fundamental re-thinking

my parents were moving house last year and a book on the 'take or throw?' pile caught my eye so I claimed it and just finished reading it recently.

the book is Protestant Christianity: Interpreted Through It's Development by John Dillenberger and Claude Welch (Charles Scripner & Sons, New York, originally published 1954).  i found it a very good read, especially because I knew very little about the details of the reformation and the subsequent theological, doctrinal and denominational developments and changes in protestantism.

what caught my eye especially was how similar previous centuries have been to our own in regards to (self-appointed) doctrinal purists (aka fundamentalists) going toe-to-toe with what would now be called 'liberal christians'.  i suppose it's inevitable for there to be a pendulum-swing aspect to any long-lasting 'movement' involving human beings, and i acknowledge the sincerity and even appropriateness of many of the pushes for change through the history of protestantism, but at the same time i'm discouraged at how little the thinking of protestant (especially evangelical) christianity has progressed, especially in the last 100 - 150 years.  consider the contemporary appropriateness of dillenberger and welch's summation of the fundamentalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century:

"... fundamentalism was from the beginning a lost cause, theologically speaking.  It was an intellectual rearguard action.  It was not simply an attempt to be faithful to the Christian tradition; it was an effort, in the face of the perplexities and shifting currents of a changing world, to fix Christianity in the mold of a particular doctrinal complex and world view.  The doctrinal complex to which fundamentalism clung so tenaciously was not that of a the ancient church, nor of the Reformation, nor of the Protestant development in general.  It was essentially akin to the hardened framework of Lutheran and especially Calvinistic scholasticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Only in the scholasticism had the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture been carried to such extremes; and in such doctrines as the atonement and the deity of Christ, fundamentalism (often unconsciously) assumed that the Protestant scholastics spoke for the entire tradition.  Moreover, in it's insistence that doctrine is irreformable, fundamentalism took over the seventeenth-century view of the relation of Christian faith to science and philosophy.  In it's own day, that view represented a significant attempt to bring religious, philosophical and scientific thought into harmony; but the effort to perpetuate that adjustment in the world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was not only hopeless but violated the intent of scholasticism itself.

"At root, fundamentalism has been seeking to preserve a kind of certainty in a world of apparent confusion and flux - a kind of certainty which was simply no longer possible.  The movement was part of a general resistance to social change.  This was particularly evident in fundamentalism's commitment to legalistic views of personal morality (mostly of the nineteenth-century pattern) and it's hostility to the "social gospel." ... the extreme social conservatism was often paralleled by a suspicion of modern education because of it's "scientific, sceptical and secular influences."  Here, too, was an attempt to hold on to the familiar, the simple and safe patterns, in the face of new and bewildering problems which the old patterns were not designed to meet.

"Insofar as fundamentalism has been committed to this sort of program, it is hard to see how the movement can claim the allegiance of thoughtful persons."  (pg 230-231)

do the contemporary fundamentalist movements (neo-calvinism, et al) "claim the allegiance of thoughtful persons"?  the answer would have to be affirmative, but it seems to me that those people are only thoughtful within a tightly constrained and pre-determined system.  it is this general assumption that the inherited formulation of the fundamentals of the christian faith are set in stone that is the most discouraging thing of all to me, since it is exactly the intellectual weaknesses and inconsistencies of these doctrinal formulations which are repelling thoughtful people from the faith throughout the world.

but there are trickles of hope, especially, in my view, in the growing interest, even among protestants, in the ideas of rene girard and those who have expanded on girard's work such as james alison.  just yesterday i came across a conversation on religion, violence and (girard's) mimetic theory between james alison and american emerging church leader brian mclaren.  in his personal introduction at the beginning of the conversation, mclaren tells this anecdote:

"I would hesitate to mention this person’s name except that he recently passed away and so I don’t think he’d mind me mentioning his name. But a very respected Evangelical leader and scholar. I know there are a lot of almost cartoonish figures in the Evangelical world, but this was a sagely gentleman named Dallas Willard. Some of you may know his name. And Dallas and I became friends, and we were at an event together – in fact, we were kind of in a panel, something like this – and one of the questions to Dallas was, “What parts of our theology do you think we need to rethink as Evangelicals?” And Dallas, without a split second hesitation said, “Doctrine of scripture, doctrine of heaven and hell, and doctrine of atonement.” Well, I was not surprised that he said doctrine of scripture. That was one that I knew we needed to rethink. Doctrine of heaven and hell, I was not surprised he said that. I was very surprised he said doctrine of atonement because I hadn’t really thought about that doctrine yet. In Evangelical Christianity atonement is a very central and somewhat complicated formula that is very deeply involved with violence."

there is not much more fundamental than the "doctrine of scripture, doctrine of heaven and hell, and doctrine of atonement."  if even evangelical leaders such as dallas willard are calling for re-thinking of these things, there is indeed hope...