What Are the Fundamental Doctrines of the Faith?
“The historic five fundamentals remain an important aspect of fundamentalism’s history and heritage, though they are not exclusive identifying marks of the movement.” - P&D
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These 5 fundmentals are essentially the fundamentals outlined in the Apostle's Creed.
Major understatement: “not exclusive identifying marks of the movement” … Well, they are “exclusive,” but not all the exclusive identifying marks. There’s historic fundamentalism and then there’s movement fundamentalism. They started out the same, then forked, forked again, forked again, etc., etc. All because of other identifying marks.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
The thing to remember with lists of fundamentals--yes, the Apostles' Creed, the five Solas, and the five Fundamentals--is that by and large, people don't sit down and say "well, what is the absolute most important thing we can communicate." Rather, they look around and say "well, what are our opponents messing up here?"
I'm thankful that the theological liberals messed things up in a way that leads to a good set of fundamentals, though.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
The five fundamentals are not that unique in my opinion. As I stated before they have been around since the birth of Christianity, they are encased in other confessions and creeds. The key was that they were in response to liberalism and higher criticism that was over taking many churches at the time. It was primarily a focus of the small independent churches. The SBC already had much of this outlined in their Baptist Faith & Message in 1925, which was essentially a slightly tweaked version of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith from 1833, a more moderate view of Calvinism as a result of a few removals from the London Baptist Confession of Faith. Confessions and Creeds were a thing of the reformed movement and not really a thing of the small independent fundamental churches that were springing up at the time. I think we all agree with the fundamentals and we all agree with separation. It really deviated when it went down the road of Battle Royal. It was the secondary separation that took it off course. I can remember my grandfather preaching in Texas that if a woman entered the church in anything but a full length dress, she was to be removed from the premises by the ushers. They would not allow that type of compromise to enter the church.
The movement was in trouble when “compromise” became an automatically negative, sinister concept. The converse of turning “compromise” into bogeyman was that it’s opposite—thoughtless, reflexive, stubborn, often petty rigidity—became a marker of authenticity. It was like James 3:17-18 were removed from the Bible, along with Romans 14:19 and 15:13, etc. Not to mention Eph 4:2 and all the other biblical calls to humility. These passages were compromised by a lot of anti-compromise groups.
So there was always a lot of “compromise.” The question never should have been “are we for or against compromise?” but rather “what sort of compromises ought we to make to live out Christian love? vs. what kinds of compromises have to be off the table?”
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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