But where does the meaning of this word come from? Let's start with the dictionary definitions:
1 Fundamentalism
Merriam Webster
1 a: often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching
1b : the beliefs of this movement
1c : adherence to such beliefs
2 : a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles
dictionary.com
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to modernism and that stresses the infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record, holding as essential to Christian faith belief in such doctrines as the creation of the world, the virgin birth, physical resurrection, atonement by the sacrificial death of Christ, and the Second Coming.
2. the beliefs held by those in this movement.
OED2 Dogmatic
1 A form of a religion, especially in Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture
So we see that fundamentalism requires that opinions on religion to be treated as if they are true and as being the basis for morality. Another word for this is dogmatic:
Merriam Webster 1 : expressing personal opinions or beliefs as if they are certainly correct and cannot be doubted
dictionary.com 1 relating to or of the nature of a dogma or dogmas or any strong set of principles concerning faith, morals, etc., as those laid down by a church; doctrinal
OED 1 Inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true3 Literalist
We also see that fundamentalism requires a literal interpretation of the Bible. hence a fundamentalist is a literalist.
4 Religious Exclusivism
We also see that fundamentalists believe in religious exclusivism - they claim that their interpretation of Scripture is the only correct interpretation, that they are right and everyone else is wrong. For the definition of this concept we can turn to two sources:
Oxford handbook of philosophy of religion
Religious exclusivism is the doctrine or belief that only one particular religion or belief system is true. Linked with a doctrine of salvation, religious exclusivism teaches that only the members of one religion or sect will reach Heaven or any given soteriological aim, while others will be doomed to eternal damnation or exclusion from a paradisiacal afterlife.
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy...
Someone is a religious exclusivist with respect to a given issue when he or she believes the religious perspective of only one basic theistic system (for instance, only one of the major world religions) or only one of the variants within a basic theistic system (for instance, within Christianity) to be the truth or at least closer to the truth than any other religious perspective on this issue. If a person believes that a given perspective on a religious issue is true, then, regardless of the nature or content of that perspective, he or she is a religious exclusivist.
5 Further definitions of Fundamentalism
5.1 In the context of culture and psychology
Two useful references are:
- "Fundamentalism and American Culture" by George Marsden, pages 4 and 5 (see below)
- "Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice". By Altemeyer & Hunsberger (International Journal for the Psychology of Religion)5.2 The Dictionary of Christianity in America
The Dictionary of Christianity in America by Daniel G. Reid, Robert D. Linder, Bruce L. Shelley and Harry S. Stout explains...
The interpretations given the fundamentalist movement have changed over time, with most older interpretations being based on the concepts of social displacement or cultural lag. Some in the 1930s, including H. Richard Niebuhr, understood the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism to be part of a broader social conflict between the cities and the country. In this view the fundamentalists were country and small-town dwellers who were reacting against the progressivism of city dwellers. Fundamentalism was seen as a form of anti-intellectualism during the 1950s; in the early 1960s Richard Hofstadter interpreted it in terms of status anxiety. Beginning in the late 1960s the movement began to be seen as "a bona fide religious, theological and even intellectual movement in its own right." Instead of interpreting fundamentalism as a simple anti-intellectualism, Paul Carter argued that "fundamentalists were simply intellectual in a way different than their opponents." Moving into the 1970s, Earnest R. Sandeen saw fundamentalism as arising from the confluence of Princeton Theology and millennialism.
5.3 The Fundamentals
The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth (generally referred to simply as The Fundamentals) is a set of 90 essays published from 1910 to 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, edited by A. C. Dixon and later by Reuben Archer Torrey. It was first published as a 12-volume set, and later as a four-volume set retaining all 90 essays. The 90 essays were written by 64 different authors, representing most of the major Protestant Christian denominations. They are widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism.
The project was initially conceived in 1909 by California businessman Lyman Stewart and his brother Milton. They anonymously provided funds for collecting essays to set out what they believed to be the fundamentals of Christian faith, and for printing and distributing copies of the collected essays. The Fundamentals was sent free to ministers, missionaries, professors of theology, YMCA and YWCA secretaries, Sunday School superintendents, and other Protestant religious workers in every English-speaking country. Over three million volumes (250,000 sets) were sent out.
The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called Romanism by them), socialism, Modernism, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn, Spiritualism, and evolutionism.
The entire text of all 90 essays can be found here
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
5.4 From Wikipedia
The term "fundamentalism" has its roots in the Niagara Bible Conference (1878–1897), which defined those tenets it considered fundamental to Christian belief. The term was popularized by the The Fundamentals, a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 [see 5.3]
5.5 Fundamentalism and Orthodoxy
Fundamentalism in the context of orthodoxy is explained by Roger E. Olson (Professor of Theology, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University).
"Orthodoxy is belief in the universal doctrines (dogmas) of Christianity rooted in Scripture and commonly held and taught by all the church fathers and Reformers. They are what author Gary Tyra (in Toward a Missional Orthodoxy) calls the “Christological verities.” They include the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ (incarnation of God), Trinity, salvation through Christ and his cross, and salvation by grace alone."
"Fundamentalism is (among other things): adding secondary and even tertiary beliefs to basic Christian orthodoxy as necessary for authentic Christian identity (e.g., premillennialism, biblical inerrancy, young earth creationism), insisting that salvation depends on belief in a long list of doctrines including ones not part of basic Christian orthodoxy, and refusing Christian fellowship with other Christians who are “doctrinally polluted” or “doctrinally impure” because they do not believe everything on the fundamentalists’ long list of essential doctrines."
6 Christian Fundamentalism
To put all of the above into a Christian context, we can turn to George Marsden's "Fundamentalism and American Culture" (page 117)
In 1910 the Presbyterian General Assembly, in response to some questions raised about the orthodoxy of some graduates of Union Theological seminary, instructed its Committee on Bills and Overtures to prepare a statement for governing future ordinations. The committee reported, and the General Assembly passed the Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910. This Deliverance declared that five doctrines were "necessary and essential" to the Christian faith:
1. The Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (John1:1; John20:28; Hebrews1:8-9).
2. The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27).
3. The Blood Atonement (Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25,5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12-14).
4. The Bodily Resurrection (Luke 24:36-46;1 Corinthians 15:1-4,15:14-15).
5. The inerrancy of the scriptures themselves (Psalms 12:6-7; Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20).
The minutes of the General Assembly are available here (starting from page 271)
In the 1920s these became the "famous five points" that were the last rallying position before the spectacular collapse of the conservative party.
These are the dogmatic points that Christian Fundamentalists use to define the boundaries of their exclusivism. Christian Fundamentalists claim that those who disagree with any of those five points are not Christians at all. Fundamentalists will tolerate disagreements within Christianity, as long as there is no disagreement on these five fundamentals, because they are the basis of Salvation.
7 Theological Modernism
7.1 Definitions
In the context of theology, modernism is a reaction, and a challenge, to fundamentalism. Definitions:
Merriam Webster:
- a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements
OED:
- A movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
dictionary.com:
- the movement in Roman Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: condemned by Pope Pius X in 1907.
- the liberal theological tendency in Protestantism in the 20th century.
7.2 The Modern Day View
Wayne Jackson, Biblical Scholar and contributor to The Christian Courier explains...
Modernism repudiates the biblical description of the nature of God. The God of the Old Testament is seen as a hateful deity of vengeance and is rejected. Albrecht Ritschl, for example, repudiated the Bible affirmations regarding Jehovah’s holiness and wrath and viewed the Lord solely as a being of love. This view overlooks the justice of God, failing to recognize that Jehovah will punish the rebel.
Modernism attacks the scriptural account of creation, suggesting that the Mosaic record is simply an ancient “myth” (cf. The Interpreter’s Bible, I.460ff). It denies that man has fallen from his holy estate; rather, it asserts that humanity has actually ascended from a brutish state (via the evolutionary process) to its current status. Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke declared that he was not embarrassed to confess that his grandfather was a monkey and his great-grandfather a tadpole.
Modernism adopts a “higher critical” attitude toward the Bible, which ignores the testimony of Scripture itself. For example, it is claimed that Moses did not author the Pentateuch, as both Old and New Testament evidence suggest; rather, supposedly, the first five books of the Bible are but a compilation of documents (e.g., J, E, P, D—the initials signifying Jehovah, Elohim, Priestly, and Deuteronomic—code names for the alleged authors).
Modernism contends that the Bible, as a historical record, is not trustworthy. Advocates of this viewpoint do not hesitate to assert that the Scriptures contain a host of errors of a considerable variety. They believe that the basis of the biblical record is an ancient legendary tradition.
Modernism, therefore, seeks to “de-mythologize” the Scriptures. Anything of a miraculous nature must be explained away as having some natural, though perhaps misunderstood, nature. According to this ideology, for example, Jesus did not walk upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee; instead, he was merely walking in the shallow surf near the coast, and the disciples, from a distance, just thought he was upon the surface of the sea.
Modernism asserts that human conduct cannot be regulated by a “rule book” such as the Bible. Instead, one must individually make his own decisions on ethical issues, letting subjective “love” be the guiding principle in various situations. Joseph Fletcher’s school of situation ethics has peddled this hedonistic ideology.
7.3 The Catholic Definition
The catholic church was - and is - strongly opposed to modernism. The official Catholic position is comprehensively covered in this famous encyclical of Pope Pius X
7.4 The Anti-Modernist view
In 1923 J. Gresham Machen wrote what many consider to be the definitive attack on modernism with his book ”Christianity and Liberalism.” His view is made plain in the interaction to the book...
"In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism."
In the book he refers to modernism as "the enemy within and states that modernism is...
"...the chief modern rival of Christianity. At every point the two movements are in direct opposition. The foundational truths have been surrendered; or worse, the concept of truth has been surrendered to pragmatism so that even affirmations are denials, because they are affirmed as useful and not as true."
7.5 The Pro-Modernist view
For the modernist stand against its fundamentalist critics we turn to Shailer Mathews, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His Book “The Faith of Modernism” published in 1914, paints a different picture of Modernism to that coming from fundamentalists. This is an extract from "The Faith of Modernism” - Chapter 2 pages 15 and 16...
WHAT IS MODERNISM?
Modernism is a projection of the Christian movement into modern conditions. It proceeds within the religious limits set by an ongoing Christian group; it distinguishes permanent Christian convictions from their doctrinal expression; it uses these convictions in meeting the actual needs of our modern world.
The term Modernism itself is somewhat unfortunate. Despite all protestation to the contrary it gives the impression of self-satisfaction, as if only those who hold certain views are intellectually abreast of the times. Yet the terms "Modernism" and "Modernists" have come into such common use that they cannot be avoided. This much, at least, can be said in their favor: they indicate a real tendency in our religious life. This tendency is to be seen when one compares the intellectual habits of Christians as they expound Christianity. Some rely on scientific method; others, on church authority. The former may be said in general to be those indicated when Modernists are mentioned. But strictly speaking, "Modernism" and "Modernist" imply no new theology or organized denominational movement.
The habits of mind and tendencies of thought which the terms have come loosely to represent are to be found in all Christian groups in all parts of the world. Until Modernism is distinguished from fundamentally theological interests, it will be misunderstood. Modernists are not members of a group which prescribes doctrinal views, but Christians who use certain methods of thought are described as Modernists.
8 "Fundamentalism and American Culture" by George Marsden"
extract from ages 4 and 5.
“Modernism,” President James M Gray of Moody Bible Institute stated flatly, “is a revolt against the God of Christianity.” It is a “foe of good government.”
”The evolutionary hypothesis,” declared William Jennings Bryan in a similarly sweeping statement, “is the only thing that has seriously menaced religion since the birth of Christ; and it menaces... civilisation as well as religion.” Given the seriousness of these threats, the response demanded was clear. In the intellectual battle between true Christianity and the philosophical materialism of modern life, said J. Gresham Machen, “there can be no 'peace without victory'; one side or the other must win.”
During this period of its national prominence in the 1920s, fundamentalism is best defined in terms of these concerns. Briefly, it was militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism. Fundamentalists were evangelical Christians, close to the traditions of the dominant American revivalist establishment of the nineteenth century, 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, such as evangelicalism, revivalism, pietism, the holiness movements, millenarianism, Reformed confessionalism, Baptist traditionalism, and other denominational orthodoxies. Fundamentalism was a “movement” in the sense of a tendency or development in Christian thought that gradually took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representatives of other movements. Although it developed a distinct life, identity and eventually a subculture of its own, it never existed wholly independently of the older movements from which it grew. Fundamentalism was a loose, diverse, and changing federation of co-belligerents united by their fierce opposition to modernist attempts to bring Christianity into line with modern thought.
Two types of interpretation of fundamentalism have prevailed to date. The most common has been to look on fundamentalism as essentially the extreme and agonzied defense of a dying way of life. Opponents of fundamentalists proposed such a sociological explanation in the 1920s, and through the next generation fundamentalism was commonly regarded as a manifestation of cultural lag that time and education eventually would eliminate. But as it became apparent in recent decades that fundamentalism and its new evangelical offspring were by no means disappearing from American life, some later interpreters began to take more seriously the internal history of fundamentalism and its relation to other traditions.
By far the most important manifestation of this shift was the interpretation of Ernest Sandeen, presented in its most complete form in 1970. Rejecting social explanations of fundamentalism, Sandeen found its roots in genuine doctrinal traditions. Basically according to Sandeen, fundamentalism was the outgrowth of the "Millenarian Movement" that developed in late nineteenth-century America, especially through Bible institutes and conferences concerning the interpretation of Biblical prophecies. The movement's millenarian teachings, appearing in their most common form as “dispensational premillennialism” divided all of history into distinct eras or dispensations. The final dispensation would be the “millennium” or one-thousand-year personal reign of Christ on earth. According to Sandeen, these Bible teachers acquired from conservative Presbyterians at Princeton Theological Seminary the newly defined dogma that the bible was “inerrant” in every detail. Millenarianism, however, was primary. This tradition, rather than events of the 1920s, Sandeen argues, is crucial in understanding fundamentalism.
Buy the book here
8.1 Inerrancy and Neo-Orthodoxy
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals provides a comprehensive overview of the inerrancy debate that was such a significant part of the evolution of fundamentalism here in their article "A Layman's Historical Guide to the Inerrancy Debate"
For much of Christian history, the view of the inspiration and authority of the Bible outlined above held firm, and it was almost unheard of for Christians to criticize and reject the content of Scripture as erroneous. The position of the greatest of the Western church fathers, Augustine of Hippo, is instructive here. In his "Reply to Faustus the Manichaean" (XI.5), St. Augustine wrote: "If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood."
But with the Enlightenment this consensus began to erode. This was the "Age of Reason" (c. 1650-1800), and while many good and useful things happened during this time such as the rise of modern science, there was also a corrosively anti-religious aspect to the Enlightenment. This anti-religious impulse flowed from the Enlightenment's view of human reason as adequate and autonomous. Human reason, it was thought, is up to the task of discovering truth, and it answers to no higher authority. For obvious reasons, this Enlightenment view of reason came into conflict with the historic Christian view of the Scriptures as without error. The Bible was derided as a "paper Pope" and viewed simply as a human document like other human documents. Moreover, the biblical narratives with their affirmations of miraculous events such as the Exodus from Egypt, the Incarnation, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and so forth were viewed as irrational and incompatible with the naturalistic worldview of the Enlightenment.
The influence of this Enlightenment rationalism gave rise to the Protestant liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Here the tendency was to use traditional pious Christian language but to reinterpret it along the lines of Enlightenment naturalism. Thus the miracles of Jesus were dismissed or explained away. No longer seen as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus was viewed simply as a really good human being who serves as a wonderful example for us. The human condition was also viewed in much more optimistic terms as these liberals spoke of the innate perfectibility of humanity. Needless to say, the inerrancy of the Bible was emphatically rejected as well.
In America this liberal impulse came to be known as "Modernism," and this wholesale rejection of historic Christian truth spawned a reaction in the form "fundamentalism." The "Fundamentalists," as they were called, sought to identify and defend essential Christian beliefs. The five so-called "Fundamentals" were the deity and Virgin Birth of Christ, the reality of biblical miracles, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, and the inerrancy of the Bible. In the northern Presbyterian Church this fundamentalist effort in turn provoked the modernist "Auburn Affirmation" (1924), a document signed by over a thousand Presbyterians which called for tolerance and held that the five fundamentals were merely "theories" that should not be viewed as essential Christian beliefs. This Auburn Affirmation was particularly pointed in its rejection of inerrancy ("The doctrine of inerrancy, intended to enhance the authority of the Scriptures, in fact impairs their supreme authority for faith and life, and weakens the testimony of the church to the power of God unto salvation through Jesus Christ."). But by 1930 or so, many of the northern Protestant denominations had either been taken over wholesale by modernism or had decided to tolerate a wide range of views. For over a century, Princeton Theological Seminary had been the bastion of Old School Presbyterian orthodoxy and its faculty members the champions of the church's doctrine of the inerrant word. In 1929, two signers of the Auburn Affirmation were placed on the reorganized Board of Trustees of Princeton Seminary. In response, the renowned New Testament professor J. Gresham Machen and Robert Dick Wilson, one of the leading Old Testament scholars in America, resigned from Princeton Seminary and along with others such as Cornelius Van Til and John Murray became the founding faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, a seminary established to continue the Old Princeton theology and to defend the absolute authority of God's Word.
Of course, not all fundamentalists were as careful and scholarly as these Old Princetonians. We may readily admit that some fundamentalists, in their zeal to defend the divine authority of the Bible and because of the influence of Dispensational premillennialism, adopted an overly literalistic approach to Scripture that failed to properly distinguish between the divine authority of the Bible and our human interpretations of it. Moreover, some of them also tended to emphasize the divine authorship of the Bible at the expense of the human, and thus they failed to do proper justice to the human dimension of Scripture.
Another response to liberalism or modernism was Neo-orthodoxy. In the wake of the First World War many found the optimism of the older liberalism, with its notions of human perfectibility, to be hopelessly naïve. They also found that classic Christian themes of radical human sinfulness and divine grace resonated powerfully after the horrors of war, and so there was a return to the classical Christian tradition by theologians such as Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Emil Brunner (1889-1966) in Europe, and many such as Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), and John H. Leith (1919-2002) in the United States.
To be sure, the Neo-orthodox movement was diverse, and some have more recently suggested (wrongly, I think) that there was really no such thing as "Neo-orthodoxy." One thing that the Neo-orthodox theologians did have in common was a rejection of inerrancy. For example, for Karl Barth the only divine revelation, strictly speaking, is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and the Bible is but a fallible human "witness to revelation" which "becomes" the Word of God as the Holy Spirit uses it to illumine hearts and minds. A complication we face with these Neo-orthodox thinkers is their dialectical method--the answer to nearly every theological question is an equivocal "yes" and "no." Thus, Barth could speak highly of the Bible as "inspired" and as in some sense "word of God" even prior to our reception of it, but he also insisted that the Bible was full of contradictions and was fallible even with respect to matters of "religion and theology."
8.2 The Princeton/Westminster Split & Inerrancy
The Princeton Theology was a tradition of conservative, Christian, Reformed and Presbyterian theology at Princeton Theological Seminary lasting from the founding of that institution in 1812 until the 1920s. The influence of modernism at the school saw Princeton theologians leave to found Westminster Theological Seminary.
A thorough overview of the Princeton/Westminster split and the doctrine of inerrancy can be found in the writings of biblical scholar Moises Silva, which can be found here. A good overview of the Westminster Confession of Faith can be found here.
9 Contemporary Fundamentalism
9.1 Curtis Hutson Curtis Hutson (July 10, 1934 – March 5, 1995) was an Independent Fundamental Baptist pastor and editor of The Sword of the Lord (1980-1995). This cover page lists his Fundamentals of the Faith...
9.2 Rick Warren
According to Rick Warren (who, by the way, asserts he is not a fundamentalist), the origin of the word "fundamentalism" comes from the 20th century document called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith. However, I can't find any record of any such document. I assume he is referring to The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth which is described in section 5.3 above and in terms of "five fundamentals" I assume he is referring to what I've described in section 6 above. Several Christian commentators assert Rick Warren is ignorant on the topic of fundamentalism.
9.3 The Fundamental Evangelistic Association
Since its inception in 1928 when it was found by Pastor M.H. Reynolds, the FEA has promoted and supported the concept of Christian fundamentalism in the modern world. They explain that...
I. The Inspiration of the Bible
II. The Trinity
III. The Deity and Virgin Birth of Christ
IV. The Blood Atonement
V. The Resurrection
VI. The Second Coming
VII. The Personality of Satan
VIII. Heaven and Hell
IX. Creation and Man's Fall
X. Justification by Faith
XI. Eternal Security
XII. The Holy Spirit and Body of Christ
XIII. Separation
XIV. The Local Church and Its Mission
XV. Good Works
------------------
Additional References
http://www.desiringgod.org/biographies/j-gresham-machens-response-to-modernism
http://www.reformed.org/books/chr_and_lib/
In the 1920s these became the "famous five points" that were the last rallying position before the spectacular collapse of the conservative party.
These are the dogmatic points that Christian Fundamentalists use to define the boundaries of their exclusivism. Christian Fundamentalists claim that those who disagree with any of those five points are not Christians at all. Fundamentalists will tolerate disagreements within Christianity, as long as there is no disagreement on these five fundamentals, because they are the basis of Salvation.
7 Theological Modernism
7.1 Definitions
In the context of theology, modernism is a reaction, and a challenge, to fundamentalism. Definitions:
Merriam Webster:
- a tendency in theology to accommodate traditional religious teaching to contemporary thought and especially to devalue supernatural elements
OED:
- A movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
dictionary.com:
- the movement in Roman Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: condemned by Pope Pius X in 1907.
- the liberal theological tendency in Protestantism in the 20th century.
7.2 The Modern Day View
Wayne Jackson, Biblical Scholar and contributor to The Christian Courier explains...
Modernism repudiates the biblical description of the nature of God. The God of the Old Testament is seen as a hateful deity of vengeance and is rejected. Albrecht Ritschl, for example, repudiated the Bible affirmations regarding Jehovah’s holiness and wrath and viewed the Lord solely as a being of love. This view overlooks the justice of God, failing to recognize that Jehovah will punish the rebel.
Modernism attacks the scriptural account of creation, suggesting that the Mosaic record is simply an ancient “myth” (cf. The Interpreter’s Bible, I.460ff). It denies that man has fallen from his holy estate; rather, it asserts that humanity has actually ascended from a brutish state (via the evolutionary process) to its current status. Lutheran theologian Helmut Thielicke declared that he was not embarrassed to confess that his grandfather was a monkey and his great-grandfather a tadpole.
Modernism adopts a “higher critical” attitude toward the Bible, which ignores the testimony of Scripture itself. For example, it is claimed that Moses did not author the Pentateuch, as both Old and New Testament evidence suggest; rather, supposedly, the first five books of the Bible are but a compilation of documents (e.g., J, E, P, D—the initials signifying Jehovah, Elohim, Priestly, and Deuteronomic—code names for the alleged authors).
Modernism contends that the Bible, as a historical record, is not trustworthy. Advocates of this viewpoint do not hesitate to assert that the Scriptures contain a host of errors of a considerable variety. They believe that the basis of the biblical record is an ancient legendary tradition.
Modernism, therefore, seeks to “de-mythologize” the Scriptures. Anything of a miraculous nature must be explained away as having some natural, though perhaps misunderstood, nature. According to this ideology, for example, Jesus did not walk upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee; instead, he was merely walking in the shallow surf near the coast, and the disciples, from a distance, just thought he was upon the surface of the sea.
Modernism asserts that human conduct cannot be regulated by a “rule book” such as the Bible. Instead, one must individually make his own decisions on ethical issues, letting subjective “love” be the guiding principle in various situations. Joseph Fletcher’s school of situation ethics has peddled this hedonistic ideology.
7.3 The Catholic Definition
The catholic church was - and is - strongly opposed to modernism. The official Catholic position is comprehensively covered in this famous encyclical of Pope Pius X
7.4 The Anti-Modernist view
In 1923 J. Gresham Machen wrote what many consider to be the definitive attack on modernism with his book ”Christianity and Liberalism.” His view is made plain in the interaction to the book...
"In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism."
In the book he refers to modernism as "the enemy within and states that modernism is...
"...the chief modern rival of Christianity. At every point the two movements are in direct opposition. The foundational truths have been surrendered; or worse, the concept of truth has been surrendered to pragmatism so that even affirmations are denials, because they are affirmed as useful and not as true."
7.5 The Pro-Modernist view
For the modernist stand against its fundamentalist critics we turn to Shailer Mathews, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His Book “The Faith of Modernism” published in 1914, paints a different picture of Modernism to that coming from fundamentalists. This is an extract from "The Faith of Modernism” - Chapter 2 pages 15 and 16...
WHAT IS MODERNISM?
Modernism is a projection of the Christian movement into modern conditions. It proceeds within the religious limits set by an ongoing Christian group; it distinguishes permanent Christian convictions from their doctrinal expression; it uses these convictions in meeting the actual needs of our modern world.
The term Modernism itself is somewhat unfortunate. Despite all protestation to the contrary it gives the impression of self-satisfaction, as if only those who hold certain views are intellectually abreast of the times. Yet the terms "Modernism" and "Modernists" have come into such common use that they cannot be avoided. This much, at least, can be said in their favor: they indicate a real tendency in our religious life. This tendency is to be seen when one compares the intellectual habits of Christians as they expound Christianity. Some rely on scientific method; others, on church authority. The former may be said in general to be those indicated when Modernists are mentioned. But strictly speaking, "Modernism" and "Modernist" imply no new theology or organized denominational movement.
The habits of mind and tendencies of thought which the terms have come loosely to represent are to be found in all Christian groups in all parts of the world. Until Modernism is distinguished from fundamentally theological interests, it will be misunderstood. Modernists are not members of a group which prescribes doctrinal views, but Christians who use certain methods of thought are described as Modernists.
8 "Fundamentalism and American Culture" by George Marsden"
extract from ages 4 and 5.
“Modernism,” President James M Gray of Moody Bible Institute stated flatly, “is a revolt against the God of Christianity.” It is a “foe of good government.”
”The evolutionary hypothesis,” declared William Jennings Bryan in a similarly sweeping statement, “is the only thing that has seriously menaced religion since the birth of Christ; and it menaces... civilisation as well as religion.” Given the seriousness of these threats, the response demanded was clear. In the intellectual battle between true Christianity and the philosophical materialism of modern life, said J. Gresham Machen, “there can be no 'peace without victory'; one side or the other must win.”
During this period of its national prominence in the 1920s, fundamentalism is best defined in terms of these concerns. Briefly, it was militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism. Fundamentalists were evangelical Christians, close to the traditions of the dominant American revivalist establishment of the nineteenth century, 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, such as evangelicalism, revivalism, pietism, the holiness movements, millenarianism, Reformed confessionalism, Baptist traditionalism, and other denominational orthodoxies. Fundamentalism was a “movement” in the sense of a tendency or development in Christian thought that gradually took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representatives of other movements. Although it developed a distinct life, identity and eventually a subculture of its own, it never existed wholly independently of the older movements from which it grew. Fundamentalism was a loose, diverse, and changing federation of co-belligerents united by their fierce opposition to modernist attempts to bring Christianity into line with modern thought.
Two types of interpretation of fundamentalism have prevailed to date. The most common has been to look on fundamentalism as essentially the extreme and agonzied defense of a dying way of life. Opponents of fundamentalists proposed such a sociological explanation in the 1920s, and through the next generation fundamentalism was commonly regarded as a manifestation of cultural lag that time and education eventually would eliminate. But as it became apparent in recent decades that fundamentalism and its new evangelical offspring were by no means disappearing from American life, some later interpreters began to take more seriously the internal history of fundamentalism and its relation to other traditions.
By far the most important manifestation of this shift was the interpretation of Ernest Sandeen, presented in its most complete form in 1970. Rejecting social explanations of fundamentalism, Sandeen found its roots in genuine doctrinal traditions. Basically according to Sandeen, fundamentalism was the outgrowth of the "Millenarian Movement" that developed in late nineteenth-century America, especially through Bible institutes and conferences concerning the interpretation of Biblical prophecies. The movement's millenarian teachings, appearing in their most common form as “dispensational premillennialism” divided all of history into distinct eras or dispensations. The final dispensation would be the “millennium” or one-thousand-year personal reign of Christ on earth. According to Sandeen, these Bible teachers acquired from conservative Presbyterians at Princeton Theological Seminary the newly defined dogma that the bible was “inerrant” in every detail. Millenarianism, however, was primary. This tradition, rather than events of the 1920s, Sandeen argues, is crucial in understanding fundamentalism.
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8.1 Inerrancy and Neo-Orthodoxy
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals provides a comprehensive overview of the inerrancy debate that was such a significant part of the evolution of fundamentalism here in their article "A Layman's Historical Guide to the Inerrancy Debate"
For much of Christian history, the view of the inspiration and authority of the Bible outlined above held firm, and it was almost unheard of for Christians to criticize and reject the content of Scripture as erroneous. The position of the greatest of the Western church fathers, Augustine of Hippo, is instructive here. In his "Reply to Faustus the Manichaean" (XI.5), St. Augustine wrote: "If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood."
But with the Enlightenment this consensus began to erode. This was the "Age of Reason" (c. 1650-1800), and while many good and useful things happened during this time such as the rise of modern science, there was also a corrosively anti-religious aspect to the Enlightenment. This anti-religious impulse flowed from the Enlightenment's view of human reason as adequate and autonomous. Human reason, it was thought, is up to the task of discovering truth, and it answers to no higher authority. For obvious reasons, this Enlightenment view of reason came into conflict with the historic Christian view of the Scriptures as without error. The Bible was derided as a "paper Pope" and viewed simply as a human document like other human documents. Moreover, the biblical narratives with their affirmations of miraculous events such as the Exodus from Egypt, the Incarnation, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and so forth were viewed as irrational and incompatible with the naturalistic worldview of the Enlightenment.
The influence of this Enlightenment rationalism gave rise to the Protestant liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Here the tendency was to use traditional pious Christian language but to reinterpret it along the lines of Enlightenment naturalism. Thus the miracles of Jesus were dismissed or explained away. No longer seen as the incarnate Son of God, Jesus was viewed simply as a really good human being who serves as a wonderful example for us. The human condition was also viewed in much more optimistic terms as these liberals spoke of the innate perfectibility of humanity. Needless to say, the inerrancy of the Bible was emphatically rejected as well.
In America this liberal impulse came to be known as "Modernism," and this wholesale rejection of historic Christian truth spawned a reaction in the form "fundamentalism." The "Fundamentalists," as they were called, sought to identify and defend essential Christian beliefs. The five so-called "Fundamentals" were the deity and Virgin Birth of Christ, the reality of biblical miracles, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, and the inerrancy of the Bible. In the northern Presbyterian Church this fundamentalist effort in turn provoked the modernist "Auburn Affirmation" (1924), a document signed by over a thousand Presbyterians which called for tolerance and held that the five fundamentals were merely "theories" that should not be viewed as essential Christian beliefs. This Auburn Affirmation was particularly pointed in its rejection of inerrancy ("The doctrine of inerrancy, intended to enhance the authority of the Scriptures, in fact impairs their supreme authority for faith and life, and weakens the testimony of the church to the power of God unto salvation through Jesus Christ."). But by 1930 or so, many of the northern Protestant denominations had either been taken over wholesale by modernism or had decided to tolerate a wide range of views. For over a century, Princeton Theological Seminary had been the bastion of Old School Presbyterian orthodoxy and its faculty members the champions of the church's doctrine of the inerrant word. In 1929, two signers of the Auburn Affirmation were placed on the reorganized Board of Trustees of Princeton Seminary. In response, the renowned New Testament professor J. Gresham Machen and Robert Dick Wilson, one of the leading Old Testament scholars in America, resigned from Princeton Seminary and along with others such as Cornelius Van Til and John Murray became the founding faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, a seminary established to continue the Old Princeton theology and to defend the absolute authority of God's Word.
Of course, not all fundamentalists were as careful and scholarly as these Old Princetonians. We may readily admit that some fundamentalists, in their zeal to defend the divine authority of the Bible and because of the influence of Dispensational premillennialism, adopted an overly literalistic approach to Scripture that failed to properly distinguish between the divine authority of the Bible and our human interpretations of it. Moreover, some of them also tended to emphasize the divine authorship of the Bible at the expense of the human, and thus they failed to do proper justice to the human dimension of Scripture.
Another response to liberalism or modernism was Neo-orthodoxy. In the wake of the First World War many found the optimism of the older liberalism, with its notions of human perfectibility, to be hopelessly naïve. They also found that classic Christian themes of radical human sinfulness and divine grace resonated powerfully after the horrors of war, and so there was a return to the classical Christian tradition by theologians such as Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Emil Brunner (1889-1966) in Europe, and many such as Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), and John H. Leith (1919-2002) in the United States.
To be sure, the Neo-orthodox movement was diverse, and some have more recently suggested (wrongly, I think) that there was really no such thing as "Neo-orthodoxy." One thing that the Neo-orthodox theologians did have in common was a rejection of inerrancy. For example, for Karl Barth the only divine revelation, strictly speaking, is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and the Bible is but a fallible human "witness to revelation" which "becomes" the Word of God as the Holy Spirit uses it to illumine hearts and minds. A complication we face with these Neo-orthodox thinkers is their dialectical method--the answer to nearly every theological question is an equivocal "yes" and "no." Thus, Barth could speak highly of the Bible as "inspired" and as in some sense "word of God" even prior to our reception of it, but he also insisted that the Bible was full of contradictions and was fallible even with respect to matters of "religion and theology."
8.2 The Princeton/Westminster Split & Inerrancy
The Princeton Theology was a tradition of conservative, Christian, Reformed and Presbyterian theology at Princeton Theological Seminary lasting from the founding of that institution in 1812 until the 1920s. The influence of modernism at the school saw Princeton theologians leave to found Westminster Theological Seminary.
A thorough overview of the Princeton/Westminster split and the doctrine of inerrancy can be found in the writings of biblical scholar Moises Silva, which can be found here. A good overview of the Westminster Confession of Faith can be found here.
9 Contemporary Fundamentalism
9.1 Curtis Hutson Curtis Hutson (July 10, 1934 – March 5, 1995) was an Independent Fundamental Baptist pastor and editor of The Sword of the Lord (1980-1995). This cover page lists his Fundamentals of the Faith...
9.2 Rick Warren
According to Rick Warren (who, by the way, asserts he is not a fundamentalist), the origin of the word "fundamentalism" comes from the 20th century document called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith. However, I can't find any record of any such document. I assume he is referring to The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth which is described in section 5.3 above and in terms of "five fundamentals" I assume he is referring to what I've described in section 6 above. Several Christian commentators assert Rick Warren is ignorant on the topic of fundamentalism.
9.3 The Fundamental Evangelistic Association
Since its inception in 1928 when it was found by Pastor M.H. Reynolds, the FEA has promoted and supported the concept of Christian fundamentalism in the modern world. They explain that...
One of the difficult tasks fundamentalists face today it the need to continually warn people in a time when warnings are not popular. It is difficult to be a fundamentalist because you must endure many hardships. We who are fundamentalists who are seeking to obey the Lord strive for an incorruptible crown. We need to remind ourselves of that. That battle is tough. Don’t think it isn’t. The battle will become tougher. Don’t think it won’t.They also provide a list of the bitter enemies of biblical fundamentalism...
- Self
- The World
- Satan
- False doctrine
- Humanistic psychology
- Complacency
- Pragmatism
I. The Inspiration of the Bible
II. The Trinity
III. The Deity and Virgin Birth of Christ
IV. The Blood Atonement
V. The Resurrection
VI. The Second Coming
VII. The Personality of Satan
VIII. Heaven and Hell
IX. Creation and Man's Fall
X. Justification by Faith
XI. Eternal Security
XII. The Holy Spirit and Body of Christ
XIII. Separation
XIV. The Local Church and Its Mission
XV. Good Works
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Additional References
http://www.desiringgod.org/biographies/j-gresham-machens-response-to-modernism
http://www.reformed.org/books/chr_and_lib/
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