{"id":1433,"date":"2009-08-23T17:07:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T01:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/08\/23\/hes-at-it-again\/"},"modified":"2009-08-23T17:07:10","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T01:07:10","slug":"hes-at-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/08\/23\/hes-at-it-again\/","title":{"rendered":"he&rsquo;s at it again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Bauder has come out with another disappointing broadside against fundamentalism. He fills a recent article of Central Seminaries online publication, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralseminary.edu\/publications\/Nick\/Nick231.html\" target=\"_blank\">In the Nick of Time<\/a><\/em>, with a series of scandalous charges against Fundamentalism.<\/p>\n<p>I have summarized the charges as they appear in the article. I attempt to represent them accurately, working my way through the article paragraph by paragraph. If my summaries are inaccurate in any way, I invite correction where I may have erred.<\/p>\n<p> <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p>The summary follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fundamentalists are not representatives of historic Christian doctrine.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists crave identity and significance.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists are badly misguided in thinking Kirsopp Lake\u2019s famous quotation compliments them (including such men as Fred Moritz, Mark Sidwell, David Beale, the FBF as represented by Wayne Bley et al).<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalist theology is only a <em>partial<\/em> preservation of historic Christian doctrine (according to Lake <em>and<\/em> Bauder).<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists are ignoramuses \u2013 they haven\u2019t even read the ancient creeds, much less studied them.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists are naive in this respect: they assume their ideas (i.e., doctrine) are derived directly from Scripture [the horror!] without mediation [i.e., the intervention of tradition].<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists have little sense of history.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists have no sense of indebtedness to Christians of the past.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists do not value the richness of traditional Christian faith and practice.<\/li>\n<li>Most fundamentalists have little or no awareness of history.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists are theologically shallow.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists have truncated the whole counsel of God.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalists love the Bible as an object but detest studying the Bible in depth.<\/li>\n<li>Fundamentalist thought compared to historic Christianity is like comparing a hamburger to a steak. [Hint: fundamentalist thought is the hamburger.]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bauder concludes his assault with this charge:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Kirsopp Lake said that Fundamentalism is the \u201cpartial . . . survival of a theology which was once universally held by all Christians.\u201d To the extent that he is correct, Fundamentalists should probably be a little less enthralled with his description. And I think that he is right.<\/p>\n<p>Fundamentalists have preserved and defended something less than the whole counsel of God.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>His whole argument is based on an edited version of Lake\u2019s remarks. Note the ellipsis. The full statement Bauder offers at the beginning of his piece:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It is nothing of the kind: it is the <strong>partial<\/strong> <strong>and<\/strong> <strong>uneducated<\/strong> survival of a theology which was once universally held by all Christians.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Lake appears to be saying something different than Bauder is alleging. It is obviously a slur. \u201cFundamentalists are uneducated boobs, but, as such, we must admit that perhaps at least partially, they hold to the historic doctrines.\u201d [That\u2019s my paraphrase of Lake\u2019s remarks.] Bauder wants to take off on this and make it out that Fundamentalists are partially the representatives of historic Christian doctrine. <strong><em>Partially????<\/em><\/strong> So are they also partially representative of non-historic doctrine? Of unbiblical doctrine, perhaps? Exactly which parts of Fundamentalist thought is historic and which is not? He doesn\u2019t say. The charges are general, offensive, slanderous and without any substance.<\/p>\n<p>One has to wonder:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How does someone who appears to so dislike fundamentalism manage to be invited to fundamentalist platforms to speak?<\/li>\n<li>How is it constructive to attack fundamentalism as ignorant and partially Christian?<\/li>\n<li>What is gained within fundamentalism if such attacks from an alleged insider are allowed to go unanswered?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One would hope that, at the very least, this article would be pulled and a more charitable and constructive one be put in its place.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"don_sig2\" style=\"border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px\" height=\"50\" alt=\"don_sig2\" src=\"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/don_sig210.png\" width=\"150\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Bauder has come out with another disappointing broadside against fundamentalism. He fills a recent article of Central Seminaries online publication, In the Nick of Time, with a series of scandalous charges against Fundamentalism. I have summarized the charges as they appear in the article. I attempt to represent them accurately, working my way through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[37,71],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-n7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}