Recent events at the ETS meetings again call into question fundamentalist participation. The Christianity Today LiveBlog reports on a session by J. P. Moreland of Talbot Seminary. The session had this arresting title: "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It"

Consider this statement as reported by LiveBlog:

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.”

or here’s another treat:

Likewise, Moreland argued, “because the human soul/spirit and demons/angels are real, it is possible, and, in fact, actual that extra-biblical knowledge can be gained about these spiritual entities. … Demons do not exist in the Bible. They exist in reality.”

By not researching how demons work, how to fight them, and other such issues by, for example, working with exorcists, Christian scholars are harming the church, Moreland argued. In a similar vein, he thinks evangelical scholars and the movement as a whole are rejecting “guidance, revelation, and so forth from God through impressions, dreams, visions, prophetic words, words of knowledge and wisdom.”

This session was some kind of ‘breakout’ session at the meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. I don’t know if the transcript will be represented by a formal paper published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) or not. Regardless, this kind of thinking is obviously part of the milieu at ETS. I have an electronic copy of JETS and occasionally find some interesting articles there, although I don’t find it a "go to" resource because JETS general tenor tends towards this kind of unbelief. That is not to say that such blatantly unbiblical thinking is present in every JETS article, but that JETS tends in that direction.

Which brings me to the issue of fundamentalist participation in the ETS. I have discussed this on another blog somewhere, although I can’t remember exactly where or when. Some prominent fundamentalists defend the association. I can’t imagine how they can defend their association with such unbelief.

In a related post, LiveBlog reports on an attempt to amend the doctrinal statement of the ETS. At the moment, members of the ETS must adhere to a very simple doctrinal statement. They must affirm belief in the Trinity and in the inerrancy of the Bible. That is all. The attempt to amend the doctrinal statement comes from men who don’t think the current statement is sufficient and that it allows for heretics to be members. I recommend that you read the whole thing, but I am struck by how much this sounds like the attempts of the fundamentalists to clarify orthodoxy in the Presbyterian church and in the Northern Baptist Convention back in the 1920s. It’s sort of deja vu all over again.

The effort at ETS will likely fail, just as those efforts in the 1920s also ultimately failed.

But again, why are fundamentalists involved in something like this at all? Did we learn anything from the 1920s or not?

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

In their own words…

UN Leader Woos Evangelicals | Liveblog | Christianity Today: “In a sense, last night’s banquet and today’s issue-oriented discussions are really less about evangelicals fighting disease and poverty and more about evangelicals working in partnerships–partnerships between Western evangelicals and those in the developing world and partnerships with non-evangelicals,

We cautiously engaged those of other shades of Christian faith and even other religions in the mid-90s when we threw tremendous weight behind the effort to pass the International Religious Freedom Act and the creation of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. We then enlarged the circle of cooperation to work on legislation to fight sex trafficking and, later, human-rights abuses in North Korea. The circle has expanded yet again as many evangelical leaders are partnering on issues of climate change.

Partnerships give evangelicals a sense of participation and empowerment. It gives us the chance to take on really big issues. That’s a strange feeling for a movement whose consciousness is rooted in old-style fundamentalism. Fundamentalism was about being the few and the proud–I mean, the pure. The evangelicalism that emerged in the 1940s hoped for a new engagement with society while maintaining doctrinal and ethical integrity. Its leaders, like first CT editor Carl F. H. Henry and first CT board chair Harold John Ockenga preached a strong social justice message. But the old fundamentalist consciousness still lurks, and these partnerships stretch the evangelical sense of identity.”

This attitude is not all that dissimilar to that promoted by at least some of the so-called ‘conservative evangelicals. I recall Ben Wright posting a telling comment by Al Mohler about fundamentalism where he said something like “Fundamentalism is marginalized and has no influence.” [I am paraphrasing, it was from Mohler’s radio show and it was some time ago.] For many conservative evangelicals, I believe the reason they cannot admit the fundamental error of evangelicalism is that they cannot give up their addiction to “influence”. Whether they actually have any influence or not is another question.

Zechariah 4:6 Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

A few years ago, a fellow said something like this to me: “A church is only as fundamental as its pastor.” As it turned out, that pastor wasn’t all that fundamental and disgraced himself and the Lord. But he was right in his observation.

Fundamentalism, evangelicalism, neo-orthodoxy, liberalism, or any shade of meaning in between is forged in the church by the leaders of the church. At the local church level, a church tends to follow the lead of its pastor. Whatever that pastor is, that church will be.

There are some occasional skirmishes that may seem to belie this principle. Churches will be embroiled in a controversy, parties form, acrimony ensues, sometimes even leading to a church split. You might be tempted to analyse these controversies to see if the people opposed to the pastor are really more theologically conservative than the pastor, but on almost every occasion you will find the controversies are much less sharply defined than that. If the split is over issues affecting fundamentalist philosophy, likely it is one or two men (often deacons) who lead the charge and become in effect de facto pastors of the dissenting group, at least for the time being.

In the ongoing (and interminable) discussions in the blogosphere regarding separation and fundamentalism, much has been made of ‘what if’ scenarios attempting to define a template for separation. “What if church X believes this and church Y does this, what should church Z do?” The fact is, the churches won’t do anything. A pastor who believes something will decide whether he is comfortable promoting a young people’s activity or a special speaker in another church based on his own philosophy of ministry. Generally speaking, his flock will follow his lead. (Quite often, they won’t know what is going on at the other church because they are full of the life of their own church — if it isn’t promoted by their pastor, they won’t bother, largely because they won’t know.)

When it comes to the wider world of conferences and meetings, the local pastor has less control over what his folks know simply because of modern technology. But the pastor (and the other leaders of ‘his’ group) will still tend to promote those organizations and activities that they think are in keeping with their own philosophy and are most suited to the spiritual needs of his flock. Thus, wider friendships and alliances are formed with leaders who tend to coalesce around similar ideas.

To illustrate, in my own ministry, I tend to move in the FBF circles. I am comfortable with the direction the most prominent men in the FBF are taking, I get a bulk subscription to Frontline for our church, I promote the regional FBF meeting, I promote a family camp sponsored by a like-minded pastor, I bring in speakers who would tend to travel in FBF circles and I preach a message that would likely be acceptable in most churches pastored by FBF men. What kind of flavor does that put on our church? (I’ll give you three guesses…)

Suppose I got hit by a bus, and someone with a different philosophy shows up to take over. They stop the Frontline, start promoting other magazines, other meetings, other speakers. What happens to the church? It starts moving into another orbit. This does take time, and if handled poorly, can cause the tensions that lead to a church split. With effective leadership, the direction of a church can be changed so that it becomes something entirely other than previous leadership envisioned. It is leadership that sets the agenda. The church is only as fundamental as its pastor.

Young preachers do need to sort out where they are on the theological spectrum. Their associations will determine the direction they take and the philosophy of the churches they will pastor. They should ask questions, but they shouldn’t assume that there is a cut and dried template that will answer all questions about association and separation. They will determine their own philosophy. Hopefully the young fellows coming up will choose well, making astute observations of history, avoiding past mistakes and forging forward faithfully for Christ.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3