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Is there such a thing as "Fundamentalist Scholars?"

Discussion in 'Baptist Colleges & Seminaries' started by Rhetorician, Aug 11, 2010.

  1. Rhetorician

    Rhetorician Administrator
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    This is a repost from the "Fundamentalist's" Section. I think it justly fits both. If I have violated "P & P" please take this down and forgive.

    Fundamentalist's Scholars
    To whom it may concern:

    I want to declare on the front end that I am involved in a "Twelve Step Program" for recovering Fundamentalists.:smilewinkgrin: (Just a joke, don't get all hot and bothered!!).

    But I would seek some real information concerning "Fundamentalist's Scholarship," scholarship at Fundamentalists colleges, and scholarship at Fundamentalists seminaries or grad schools of religion (and I doubt many would meet this criteria?).

    Is there any scholarship coming out of any of the institutions or from renown Fundamentalist scholars who might be cited, quoted, or considered from any other than Fundamentalist's research?

    I am not talking particularly about writing and research in "Fundamentalist" proper or "the history of Fundamentalism," or such.

    Is there any New Testament studies, Old Testament studies, Greek, Hebrew, Semitics, Church History, Theology, et al?

    I mean by this, what would hold up to real scholarship that might be taken seriously by say scholars at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell, TEDS, Fuller, or others of the evangelical world.

    I know some will retort, "why would we even want those other schools or 'libersl' to consider us anyway?" To make sure you are doing real scholarship is the reason. Real scholarship can be done in the light of the noon day sun with no fears. I am really asking because I truly want to know.

    It seems to me that if Fundamentalist scholars are just talking "at one another" then that seems counter intuitive and counter productive for the "movement?" does it not?

    Let me have it, tell me something, if you can? I know I have opened myself up for recrimination here, but I think I can take it!!?? :tongue3: This is the place for you "fightin' fundamentalists" to have a go at me!!!

    That is all!

    sdg
    rd
    ____
     
  2. mjohnson7

    mjohnson7 Member

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    I think it may be a real challenge to find many within "fundamentalism" that fit the description you gave in the OP. There are a few reasons for that, but as that is somewhat off topic, I'll get to the point.

    I would submit Dr Kevin Bouder of Central Seminary in Minneapolis. Dr Bouder is a true fundamentalist and a fine scholar in my opinion. I think fundamentalism needs more leaders like him. He is definitely a refreshing voice among a wide and varied tent of people who like to wear the badge of fundamentalism.



     
  3. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

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    At the risk of getting myself booted out of here on my first day of posting... :smilewinkgrin:

    I am not sure but it seems that true fundamentalism is antithetical to research and theology proper. One of the core tenets of fundamentalism is that an absolute truth is already known, so there is no real reason to further investigate other truth claims or theological positions. That is not a knock against the fundamentalist position as it seems inherent with their emphasis on the fundamentalism, which seems to preclude all else.

    In a larger view, it would seem that a lot of "isms" end up in the same boat, including evangelicalism, catholicism, etc. Some truth of God is noted and acted upon. God moves. That action is then codified into oral or written law and those coming after must work within the system that has been codified into an "ism" until such time as God moves again and an entirely new cycle begins.

    It would probably be better to simply realize that God is larger than many of our "isms" but we humans seem to be wired to create them and then to war over them. This is likely one of our rebellious issues that we saw first with Eve in the Garden, where God's precise words were altered for some seemingly good religious cause.
     
  4. Bob Alkire

    Bob Alkire New Member

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    So true to a point. As a teenager at Hargrave Military Academy I picked up a book that the author was giving a good review of William Newell commentary on Romans. I'm not sure but I think that book was written in the 30's or 40's and he liked Newell's book. But what I recall was that he said all the world needs is another commentary on Romans.

    I've read a few books by Adolph Saphir and you will hear in each of them say something to the point, things aren't like they use to be. I believe Saphir wrote back in the 1800's.

    Today we have so much deconstruction ot the Scriptures and basic teaching.

    Then we have folks like Pinnock, Brrow,Stackhouse and some of todays known pastors with their disassembling like Osteen and Jensen.

    With in the camp we are into hair splitting.

    But we are going over the same thing for the most part. And a lot of the new stuff I like a well as a lot of the old, Phillips, Carson and Moo, to name a few.
     
  5. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

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    There are great Evangelical scholars who work in the spirit of the fundamentals, but Fundamentalist doesn't seem to play since the Ryrie charts and graphs era has passed (it has passed, right?).

    I am blessed to know and work with a number of these great men. Bruce Ware, Tom Shreiner, Russell Moore, Craig Blaising, Greg Wills, Hershel York, Thom Rainer, Chuck Lawless, Mark Seifrid, and others. What a joy to have sat under their teaching in the classroom, and more so now to help push doctoral students forward in their own careers under the guidance of the men above.
     
  6. Bob Alkire

    Bob Alkire New Member

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    No!!! Dispensational teachings are still strong as well as those who are pre mill and pre trib and not dispensational.
     
  7. Bob Alkire

    Bob Alkire New Member

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    I wish I could feel the same about the seminary I went to and its professors. But I did go after graduation to Dallas and Grace for a few semesters, I feel the same about many of them. Alva J. McCain, Herman Hoyt, John Whitcomb, Dwight Pentecost and John Walvoor to name a few. Great teachers makes so much come alive and we are indebted to them for their help.
     
  8. Rhetorician

    Rhetorician Administrator
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    BA Response

    Bro. Bob,

    I think one reason that there may not be "any fundamentalists scholar" is the fact that; the "liberal's understanding of the Gospel," and the "fundamentalist's" understanding of the Gospel is so greatly divergent. Neither is interested in what the other is thinking, writing, or considering.

    Am I wrong here. Please help me. There may not be a nexus of any sort? :tear:

    "That is all!"
     
  9. Bob Alkire

    Bob Alkire New Member

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    I heard W. A. Criswell say if you want to make a theologian or a pastor upset with you say,(my paraphrase of what he said) sir with all due respect I believe you are wrong ( I'm not always happy to hear I'm wrong either). At that point most that I've come across or not interested in hearing you, they want to tell you that you are wrong.

    So you could be correct to a point, my friend.
     
  10. Squire Robertsson

    Squire Robertsson Administrator
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    I think you've got it right. Please see Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. If I read the book correctly, Machen considered Liberalism not to be an orthodox Christian philosophy. To call Machen a Fundamentalist is like calling Jefferson a Democrat. So, yes, in the main the publications and printing houses controlled by Modernists and their Evangelical friends couldn't care a farthing for what a Fundamentalist wrote on theological matters. That mind you even if the work was to the highest academic standards. Though, as most of archaeological work is done by Modernists (if done by "Christians"), we read them to see what they dug up.
     
  11. Rippon

    Rippon Well-Known Member
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    Not Christianity period.

    Machen did not like to be referenced as a Fundamentalist though holding some core beliefs in common.with those identifying with that term. There were(and still are) too many negative connotations about being a Christian Fundamentalist. He didn't want anyone to have some undesirable associations in their mind regarding his stance.
     
  12. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

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    There is a difference in a scholar holding to the Fundamentals of the faith and being a fundamentalist. Machen was not a Fundamentalist.

    As I consider the issue of Fundamentalist writings, one of the reasons for the lack of contribution is perhaps the simple fact that the Fundamentalists think that they are set apart and that everyone else is simply wrong about just about everything. Why bother writing books for those that are already judged sinners and wrong? Not to say that nothing at all has been written -- it has -- but not much of late. We have to go back to the early 1900s to see any impact, and during that time liberalism also came roaring out of Tübingen School.

    Tick-tock-tick-tock -- like the pendulum swinging, theology is a lot of times a reaction to someone else's bad theology. I see Fundamentalism and Liberalism as the ends of the pendulum swing.
     
  13. Squire Robertsson

    Squire Robertsson Administrator
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    I pulled my punch on Machen's view of Liberalism (with which I agree) because I was relying on a 10+ year old memory.

    As for his not being a Fundamentalist, that's not really a biggie. He was the last of the major Proto-Fundamentalists to pass from the scene.

    The view that Fundamentalists are not comfortable with rigorous scholarship is about 10-15 years out of date. It took a couple of generations for the movement (at least the part which came out of the NBC) to recover and rebuild from the nuking of its schools.

    Again the question remains, everything being equal which publication would print an article by a Fundamentalist?
     
  14. mjohnson7

    mjohnson7 Member

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    I agree, though I would go a step further. There are FEW within the crazy fundamentalists camp that can even preach a sermon that doesn't contradict scripture, much less have the intellect to do scholarly research.

    Then you have the faculty of the likes of Detroit Seminary and Central Seminary that are fundamentalists, yet are not well known as scholars but do have credentials and intellect. Is is that they write only for their own journals and their circle of fundamentalism is so small that they are "unknown" in the big tent of conservative evangelicals? I think that contributes a great deal. Maybe their idea of "separation" prohibits them from submission of scholarly writing being submitted to other journals. Maybe others with more knowledge of this area of fundamentalism could speak to this.

    As far as the Hyles camp....and others.....what a joke! They are a major blemish on Christianity.
     
  15. Havensdad

    Havensdad New Member

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    Well, I know several of the publishing professors at Liberty call themselves fundamentalists. Daniel Mitchel and Gary Habermas come to mind. Not too sure about Habermas, but I know Mitchell is solid.
     
  16. Squire Robertsson

    Squire Robertsson Administrator
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    Or do the CE's view anything coming from a Fundamentalist as worthy of their notice or publication.
     
  17. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

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    I've been arguing all along that there is a difference between those scholars who hold to the fundamentals of the faith and the movement that grew from the publishing of those fundamentals -- the fundamentalists.

    No argument against the fundamentals, especially the big five:

    The inerrancy of the Bible
    The literal nature of the Biblical accounts, especially regarding Christ's miracles, and the Creation account in Genesis.
    The Virgin Birth of Christ
    The bodily resurrection of Christ
    The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross


    I know a great many men of immense erudition who hold solidly to the fundamentals of the faith. I do not know so many, outside the local pulpit, who are fundamentalistic.

    Tongue in cheek, they can be spotted at a distance by their insistence on issues such as "KJV ONLY," their "everyone else is wrong" stance, a preponderance of "charts" and "time-lines" that demonstrate their dispensational doctrinal tenets, that most of their writings are "against" something or someone instead of "for" something or someone, an "aversion to the world," and an invitation to a tent revival meeting somewhere... :smilewinkgrin:

    I used to sort of smile when I would hear some fundamentalist preacher go on about the world today, long hair, or any number of other cultural issues, but I've sort of gotten over the smiling part myself. Though I hold to the fundamentals in a rock solid way, I also realize that a fight against culture, as is so often the case with fundamentalists, means that the spread of Christianity halts in its tracks.

    We no longer live in the days of Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday, or even Billy Graham. The 1950s, the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond are gone. That era only lives on in our minds. And so, the culture brought forward from those earlier decades and seen as "apart from the world" is also wrong. Bankers, who may have sold their souls to the devil for financial gain, wear nice suits to work while Christ followers who are sharing the gospel and taking care of widows and orphans may dress in blue jeans and have facial hair, tattoos, and earrings. What most fundamentalists fail to realize is that they too have a culture that is "of the world." Such is impossible to escape, we live on a planet where "the world" is our choice, culturally, unless we wish to form enclaves and totally separate ourselves apart from all human activity. Note: that has been tried before and it failed. Second note: Jesus commanded us to go into the world, not to escape into stone rooms and hide.
     
  18. Havensdad

    Havensdad New Member

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    Dan Mitchell, a self ascribed fundamentalist, refers to these traits you are referring to as pseudo fundamentalism, rather than true fundamentalism.
     
  19. mjohnson7

    mjohnson7 Member

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    Squire,

    I would agree there probably is a bias against "fundamentalism" as a movement from CEs, but it is the Hyles, Schapps, and others who have effectively tarnished fundamentalism as a movement. I think that's why few take notice of men like Dr Bouder at Central and other men like him. Stereotypes are certainly not always correct but perception is reality unfortunately.

    With that in mind, what can we as believers/ministers do to encourage the Bouders and discourage the Hyles/or Hyles mentality within Fundamentalism?

    With regard to Liberty: I am a Liberty grad and love the school. There are definitely fundamentalists on the faculty there that contribute to the academy. However, there has been a trend to be much more mainstream....I don't want to say emergent b/c of the bad connotations, but I think Caner did more bad than good for Liberty. I am hoping his successor is more like an Al Mohler or Daniel Akin than Caner.
     
  20. glfredrick

    glfredrick New Member

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    Note I said "tongue in cheek" when I posted that stuff. :saint:

    It is sort of like pinning hyper-Calvinistic traits on regular Calvinists, or zombie-pope-follower status on Roman Catholics. A straw man, but not the real deal.

    Yet, these days, that is about where the fundamentalist culture boils down in a Sunday morning in-the-pew pragmatic sense. Wish I could say that I've not been there, but wow, I sure have. I went to one particular tent revival meeting and by the end, I thought that I had stumbled into some form of a cult instead of a Baptist church. It was capital W weird, and they made sure that they touched on everything and everyone when they "preached". I'm fairly sure that even the tent was going to hell. Sadly, the one thing they left out was God's grace and the true message of the gospel, that we are saved by grace through faith through the completed work of Jesus Christ.

    A question for any of the self-disclosed fundamentalists... Are your churches growing, and what is the size range? Also (and this is not to be spiteful in any sense of the word!), are you somewhat proud of the direction that your congregation is headed, i.e., that the path is narrow and few find it, etc.?

    Just wondering from a church planting perspective if perhaps the culture is working against the message... :tear:
     
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