Ron Rhodes And Norman Geisler

I am not in an IFB church, but Dr. Geisler is President of my seminary, Southern Evangelical Seminary, and one of the foremost living Christian apologists. He's also an excellent teacher. Dr. Geisler is also the co-founder of the seminary. He wanted a seminary where apologetics was taught. At the time he founded it, there were basically no apologetic courses in the seminaries - now more and more have apologetics.

I had Dr. Rhodes as my prof (he's a visiting prof there) for Contemporary Cults, which I took about 3 yrs. ago or so. He was very good. He has written a book that used a lot of the info he gave us.

I think both of these men are solid Christians who hold to the essential doctrines of the faith and are conservative Christians.

The site for the seminary is www.ses.edu

 

They are convservative evangelical scholars.. just as you said. I would say.. more like the Dallas theo seminary folks.

 

Conservative evangelicals serve and fellowship with one another across denominational lines. Baptist fundamentalists only fellowship with each other and accuse conservative evangelicals of being compromisers and new evangelicals.

 

Well, this is your view because you are a Calvinist. For me, the view on Calvinism is a minor issue.

On the other hand, Dr. Geisler earned a lot of people's respect when he resigned from the ETS because they would not declare Open Theism at odds with the veiw of biblical inerrancy.

 

Conservative evangelicals are not necessarily Baptist, for one thing. If you look at the churches pastored by conservative Evangelicals.. usually they are "Bible" churches and the like. I dont have a problem with it myself, but they are usually more ecumenical than most Baptists.

 

Depends on what you call a fundamentalist... which has been the topic of several threads.

The original fundamentalists were multi-denominational and focused on biblical basics rather than extraneous issues. Many genuine fundamentalists still do.

My church would be considered "fundamentalist" and belongs to the BBFI. My pastor fellowships freely with likeminded Southern Baptists. We have other somewhat more limited relationships with the Methodists, Nazarenes, Assemblies of God, and a non-denominational church in town.

These are voluntary interactions on a case by case basis. He doesn't belong to the Ministerial Alliance because its fundamental premise is that everyone who calls themselves a Christian church is such no matter what doctrine they preach.

I guess some might condemn us for not holding to the second degree of separation but our pastor simply doesn't.

 

Many conservative evangelicals would have been considered fundamentalists 100 years ago.

Pseudo-fundamentalists who have tried to be more "biblical" than the Bible have forced a re-labeling.

 

Scott J,

We agree.

The fundamentalism of the 1920s is "historic" fundamentalism, whereas, the fundamentalism that separates from other believers on the basis of alleged compromise is what is generally considered "fundamentalism" today, as practiced by many independent Baptists, but apparently, not as many as I had thought!

I agree with your assessment completely. Genuine fundamentalists are the "historic" fundamentalists.

 

As i have clarified before..when i say "fundamentalist", I am not talkingt about Criswell, Ryrie, etc. I am talking about Norris, Applemann, etc.
It seems like the point of disagreement is ecclesiastical separation. It's a label, an opinion, really, not something concrete.

 

True.. but I understand that the label "fundamentalist" that I tag onto people is not the norm. Again, to me, the word "Fundamentalist" always meant someone who was opposed to the liberalism in the SBC. That, of course, is not going to be the common usage of the term and I acknowledge that. After I had been away from the SBC (and all the good folks in it) I began to realize that even those I term "fundamentalists" have always thought of Bob Jones, Sam Jones, Billy Sunday, etc as being Fundamentalist even though they weren't Baptist.

 

The Lord opened the eyes of Dr Geisler to the Truth. How can that be a bad thing?