Historical Theology: The Christian Theologies of Fundamentalism and Liberalism in the Early 20th Century
The event took place in 1910 where a series of booklets called “The Fundamentals inspired by the great revivals of evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899), dismayed and appalled by the growing influence of liberal theology, and energized by the resurgent Protestant orthodoxy of Warfield and others, two wealthy Christian businessmen sponsored the publication and free distribution of twelve collections of essays by leading conservative Protestant scholars” (Olsen 560). These booklets would definitely make one think that they had great impact on those that read them, considering the way they seemed to have answered most of the important questions that a person in that particular period of culture could ask. For instance, under Science and Christian Faith in The Fundamentals, the author of this particular article explains that “science and the Biblical views of God, man, and the world, do not stand in any real relation of conflict. Each book of God's writing reflects light upon the pages of the other, but neither contradicts the other's essential testimony. Science itself seems now disposed to take a less materialistic view of the origin and nature of things than it did a decade or two ago, and to interpret the creation more in the light of the spiritual” (Orr v. 1 Ch. 18). In other words, the point is that the ‘fundamentals’ are explained in an easily understood manner, nearly black and white, if you will.
Partially because of these booklets and what attitudes they caused several people to have (like that of black and white), one can see why Paul Enns, a contributor to the Moody Handbook of Theology, would cite such a harsh definition of fundamentalism as his own: “Marsden [historian] defines fundamentalism as: “1. an evangelical Protestant; 2. an anti-modernist, meaning that one subscribes to the fundamentals of traditional supernaturalistic biblical Christianity; and 3. militant in this antimodernism or in opposition to certain aspects of secularization. A fundamentalist, then, is a militantly anti-modernistic evangelical” (Enns 613).
Since The Fundamentals were written out of what would look to be an apologetic, it seems that both the fundamentalists and liberalists of this time had a few things in common: it was their way or the highway; and each group seemed to blame the other for taking away what they really believed they stood for. For example, the liberals believed they stood for liberty or freedom in Christian intellect, and fundamentalists believed that they were held accountable to set beliefs. It seems at the core or the heat of the debate between these two American religion shaping groups, lies in the fact that there is a question of whether or not the modern Christian theology should be greatly influenced by the doctrines found in the Christian theology of the past.
The following citation shows, from the liberalists view, how they feel oppressed about matters such as having to believe what fundamentalists find to be the central nervous system of Christianity in order to call themselves ‘Christian:’ “It is interesting to note where the Fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church, across which no one is to pass except on terms of agreement. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our Lord; that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration; …that we must believe in a special theory of the Atonement—that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner; and that we must believe in the second coming of our Lord upon the clouds of heaven to set up a millennium here, as the only way in which God can bring history to a worthy denouement” (Fosdick). Liberals clearly take this to mean that they must fall under this category in order to call themselves Christian, or more importantly, these are some of the things they need to believe that is required of by salvation. Without believing these things, they feel they have no hope of salvation it seems.
To explain the history and impact of liberalism in a nutshell, “liberalism was born in the form that the modern world knows in the late eighteenth century. Its roots go back much further, to the Protestant Reformation and the seventeenth-century political philosophers in England. The basic principles of liberalism are (1) the liberty of the individual in religion and person and (2) the equality of individuals in the eyes of God and the laws” (Adler 412). The point here is that liberalism seems to be much older than fundamentalism and therefore one can see the cause for the motivation for people in history to do such things as fund, write and distribute (for free) The Fundamentals booklets.
The Bible
The fundamentalist argument toward the direction of defending hardcore conservative beliefs looks like it might be something like they are putting emphasis on what Christ did, as far as His work is concerned, and it looks like the line of logic that the fundamentalists use, sound like the rhetorical question, ‘If the Bible is in fact, errant, and the theology of the former theologians is incorrect, is Jesus strong enough to save?’ In other words, Christ needs to be as powerful as He is, sinners definitely need atoned for, and the Bible is clearly credible because it is inerrant. So, since the Bible is inerrant, one can easily come to the conclusion that Christ is powerful, amazing and loving, more than enough for human sinners to exist in God’s presence.
It seems that liberals would desire the Bible to be on a playing field that makes it become universally acceptable. If one were to take certain passages in the Bible to the extreme, such as First Corinthians chapter nine, verses twenty through twenty-two; “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (NIV 1 Co 9:20-22), he or she (who took this passage to the extreme), would clearly say that getting on another person’s level in order to witness to him or her would draw the line of “becoming like one not having the Law” beyond sin. In other words, the extreme would be sinning with someone, or condoning sin in order to reveal the love of Christ.
The fundamentalist view would seem to say that liberals are only drawing that which they want to, out of the Bible. That which they want to, being only the passages of the Bible which seem to show love and peace versus war and death and punishment, like that being portrayed in the story of Jesus clearing the Temple: “So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their table” (NIV Jn 2:15). Clearly, correction is necessary, and the Bible speaks of things that liberals wish were not in it, so they could make it say what they want. “Non-Christians say that Christianity is what the New Testament teaches and that Christianity is false. Christians agree that Christianity is what the New Testament teaches but that Christianity is true. Liberalist theologians want to make peace with both sides so they say that Christianity is not what the New Testament, at face value, teaches but instead is what liberalists have selected out of the New Testament (the love ethic without miracles) as something that will be acceptable to both unbelievers and believers and that this redefined Christianity is true” (Kreeft and Tacelli 207). Clearly, the disagreement about the Bible between liberals and fundamentalists is because liberals do not want to accept the clarity of the Bible’s teachings, and fundamentalists are militant about pushing their views on liberals, which almost sometimes seems counterproductive. Although it seems hard in this day and age to get someone to believe in the Bible’s content fully, it doesn’t give the Christian an excuse to write off his or her duty to not only spread the Word, but also shows the need to “contend for the faith” (see Jude 3).
The Christ
Liberals (or modernists) view Jesus in a light pretty much only driven by what they want, in other words, they want Christ to fit their needs instead of them wanting to fit Christ’s needs. “Jesus of Nazareth, according to the liberal view, was the greatest of the children of men. His greatness centered in His consciousness of standing toward God in the relation of son to Father. That consciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus discovered, was not shared by others. Some category was therefore needed to designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The category which He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably toward the end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship” (Machen 25). It is clear that Machen, a well known spokesman for fundamentalism at the time was on the right path by pointing out what liberals believed about Jesus, in that He (as the reader can see from the citation) became reluctantly the category of Messiah. In other words, Liberals believed that Jesus became something that resembled a Messiah. “His Messianic consciousness was thus not fundamental in His conception of His mission; certainly it did not mean that He put His own person into His gospel” (ibid.). This is to mean that Jesus’ message to man at first was not that He was the savior, but that he was an example on how one is to live his or her life through the eyes of love.
Machen continues, explaining the liberals viewpoint of Christ, “He urged men, not to take Him as the object of their faith, but only to take Him as an example for their faith; not to have faith in Him, but to have faith in God like His faith. Such was the impression of His personality, however, that after His death the love and reverence of His disciples for Him not only induced the hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from the dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kind of religious importance which He had never claimed. They began to make Him not only an example for faith but also the object of faith. The Messianic element in His life began now to assume an importance which He had never attributed to it; the disciples began to ascribe to Him divine attributes” (ibid.). Clearly what can be taken from this is that liberals believed (through the eyes of a respected scholar) that the disciples were getting it wrong as soon as Jesus left. In other words, it can be understood that Liberals do not believe in Christ's deity, and they believe that they are going back to the original message that Jesus was preaching.
Adolf Von Harnack uses the idea that people mistook John the Baptist as the Messiah at first shows people how the common views of the Messiah at that time were so seemingly ignorant, which would then allow such broad prerequisites for one to claim Messiahship. “We learn from that story that some were disposed to take John for the Messiah. What elasticity the Messianic ideas must have possessed, and how far, in certain circles, they must have travelled from the form which they originally assumed, when this very unkinglike preacher of repentance, clad in a garment of camel's hair, and with no message but that the nation had degenerated and its day of judgment was at hand, could be taken for the Messiah himself” (Von Harnack 147)!
Though Von Harnack rejects the fourth Gospel, there are many other areas in the synoptic Gospels which show Christ’s deity. For instance, the whole fact that He was worshipped as an infant, a man, and as the defeater of death shows that even at that time, people saw Jesus as something to be worshiped (Matthew 2:1-2; Matthew 14:33; Matthew 28:8-9). “Von Harnack denied that Jesus ever claimed to be deity, denied the miracles, and said Paul had corrupted the simple religion of Jesus. He emphasized the need to get back to the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus” (Enns 551). Of course Von Harnack denies these things because he denies the Gospel of John, and believes that man’s interpretations are skewered the second they were left to their own devices. In other words, the human element, as soon as it got involved, messed everything up. There are a massive amount of Biblical passages (even in the Gospels) that completely refute this idea: “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (NIV Mt 28:18-20). Craig Blomberg explains the idea that Jesus was given authority well, in that it is grammatically passive. In other words, the important thing here is that Jesus does in fact, have all authority: “Jesus can make the claim of v. 18 only if he is fully God, inasmuch as the whole universe is embraced in the authority delegated to him. And yet he is still in some sense distinct from his Heavenly Father, so that Matthew can use the divine passive in speaking of his having “been given” this authority” (Blomberg 431).
Jesus knowing the thought of those who opposed Him at the time is in itself a miracle, but also that He proves to those opposing Him that he does indeed have all authority: “Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, ‘Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…’ He said to the paralyzed man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home’” (NIV Luke 5:22-24).
Not even using the Bible, which in the eyes of a liberal seems barely credible, C. S. Lewis’ ‘liar, lunatic or Lord’ concept comes to mind. There are an awful amount of ‘lunatics’ that died for believing in Christ throughout history, with the martyr makers knowing what Christ stood for, or knowing what it meant to believe in Him. So if it was a joke to believe in Him, people would have turned around their story and told the truth. If that is not the case, there were an awful lot of people who were misled by What Jesus taught and by what those close to Jesus taught. The fact that the witness in Scripture stayed alive so strongly for so many years is also a testimony of Christ’s position and impact on earth. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever,” and He clearly has all authority. Those that believe otherwise Biblically as well as historically speaking, seem like they have cause for concern.
Denying Christ's deity is denying Christ Himself. Any other Christ aside from what God’s Word speaks of is not the Christ. In other words, heresies have been around for thousands of years (Galatians 1:6-10), and need to be corrected as the way those such as Machen have done. “All people are like grass, and their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this was the Word that was preached to you” (NIV 1 Pet. 1:24-25). Clearly, the Bible is not something that will lose in the test of time.
“But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them” (KJV 2 Peter 2:1).
Works Cited
Olsen, Roger E., The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform(Intervarsity Press Downers Grove, IL 1999).
James Orr, D. D., The Fundamentals: a testimony to the truth: Science and Christian Faith (http://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/volume1/chapter18/orr_3.php).
Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1997, c1989).
Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Christian Work 102 (June 10, 1922: 716–722 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5070/).
Adler, Philip J., World Civilizations (West Publishing Company St. Paul, MN 1996).
The Holy Bible: New International Version, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, c1984).
Kreeft, Peter and Tacelli, Ronald K., The Handbook of Christian Apologetics (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL 1994).
Machen, J. Gresham, The origin of Paul’s Religion (The Macmillan Company, New York, NY October, 1921).
Von Harnack, Adolf, What is Christianity? (G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York, NY 1902).
Craig Blomberg, Matthew, electronic ed., Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001, c1992).
The Holy Bible: King James Version., electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version. (Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995).
© Nace Howell, 2022
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