Today I would like to talk about fundamentalism – which seems appropriate given C’s piece on the new test act. Fundamentalism appears to be a relative term. In the eyes of many secularists, all of us here at AATW would count as fundamentalists: we believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, that He is the Son of God, and that He is the only way to the Father, and that He will return again to judge the living and the dead. In the eyes of many “hard-core” fundamentalists, however, we would not be considered part of their ranks. Many of us do not buy into conspiracy theories; many of us do not believe belief in the “seven year tribulation” is dogmatically required; many of us are not premillennial in our interpretation of Revelation 20; and many of us do not believe our faith should be enforced upon others via a theocracy.
Fundamentalism can also take a secular form, however, and France is the nation par excellence that embodies this. Christians can see certain upsides in this: if we are all equal before the law, then we should be protected from tyranny at the hands of other religions. But this kind of fundamentalism can rapidly turn into oppression, into people being persecuted merely for preaching the Gospel. The Gospel is offensive – at least it should be. We are in a war: the Kingdom of God is driving the Kingdom of Darkness from this earth, and the latter is not going quietly.
However, the methods of the two realms are not the same (although we have often fallen into the temptation to use the tactics of the enemy). The secularists are trying to create the theocracy that many orthodox Christians are accused of imposing – but with different values. Christians advance the kingdom by heavenly warfare: prayer, preaching the Gospel, acts of true love, laying down our lives. Satan forces to preserve their power through violent warfare: blood, tears, and lies, seduction and fleeting pleasures. His realm is passing away, but God’s will last forever.
What are the fundamentals of our faith? What determines our view of the Kingdom, our engagement with the world, and our hope for the future? There are many points we could discuss from the Nicene Creed, but there is plenty of material on this blog about this point, including many excellent incarnational and Trinitarian pieces by C.
Christians are a people apart, whether they realise it or not. The Apostles refer to us as priests, as kings, and as temples of the Holy Spirit. Holy things are marked by their separation that is what consecration means, to be devoted to God, excluding other options and uses. To be in covenant with Yahweh is to forsake the gods of nations, to have nothing more to do with them. This marks Christianity as an “intolerant” faith, and this was one of the reasons why the Israelites and the early Christians were persecuted. Our God is the God of gods, there is no god like Yahweh. Not only is He jealous for us, but we are jealous for Him: His glory is not to be shared with another. Baal did not create the universe; Baal did not spend his life to save humanity; Baal is not Lord of Heaven and earth.
Christians have a theology of fall and restoration. We live with the conviction that the world is not as it should be. It was created good, but evil found its way in and corrupted it. Christ came to destroy the works of darkness and commissions His Church to do the same. We wait for Him to return to bring things to their consummation. The wicked will be expelled and the righteous will inherit the earth.
Christ has authority to do this. Our beliefs are not built on traditionalism or “the rights of the proletariat”. Our belief is founded on Jesus Christ, who is Yahweh and is also human. He has the right to determine how this world should be, and He showed us how to live. Not even Pilate could find fault with Christ.
So, I submit that true Christian fundamentalism springs from the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, that He is the Way. the Truth, and the Life.
All Along the Watchtower 
Excellent post. I would only add (I would, wouldn’t I!) that Christ and His Church are one; the Church is less an institution than Christ’s Body…I have recently been reading a good book by American convert, academic and author, Peter Kreeft: Catholics and Protestants: What We Can Learn From Each Other”. I started out thinking What do I as a Catholic need to learn from Protestants???” Now I know!
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Yes, I agree. The fact that Paul talks of us as His body clearly indicates a close identification. We don’t always get it right, but this is a key difference between us and other ways. Christ Himself through His Spirit lives in us and talks to us – the others just “try and do the right thing” and hope it works.
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Yep, Francis, my friend, you would, and you would not be true to yourself and your Church if you did not. And that’s why we love you for it. Even as we sometimes say the same thing to you! 🙂
” that Christ and His Church are one; the Church is less an institution than Christ’s Body” Be careful, Francis, that tends very close to the argument, I make for Lutheranism. 🙂
I’ve been hearing good thing about that book, probably works both ways. Think I’ll have to pick it up.
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By Christ’s Body I mean His Mystical Body, the Church, as explained by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical. I think you would enjoy Kreeft’s book. His point is that Lutherans (but not the modernist ones obviously) are much closer to the Catholic Church than they think. What we can learn from them is a personal relationship with Christ; what they can learn from us is that at Holy Communion at Mass, we come as close to Christ as a human being can. The problem with Catholics is that this Eucharistic devotion is taught as ‘theology’, not as a relationship with Jesus. I was sad to read that Mike Pence, the US VP, who came from a devout Catholic family, decided when at college to become a Protestant because “he wanted a relationship with Jesus”. One has to ask, what had his Catholic formation and instruction given him if not this very thing? I think Lutherans score by constantly reading the Bible, knowing it, loving it, talking about it, finding Jesus as a living Person in it. Catholics emphasise the Sacraments – but this should go alongside knowing and loving Scripture/the Gospels. We end up being sacramentalised – but not evangelised. When evangelical Christians ask us if we have been saved, we should know what to answer: Yes, by Christ, whose sacrifice on the Cross is the same as the (unbloody) sacrifice on every Catholic altar at Mass. Instead, we squirm and think they are being over-emotional, embarrassing or ‘too personal’.
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Perhaps it is God’s will that the sundered pieces of His Body should be reunited at this time.
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I certainly agree, Francis. And yes, traditional Lutherans are far more ‘Cattholic’ than they (we) are comfortable admitting. In fact, our view of the Eucharist is very much like the Catholic one, although our terminology is different, and we view it as a celebration of his resurrection rather than a sacrifice, if that makes sense. Transubstantiation isn’t really very far from consubstantiation.
The book is now on my list. I’m pretty sure I read a review of it before. Yours? Undoubtedly, if you reviewed it. 🙂
The funny part about that, our modernists (and yes, I’m in that church, for the moment due to practical considerations) say they believe exactly the same things that the conservative ones do, we all use Luther’s Catechism, again not unlike Catholicism’s Traddies and Modernists. In America, especially, we just formed different synods, perhaps to keep the intranecine noise down a bit. 🙂
And that is starting to happen in Europe as well. What we call the Free Churches are growing, lots of them working with the LCMS.
Actually, a lot of us think that too. I suspect it’s more of a northern European thing than to do with our Christianity. As I’ve said before, it’s part of the reason I’m quite comfortable with Our Lady of Walsingham, many of the other presentations, while valid, are not as comfortable for me.
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Kreeft spends much time in consideration of Christ’s Prayer “That they all may be one…” He says that if Lutherans met up with the Catholic Charismatic Movement they would be reunited (Catholics charismatics remind us that we Catholics also have to be born again in the Spirit). We need this unity to counter the rise of militant and fanatical Islam.
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I surely agree with that. But I’m not sure our churches will ever formally reunite, awful lot of issues in the last 500, let alone 1500 years, I see no reason at all why we shouldn’t work together. Long ago we did a series here and at NEO that dug around and found that there is a huge difference between trying to unify formally and simply cooperate. I think it basically starts here:
https://jessicahof.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/united/
The problem is essentials and druthers. There are things in Catholicism that I as Lutheran (perhaps the most catholic of Protestants cannot accept, the same is true for Catholics about Lutheranism) but we believe pretty much the same thing, Christ and Him crucified. Islam has its sects as does Christianity, what we need to do is to work together, not against each other. Not that it is easy to put 500 years of competition away but after all, Luther did support the Emperor’s war against the Turk, we should do no less
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become a Protestant because “he wanted a relationship with Jesus”
Good brother Pense, being raised in the CC, must have run across some born again kids at college. Seems like there are some at almost any college. He could see Catholicism had nothing. He wanted a relationship, not a mouth full of crackers.
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Thank you for this, Nicholas. His Kingdom is not of this world, and we long ago xcame to a consensus on what was payable to the rulers of this world – it is their nature to demand more, and our task to resist.
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The fact that Paul talks of us as His body
The Apostles refer to us as priests, as kings,
Good brother Nicholas, my I respectfully inquire as to who US is? Thanks in advance.
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