Evolution and the Rise of Fundamentalism

There has been a debate raging for many years over the issue of creationism vs. evolutionism. It was, in fact, the theory of evolution, as it was applied to theology, anthropology, ethics, and a host of other fields, that was the spark needed for the rise of Fundamentalism. Biblical critics began to juxtapose an evolutionary view upon the formation of the Bible, saying that some of the Biblical books started as smaller writings, and as time passed, each stage found more and more embellishments and recensions until Presto!: the Bible as we have it. They say, for instance, that the Genesis story has its origins in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epoch, which was Hebraized and "converted" into the story we have today. They say that really there are two creation stories detectable in the Biblical text and that the entire book of Genesis as we have it today is the product of at least 4 different writers! Hard evidence for this crazy idea is non-existent. But that has never stopped people before. The idea, of course, comes from an evolutionary view of the Scriptures. The sad part of this, however, is that many "scholars" (not real ones, but people who are often only intelligent enough to get themselves in trouble) swallowed this idea hook, line, and sinker, and have subsequently rejected the Scriptures as the only consistently reliable source for truth. Man became God's judge and called His Word a lie. Now, everything in the Bible is suspect to them. No truth is there; only people's ideas about a god who may not even be there.

As a reaction to this trend in the latter part of the 19th c., three distinct groups of churches were formed. First, there were those who bought into the lie. These people are, by and large, in the leadership and seminaries of most of the mainline denominations of the twentieth century. They have lost touch with the vast majority of their own parishioners-people who often want to love the Lord and who want to be taught and led by competent pastors-and they have, instead, pursued their own agendas, followed their own depraved ideas, and rejected the Biblical view of morality and salvation. They no longer believe that man needs to be saved from sin; now they believe that man needs to be saved from the Bible. They have lost their zeal to see people saved, reject the Bible as the revealed word of God, and have turned to a social gospel, where the blood of Christ which was shed for my sins and yours is never preached. This is not an indictment against all who are members of a church that is denominational. This is only a sorry statement fact which is supported by many a survey done amongst denominational ministers and seminarians.

The second group of churches that reacted to this evolutionary trend is the Charismatics. They chose to deny the validity of the "scientific method" as the only means of ascertaining truth (and rightly so), and instead, they looked to personal experience as the confirmation of Biblical truth. They knew that to argue with a person about personal experience would be pointless. (Who knows what is going on inside me?) Someone could argue all day with you about the reality of the resurrection; but who can deny that you speak in tongues, or speak in prophecy, or have received a healing? In this way, the truth became subjectively confirmed. It's sort of the idea that comes out of the Hymn He Lives. The chorus says, "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives, within my heart." How can anyone argue that?

Obviously, subjective truth is not always confirmed by signs and wonders, however. An offshoot of this subjective line of Christianity also developed around the same time. The intellectual response to this subjective form of truth gave rise to the Neo-Orthodox movement within many of the denominations. Theses were mostly people who rejected the emotionalism and what they perceived to be fanaticism of the Charismatics. Yet, they also believed that they had some form of mystical experience with God. According to the Neo-orthodox, the scriptures become truth to the person who takes an irrational "leap of faith" into the "upper level" and has a personal experience with God. There is no objective rationality to spiritual truth-it is purely an irrational and existential experience which can only be subjectively validated. After all, they say, how can the finite (that's man) ever grasp the infinite (that's God)? God is so "wholly other" that he cannot be apprehended within normal human experience. They would argue that God is not empirically apprehendable, nor can any experience with Him be adequately conveyed with language, seeing it is a purely subjective experience. Who can get into your brain? I suppose that it's sort of like trying to explain what it "feels like" to be born again. How could you adequately describe it? Although I reject this view as overly stating the case, there's something to be said for it. After all, except the Spirit reveal Jesus to you, you cannot of your own self know Him. Even Paul said,

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man, (I Corinthians 2:9-15).

I believe, therefore, a case can be somewhat made for a portion of this view, but not all of it. After all, the substantiating event of our faith was the resurrected Jesus--something which was not "spiritual" but an actual space-time event in history. The truth of the resurrection was so powerful and compelling that we count time by Jesus' appearance on earth. (This is 1995 A.D. "Anno Domini," which means "year of our Lord" in Latin, because it was 1,995 years ago that Christ was born.)

The third group of churches that came out of this debate were the Fundamentalists (and, to a lesser extent, the Evangelicals). These people stood firm on the fact that the Bible is the only reliable source of truth because it was given to man by God through Divine inspiration. The prophetic element and the historical background of the Scriptures prove to the objective inquirer that they cannot be the by-product of collaboration and recension. But beyond all the intellectual reasons to accept the Bible as infallible, there are the internal evidences of the faith itself. Jesus Christ is said to have died for our sins, He is said to be the Son of God, and He is said to have done many miracles, including raising several dead. If this isn't true, then it's a lie. And if it's a lie, then our faith is a hoax. The premise is simple: if the Bible is false in any part, then how can we hold it to be true at all? Who would be able to say what is and isn't true? The implications are grand. Christ may have been wrong. Maybe He is still in a grave in Jerusalem. Worse yet, maybe He intentionally lied to us. Certainly the apostles did if the Bible isn't true.

In examining the evidences, we must come to some sort of agreement as to the reliability and weight of those evidences. Obvious to all is that subjective truth is subject to error by the one experiencing it. In this sense it is unreliable, and certainly unconfirmable. But what about scientific "truth", which, on the other hand, is constantly being challenged and revised?

It wasn't that long ago that the theory of Spontaneous Generation was widely held. It was held, in that time, that maggots form from rotting meat "spontaneously." It took a French scientist by the name of Louis Pasteur to disprove that idea. He did so by a simple experiment. He put some pieces of meat into two jars: one covered with a screen, the other without a screen covering. After several days the jar without a screen was full of maggots, while the one with a screen wouldn't allow the flies in and, thus, there could be no maggots. With this classic experiment Spontaneous Generation met its intellectual end. Unfortunately, now it has been revived in the theory of Spontaneous Genesis (the idea that life came from the rocks, atmosphere, and lightning of the primeval earth). The evolutionist holds that this is how life was formed on earth and that it only happened once. Man will never learn. The implications of a God who will hold you accountable for your life is threatening, so we make believe that He's not there. Man will not yield to Biblical truth, which is the only absolute and unchanging source of Truth.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, it was fashionable to slowly remove God from the explanations of certain phenomena as we gained insight into those areas. Before long, God was simply a postulate given until our knowledge increased. This trend continued until Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species, which, although didn't explicitly reject the idea of God, certainly implied that God was not necessary in order to explain the origin of the species and of life itself. Given time and the mechanisms of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest", all of the variations of life could be explained in a non-theistic and mechanistic fashion. As time went on, evolutionary theory was employed to explain cosmogony, sociology, religion, and just about every other discipline.

Fundamentalists, then, are those who have rejected the idea of reducing God to some "gap-filler" in our knowledge. We believe that the wisdom and truth of the Bible are timeless. It speaks to us as much today as the day it was given. We reject the evolutionary scheme of most things-especially the Bible. We are not saying that there aren't difficulties in comprehending the Sacred Text. If anyone says he has a full grasp of the Bible, mark him as a liar! However, the problem isn't in the Bible; it is in our understanding of it.

Despite all the things people call us, and what people say about us (some, unfortunately, are deserved), we are simply Bible-believing Christians who will not be swept away with every new idea that "comes down the pike"-especially in the area of morality and ethics. It's "posh" these days to be informed of "the latest". As we look at our society, we see with a glaring plainness that new isn't always improved. We believe that, in the market place of ideas, most of the stuff that comes out is hog-wash! We are necessarily skeptical of the "experts". The new morality is nothing more than the same old immorality. In this sense, we are Fundamentalists!

Pastor Pete