Challenging The Fundamentalists claim they take a 'historical view' of scripture

By J. Eric Peters

Dayton Daily News reporter Stephanie Gottschlich’s report on fundamentalist Baptists firing two Christian professors from a local religious school also appeared on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch's Sunday Metro & State section, headlined “Bible profs’ firings leave college unsettled” (Mar. 30).

            Some comments are in order. The Bible is not God, as even the most strident fundamentalist (Christian or Muslim) will confess (usually).

            Gottschlich certainly gave these people too much credit with “Fundamentalists take a historical view. . .”

            Accuracy and fairness demanded “Fundamentalists claim to take a historical view of [scripture].”

            They do make that claim, but they're in error. Their pet doctrine of inerrancy is actually a relatively recent invention, spawned by a series of little books published in the early 20^th Century under the title The Fundamentals.

            Gottschlich continued, saying the college “has been fundamentalist, or orthodox, since becoming a Baptist institution in 1953.”

            Clarity demanded writing it's been “either fundamentalist or orthodox” since fundamentalism is decidedly unorthodox (regardless of what some fundamentalist probably told Gottschlich).

            A key to real orthodoxy can be found in survey data published in 2002 by Nashville’s Glenmary Research Center, Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States. They found just over five million religious adherents in Ohio including roughly 150,000 Jews, Bahais, Muslims and Unitarians. Ohio’s Christians include over 2.2 million Roman Catholics, United Methodists and members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ. Together just these four denominations make up over sixty percent of Ohio’s Christians.

            My understanding of Roman Catholics is that they teach not scriptural inerrancy but rather papal infallibility in translating into the Magesterium the Bible’s inspired and inspiring revelations.

            The three Protestant churches all affirm the Bible's inspiration and its profound and enduring value for Christians, but not its inerrancy.

            Christianity's ageless faith is expressed every time congregations recite the ancient creeds, principally the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed. The Apostles’ Creed, which Christians have been reciting since the 700s, makes no mention of the Bible and neither does the earliest version of the Nicene Creed.

            Either fundamentalists are orthodox or the millions of Christians who lived before the 20^th Century were. My vote is with the faith of our fathers and the Rock of Ages.