Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism in Christianity came about as a reaction to Modernism. They have five (5) basic elements of Christianity that they believe are necessary to a proper understanding of Christianity.

The inerrancy of the Bible

The Virgin Birth and the deity of Jesus

The belief that Jesus died to redeem mankind's sin and that salvation resulted through faith in Jesus

The physical resurrection of Jesus

The imminent Second Coming of Jesus.

I would like to take a moment to address each of these elements.

The inerrancy of the Bible

This is a very interesting concept. Fundamentalists believe that if the Bible is not inerrant then it is useless. They see this as a pass/fail situation. However, the Bible has many wonderful concepts in it and would be a very useful book even if there were an error or two. If we tossed out every single book that had an error in it we wouldn't have any books at all. Every textbook you have ever studied from had errors; does that invalidate your education?

However, the Bible was written in human langauge. The original authors were given perfect information and they wrote it down as best they could. Human langauge is not perfect. How can anything be inerrant when written in an imperfect language.

So what is that book you and I refer to as The Bible? Well it is a translation of a copy. The original manuscripts were copied many times in their original language. Those copies were translated into many different languages, more than 2600 today.

It would be nice, but asking much, if we had the original manuscripts of the Bible. We do not, we have copies of copies of the Bible. The closer a copy is to the original, in terms of when it was written/copied the greater we can rely on it's accuracy.

In the last century a number of archeological finds, notably the Dead Sea Scrolls, have enabled us to significantly improve the accuracy of our translation of the Bible. Nevertheless, without going into a huge discourse on the difficulties of translating texts, I will point out that translating between modern languages has huge hurdles, mostly due to different cultural contexts. The difficulties of translating a dead, ancient language into any modern language, especially since we are not fully aware of the cultural contexts, is daunting, to say the least.

Since even the original manuscripts could not be inerrant, we have no reason to presume that current translations are even close to being inerrant and, in fact, some translations of the Bible have to be in error since they are inconsistent with other translations.

Further even if our Bibles were inerrant there is no guarantee that our understanding is inerrant! You and I can never fully know or understand exactly what was in the minds of the teams that created each translation. Human languages are broken and confused after all, we know this from the Bible!

Any person doing a serious study of the Bible should have several translations, as well as, a Greek New Testament and a Hebrew Old Testament. Further a dictionary of Old and New Testament words, such as Vine's or Mounce's is also an important tool.

However, do not forget Genesis 11:1-9

The Tower of Babel

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."

So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

God confused the language of man. We often believe that this merely created a whole bunch of different languages. What God really did was to make it difficult, if not impossible, for one person to fully understand what another is saying even if they speak the same language. God made language broken and He made it very difficult for us to communicate with each other. Think about all the times you were misunderstood!

Yes, Scripture was 'breathed' by God into the minds of the authors who then wrote them in a broken language. The only way you can truly understand Scripture with the assistance of The Holy Spirit.

The idea that anything written in a broken human langauge is nothing more than vanity.

The Virgin Birth and the deity of Jesus

Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and Jesus was born some 10 lunar months later. This would make Jesus divine. The question before us though is how necessary these two concepts are to being a Christian.

The question of Christ's deity has spawned at least two heresies. One heresy denies the divinity of Christ and says he is merely human. On the other side, there is a heresy that denies that Christ was at all human.

Does it make a difference whether Mary was a virgin before bearing Jesus? Is it necessary to believe that she remained chaste after Jesus was born? I do not believe so. I do not think either condition makes any difference. As for the second, scripture makes that impossible. The Bible speaks of Jesus' brothers and one of the authors of the New Testament, James, was Jesus' younger sibling. It is not possible that Mary remained chaste after Christ's birth and it is not really important to Christ's message that she was a virgin when he was conceived.

However, if Jesus was just a man, even a sinless man, how could he have died in atonement for the sins of all mankind? Why would this be special?

It would not be special. Jesus was the Son of God. He died on the Cross for our sins. It is needful for Christ to be divine or the New Testament becomes just another book.

But what if Jesus was not human, but only divine, only of the Spirit? We would then question whether he really suffered. More importantly, the resurrection would be unimportant. Why should a human care if a divine person was resurrected? Jesus was human, his resurrection means that we can also be resurrected! This is important.

Christ's humanity is important in another, human way. Since he was human we know that he experienced the same things we experience, we know that he understands the meaning of being human, not merely on a rational basis but on an emotional basis. Simply knowing that Christ is God, part of the triunity, may allow us to understand on a rational level that he knows what being human is all about. Knowing he was human means we can know on an emotional level that Christ understands.

Mary was, in fact, a virgin when she conceived Jesus with the help of The Holy Spirit. However, this is not essential to being Christian. Understanding that Christ is divine and was fully human, though, is necessary to a full understanding of Christianity.

The belief that Jesus died to redeem mankind's sin and that salvation resulted through faith in Jesus

I am happy to say there is nothing you can do to be saved, nor is there anything you need to do to be saved. You are saved!

Jesus died once for all! Jesus died to redeem mankind's sin, he suffered and died so that you will be saved. There is nothing you need to do, nothing you can do, to achieve salvation. Through the gift of Grace from God you are saved!

A gift cannot be earned, neither can salvation. So what is all the fuss about? Why is it important to understand the Bible.

Although there is nothing you can do to gain entrance to The Kingdom of God, you will get there, eventually, there is something you can do about the timing of your entrance to The Kingdom of God.

No, I don't mean suicide! The Bible speaks of an inheritance. An inheritance is something you get when someone else dies. Through faith in Christ, Bible study, and a Christian life you can enjoy many of the benefits of God's Kingdom right here on earth, before you die.

I cannot tell you how, beyond having faith in Christ, studying the Bible, and living according to the golden rule. I can tell you that there is nothing even approaching the joy of experiencing God's Kingdom. Adam and Eve defied God and broke his one rule to achieve that joy on a permanent basis. Although they failed, and in fact lost that joy altogether, you can succeed.

The physical resurrection of Jesus

As I pointed out previously, Jesus was human and he was resurrected. As a result of this, you can be assured that you too can and will be resurrected. You will live eternally in God's Kingdom. Yeah, this is important!

The imminent Second Coming of Jesus

Through The Holy Spirit God can write his law directly on your heart. When this happens you will suddenly find you do not want to disobey and will feel huge guilt with even a minor disobedience. Is this dependent on the Second Coming? No, this is dependent on how open you are to The Holy Spirit. Obedience to laws is not related to the presence of law enforcement personnel. Hopefully you obey laws because you understand that it is the right thing to do. Similarly, if we only choose to study Christianity because we think Christ is about to return, then we really do not understand. It is not important when Christ returns. Which is a good thing!

Jesus will come back. Remembering that one day to God is more than 1,000 years to mankind we realize that it has only been two days (at most) since Jesus was resurrected!

Psalm 90 2-4

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You return man to dust and say, "Return, O children of man!"

For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.

Revelation speaks of a millennium or 1,000 years! Fundamentalists often fail to understand that God experiences time differently from humans. The 6 days of creation was 6 of God's days not our days, not 24 hour periods. According to Psalm 90 we are actually speaking of at least 6,000 years and probably 36,000 or more years. Scientists, studying how God created earth and our universe, estimate that it took about 14.3 billion human years for those 6 days of God.

God's millennium would be 365,000 of God's days or, at least, 365 million years to mankind. It could be a lot more. It may be quite a while before Christ comes back! It is unlikely that it will occur in our lifetimes. However, we should all live our lives as if He is going to return tomorrow!

How we interpret the Bible

Before I go I would like to revisit the Bible for a moment and the idea that the Bible must only be interpreted literally. There are several ways to interpret the Bible. Literal and metaphoric are two of the ways to read the Bible. Just to dispel any problems, language is inherently interpretive. Every thing you read you interpret based on your knowledge, culture, experience, and how your feel at the moment. Those who try to tell you that you are not supposed to interpret the Bible are really saying "I will tell you what the Bible means!"

Many of the teachings of Jesus are obviously metaphorical. Jesus loved to use metaphors in his teaching. Jesus, as a member of the Trinity is part of God. If Jesus loves metaphors then God loves metaphors. Many books of the Bible obviously have metaphors, Ecclesiastes is one big huge metaphor. It would seem that when we do read the Bible we should be on our guard for metaphors! (Note: The Good Samaritan did not really exist).

We also have to guard against idioms. An idiom is a phrase that hold a different meaning than a literal interpretation of the words would suggest. We we say we are 'going by the store' we mean that we are going shopping, yet a literal interpretation of the word by would seem to indicate that we are simply going to drive past the store and come home (or go elsewhere). There is nothing inherent in that phrase that suggests shopping. We might also get the complaint that we 'bought the store' when we come home with a large number of purchases. Here again the literal meaning differs from the idiomatic meaning.

Does the Bible contain idioms? What idioms did ancient man use? We do not know. When we translated from the original languages did the translators use any idioms? Do we know all the possible idioms used in the last 2500 years? Again, we do not know. We do know that God loves us and would not want any of us to come to harm. When we read a passage in the Bible that appears to cause harm to a large group of humans we need to consider that there may be an idiom at some point.

Remember the words of Dale Martin (a New Testament Scholar):

Any interpretation of scripture that hurts people, oppresses people, or destroys people cannot be the right interpretation no matter how traditional, historical, or exegetically respectable.

Amen