EVERYONE NEEDS FUNDAMENTALS

Fundamentals. We use the word quite often, but do we actually know what it means. A dictionary definition may help. A fundamental used as a noun is "a basic principle, rule, law, or the like, that serves as the groundwork of a system; essential part: to master the fundamentals of a trade." (Random House Dictionary.) More often it is used as a noun. In the study of any intellectual discipline, whether a student or a scholar, one beings with some fundamentals that are the guidelines or, as we see above, "the groundwork of our system."

In all disciplines, there are fundamentals that form the basis of study, research and implementaion. Biblical studies are no different. A little more than a century ago a new movement burst on the scene disrupting scholarly pursuits in biblical interpretation that had been pursued since Christians and Jews first composed what became their respective Holy Scriptures. From the beginning of the Enlightenment Age in the 17th century scholars had been applying modern historical and literary methodologies to those scriptures. The impact of these methodologies and in particular the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species with its fundamental challenge to the Creation passages in the Book of Genesis caused many sincere scholars and preachers to react with surprising negativity.

This new movement was given the name of Fundamentalism. In many respects, the conflict it caused resulted in irreparable divisions within some Protestant denominations and numerous congregations. Like all intellectual systems, Fundamentalism has its basic principles, five in number: biblical infallability and inerrancy, the virgin birth and deity of Jesus, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement for sin, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus to heaven, and the authenticity of the miracles of Jesus and his miraculous return at the end of history.

There is nothing wrong with those fundamentals, but it is certainly not those I would select as necessary for appropraite study of the Christian Bible or the Holy Scriptures of any other religious tradition. The tragedy of our time is that every tradition has its own "fundamentalists" who attempt to force their will on others of their own or other traditions. I was trained in the historical critical approach to the Bible. That was more than sixty years ago. The discipline has changed in the interim. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to keep up with the changes unless one has access to a major library collecting every available imprint in the field.

Recently I have been reading selectively in progressive biblical studies like those written by members of the Jesus Seminar and Evolutionary Christianity. My main question to those authors is a simple one: "By what fundamentals are you deciding that your approach is an advance over what has gone before?" Another serious question that could also be asked is the proverbial one: "Are you throwing out the baby with the bath water?" To be specific, a significant issue needs to be  raised: Does setting aide the traditional doctrine of the Trinity or reviving the century old search for the historical Jesus in the Gospel narratives create more faithful followers of Jesus in a global society?

Those authors who seek to move the Christian faith beyond its traditional base of theism embodied in human life need to make clear just what other fundamentals they would put in its place.