A few more thoughts on my DBTS post. (From the department of “can’t leave well enough alone”).
- The answer to my initial question is “Yes”.
If you care to check the thread where I interact with DD, you will see that my question, “is this characteristic of DBTS” must be answered, “yes.” Now, what we do with that, what it means for the future of fundamentalism, where we go from here… those remain open questions. Uncertainty reigns.
- Ecumenical is as ecumenical does.
If such conferences are purely academic, no hint of compromising fundamentalist philosophy as a result, no chance of confusing the masses, then I wonder… I wonder if other schools, say, the University of Chicago Divinity School, ever have academic lecture sessions on church history that a fundamentalist might like to participate in? Nothing ecumenical about it, of course, pure academia.
… - Elitism.
Is it possible that I, as a pastor of a small local church, might also get involved in some endeavour that has nothing to do with ecumenical matters, but does involve association with Christians of other persuasions? Or would I be looked at askance by my fundamentalist brethren? Like say I was invited by a local evangelical Bible college to present my expertise on ‘the history of fundamentalism,’ for example. What would my fundamentalist friends think of that? Would my mission board and supporting churches heartily approve?
On the other hand, we are told to accept this as normal academic behaviour when one of the leading fundamentalist seminaries does it. It seems as if the bigger the name, the more one can get away with. Is that how it works?
- Equivocation is not an answer. When a politician side-steps direct questions and gives evasive or partial answers, what do we conclude? Should we conclude anything different when it is a well known seminarian? Or am I just being petulant?
There is one more aspect of this discussion that I’d like to comment on, but it will have to await a future post.
Don
Between you and Phil Johnson’s post, separation and fads. Do you separate from the brethren because you believe they are not totally involved in biblical standards, or on the other hand are you using material that is written by someone who is tagged as a Emergent.
I generally never side step any question, which is not always smart, I guess.
What would my fundamentalist friends think of that? I know what they think! It holds little weight. I know what they think of me as a pastor, or preacher. They don’t like that I preach expositional, they don’t like it that I like non independent Baptist. They don’t like it that I am not an KJV only. The seminary doesn’t like it that I support another fellowship. There is a lot of “I don’t like it.”
i would love to speak in any college on the history of Fundamentalist Baptist.
Thanks brother
Hi Charles
Quite a lot of questions! Ok, first, regarding ‘standards’, I would say it depends. While I might be comfortable doing some things with a guy who holds some different standards than I, I might not be comfortable in every situation. There are so many areas of standards (dress, music, activities, etc) that I think it has to be approached on a case by case basis. The fact is that in some of these things I am less strict than some of my fundamentalist friends, but in others I am more strict than many. So your question on standards is not easy to answer without specific examples.
To my knowledge, we are not using anything by the emergent crowd. If I discovered that we were, we would get rid of it immediately.
I think most fundamentalists these days would support expositional preaching. Many (but not all) would be willing to cooperate with others who are not independent Baptists (but that depends on a number of factors as well!) Most of my fundamentalist friends are not KJV only, including me. I have a few KJV only friends who apparently tolerate me to some extent.
I read someone the other day who talked about a “sliding scale” of separation. I agree with the concept, but in many cases our applications could be different.
But we are drifting a little bit from my topic…
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3