In The Nick of Time

Digression One: Really?

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Over several essays I have been attempting to describe the intellectual and social influences that were operating within the early fundamentalist movement. One of the earliest essays offered an overview of Scottish Common Sense Realism in which I suggested that most early Fundamentalists (among others) absorbed this philosophy from their intellectual milieu. Furthermore, I argued that Common Sense Realism had a definite and rather negative effect upon Fundamentalism.

Numbers of people have written to inform me of my several mistakes. The first is supposed to be that Common Sense Realism isn’t really anything new because people have always made their real decisions on the basis of common sense. The second is that Common Sense Realism could not have affected early Fundamentalists all that much because they were Biblicists and not philosophers. The third is that the effects of Common Sense Realism cannot be as dire as I hinted.

In the present essay I wish to respond only to the first objection. The second really requires no response except to refer the reader to the rather substantial literature on the subject.¹ The third merits a separate discussion.

Is it true ordinary people (as opposed to philosophers) have always acted on the basis of common sense? One fellow in particular was quite definite. “If you see a cow in a field,” he said, “You can just point to it and say, ‘That’s a cow.’” As far as he was concerned, this is just common sense, and it describes the way that people have always thought and acted.

No.

Fundamentalism and Sentimentalism

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

The evangelical mixture from which Fundamentalism developed made serious concessions to populism. Charles Finney took those concessions to an extreme by patterning the inner ministry of the church after the worlds of commerce, politics, and entertainment. Finney made these adaptations at the precise moment when popular culture was coming into existence. The result was that the predecessors of Fundamentalism invested heavily in adapting their Christianity to popular culture. Fundamentalism inherited this link with popular culture and has perpetuated it rather consistently through the years.

Popular culture came into its own during the Victorian-Edwardian era.¹ It provided a channel through which Victorian influences began to affect the lived Christianity of most American evangelicals, and consequently of the Fundamentalists who came after them. While Fundamentalists have not been alone in attempting to assimilate popular culture into Christianity, they have been among the foremost.

One of the main characteristics of Victorian popular culture was its sentimentalism. Victorians did not invent sentimentalism, but they made it a significant aspect of their mental and emotional furniture. As the predecessors of Fundamentalism absorbed Victorian popular culture, they imported its sentimentalism into their Christianity.²

Sentimentalism is more than simple overindulgence in emotion. It is a combination of two factors. First, it attaches the wrong degree or kind of emotion to an object. Second, it pursues emotion for the sake of the emotion itself.

Fundamentalism and Populism

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Prior to Thomas Reid and Scottish Common Sense Realism, people typically recognized a distinction between appearances (whether understood as perceptions, phenomena, or, in Locke’s case, ideas) and reality. From antiquity until the late Middle Ages, this distinction had produced two effects upon the way that most people thought about reality. First, they reckoned that whatever reality they encountered had to be interpreted—and not everyone was in an equally good position to do the interpreting. Second, they believed that reality possessed dimensions of meaning or significance that stretched well beyond sensory awareness. Grasping those levels of meaning was also something that not everyone was equally qualified to do.

Common Sense Realists denied the distinction between appearance and reality. They insisted that perceiving subjects have direct and unmediated access to reality itself. Consequently, reality does not need to be interpreted—it is as it appears to be. This move had the effect of placing every person on an equal footing for understanding any aspect of reality.

As presented by people like Reid and Dugald Stewart, Common Sense Realism was a responsible if misguided academic option. Ironically, however, many of the people who appropriated and applied Reid’s conclusions would not have been capable of understanding his arguments. Chief among them were Americans.

Even before Reid, Americans had begun to affirm the competence of the ordinary person in all matters. This perspective is called populism. The harshness of the American frontier and the necessity of individual accomplishment tended to negate aristocratic influences. The sense that they were starting anew gave Americans an antipathy toward traditions. The arrival of Common Sense Realism confirmed the populist prejudice and opened the throttle for its acceleration. This process continued throughout the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian periods.

Fundamentalism Common Sense

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

By definition, Fundamentalism does not concern itself with the whole counsel of God. As the name implies, it concerns itself with fundamentals, i.e., with those matters that are essential to the bare existence of Christianity. Fundamentalists may, and many Fundamentalists actually do, go beyond this limited concern. When they do so, however, they are no longer acting merely as Fundamentalists, but as Fundamentalists who also happen to be something else.

On one hand, as an actual, historical movement, Fundamentalism has often tended to settle for an abbreviated form of Christianity. Though clear exceptions exist, it has often sacrificed doctrinal breadth and detail. On the other hand, Fundamentalism has also tended to add elements that are not necessary to any form of biblical Christianity. Over the next few essays, I wish to explore three of these additions: Common Sense Realism, populism, and sentimentalism.

Common Sense Realism was a reaction to and development of Enlightenment philosophy. It was articulated by Thomas Reid of Aberdeen (later Glasgow) and sold to the philosophical world by Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh. A relatively late development, Common Sense Realism represented an attempt to circumvent several philosophical impasses. Continental rationalism had never been able to move convincingly beyond solipsism. British empiricism had led to the subjective idealism of Berkeley and the skepticism of Hume.

Reid hoped to get past these problems by grounding knowledge in a core of self-evident common sense. Where earlier thinkers had distinguished appearance from reality, Reid posited that people perceive reality directly. Normally, perceptions can be relied upon as accurate and trustworthy. For Common Sense Realism, reality is transparently available to the perceiving subject.

Fundamentalism and History

Read Part 1

It is a mistake, often made by educated persons who happen to have but little knowledge of historical theology, to suppose that Fundamentalism is a new and strange form of thought. It is nothing of the kind: it is the partial and uneducated survival of a theology which was once universally held by all Christians. How many were there, for instance, in Christian churches in the eighteenth century who doubted the infallible inspiration of all Scripture? A few, perhaps, but very few. No, the Fundamentalist may be wrong. I think that he is. But it is we who have departed from the tradition, not he, and I am sorry for the fate of anyone who tries to argue with a Fundamentalist on the basis of authority. The Bible and the corpus theologicum of the Church is [sic] on the Fundamentalist side.
—Kirsopp Lake¹

The above words were not written by a Fundamentalist or even a friend of Fundamentalism. The quotation comes from a theological liberal who was writing at the height of the Fundamentalist controversy. As such, it represents rather a startling admission. Not many liberals were willing to concede as much.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the quotation has become a favorite of those who have identified with Fundamentalism. David Beale appeals to it in his attempt to define Fundamentalism. Both Fred Moritz and Mark Sidwell refer to it in their defenses of separatism. Robert Reymond (a systematic theologian who was trained at Bob Jones University) includes it in his discussion of divine revelation. It even shows up in a sermon by Wayne Bley on the website of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International.²

Fundamentalists are flattered to think of themselves as neither more nor less than representatives of historic Christian doctrine. They take comfort and courage in believing that they have neither added to nor subtracted from the deposit of faith, but that they simply proclaim and defend exactly the same message as the apostles did. This kind of reassurance feeds a craving for identity and significance.

Things Have Changed

The last sustained history of fundamentalism to be published by a fundamentalist was David Beale’s In Pursuit of Purity¹. Nearly a generation has passed since Beale finished writing his book. During that time the landscape of fundamentalism has altered significantly.

The period when Beale was writing was a time of intense struggle within fundamentalism. Segments of the movement were denouncing other segments as “neo” this or “pseudo” that. One wing of fundamentalism (led by Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, Ed Hindson, and Jack Van Impe) was attempting to forge links with mainstream evangelicalism. From the opposite wing, Bob Jones Jr. was attacking John MacArthur’s views on the blood of Christ and declaring that “MacArthur’s position is heresy.”² The King James Only movement, pioneered by David Otis Fuller and D. A. Waite, was in its infancy, barely a cloud the size of a man’s hand.

Many of the events that define present-day fundamentalism were yet future. Robert Sumner had not yet published his exposé of Jack Hyles’s (alleged) affair, and Hyles himself was regarded as a prominent leader within mainstream fundamentalism. Cornerstone College was still Grand Rapids Baptist College, an approved agency of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and the GARBC was still approving agencies. Bob Jones University, smarting from its recent rebuff by the United States Supreme Court, continued to defend its ban on interracial dating and marriage as “based on its understanding of the Bible.”³ Perhaps most significantly, the conservative resurgence within the Southern Baptist Convention was still in its infancy. Conservatives controlled no Southern Baptist institutions yet, and most fundamentalists doubted that they ever would.

In 1986, neither Dave Doran nor Tim Jordan held the pastorates that have come to be associated with their names. Dan Davey and Mark Minnick were associate pastors in Virginia Beach and Greenville, respectively. Matt Olson was just a few years into the planting of Tri-City Baptist Church near Denver. John Hartog III was a college student, and Stephen Jones was still in high school.

A recent, widely-circulated sermon took aim at pastors who lead their congregations to adopt premillennialism as an article of faith. The sermon posited that, by instituting premillennialism as a doctrinal test, those churches were unnecessarily dividing the body of Christ. Addressing pastors who encourage their churches to adopt premillennial confessions, the preacher said, “You are sinning.”

This sermon raises an important question. Is it a sin to implement a particular millennial view as a test for church membership? Or is every church obligated to grant eschatological latitude? The question may not be as easily answered as the sermon assumed.

Perhaps the place to begin is by recognizing that some doctrinal and practical tests are essential, not merely to church membership, but to any Christian fellowship. The basis of all Christian fellowship is the gospel. Those who deny the gospel should never be accorded Christian fellowship or recognition at any level. Therefore, any proposition that is essential to the gospel is also essential to Christian fellowship. No level of Christian fellowship, including church membership, is ever proper with those who deny the essentials of the gospel.

Historically, most gospel-affirming churches have required more than simple affirmation of the gospel for membership. Their requirements have usually included some level of Christian obedience. Baptism provides a convenient illustration. Most Christians have thought that baptism, while not essential to salvation, is essential to obedience for those who have been saved. Since one function of a church is to foster obedience in its members, most churches have typically required baptism as a precondition for membership. Other Christians, however, believe that baptism, while advisable, is not essential to obedience. Their churches do not require baptism for membership. A very few Christians even believe that water baptism should not be practiced at all.

Disagreeing with someone’s perspective is one thing, but dismissing it is something else. People can disagree respectfully. Respectful disagreement involves listening carefully to other individuals in conversations, understanding their positions, and considering carefully the arguments that favor them (or that weigh against one”s own position) before replying. When a perspective is dismissed, however, it is rejected as so implausible—and perhaps so damaging—that it does not warrant a hearing. Dismissiveness is often accompanied with derision.

In certain theological circles, premillennialism, especially in its dispensationalist varieties, is almost habitually dismissed and derided. A recent example involves a sermon preached by a well-known evangelical pastor. The sermon, which was partly addressed to premillennial pastors, was mainly an exposition of Revelation 20. To be clear, the sermon contained much useful teaching. This influential pastor, however, began his treatment of the text by repeating a quip that Revelation is not “for the armchair prophets with their charts of historical events and their intricate diagrams of the end of the age.” He then continued, “This is not rightly dividing the Word of Truth,” a clear allusion to dispensational theology. He insisted that the purpose of the book of Revelation is to provide “warning and reassurance” to “harassed, subsistence-level Christians,” to “encourage them in their struggle,” and to “liberate them from fear of the enemy within and without.” In other words, the purpose of Revelation is to hearten persecuted believers, not to disclose details of an eschatological timetable.

Those two activities, however, are not mutually exclusive. Granted, the purpose of the Apocalypse really is to encourage perseverance among believers who are facing oppression. Even so, that does not imply that eschatological chronology or detail is necessarily absent from the book. Indeed, it is at least possible that the details of eschatological chronology might be revealed in order to provide motivation for perseverance.

At this point, a concession is in order. Even if eschatological detail and chronology are important, not every use of these details is necessarily helpful. In fact, two uses of prophetic schematizing are damaging. These uses ought to be an embarrassment to every responsible premillennialist.

This is the third week of July, and I’ve finally managed to grab a week of vacation—my first this year. People do all sorts of things with their vacation time. Some travel for fun. Some hole up in a remote hideaway. For me, however, vacation means getting to stay home.

By “staying home” I do not mean lounging around the house. What I do for vacation is to catch up on the projects that normal people do during their evenings and weekends. This week I’m installing a new exterior door and new windows. Last year I took two weeks of vacation, stripped our bathroom to the bare studs, and refitted everything in it. The previous year I finished the interior of my garage. Another year I built a 10x12 tool storage shed, complete with attic.

These are not projects that I pursue because I enjoy them. On the contrary, I do not like to do construction, auto mechanics, or most similar activities. But I do them anyway, for two very good reasons. First, the projects really need to be done (if you’d seen the shape my windows were in, you’d understand). Second, I’m too cheap to hire somebody else to do the work.

Actually, I have other reasons, too. One is a belief—almost a conviction—that people who do the work of the mind should not forget what manual labor feels like. We should value the kind of productivity that comes from the exertion of muscle. It helps us to remember the dignity of any honest job. Lessons are learned from swinging a hammer, turning a wrench, or digging in the soil.

Another reason that I do these things is simply because I can, and that ability I owe in no small part to my father. Dad has always been a hands-on guy. He’s slowing down a bit now, but he used to hope that something would break just so he could repair it.

Because of Dad, I grew up in houses that were constantly under construction. In fact, I prayed to receive Christ while kneeling beside a pile of two-by-fours in the middle of a remodeling project. Through the years I helped Dad hang drywall, lay hardwood flooring, run wiring and plumbing (both with real copper), and build cabinetry. The sweet whine of a table saw ripping plywood can bring tears of nostalgia to my eyes.