One the best things about growing up fundamentalist is that we absolutely knew we were on God's side or perhaps it is better to say that God was on our side. Knowing God is on your side breeds confidence as well as other things ... and I want to have a conversation today about those other things. I'm not concerned today about what a fundamentalist believes. Facts clearly show that fundamentalists and evangelicals and Catholics and orthodox Christians believe many of the same things. What I've tried a number of times to do is to think my way into why it is that many get upset with fundamentalists. What is it?
Zeal, too much of it. Relentless zeal. Imposing zeal. Absolute confidence in everything they think is important.
Here's what I have observed: my experience shows that former and anti-fundamentalists can be just as fundamentalistic -- zealous and absolute -- about their anti-fundamentalism and new-found beliefs. In other words, they absolutely confident liberalism is another form of fundamentalism.
These anti-fundamentalists (and anti-evangelicals) can be just as confident and cocky that they've got it all figured out. That they stand high above the rest in their perceptions of truth. They can be just as zealous for their new convictions, some of them petty. Once they saw all non-fundamentalists in danger of perdition, now they find everyone who doesn't fight for the cause they believe in as hopeless or apathetic or non-Christian. I call this fundamentalist flop-flipping, from being a pro-fundamentalist fundamentalist to being an anti-fundamentalist fundamentalist.
There's some good news here. I don't believe we need to say "once a fundamentalist always a fundamentalist." No, God mercifully grants us grace to find a different way, a third way, the way of grace and love that can hold firmly to one's viewpoint and yet treat the other with respect and dignity.
At the bottom of the problem many of us have with fundamentalists is the lack of grace or mercy or -- and I'd prefer this term the best -- love. Jesus taught his followers something that can reshape anyone from zeal-spirited fundamentalism, whether on the rebound or not. He taught them that the whole law hung from two basic commands:
Love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
I call this The Jesus Creed
and the discovery of the importance of this Creed to Jesus can reshape more how we live and relate to others than what we believe. Love has the power to reshape fundamentalists from the inside out. I've met plenty of them.
Fundamentalist or not, this is what Jesus wants of us: to love God and to love others. No one who loves God and loves others lives in that angry spiritedness, flop-flipper or not.
Here's what I have observed: my experience shows that former and anti-fundamentalists can be just as fundamentalistic -- zealous and absolute -- about their anti-fundamentalism and new-found beliefs. In other words, they absolutely confident liberalism is another form of fundamentalism.
These anti-fundamentalists (and anti-evangelicals) can be just as confident and cocky that they've got it all figured out. That they stand high above the rest in their perceptions of truth. They can be just as zealous for their new convictions, some of them petty. Once they saw all non-fundamentalists in danger of perdition, now they find everyone who doesn't fight for the cause they believe in as hopeless or apathetic or non-Christian. I call this fundamentalist flop-flipping, from being a pro-fundamentalist fundamentalist to being an anti-fundamentalist fundamentalist.
There's some good news here. I don't believe we need to say "once a fundamentalist always a fundamentalist." No, God mercifully grants us grace to find a different way, a third way, the way of grace and love that can hold firmly to one's viewpoint and yet treat the other with respect and dignity.
At the bottom of the problem many of us have with fundamentalists is the lack of grace or mercy or -- and I'd prefer this term the best -- love. Jesus taught his followers something that can reshape anyone from zeal-spirited fundamentalism, whether on the rebound or not. He taught them that the whole law hung from two basic commands:
Love God with your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
I call this The Jesus Creed
and the discovery of the importance of this Creed to Jesus can reshape more how we live and relate to others than what we believe. Love has the power to reshape fundamentalists from the inside out. I've met plenty of them.Fundamentalist or not, this is what Jesus wants of us: to love God and to love others. No one who loves God and loves others lives in that angry spiritedness, flop-flipper or not.
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I almost have to laugh at where this conversation has ended up -but that indicates that a real conversation is going on. Scot M., thanks for giving the time and space to this.
Scot M - Thanks for the post/article - I couldn't agree more. Typically I find the right (which I am more closely associated with than I like to admit) to be the most argumentative and mean (calling people names,saying believing or not believing certain things means you aren't a christian, proclaiming their ideas to be right/biblical/orthodox etc.) but I find it horrible no matter what side it comes from. That attitude is the number one thing that I have spent the last several years trying to detox from. I noticed one day that my faith had become a barrier instead of a bridge - not because of what I believed, but because of the attitude I had. Since then I believe in some things more, some things less and some things not at all - but mostly my heart has changed and I am much more focused on right living instead of right believing.
Scot Lyons -
I am chiming in late but I did read all of the comments and wanted to respond to you...Wow - your comment #58 (particularly the fourth paragraph) sounds like you are absolutely certain you have the virgin birth/divinity of Christ/incarnation/fully human-fully God thing all figured out. That kind of certainty is very hard for me to relate to these days (although I am empathetic as I came out of that sort of mind set a while back). IMHO it would be a better conversation if you stated that those are reasons that the virgin birth is important to you and that without it you would be hard pressed to believe that Jesus was God incarnate etc. but the way you say "losing the virgin birth would destroy the faith" sounds like a statement that lacks humility about your(and all of mankinds)ability to understand these things and (although I may be reading you wrong) it also sounds like a statement that is meant to shut down the conversation because if we don't watch out we could destroy the faith.
Have you considered that maybe God could have made Jesus fully human and fully divine without a virgin birth if He wanted to. Perhaps the virgin birth was just a sign (wasn't it prophesied?) and not the only way that God could have made it all happen. Do you have to have that kind of "it's the only way it could be true" approach in order for you to believe in it?
Personally I believe in the virgin birth but if I didn't it would not stop me from believing that Jesus was fully human and fully God and I find it hard to believe that it would "destroy the faith". I do not see the virgin birth as essential. But that is just my humble opinion.
Perhaps the virgin birth was just a sign (wasn't it prophesied?)
Just chiming in on this one quote from the latest post.
When telling the birth story, Matthew does indeed quote from the prophet Isaiah "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son."
Leaving aside for the moment the discrepancy between the Latin Septuigint (which Matthew used) and the Hebrew scriptures (whereby the word in Isaiah is more properly understood as a young marriageable woman, and not explicitly a virgin), and whether or not Isaiah was prophesying about something that was to happen a bit closer to his own time (suffice it to say, there are plenty of debates on this issue), there is still a significant interpretive issue at play here.
The original readers/hearers of this passage, even if they understood the word as "virgin," had no tradition of understanding this passage to mean that a person who had never had sex would nonetheless have a baby. Rather, it seems that this would have been understood to read that a young woman--a virgin even--would conceive in the usual way (thus no longer being virgin, yes. But the point here is that she was up until then) and have a baby.
In other words, the Isaiah prophecy has only been understood to refer to the Virgin Birth because the Virgin Birth actually happened!
Mark - Thank you for the response. I wanted to say something about this but didn't know enough detail(other than the part about the Hebrew meaning young unmarried woman). I was hoping someone would clarify.
ooops - that was me, Liz, in #65
Liz, I'm not questioning anyone's love for Christ here, whether they affirm the Virgin Birth or not. I'm not questioning whether anyone is saved. I am not judging their souls. I disagree, that's all. I am (and was) simply trying to state what our faith is, and to say that it is our catholic (little c) faith - believed by all (the Church), everywhere and in all times (as St. Vincent of Lerins puts it). That statement about the Virgin Birth is fairly incontrovertible. Orthodoxy does not equal pride. Uncertainty does not equal humility. I am certain (today) of the Virgin Birth because of the certainty that faith gives (Hebrews 11), not because of anything I have figured out. I may have a terrible day tomorrow and have a very different attitude about it all - I have had plenty of those days.
(And let me say that I believe "orthodoxy" to be what the Church has always believed throughout the centuries - beautifully summarized in the creeds.)
So first, forgive me for a tone that sounded prideful to you. I did not write the comment with the intention of coming across as a better Christian than anyone else here or as a better thinker or as a better anything else. I come from a very different tradition than most people here and I try to speak out of that tradition. When that is no longer welcome here, Dr. McKnight will politely let me know and I will simply become a reader of "Jesus Creed." But to not let someone speak about their belief, even their certainty of their belief, or to simply tell them how amazed you are at their pride and certainty, also ends conversation.
Nothing anyone says here or elsewhere will destroy the faith. I certainly do not see how the Virgin Birth could ever be debunked - it is simply a hypothetical. It can be believed, it can be denied, and it can even be believed but not believed necessary. My statement was made to Travis because our holy Fathers certainly believed the Virgin Birth necessary to guard the faith and to guard the Incarnation. I am not requiring Travis to believe that or even agree with me in how I think about it. I am not asking RJS or Travis to become something they are not.
We can think another wrong, disagree with him or her, without thinking the other lost. For me, that's the difference between fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Regardless of what someone does or does not believe does not change how I ought to love them - not in-pity-for-the-poor-lost-soul and I-pray-they're-saved, but because I am in need of salvation myself. Because I am loved. Which is another thing that I am certain of.
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