The Difference between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists – This exclusive article comes from Roger Steer author of the newly published “Inside Story”, a biographical look at the life of preacher/teacher John Stott.
A wonderful article from John Stott (Whom I greatly admire), which is an exclusive to the brilliant Virtue Online, who have kindly granted me permission to reproduce (thanks David) on this blog.
The Difference between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists
By Roger Steer
A VOL Exclusive
www.virtueonline.org
November 13, 2009
This exclusive article comes from Roger Steer author of the newly published “Inside Story”, a biographical look at the life of preacher/teacher John Stott. It did not make the cut in Mr. Steer’s book and so it is being offered exclusively to VOL’s readers.
If you would like to purchase Roger Steer’s book on Dr. Stott you can do so by clicking here http://tinyurl.com/yju5yxk
Over a period of a few months during 1998, John wrote his Evangelical Truth: a personal plea for unity. ‘As I approach the end of my life on earth,’ he wrote, ‘and as this year I complete sixty years of privileged Christian discipleship, I would like to leave behind me, as a kind of spiritual legacy, this little statement of evangelical faith, this personal appeal to the rising generation.’
Twenty years on from answering the questions ‘What is an evangelical?’ at Nottingham in 1977, he chose a Trinitarian approach to evangelical truth. But first, he set out ten respects in which the authentic evangelical differed from the fundamentalist. In doing so he tried to be as fair as he could to fundamentalists trying desperately to avoid caricature.
In relation to human thought, fundamentalists gave the impression that they distrusted scholarship, including the scientific disciplines. Some tended towards a thoroughgoing anti-intellectualism, even obscurantism. Authentic evangelicals, however, acknowledged that all truth was God’s truth, that our minds were God-given, being a vital aspect of the divine image we bear, that we insulted God if we refused to think, and that we honoured him when, whether through science or Scripture, we (as Kepler put it) ‘think God’s thoughts after him’.
As to the nature of the Bible, fundamentalists were said to believe that ‘every word of the Bible was literally true’. To be fair to fundamentalists, John thought this was a slander, since the adverb ‘literally’ was being used too sweepingly. Yet he couldn’t deny that some fundamentalists were characterised by an excessive literalism. Evangelicals, however, while believing that whatever the Bible affirmed was true, added that some of what it affirmed was figuratively or poetically (rather than literally) true, and was meant to be interpreted thus. Not even the most extreme fundamentalist believed that God had feathers (Ps. 91:4).
In relation to biblical inspiration, fundamentalists had tended to regard it as having been a somewhat mechanical process, in which the human authors were passive and played no active role. Thus the fundamentalist view of the Bible, as having been dictated by God, resembled the Muslim view of the Koran as having been dictated by Allah in Arabic through the angel Gabriel, while Mohammed’s only contribution was to take down the dictation. Evangelicals emphasised, however, the double authorship of Scripture, namely that the divine author spoke through the human authors, while they were in full possession of their faculties.
As for biblical interpretation, fundamentalists seemed to suppose that they could apply the text directly to themselves as if it had been written primarily for them. In doing to they ignored the cultural chasm which yawned between the biblical world and the contemporary world. At least in the ideal, however, evangelicals struggled with the task of cultural transposition, in which they sought to identify the essential message of the text, detach it from its original cultural context, and then re-contextualize it before applying it to our situation today.
Fundamentalists tended to go beyond suspicion (for which indeed there was ample justification) of the ecumenical movement to a blanket, uncritical, even vociferous rejection. Many evangelicals, however, although critical of the liberal agenda and frequently unprincipled methodology of the World Council of Churches, had tried to be discerning, affirming in ecumenism what seemed to them to have biblical support, while claiming the freedom to reject what had not.
On the church, fundamentalists tended to hold a separatist ecclesiology, and to withdraw from any community which didn’t agree in every particular with their own doctrinal position. This was to forget that Luther and Calvin were very reluctant schismatics, and dreamed of a reformed catholicism. Most evangelicals, however, while believing it right to seek the doctrinal and ethical purity of the church, also believed that perfect purity couldn’t be attained in this world. He conceded, however, that the balance between discipline and tolerance wasn’t easy to find.
In relation to the world, fundamentalists had tended sometimes to assimilate its values and standards uncritically (for example in the ‘prosperity gospel’) and at other times to stand aloof from it, fearing contamination. John readily admitted that by no means all evangelicals escaped the charge of worldliness. Nevertheless, at least in theory, they sought to obey the biblical injunction not to conform to this world, and were also anxious to respond to the call of Jesus to penetrate it like salt and light, in order to hinder its decay and illuminate its darkness.
Fundamentalists had shown a tendency – especially in the United States and in South Africa – to cling to the myth of white supremacy and to defend racial segregation, even in the church. Racism without doubt lingered among some evangelicals too. Yet there was a widespread desire to repent of it. Most evangelicals, he claimed, proclaimed and practised racial equality, originally by creation and supremely in Christ, who broke down the walls of racial, social and sexual separation in order to create a single, united humanity.
In relation to the Christian mission, fundamentalists had tended to insist that ‘mission’ and ‘evangelism’ were synonyms, and that the vocation of the church was without qualification to ‘proclaim the gospel’. Evangelicals, however, at least those of his persuasion, while continuing to affirm the priority of evangelism, felt unable to sunder it from social responsibility. As in the ministry of Jesus, so today, words and deeds, proclamation and demonstration, good news and good works supplemented and reinforced one another.
Finally, in relation to the Christian hope, fundamentalists tended to dogmatise about the future, although to be sure they held no monopoly on dogmatism. But they often went into considerable detail about the fulfilment of prophecy, divided history into rigid dispensations, and espoused a Christian Zionism which ignored the grave injustices done to the Palestinians. Evangelicals, however, while affirming with eager expectation the personal, visible, glorious and triumphant return of our Lord Jesus Christ, preferred to remain agnostic about the details on which even firmly biblical Christians had differing viewpoints.
John pleaded for evangelical integrity, stability, truth, unity and endurance. He claimed that the supreme quality which the evangelical faith should engender was humility, readily admitting that this claim might well be met with a wry smile. He knew full well that evangelical people were often regarded as proud, vain, arrogant and cocksure.
Evangelical Christianity was Trinitarian Christianity and, if this was correctly understood, it inevitably tended towards humility. Evangelicals held the three ‘Rs’ – revelation, redemption and regeneration, associating revelation with the Father, redemption with the Son and regeneration with the Holy Spirit. Yet the more the three persons of the Trinity were glorified, the more completely human pride was excluded. To magnify the self-revelation of God was to confess our complete ignorance without it. To magnify the cross of Christ was to confess our utter lostness without it. To magnify the regenerating, indwelling and sanctifying role of the Holy Spirit was to confess our abiding self-centredness without it.
Tags: Christian Life
November 15th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
The complete absence of authorized custody of the “key” to God’s secret, viz.: firsthand and personal knowledge of Jesus Christ’s divine identity in his perfect and diacritical death on the cross (http:www.the2keys.com), throws a highly unfavorable light on the difference between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists as no more than a squabble among “thieves and robbers” (John 10: 1-10; Col. 2: 1-3; Rev. 5).