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Critical Distinctions Between the Reformed Tradition and Fundamentalism in Eschatology

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Critical Distinctions Between the Reformed Tradition and Fundamentalism in Eschatology CRITICAL DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE REFORMED TRADITION AND FUNDAMENTALISM IN ESCHATOLOGY ELTON M. EENIGENBURG I. Preliminary Question: the Matter of Identifying the Opponents. Can the "Fundamentalist" be identified? Several years ago I wrote an article on the Fundamentalist movement for the Earnest Worker, 1 a guide booklet for Sunday School teachers, in which I remarked that more confusion has gathered around the term "Fundamentalism," spelled with a large F, than around any other term in common usage in religious circles today. I noted further that "It is definitely a movement, a spirit, a mood, an attitude, and a set of con­ victions, but it has no specific organization or office to which you might address a letter requesting information, no reliable body of statistics in­ dicating weight or size, nor does it have a universally acknowledged literature or theology which one might study. In American Protestantism, where it is principally located, it is the form of religion of some whole denominations, but it crosses the lines of almost every denomination and thus is found everywhere." It has never been otherwise. The term "fundamentalists" was coined in an editorial in the July 1, 1920 issue of the New York weekly, the Watchman-Examiner. It was applied to those "who mean to do battle royal for the fundamentals." As early as 1909 the phrase, "the funda­ mentals," came into use when a group of evangelical leaders began to organize a scholarly protest against the encroachments of an advancing liberalism in the Protestant churches. Between 1910 and 1915 a series of twelve small volumes came from the press and were given world-wide distribution. They were given, each of them, the title, The Fundament­ als.2 It is important to observe that chapters in these volumes were con­ tributed by men of the caliber of James Orr, B. B. Warfield, H. C. G. Maule, and W. H. Griffith Thomas. In a very few decades the Fund- 1Earnest W' orke1·, November, 1958 (Richmond, Va.: Board of Christian Educa­ tion, Presbyterian Church, U.S.). 2The Fundamentals. A testimony to the truth. (Chicago: Testimony Publishing Co., 1910-15) . 3 amentalist movement would find it well-nigh impossible to persuade traditionalist scholars of their rank to write their apologetic pieces. In a sense something very much like Fundamentalism has always been with us in this country. In the colonial period it took the form of Ger­ man and Dutch pietism, which sought to penetrate the rigidities of tra­ ditional Protestant thought and deed. In its revivalistic phase it took charge of Christ's demand for the obedience of each individual soul, usually through a well-structured violence in which conversion became a visible phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century Fundamentalism be­ came a warrior, doing battle mightily with the same issues to which Protestant liberalism made an easy capitulation, especially those of "higher criticism" and the theory of organic evolution. Where the liberals settled for peaceful co-existence, the Fundamentalists pledged a fight to the death, and there was little doubt in their minds whose death that would be. When the liberals began to write a dubious theology as rational justifi­ cation and basis for the "Social Gospel," again the conservatives sought to call the churches back to "the fundamentals." Until about the mid-1920's one could use the word "fundamentalist" as a rough equivalent of "conservative" or "evangelical," and not rouse any special reaction. The Fundamentalist was found in many denomina­ tions. He was simply the conservative Protestant who felt he must con­ tend, in one way or another, against liberalism. Though "the funda­ mentals" were phrased in somewhat different ways by various denomina­ tional groups, there was essential agreement among Protestant conserva­ tives as to what they were. In the lists of what were fundamentals, the last named were invariably of an eschatological nature. Jesus, who had experienced a bodily resurrection, would come again personally, and physically. It has been observed by historians that after the first World War, many leaders of the Fundamentalist movement were premillennialists. 3 The war itself had done much to convince many that the end of the world was at hand and that their only hope lay in the "second coming" of Christ. Since the liberal' s higher criticism of the Bible seemed to call into question the very authority by which this expectation was held, the Fundamentalists who were also premillennialists felt themselves called by God to lead the attack against the foe in this area. Premillennialism demanded of its adherents a militancy and aggressiveness which con­ servatives holding other eschatological views found it impossible to mus­ ter. Many of the latter had, in fact, been holding the wrong theory about scf. Norman F. Furniss, The F1112clam entalist Conll'oversy, 1918·1931. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 24: "It was significant that many fervent champions of religious orthodoxy after 1918 were premill eniali sts." 4 the return of Christ. The postmillennial view, held by many conservatives at .the time, had looked for an increasingly improved world prior to Christ's second advent. The awful carnage of the war, with its attendant miseries, made such a theory ·seem a mockery of the facts. Other factors in the rise of premillennialism to Fundamentalism's leadership had been in play for several decades prior to the war. One of the more significant was the development of Bible and "prophetic" con­ ferences, the one at Winona Lake, Indiana, becoming the most popular of them all. It was founded in 1893 and was developed by Dr. W. E. Biederwolf. The first prophetic conference was held in New York in 1877. Great emphasis was laid upon the imperative of holding pre­ millennial views of Christ's return in the long series of prophetic con­ ferences. After the 1920's it became plain that a "good Fundamentalist" was also a premillennialist. Another factor greatly strengthening the premillennialist claim on the leadership of the Fundamentalist move­ ment was the rise of the Bible School and Bible Institute movement. In 1900 there were only nine Bible institutes in this country; by 1950 there were 150 of them in the United States and Canada. There are a number of reasons why, after the 1920's, many a con­ servative theologian or minister, member of one of the oldline Protestant denominations, did not wish to be identified as a Fundamentalist. In the rising din of battle, scholarship had often been sacrificed to acrimony, calm debate to vilification. Fundamentalism had become identified in the popular mind with a loud, rasping noise emitting inconsequential, irra­ tional, and unscientific deliverances. The eschatological issue had come more and more to the fore, to the point where premillennialists were sometimes saying out loud that brethren holding other eschatological views might well be suspect of being led, not by the Holy Spirit, but by a spirit which could only serve to deny Christ. It is no wonder that Dr. J. Gresham Machen declared that he did not wish to be known as a Fund­ amentalist. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Fundamentalists today, at least some of the better known among them, are straining hard to escape the Fundamentalist label. For example, in the recent volume, Contem­ porary Evangelical Thought,4 the contributors seem anxious to be known as "neo-evangelicals." 5 The volume represents something we have been observing more frequently in recent years, collaboration between conserva­ tive scholars from the old-line denominations and some of the more sophisticated Fundamentalists like Carl Henry and Roger Nicole. It is 4 Contemporai7 Evangelical Thought, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (New York: Channel Press, 1957). 5/bid., p. 109, for example. beginning to look more and more like the days before World War I, when the two types of conservatives got along very well together. That was before the eschatological issue raised its "ugly head." From the British side, Dr. J. I. Packer, in his book, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God, 6 waxes eloquent in his insistence that the term "Fundamentalist" is a "theological swear-word," 7 and that therefore it ought not be applied to the company of earnest evangelicals. From the point of view of historical understanding, this book is incorrectly titled. He is not talking about the Fundamentalism of the last decades at all, but of the pre-World War I Fundamentalism, the kind which was per­ fectly compatible with old-line conservatism. He is defending that kind of evangelicalism, but seems to fear that it is being regarded as the later, deteriorated Fundamentalism. Packer does not seem to see that this is simply a mistake in identification. However, it may be that in England that kind of confusion prevails generally with respect to the phenomenon of Fundamentalism. We have thus far answered the query, "Can the 'Fundamentalist' be identified?" with an historical summary which has furnished us with the conclusion that the Fundamentalist today is simply the premillenarian in our midst. But that is only the focal point. His premillennialism has given him a kind of piety which is more open and public than that of the traditional conservative. He confesses his allegiance to Christ with relative freedom. He is often strenuous in seeking to win the lost to the Saviour. He is more concerned with the prophetic aspects of the Scrip­ tures than is his conservative brother. Of these matters, more later. We may add the note here that Fundamentalism has often made a profound impression upon traditional conservatives in one way or another, so much so that there are today a great many people in the old-line churches who are a kind of half-Fundamentalist.
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