Theology Thursday - Carnell on the "Perils" of Fundamentalism (Part 1)

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Edward J. Carnell was a major figure in the evangelical world in the 1950s. He became President of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1957, and wrote a little book entitled The Case for Orthodox Theology two years later. At only 168 pages, this was a short, introductory book intended for an interested, but general audience. In a chapter from this book, which he ominously entitled “Perils,” Carnell unleashed a pitiless broadside against fundamentalism.

In this article and the next, I’ve included nearly his entire chapter. It provides a fascinating look into what a conservative evangelical thought about fundamentalism at mid-century. Carnell writes with passion; indeed, at some points his passion gives way to scornful contempt. Some of his critiques still sting today.1

Orthodoxy is plagued by perils as well as difficulties, and the perils are even more disturbing than the difficulties. When orthodoxy slights its difficulties, it elicits criticism; but when it slights its perils, it elicits scorn. The perils are of two sorts; general and specific. The general perils include ideological thinking, a highly censorious spirit, and a curious tendency to separate from the life of the church. The specific peril is the with which orthodoxy converts to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is orthodoxy gone cultic.

Fundamentalism

When we speak of fundamentalism, however, we must distinguish between the movement and the mentality. The fundamentalist movement was organized shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. When the tidal wave of German higher criticism engulfed the church, a large company of orthodox scholars rose to the occasion. They sought to prove that modernism and Biblical Christianity were incompatible. In this way, the fundamentalist movement preserved the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Its “rugged bursts of individualism” were among the finest fruits of the Reformation.

But the fundamentalist movement made at least one capital mistake, and this is why it converted from a movement to a mentality. Unlike the Continental Reformers and the English Dissenters, the fundamentalists failed to connect their convictions with the classical creeds of the church. Therefore, when modernism collapsed, the fundamentalist movement became an army without a cause. Nothing was left but the mentality of fundamentalism, and this mentality Is orthodoxy’s gravest peril.

The mentality of fundamentalism is dominated by ideological thinking. Ideological thinking is rigid, intolerant and doctrinaire; it sees principles everywhere, and all principles come in clear tones of black and white. It exempts itself from the limits that original sin places on history; it wages holy wars without acknowledging the elements of pride and personal interest that prompt the call to battle; it creates new evils while trying to correct old one.

The fundamentalists’ crusade against the Revised Standard Version illustrates the point. The fury did not stem from a scholarly conviction that the version offends Hebrew and Greek Idioms, for ideological thinking operates on far simpler criteria. First, there were modernists on the translation committee, and modernists corrupt whatever they touch. It does not occur to fundamentalism that translation requires only personal honesty and competent scholarship. Secondly, the Revised Standard Version’s copyright is held by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ. If a fundamentalist used the new version, he might give aid and comfort to the National Council; and that, on his principles, would be sin. By the same token, of course, a fundamentalist could not even buy groceries from a modernist. But ideological thinking is never celebrated for its consistency.

Dispensationalism

Having drifted from the classical creeds of the church, the separatist is prey to theological novelty. Most of Machen’s immediate disciples were shielded from this threat by their orientation in Calvinism, but fundamentalism in general did not fare so well. Dispensationalism filled the vacuum created by the loss of the historic creeds.

Dispensationalism was formulated by one of the nineteenth-century separatist movements, the Plymouth Brethren. Hitherto, all Christians had believed that the church fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament, and that the future of saved Jews falls within the general life of the church.

Dispensationalism overturned this time-tested confession by contending that the church is only an interim period between two Jewish economies, the Old Testament and the millennium. While dispensationalism sincerely tries to honor the distinctives of Christianity, in practice it often honors the distinctives of Judaism. This is an ironic reversal …

Having withdrawn from the general theological dialogue, the dispensationalist has few active checks against the pretense of ideological pride. As a result, he imagines that the distinctives of dispensationalism are more firmly established than they really are. This illusion prompts him to fight major battles over minor issues. If it comes to it, he is not unwilling to divide the church on whether the rapture occurs before or after the tribulation. This is straight-line cultic conduct, for a cursory examination of Philip Schaff’s “Creeds of Christendom” will show that the church has never made the details of eschatology a test of Christian fellowship.

The dispensationalist is willing to go it alone because he is prompted by the counsels of ideological thinking. He compares Biblical doctrines to a line of standing dominoes: topple any one domino and the entire line falls. On such a scheme the time of the rapture is as crucial to faith as the substitutionary atonement, for any one doctrine analytically includes all other doctrines.

This argument, of course, is a tissue of fallacies. It violates the most elementary canons of Biblical hermeneutics. When separatists flee from the tyranny of the church, they end up with a new tyranny all their own; for there is always a demagogue on hand to decide who is virtuous and who is not. His strategies are pathetically familiar: “Things are in terrible shape; errorists are everywhere. The true faith is being threatened; my own life is in danger. Something must be done; some courageous person must volunteer. I’m free; I’m ready; I’m willing … Oh, yes, you may subscribe to my paper and keep up with the real truth. Three dollars will enroll you in my movement, and for $5.00 you may have a copy of my latest book.”

Intellectual Stagnation

When orthodoxy says that the Bible is the only rule of faith and practice, the fundamentalist promptly concludes that everything worth knowing is in the Bible. The result is a withdrawal from the dialogue of man as man. Nothing can be learned from general wisdom, says the fundamentalist, for the natural man is wrong in starting point, method, and conclusion. When the natural man says, “This is a rose,” he means “This is a not-made-by-the-triune-God rose.” Everything he says is blasphemy.

It is non-sequitur reasoning of this sort which places fundamentalism at the extreme right in the theological spectrum. Classical orthodoxy says that God is revealed in general as well as in special revelation. The Bible completes the witness of God in nature; it does not negate it.

Since the fundamentalist belittles the value of general wisdom, he is often content with an educational system that substitutes piety for scholarship. High standards of education might tempt the students to trust in the arm of flesh. Moreover, if the students are exposed to damaging as well as to supporting evidences, their faith might be threatened. As a result, the students do not earn their right to believe, and they are filled with pride because they do not sense their deficiency.

The intellectual stagnation of fundamentalism can easily be illustrated. Knowing little about the canons of lower criticism, and less about the relation between language and culture, the fundamentalist has no norm by which to classify the relative merits of Biblical translations. As a result, he identifies the Word of God with the seventeenth-century language forms of the King James Version. Since other versions sound unfamiliar to him, he concludes that someone is tampering with the Word of God.

This stagnation explains why the fundamentalist is not disturbed by the difficulties in orthodoxy. Faithful to ideological thinking, he simply denies that there are any difficulties. To admit a difficulty would imply a lack of faith, and a lack of faith is sin.

… to be continued

Notes

1 Edward J. Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1959), 114-119.

Discussion

I’m not “prioritizing” school textbooks. Just noting that 40 years ago, the priority and great need was for good textbooks in the new and growing Christian school movement. Christian schools were having to use secular textbooks because few Christian textbooks existed. So BJU and others put their emphasis on the need of the time. That makes sense and is ingenious. Now that the Christian textbook supply is met, other areas can now be addressed.

Wally Morris

Charity Baptist Church

Huntington, IN

amomentofcharity.blogspot.com

Wally, you’re confusing the “urgent” need for textbooks with what was important. Let’s be frank about the matter; the list of things for which BJU has apologized over the past few decades illustrates that BJ Sr. and Jr. could have seriously used some good systematics. See what I’m getting at?

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

I know exactly what you’re saying.

I’ve never said that there wasn’t any need for “systematics”. The point is: With limited resources and the urgent need for Christian textbooks, many Fundamentalists chose to help build the Christian school academic basis by writing textbooks. It’s ingenious because you’re writing for the students who will one day be the adults who will be teaching another generation. You’re conflating 2 different issues and assuming that BJU’s “mistakes” would have been solved by a few systematic theology textbooks. I’m really not interested in debating or discussing BJU’s “mistakes”. It’s another issue.

Wally Morris

Charity Baptist Church

Huntington, IN

amomentofcharity.blogspot.com

Don, first of all, perhaps C.W. should have dropped the issue when BJU apologized for the slander, but to my knowledge, no apology has been issued. Therefore Smith was just as free to comment on the matter as Paul was to mention Alexander the Coppersmith, and just as free as John was to mention Diotrephes by name. No?

It doesn’t matter if BJU never apologized; C.W. could have taken a higher road and let it go for God to deal with. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if C.W. never apologized to BJU.

This is kind of the argument I expect from a 4 year old - ‘he did it too!’.

Furthermore, Paul and John were under direct inspiration from God. When God says something is so, that’s a lot different from trading barbs and accusations.

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Bert, You mentioned “creating an intellectual foundation and infrastructure for fundamentalism.” Perhaps I am not sure what you mean by that, but fundamentalism as I know it has long had this. It is historical orthodox theology. There’s nothing to create so far as I can tell. The “nutjob” faction of fundamentalism is not different than the nutjob faction of evangelicalism. But the mainstream of fundamentalism has always had an intellectual foundation and infrastructure. It was simply rejected by those who didn’t like it. Remember, fundamentalism is the constant stream. The New Evangelicals were the divergents.

You mentioned training new scholars. You then make several biblical references but none of them have to do with scholarship as the modern use of the word. What is in view in these passages is knowledgeable pastors who have been trained, not by books primarily, but by life on life discipleship. I suppose my question is this: What do fundamentalists bring to the publishing table that sets them apart and makes their contribution unique? Is our systematic different? Is our exegesis and interpretation different? I am not saying these are bad things to do. I am fine with fundamentalists publishing more. I am simply not sure what unique perspective fundamentalists bring to the publishing table that necessitates writing for the future.

You mention Paul being taken out of day to day pastoral ministry for the express purpose of thinking through things and writing. But that doesn’t seem to square with the biblical record. Paul was rarely in day to day pastoral ministry as we think of it. He was an itinerant evangelist church planter for much of his life who spent some time in jail. It is possible that his day to day activity was, at some points in his life, more full than day to day pastoral ministry. He did write, but again, this is not scholarship. It’s inspiration to be sure.

I agree that Bible college students are typically not well-prepared for pastoral ministry. They need more. A person with an MDiv or even a PhD is not yet really a scholar ready to publish. I think you are confusing being well-educated and well-trained with scholarship. They are not the same. I am not arguing against scholarship at all and I am not arguing against writing. I think both are good. Kevin Bauder wrote a series of articles on scholarship a while back and Andy Naselli has compiled them into one document: http://andynaselli.com/wp-content/uploads/Bauder_scholarship.pdf. It is well worth reading.

You made a rather gratuitous comment above regarding the Joneses. The lack of a fundamentalist systematic was not the cause of their positions. There were plenty of solid systematic theologies available then and there are now.

I think we may be putting too much emphasis on writing. I think it’s a good thing to do. But that’s not the answer to fundamentalism. I don’t think the future of fundamentalism rises or falls based on fundamentalist authors publishing.

What’s important is training pastors for the future and that takes place best in relationships. I think publishing is good if there are people who have the ability to write. But it is possible to spend a lot of time repeating what is already elsewhere adding to Solomon’s “no end” and in the end not doing what we are supposed to do.

What’s important is well-trained pastors who can shepherd the flock of God among which he has made them overseers.

Larry, I’ll concede that the Biblical argument for more scholarship is implicit and not explicit. There was no such thing as a university as we know it today, so how could it be otherwise?

That said, if we take a look at how the rabbis of old (probably including Paul, perhaps including Christ) were trained, we find 12 years of training where many are said to have memorized the Torah—perhaps the whole Old Testament really—and where all had great familiarity with “Oral Torah” as well. OK, that last part isn’t something we want today, but we would possibly note that a pastor ought to at least have familiarity with Augustine, Calvin, the Council of Trent, and so on. As you note, many are woefully unprepared. It’s worth noting as well that most in that day would have been at least bilingual (Hebrew and Aramaic) if not trilingual (Greek) or quadrilingual (Latin) or more.

And that is, really, my central point, and let’s go back to some of the things by which fundagelicals alike have embarrassed themselves, specifically BJ Jr.’s misrepresentation of John MacArthur. In that case, either BJ Jr. (?) was unable or unwilling to read MacArthur’s writing carefully enough to get the real message, and in any case when his error was pointed out, he failed to repent.

Now if I’m gracious to him, I’m going to say he was in error and did not know his exegesis and hermeneutics well enough to parse out the passage—that is an academic issue. If I’m a little bit colder to him, I’m going to say he got caught in an untruth and didn’t have the character to apologize—and in any serious course of training, any good professor, pastor, or rabbi is going to recognize that someone does not own up to his mistakes.

Either way, it is at least in part an issue of training/academics.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

My original comments on writing (tied to Carnell’s charge of alleged intellectual stagnation) were not about “scholarship” for the sake of scholarship. I believe the relative lack of published works by fundamentalists reflects a wrong understanding of who the real enemy is.

We have plenty of works about separation, and about “the tragedy of compromise.” However, as a movement, we have produced extraordinarily little attacking modern liberalism and relevant social issues of the day. In other words, if we were truly fundamentalists who are anxious to be militant for the faith, we’d be writing to defend that faith. Instead, we’ve largely written to critique conservative evangelicals and defend the doctrine of seperation. That is a worthy topic, to be sure, but we’ve been inbalanced on this for too long. Not good. We can do better.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

…that thankfully I’m seeing more of it, is clear explanations of how the Fundamentals and the Solas ought to work out in daily life. OK, what does the inerrancy of Scripture mean outside of six day creation and the like? How does it interact with our hermeneutic? A lot of our excesses would end, in my view, if we simply took Sola Scriptura seriously.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.