Response to Piper’s “20 Reasons…” Part 4
June 11, 2008
This is a continuation of my comments on John Piper’s “20 Reasons I don’t Take Potshots at Fundamentalists”.
Questions 16 – 20:
16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
So, is it good to be ignorant? Is it good to have pride in rejecting scientific facts, historic research and biblical scholarship? Is it good to close yourself off from the real world to dwell in a fake biblically inerrant world? As Susan Jacoby has correctly said: “…fundamentalism has always been defined by its refusal to adapt to any secular knowledge that conflicts with its version of revealed religious truth; that refusal, in science and the humanities, has been the most enduring and powerful strand in American anti-intellectualism (The Age of American Unreason).” I don’t think this is something to be proud of or to admire.
17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
Whose truth? The Calvinist? The Arminian? The Pentacostal? The Pelagian? The Catholic? It seems that the clear biblical truth means something different to each and every one of the 30,000 or so Christian denominations. The Church is hardly a bulwark of Truth, rather is shows how little their “truth” is based in any type of reality or that almost any doctrine can be formulated from the “clear” words of Scripture.
18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
Only if you think that a relative who is in prison is good for the rest of the family. Fundamentalists are an embarrassment and if they have their way, American will be dragged back to the “Golden Age” when the bible ruled. What some evangelicals fail to see is that their freedom to worship is a direct result of the separation of church and state. Without this protection, their particular religion doctrine may be outlawed by the government.
19. My dad was one.
Unfortunately, I was one too.
20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.
This just goes to show you the divisions that are in the “body” of Christ. Piper is loved by some and looked at as a heretic by others. I just love the clarity of scripture, where the same scriptures are used to praise and damn a man!