3 Comments »

  Dan Harney wrote @ April 12, 2008 at 11:58 am

Perhaps we can go through the fundamentals, one by one, to ensure we are on the same page. For example, when I was in college our president at the time did a session on the problems of fundamentalism. One point that he made was that fundamentalists often have the highest respect for inspiration, but the lowest intelligence of interpretation - in reference to scripture. I think this is a fundamental (pun fully intended) problem when trying to transplant the truth of the inspiration of scripture into a relevant context. Maybe this would be a good place for recovering fundamentalists to start thinking about what he/she really believes. Just a thought.

  Mark Culton wrote @ April 14, 2008 at 3:01 pm

Yeah, that is a really good point. Semantics play a big part in this discussion. What do we really mean when we say “literal interpretation”? Or, what do we mean when we say “separation”.
Very good point.

  PhilipT wrote @ April 17, 2008 at 12:25 am

Good ideas!

The doctrines of the Scripture are often already evident on the surface of the Bible, but can be cleared up through proper hermeneutics.

Proper practice of believers or matters of interpretation often fall into the realm of faulty hermeneutics. An obvious fault in the past few generations of fundamentalism has been the straying from the solid hermeneutics of many of the early preachers and theologians of fundamentalism (C. & A. A. Hodge, J. G. Machen, A. J. Gordon, etc.) into a very allegorical approach to the Bible.

Another fault of fundamentalism has been the assertion of preference rather than Scripture. Often these preferences come as a result of a Scriptural principle applied to one area of life and then that area of life then used to categorize other practices as wrong (classic example: The Bible teaches against violence and the lyrics of some rock music are pro-violence, therefore, the lyrics of some rock music are wrong, therefore, the rhythm must carry some of that moral nature, therefore any words that carry that rhythm must be sinful, therefore any use of the words used in songs that use a rock rhythm is sinful).

A return to biblical doctrine combined with biblical hermeneutics and a biblical moral compass (rather than that of emotion or tradition) will greatly benefit one who seeks to have the old heart of fundamentalism transplanted.

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