eternallifeinchrist
Puritan Board Freshman
What makes someone fundamental?
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Fundamentalist has various connotations, and sometimes carries a pejorative sense. So, the word itself is a misnomer. In a sense, it's often utilized to delienate dispensationalist evangelicals. On the other hand, in the early twentieth century, orthodox Presbyterian stalwarts like J. Gresham Machen were dubbed a "fundamentalist." Originally, before it lost its lustre, it described the type of Christian who was firm in his adherance to orthodox doctrine and the core tenets of the faith on Christology and Soteriology.What makes someone fundamental?
That's right, which is why I question why most contemporary Reformed thinkers would even want to embrace the appellation "fundamentalist" as a badge of self-description given the popular connotations of it. The frame of theology that a church embraces shouldn't be for pragmatic reasons, so as to allow for bridge-building coalitions with other denominations ostensibly to mount a concerted apologetics opposition to unbelieving heretics.Fundamentalism is a rejection of historic confessions to make way for a new minimalist confession that only contains the "fundamentals." Fundamentalists saw the historic confessions as needlessly devisive in the struggle against liberalism.
As Ryan has pointed out, it used to have a historical meaning behind it. It refers to those who were rejecting the liberalization of theology in mainline Protestantism. Fundamentalists wanted to affirm 5 key issues that modernists were denying:
1. the inerrancy of the Bible,
2. the Virgin birth,
3. physical resurrection,
4. atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and
5. the Second Coming.
The movement, as movements do, made for some strange bedfellows. Because Seminaries were the breeding ground for this liberalism, Bible believing Christians started to become suspicious of higher education since their kids were leaving for training believers and coming back as unbelievers. Hence, those that continued in the movement tended to be anti-intellectual and much of modern, conservative Evangelical inherits this "just me and the Bible" mentality as well as an eschewing of theological preparation.
You can kind of sense the angst now, though, because the Internet makes it impossible to insulate kids from the world's ideas as they once were. I think many of the fundamentalist institutions have had to start becoming more serious about education and taking their heads out of the sand but there is a tension between their roots and where they're trying to go. Witness how they handle the men within their midst that discover Reformed theology and want to reason from the Scriptures. They're typically anathemetized within the group because debate and discussion is not a skill that most fundamentalists have.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Chuch is very interesting because it grew out of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. My former Pastor's father-in-law was the pastor of an OPC in San Francisco that used grape juice during the Lord's Supper because there were some really old ladies that had been a part of the prohibition movement.
When J. Gresham Machen founded Westminster Seminary and helped to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (originally called the Presbyterian Church in America before the mainline sued), there were some fundamentalists that "joined the cause". Fractures formed early when the fundamentalists realized that Machen was, in the end, a Presbyterian and believed more than 5 fundamentals. It's pretty hard to form a Church around a Confession with only 5 things like the above after all. The Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC) was an offshoot and split off from the OPC because they wanted to be more fundamentalist than Presbyterian.
Anyhow, that's a nutshell. This is actually a pretty decent article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist
One of the unfortunate downsides to wrestling with someone in an intelectual battle, is that you are sometimes influenced by them indirectly. Hence, conservative Christian evangelicals become more obsessed about holding the public square, and taking it back from the liberals, rather than doing something meaningful like evangelizing. Take Bryan at the Scopes trial. Bryan's intellectual gafts gave the pagan H.L. Mencken reason to mock him and other Christians.
George Marsden says a fundamentalsit is "an evangelical who is angry about something."
George Marsden says a fundamentalist is "an evangelical who is angry about something."
As you can see from the thread, the definition of a fundamentalist has changed somewhat over the years. I think being a fundamentalist and being a Calvinist could go hand-in-hand if you define it as it was during the early struggles with liberalism. The two may not go together so well if you define it as Curt said:So if you have a high view of the Sabbath and don't drink or smoke...don't go out dancing...and really love reading the Scriptures...but go past the five points and are reformed...then they are not a fundamentalist? A Calvinist can hold to the five teachings, but a fundamentalist cannot hold to Calvinist teachings??? Just trying to unravel this one...
As you can see from the thread, the definition of a fundamentalist has changed somewhat over the years. I think being a fundamentalist and being a Calvinist could go hand-in-hand if you define it as it was during the early struggles with liberalism. The two may not go together so well if you define it as Curt said:
Most of those who call themselves fundamentalists today are separtist Baptist dispensationalists.
Since 'fundamentalist' is just a label, a person may find that as they become more Calvinistic in their beliefs that the label just doesn't accurately represent what they believe anymore. Sometimes people become less of a separatist when they become reformed. Sometimes they change and don't consider themselves dispensationalists anymore. Sometimes they change and no longer consider themselves baptistic. When one or more of these fundamentalist distinctions changes in the person's life, given the above definition, they may decide that the label just doesn't fit anymore.