1970]). At the same time, the more moderate or ecumenical evangelicals now want to hold that this area of controversy is really over minor, nonessential points of doctrine and decry the separatism into which fundamentalism has been led.

Related

• See Baptist Origins

See also

• Dominionism
• Christian Reconstructionism
• Theocratic Dominionism
• Theonomy
• Defining A Fundamentalist
Differing views how Baptists originated
1/19/2008 5:10:52 PM - -76.30.20.161
Fundamentalist Christianity and its relationship to Dominionism
8/29/2007 11:54:17 AM - -76.30.20.161
The movement and its "Dominion Theology" are relatively new, dating from the publication in 1973 of The Institutes of Biblical Law by the late Rousas John Rushdoony. Related: [Dominionism], ChristianReconstructionism, TheocraticDominionism, and [Theonomy]
6/13/2006 9:18:44 AM - -195.53.125.135
The definition of a Christian Fundamentalist
8/16/2006 8:54:21 PM - -67.10.170.21