Eight Reasons To Be a Fundamentalist

Joseph, again I will defer to Mortenson, as it would be foolish of me to dive into a debate on the history of geology. I do not think he would agree with your assertions, however.
Please check his work in “The Great Turning Point.”
I should think that work done around Oxford University for a European doctorate should qualify as being academically and historically credible for our purposes here.
(BTW - Numbers is a YEC critic, no more a neutral party in this discussion than Mortenson.)

In an article titled “The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story,” Stephen W. Boyd shows that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 should be read as historical narrative based on statistical analysis of Hebrew verbs used in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and narratives and poetry in other parts of the Bible.

Love,
In Christ,

Matt

[Joseph] Mike,

I’m not sure I fully understand your point. Tell me if the following summary is wrong: YEC is not a primary issue, but someone could adopt YEC for reasons that themselves reflected a primary issue.

Joseph, I was actually arguing a somewhat inverse position: that if a person does not believe YEC (which is NOT a primary or doctrinal issue), it may reflect that he has some primary or doctrinal problems.

The most simple form of this would be something like “I don’t believe YEC because I don’t believe in inerrancy on that level. The Bible can be true in spiritual matters but be entirely inaccurate in what it affirms scientifically.”
Or they might say “I don’t believe in YEC because I believe that Genesis 1 & 2 are simply oral traditions that Moses recorded and are not really any sort of prophetic word from God.” Thus they would deny inspiration.

On the other hand, someone might say “I don’t believe YEC because I believe that God is using Genesis 1 & 2 to communicate something entirely different than you do, and here’s why. ….” And then I would hope to hear explanations for the kinds of questions I asked above about other texts that refer back to Genesis 1 & 2.

In other words, the manner in which some people disagree with YEC may reflect a low view of God’s Word, inspiration, etc.

Mike,

That’s what I meant; I wrote the opposite of what I was thinking (it’s been a long day!).

[Joseph] Mike,

That’s what I meant; I wrote the opposite of what I was thinking (it’s been a long day!).

OK. Thanks. So, do you agree? Would you agree with me that while YEC is not a primary doctrinal issue, the reasons that someone rejects it may be primary doctrinal issues? If so, that’s the only point I wanted to make.

I am at a loss as to why cessationism is classed as a sign of being a fundamentalist. With no scriptural warrant other than the gross assumption that the “perfect” refers to the canon of scripture this cannot be said to be a fundamental. You can’t base fundamentals on a dubious interpretation.There is more scriptural warrant for its continuation which is why continuationism is an indication of being a fundamentalist to my mind.

[Richard Pajak] I am at a loss as to why cessationism is classed as a sign of being a fundamentalist. With no scriptural warrant other than the gross assumption that the “perfect” refers to the canon of scripture this cannot be said to be a fundamental. You can’t base fundamentals on a dubious interpretation.There is more scriptural warrant for its continuation which is why continuationism is an indication of being a fundamentalist to my mind.

Richard,

1. Interpreting “the perfect” in 1 Cor. 13 as the completed canon is not a “gross assumption”, as I believe a good case can be made for that interpretation (although I freely admit that many Bible teachers, even cessationists, do not hold to that interpretation).
2. More importantly, cessationism by no means rises or falls on that one passage. It has much more scriptural support than that, which is why there are those who do not believe “the perfect” refers to the completed canon yet are still cessationists.

[Richard Pajak] I am at a loss as to why cessationism is classed as a sign of being a fundamentalist. With no scriptural warrant other than the gross assumption that the “perfect” refers to the canon of scripture this cannot be said to be a fundamental. You can’t base fundamentals on a dubious interpretation.There is more scriptural warrant for its continuation which is why continuationism is an indication of being a fundamentalist to my mind.

I feel a similar loss. I can understand why some believe the Bible teaches this, but there are many things much clearer that we do not classify among the fundamentals. I think we are playing semantics again — we can talk about the original version of fundamentalism popular 100 years ago, or we could use typical Baptist fundamentalism as a status quo to be maintained.

I probably was too quick in saying I agree with the points of the original article. I am not a strict cessationalist myself. I do believe that there is no more INFALLIBLE revelation — meaning Scripture. But that brings us back to one of our major misunderstandings, an abuse of the term “Sola Scriptura” which originally meant that the Bible is the only infallible authority, not that other (fallible) authorities do not exist.

Y’all are still reading Pratt wrong… he is not saying “these are things that make you a fundamentalist” but rather “these are things fundamentalists have gotten right.” In other words, “these are things most fundamentalists believe that I agree with, ergo, I gladly claim the name.”
And it is true that most fundamentalists are cessationists of one sort or another.

(One reason this is the case is that when fundamentalist movement got off the ground, the only non-cessationism around was old pentecostalism. If memory serves correctly, these were not for the most part interested in the movement. Later, the only form of non-cessationism around was that of the Charismatic Movement which was very much not interested in fundamentalism. It’s only since the “Third Wave” and others came along among conservative evangelicals that continuationism began to look like something plausibly fundamentalist. … http://www.dbts.edu/4-1/4-19.asp] Mark Snoeberger has done some good work on this if I remember right, but I’m not sure where the paper is published. Read it at a conference, myself.)

[Aaron Blumer] Y’all are still reading Pratt wrong… he is not saying “these are things that make you a fundamentalist” but rather “these are things fundamentalists have gotten right.” In other words, “these are things most fundamentalists believe that I agree with, ergo, I gladly claim the name.”
And it is true that most fundamentalists are cessationists of one sort or another.

(One reason this is the case is that when fundamentalist movement got off the ground, the only non-cessationism around was old pentecostalism. If memory serves correctly, these were not for the most part interested in the movement. Later, the only form of non-cessationism around was that of the Charismatic Movement which was very much not interested in fundamentalism. It’s only since the “Third Wave” and others came along among conservative evangelicals that continuationism began to look like something plausibly fundamentalist. … http://www.dbts.edu/4-1/4-19.asp] Mark Snoeberger has done some good work on this if I remember right, but I’m not sure where the paper is published. Read it at a conference, myself.)

Sorry! I did misread you. I stand corrected!