What Can We Learn from Christian Fundamentalists? Timothy George Responds

^{Editor’s Note: 9Marks Ministries recently dedicated their recent eJournal issue to discussing Fundamentalism. SharperIron has received permission from them to reprint the articles here for discussion. We will post ten articles over the next two weeks. If you would like the complete eJournal or would like to subscribe to further editions, please go to www.9marks.org.}

Timothy George

What can we learn from the Fundamentalists? Well, to start with, how about the fundamentals? These sturdy Christians stood courageously for crucial doctrines of faith such as the total truthfulness of Holy Scripture, the Virgin Birth of Christ, his substitutionary atoning death on the cross, etc. when these teachings were under attack by unbelieving theologians. Thank God for them and for their courage!

Another lesson: how to work together across denominational lines for the historic orthodox faith. Fundamentalism is the mother of Evangelical ecumenism at its best.

Here is a third lesson: an unstinted commitment to the cause of world missions. The Fundamentalists gave the lie to the old canard, “Doctrine divides, missions unite.”

But there are negative lessons as well. The twin errors of Fundamentalism, to my mind, were reductionism and separatism. On the first, the Fundamentalists were not fundamental enough (where’s the Trinity?), and on the second, they became, over time, too contentious to contend for the faith once delivered, except in their own sectarian bubble.

Still, there is much to learn here about our Christian witness today.

Timothy George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and a senior editor of Christianity Today.

March/April 2008, ©9Marks

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