Contending
for the Faith
by
Fred Moritz
What
is Fundamentalism?
Non-Fundamentalist
Descriptions of Fundamentalism
Many
scholars who disavow Fundamentalism have objectively analyzed
the movement. Their work deserves attention as we consider
how unbelievers understand Fundamentalists and how brethren
who do not share Fundamentalist convictions see us.
James
Barr
James
Barr distances himself from the movement and clearly states
that he does not believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures.5
He recognizes three major characteristics of Fundamentalism:
(a) "A
very strong emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible, the
absence from it of any sort of error";
(b) "A
strong hostility to modern theology and to the methods,
results, and implications of modern critical study of
the Bible"; and
(c)
"An assurance that those who do not share their
religious viewpoint are not really 'true Christians' at
all."6
Carl
F. H. Henry
Carl
F. H. Henry was an early leader in New Evangelicalism. His
1947 book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism,
revealed dissatisfaction with Fundamentalism that later
produced New Evangelicalism. He served on the first faculty
at Fuller Theological Seminary and as the first editor of
Christianity Today. Henry also analyzed Fundamentalism.
Henry sees the movement in terms of its separatism:
Modern
prejudice, justly or unjustly, had come to identify
Fundamentalism largely in terms of an anti-ecumenical
spirit of independent isolationism, an uncritically
held set of theological formulas, an overly emotional
type of revivalism.7
Henry
also sees supernaturalism in the movement:
Fundamentalism
was a Bible-believing Christianity which regarded the
supernatural as a part of the essence of the Biblical
view: the miraculous was not to be viewed, as in liberalism,
as an incidental and superfluous accretion.8
Henry
further identifies militancy as an ingredient of Fundamentalism:
This
is not to suggest that Fundamentalism had no militant
opposition to sin. Of all modern viewpoints, when measured
against the black background of human nature disclosed
by the generation of two world wars, Fundamentalism
provided the most realistic appraisal of the condition
of man.9
George
Marsden
George
Marsden has taught at Calvin College, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Duke University.10
Presently he teaches at Notre Dame. He describes Fundamentalism
as militantly anti-modernist:
Briefly,
it was militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism.
Fundamentalists were evangelical Christians, . . . who
in the twentieth century militantly opposed both modernism
in theology and the cultural changes that modernism
endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what
most clearly set off fundamentalism from a number of
closely related traditions.11
In another
work Marsden reaffirms this definition of early Fundamentalism,
adding that it exhibited tendencies toward several elements,
including separatism and dispensationalism. He points out
that detractors would accuse a Fundamentalist of being "obscurantist,
anti-intellectual, or a political extremist. So when I speak
of fundamentalism here, I do not use the word in such pejorative
senses."12
Ernest
Sandeen
Ernest
Sandeen is less complete in his definition, but he also
begins,
A
firm trust and belief in every word of the Bible in
an age when skepticism was the rule and not the exception—this
has been both the pride and the scandal of Fundamentalism.
Faith in an inerrant Bible as much as an expectation
of the second advent of Christ has been the hallmark
of the Fundamentalist.13
Sandeen,
himself a liberal, understands the importance of an inerrant
Bible to Fundamentalism. As he describes the advances of
the higher criticism and modernism, he puts the issue in
clear focus:
When
many others carried on, supported by their personal
experience or faith in the church, why did some Christians
demand an inerrant Bible? This is the central question
of Fundamentalist historiography [emphasis mine].14
Sandeen
also understands the importance of premillennialism to the
Fundamentalist movement. He continues:
The
understanding of millenarian hermeneutics—the manner
in which the millenarians interpreted the Bible—and
the theology of biblical authority developed at Princeton
Seminary in the nineteenth century can help to answer
this question.15
Grant
Wacker
Grant
Wacker, writing about Augustus Hopkins Strong and his attempt
to balance biblical orthodoxy with invading modernism, understands
the issues in a similar way:
Fundamentalism
is used in a still more restricted fashion to designate
the militant emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible
and the deity and miracles of Jesus Christ that emerged
in the early twentieth century in opposition to theological
modernism.16
A Summary
Non-Fundamentalists
commonly identify several traits of Fundamentalism. They
see the following:
- An
emphasis on the inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy,
and authority of the Bible.
- An
opposition to modernism.
- An
emphasis on separatism.
- A
belief in the premillennial return of Christ.
- An
opposition to sin and the cultural decay produced by modernism.
- A
militant spirit.
Contending for the Faith. ByFred Moritz. ©2000. BJU Press. Reproduction
prohibited. This work is available for purchase at the Bob Jones University
Campus Store (phone: 1-800-252-1927; web address:
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