A Roundtable Discussion on “The Fundamentals”

[Note: we published this article, a synopsis of a recent roundtable discussion, in the May/June 2019 issue of FrontLine. With this republication, we make available the full video recording of the discussion. You may access it here. Please note the password! “FBFI” (without the quotes)]

Dr. Kevin Schaal (FBFI president), Dr. Kevin Bauder (Central Seminary), Dr. Steve Hankins (Bob Jones University), Dr. David Shumate (International Baptist College and Seminary), and Mark Herbster (Maranatha Baptist Seminary) gathered for on online discussion on The Fundamentals and their relationship to the problems we face today. This is a synopsis of an hour-long discussion. You can watch the entire discussion here.

Schaal: What impact did The Fundamentals have on the theological landscape of its day? Did their publication make a difference?

Bauder: I am not sure that the series was intended to either to get people to “come out” or “put out.” It was intended to be a restatement of orthodoxy in the face of new challenges—in particularly the challenge of religious liberalism. About half of the articles in the original twelve volumes have to do with the doctrine of Scripture, which makes sense because that is the doctrine that was under attack by liberals. There were articles about other fundamentals and “isms” of various sorts, and then there was a collection of articles that were mainly about Christian living, testimony, and that sort of thing. I think it was really aimed as a restatement of real Christianity in the face of one huge denial but then several little denials as well, and I think it served that purpose. It resurfaced the idea that Christianity has a doctrinal core, it has a biblical core.

If it was intended as a standard to rally the troops, it did not do that right away, primarily because it was published on the eve of World War I and immediately people got distracted. But in its statement of fundamental doctrines it provided a platform from which future generations could work.

Schaal: So it was answering the question about what real Christianity looks like, doctrinally and practically—is that what you are saying?

Bauder: Yes. They made the point that real Christianity has a doctrinal boundary and it includes doctrines about Jesus Christ and the atonement, but then real Christianity includes also a way of living, a way of relating to God, a way of ministering in the world.

Schaal: So do The Fundamentals have the same relevance today that they did one hundred years ago?

Bauder: Some of the articles are highly relevant, some would strike us as odd because they are addressing issues that we do not really address anymore or because they have been addressing issues that have been highly addressed since then.

Schaal: We are now in the twenty-first century, and while some of the issues are the same, we are facing new controversies not considered one hundred years ago. What are those?

Herbster: We are not facing the same doctrinal issues in such a broad way as they were one hundred years ago. Our present issues are not as clearly delineated. They are practical and cultural issues.

Shumate: There are issues we face with regard to practice. Evangelicalism adopted a policy of infiltration by the midtwentieth century and became eventually a great mixed multitude. Evangelicalism then became the new mainline church.

Schaal: Not all people within liberalism were liberals. They were just content to live with them. Then with the rise of new evangelicalism in the 1940s and philosophy of infiltration back into liberal colleges and seminaries, there was a new mixed multitude created. Al Mohler has said that the biggest difficulty in reclaiming the SBC was not the theological liberals but the theological conservatives who were unwilling to confront and deal with liberalism within the convention. It has always been the disobedient believers who refuse to take a stand on the clear issues that create the biggest problem.

Shumate: Spurgeon said the same thing during the Downgrade Controversy. History never completely repeats itself. One difference is that it seems to be a lot more undefined now. You have unofficial coalitions of people as opposed to rigid denominations. “Who is really associating with whom?” is perhaps a more difficult question today.

Hankins: When you come back to what would be primary points of concern now, I can think of two important issues. We need a theological articulation of a right view and practice of worship and the same concerning worldliness. We need a theological articulation of the nature of worldliness and what characterizes it. This seems to be a watershed issue to me.

Schaal: The advent of American popular culture took worship that had been consistent for millennia and turned it upside down. It took worship outside its normal and commonly accepted bounds, and now we are forced to define what aberrant worship looks like.

Hankins: I think we have been at that point for several decades now. I might be missing something, but I do not think we have gotten the job done of articulating the theology of worship and the practices that should grow out of it.

Schaal: The third thing I would add to worship and worldliness is a theology and practice of human sexuality. This is the big issue in broader nonfundamental evangelicalism. What the Bible says about this issue is pretty clear. The centrality of position and practice on this issue with regard to what is true Christianity is not being articulated as well.

Bauder: Nobody needed to defend the biblical doctrine of human sexuality a hundred years ago. The Fundamentals were not so much about the smaller circles that divide us within professing Christianity but the big outer circle that defines true Christianity as a whole. When it comes to the big outer circle, the fundamentals are not just doctrinal; some of the fundamentals are practical as well. The issue of homosexuality is a gospel-level issue, for instance.

Schaal: Yes. I think the whole issue of sex outside of marriage— that seems to be a big boundary issue.

Bauder: It certainly is in 1 Corinthians 5. In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul was articulating moral boundary issues. In another passage, Paul takes this issue of one who was unwilling to support his own family calling him an “infidel” and saying he has denied the faith. This is a gospel-level issue but it’s a matter of conduct rather than doctrine.

Hankins: So what I hear both Kevins saying is that there is an exegetical basis for what we say are boundary issues.

Bauder: There is only one boundary of Christianity, and everyone who is outside that boundary should never be recognized as a Christian. We should never extend any element of Christian fellowship to a person outside the boundary, and the boundary is the gospel. But I think that there are areas of separation within the boundary as well—we come to think of these as smaller circles. Now, if you take someone who is living an immoral life—they are not inside the circle to begin with. We are supposed to treat them as if they are outside the big circle. In fact, when Paul talks about them in 1 Corinthians 5, he calls them “so-called” brothers. Their conduct makes their profession a lie.

Shumate: So is reaching outside the big boundary for fellowship a big-boundary issue in itself?

Bauder: The problem with the New Evangelical is that he tries to pretend there is no boundary or that the boundary has huge gaps in it. Of all the errors that can be committed by someone inside the circle [of true Christianity], what the New Evangelical does is probably about as bad an error as I can imagine. I think he is doing greater damage than the guy who falls into adultery.

Schaal: So, back to the issue of worship. Is worship a bigboundary issue?

Shumate: There are two questions. In principle, is it? And second, how do you apply it? Worldliness and ungodliness in worship is a very serious issue.

Bauder: Worship includes doctrine (orthodoxy) and having our practices right (orthopraxy), it also includes loving God rightly (orthopathy).

Schaal: Having our passions right.

Bauder: Yes. Loving God wrongly becomes a boundary-level issue if someone or something is subverting our love of God sufficiently gravely.

Shumate: I think worship clearly is a big-boundary issue. After all, what is idolatry but a false worship? It was having an altar to Baal and an altar to Yahweh in the same courtyard and mixing those together. There is a great deficiency theologically in defining what idolatry is all about. We have a shallow understanding of idolatry.

Schaal: The last item we want to discuss is hermeneutics. Can hermeneutics become a big-boundary issue? After all, you can affirm inspiration, but then undermine Scripture with your hermeneutic.

Herbster: In early fundamentalism it was not. There were many various hermeneutics within the movement.

Shumate: There are aspects of hermeneutics that certainly can become a boundary issue because they strike at the heart of biblical authority.

Schaal: The impact of postmodern thought on hermeneutics has really changed the way people think about hermeneutics. That is an issue we are facing today that the early fundamentalists did not really address.

Bauder: The trajectory hermeneutic or the redemptive movement hermeneutic of William Webb strikes at our ability to understand and apply Scripture. It draws the line for the understanding and application of Scripture beyond the line of the Bible itself. You can come out with a morality that actually contradicts the morality that is revealed in Scripture. What those hermeneutics are being used to justify goes well outside the range of Christian orthodoxy. So yeah, I think that’s a gospel-level issue.

Hankins: So you are saying that any hermeneutic that undermines the concept of the authority and infallibility of Scripture is an invalid hermeneutic, and that is a boundary issue.

Schaal: So that is the work that we have ahead of us. We need to think this through, talk this through, and come to some conclusions. My concern is that our previous habit is to dictate from the top that this is what you have to do, without thinking through and reasoning through the issues. We have to be more than intuitive. We have some work ahead for us. This will probably be part of the work of the Church until Christ comes.

Thank you so much, gentlemen, for your participation. May God bless and guide us all in the work ahead.

(Originally published in FrontLine • May/June 2019. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)