What Theology Wise Differiates A Fundementalist/Evangelical baptists?

JesusFan · Oct 18, 2011

What would be our major diiferences in areas of Theology?

Ruiz · Oct 18, 2011

JesusFan said: ↑

What would be our major diiferences in areas of Theology?
Click to expand...

Evangelicalism has morphed the last 3 decades and I am not convinced of either group. I think the best short critique of Fundamentalism came from J. Greshem Machen (borrowed from John Piper).

Machen’s years at Princeton were the two decades which are known for the ongoing Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy. We will see Machen’s distinctive response to Modernism if we contrast it with what was known most widely has Fundamentalism. In the process of defining his response, the meaning of Modernism will become clear.

He was seen as an ally by the Fundamentalists; and his ecclesiastical opponents liked to make him “guilty” by association with them. But he did not accept the term for himself.

In one sense, Fundamentalists were simply those who “[singled] out certain great facts and doctrines [the “Fundamentals”] that had come under particular attack, [and] were concerned to emphasize their truth and to defend them.”18 But there was more attached to the term than that. And Machen didn’t like it. He said,

Do you suppose that I do regret my being called by a term that I greatly dislike, a “Fundamentalist”? Most certainly I do. But in the presence of a great common foe, I have little time to be attacking my brethren who stand with me in defense of the Word of God.19

What he didn’t like was

the absence of historical perspective;

the lack of appreciation of scholarship;

the substitution of brief, skeletal creeds for the historic confessions;

the lack of concern with precise formulation of Christian doctrine;

the pietistic, perfectionist tendencies (for example, hang ups with smoking etc.);

one-sided other-worldliness (that is, a lack of effort to transform culture); and

a penchant for futuristic chiliasm (or: pre-millenialism).

Machen was on the other side on all these things. And so “he never spoke of himself as a Fundamentalist.”21
Click to expand...

Thus, I do not know if Machen would be considered an Evangelical, but probably was more distinct in his theology and he seems to reject even some characteristics of Evangelicalism, as I do. While I agree with Lloyd Jones' definition of an Evangelical, it has dramatically changed in the last 20-30 years.

What Theology Wise Differiates A Fundementalist/Evangelical baptists?

JesusFan Well-Known Member

Ruiz New Member

Useful Searches

What Theology Wise Differiates A Fundementalist/Evangelical baptists?

JesusFan Well-Known Member

Ruiz New Member