But perhaps the most striking difference between fundamentalist and modernist lies in their conception of God and His requirements.
THE modernists, like the great prophets of Israel, conceive God as being, at the least, indifferent to worship and to things done simply for Himself. They believe that the thing He is most zealous for and whose neglect gives Him most concern, is that righteousness, kindness, justice, and truth should prevail among men.
The fundamentalists on the other hand, while of course not overlooking altogether this interest which the God of the prophets and of Jesus manifests in human conduct and welfare, are prone rather to be like-minded with the priests, the bitter enemies of the prophets, in stressing what they consider the all-important matter of worship, without whose punctilious observance they think it is impossible to be well-pleasing to God.
They are persuaded that God is particular about fasts and feasts, holy days and seasons, ceremonies and rituals and sacraments; whereas these things to the prophets, to Jesus, to Paul, and to the modernists are matters of secondary importance. They are not prescribed or insisted on by God but are left to individual taste and preference.
The fundamentalist, imbued as he is with the sacerdotal spirit, is a zealous champion of tradition, "the faith of the fathers," the creeds and formularies that have come down from the theological battles of the past.
The modernist tests all things no matter how ancient, and feels free to hold fast only to that which is good. The antiquity of a belief alone is not for him a sufficient ground for acceptance.
The Negative
By J. GRESHAM MACHEN
THE term "Fundamentalism" in the title of our discussion is evidently to be taken in a broad sense, not to designate "Premillennialists" but to include all those who definitely and polemically maintain a belief in supernatural Christianity as over against the Modernism of the present day. In what ways has "Fundamentalism," defined thus broadly, to include men like ourselves, been held to be inimical to social progress?
In the first place, it has been held to be inimical to social progress because it maintains unchanged certain root convictions in the sphere of history. It is opposed to social progress, we are told, because it is opposed to all progress. It maintains a traditional view of what Jesus was and what Jesus did in the first century of our era, and therefore, we are told, it is opposed to the advance of science. If we no longer hold to the chemistry or physics of the sixteenth century or the fourth century, why should we hold to the account which those past ages gave of what Jesus said and did?
This objection ignores the peculiarity of history as over against the experimental sciences. A thing that has happened can never be made by the passage of the years into a thing that has not happened; all history is based upon a thoroughly static view of facts. Progress can never obliterate events.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the evangelical Christian is opposed to the discovery of new facts; on the contrary he welcomes the discovery of new facts with all his mind and heart. But he is a Christian because he maintains certain facts which have been known for many hundreds of years. In particular he believes that on a certain morning some nineteen hundred years ago, the body of Jesus of Nazareth emerged from the tomb in which it had been laid. That belief involves the most far-reaching consequences in every sphere of thought and of conduct; the Christian risks the whole of his life upon his conviction as to the resurrection of Christ. If indeed that conviction should prove to be ill-grounded, it would certainly have to be given up. The Christian ought to welcome to the full the investigation of the resurrection of Christ by all the methods of scientific history. But the point is that that investigation seems to him only to result in a confirmation of his belief. And if it results in a confirmation of his belief, then to relinquish that belief is not progress but retrogression. The grounding of life upon falsehoods is inimical to progress; but the grounding of it upon facts is a necessary condition of any true advance.
IN the second place, Christianity is held to hinder social progress because it maintains a pessimistic view of human nature as at present constituted. This charge is sometimes evaded; and the Christian religion is represented as though it were a kind of sweet reasonableness based upon confidence in human goodness. But the evasion reverses the true character of our religion. Confidence in human resources is paganism—or modernism—whereas Christianity begins with the consciousness of sin, and grounds its hope only in the regenerating power of the Spirit of God.
It is no wonder that the advocates of the modernist program regard Christians as opponents of social progress. Men who refuse to go with the current and who rebuke the easy self-confidence of their time have always been regarded as enemies of the human race. But this antipathy is well founded only if the pessimism that is objected to is out of accord with the facts. The physician who comforts the patient by a false diagnosis is pleasing for the moment; but the true friend and helper is the one who designates the disease by its true name. So it may turn out to be with the Bible and with the Christian preacher who brings the Bible message to the modern world. Modern social science has erected an imposing building; it has in many respects improved the mechanical aspect of human life: and Christianity certainly has nothing to say against its achievements. But, unless we mistake the signs of the times, there is among the social architects of the present day a vague sense of uneasiness. There is abroad in the world an ill-defined but none the less disconcerting sense of futility. The work on the social edifice still goes on, but rifts are beginning to appear in the walls and underneath there are intimations of dreadful things. Shall the trouble with the foundations continue to be ignored? If it is ignored, the enthusiasm of the architects may for a time be maintained, but all the greater will be the crash when at last it comes. Utilitarianism, in other words, is proving to be a quite inadequate basis for the social edifice, and there are those despised and
