Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  Genuine religious experience, Hodge was convinced, grew only out of right ideas; right ideas, in turn, could only be expressed in words. Hodge developed this point in relation to the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, which was an increasingly embattled position in the Princeton line of defense as the century wore on. Writing in 1857, Hodge observed that some interpreters suggested that “inspiration” applied to the thoughts of the sacred writers, but not to their exact words. To Hodge this was sheer nonsense. “No man can have a wordless thought, any more than there can be a formless flower,” he said. “By a law of our present constitution, we think in words, and as far as our consciousness goes, it is as impossible to infuse thoughts into the mind without words, as it is to bring men into the world without bodies.” The purpose of inspiration was to communicate a “record of truth.” For such a record “accuracy of statement” and an “infallible correctness of the report were essential.” These would not be assured if the selection of words were left to humans, whose memories were faulty. Although the method of inspiration was not merely mechanical dictation, the Holy Spirit could guarantee the accuracy of the reports only by inspiring the authors to select correct words.16

  This view of Scripture, which had been taught by Archibald Alexander at the seminary’s inception,17 received its classic expression in 1881 when Archibald Alexander Hodge and the young B. B. Warfield published their famous defense of the “inerrancy” of Scripture. This they took to be “the great Catholic doctrine of Biblical Inspiration, i.e., that the Scriptures not only contain, but ARE THE WORD OF GOD, and hence that all their elements and all their affirmations are absolutely errorless, and binding the faith and obedience of men.” Following the elder Hodge closely, they insisted that the inspiration must extend to the words. “Infallible thought must be definite thought, and definite thought implies words.” The result was “the truth to fact of every statement in the Scripture.”18

  This view of truth as an externally stable entity placed tremendous weight on the written word. If truth were the same for all ages, and if truth was apparent primarily in objective facts, then the written word was the surest means permanently and precisely to display this truth. Religious experiences, rituals, traditions, even unrecorded words spoken by God or Jesus, as essential as all of these were, nonetheless were transitory. Unassisted, none could guarantee that sure facts would be objectively apprehended in all ages. “The Bible is to the theologian,” said Charles Hodge in his Systematic Theology, “what nature is to the man. It is his store-house of facts.…19 At Princeton it was an article of faith that God would provide nothing less than wholly accurate facts, whether large or small. Common Sense philosophy assured that throughout the ages people could discover the same truths in the unchanging storehouse of Scripture.

  Another important element in this view of Scripture was tied to the Common Sense tradition. Common Sense philosophy, in contrast to most philosophy since Descartes and Locke, held that the immediate objects of our perceptions were not ideas of the external world, but (as the Princeton Review put it) “we are directly conscious of the external objects themselves.” The same principle applied to memory; what we remember is not the idea of a past event, but the past event itself. So, for example, we do not remember the idea of Rome (which is in the present) but Rome itself, which is in the past. For such knowledge of the past, we must furthermore rely on the testimony of honest witnesses, else we could not know the past at all, which would be contrary to common sense.20

  This view that the past could be known directly through reliable testimony meant that Scripture was not regarded as representing the points of view of its authors respecting the past, but it was rather an infallible representation of the past itself. This distinction was intimately connected with the demand at Princeton that Scripture be accepted as without error, even in historical detail. Increasingly, modern thought suggested that the point of view of the observer stood between the facts and his report of the facts. This would suggest that even the most honest and authoritative accounts of the past would be altered in detail by the observer’s point of view. At Princeton, however, the ideal for truth was an objective statement of fact in which the subjective element was eliminated almost completely. In their view, Scripture did just that. Although they did not deny the human element, divine guidance was thought to produce accounts where the warp from point of view had been virtually eliminated.

  The whole Princeton view of truth was based on the assumption that truth is known by apprehending directly what is “out there” in the external world, not a function of human mental activity. The mind discovers objective truth, which is much the same for all people all ages.

  Yet, if truth is so objective and common sense so reliable, how does one account for the wide prevalence of error? This was the great obstacle to the whole Common Sense philosophy and the rock against which in the nineteenth century it repeatedly foundered, until all but its most stubborn exponents were dislodged. How is it that there are so many rational and upright people of good will who refuse to see the truth which consists of objective facts that are as plain as day? As the nineteenth century wore on, Americans were confronted with a bewildering diversity of ethnic and religious groups, and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant religious and moral consensus was breaking down. Questions concerning why others did not see the truth became increasingly acute. The Princeton and fundamentalist Common Sense explanations of why individuals accepted error has, of course, a great deal to do with understanding the fundamentalist reaction to modern ideas.

  The Common Sense view of truth and error stood in a relationship to the prevailing modern views that was closely analogous to the relationship between Ptolemaic and Copernican accounts of the universe, and the difficulties in relating one view to the other were just as insuperable. As in the Ptolemaic astronomy the earth was regarded as a fixed point with the heavenly bodies all revolving around it, so in the Common Sense view of knowledge there was one body of fixed truth that could be known objectively, while around it revolved all sorts of errors, speculations, prejudices, and subjective opinions. Most other modern schemes of thought have tended toward the view that all observers, like all bodies in the Copernican universe, are (as it were) in motion—caught in historical processes. Rather than seeing truth as objectively existing at one fixed point, they have viewed knowledge as at least to a considerable degree relative to a person’s time and point of view.21

  For B. B. Warfield, the greatest champion of the Princeton cause, during the critical period of the shipwreck and breaking apart of the Common Sense consensus in America, between the Civil War and World War I, accounting for the immense growth of error from a Common Sense position was a crucial concern. Like his predecessors, Warfield emphasized that faith must be grounded in right reason. Although the Holy Spirit was the agent for a change of heart, “how can even a prepared heart respond, when there are no ‘reasons’ to draw out its actions?” Reason is as necessary to faith, said Warfield, as light is to photography. Warfield indeed wrote as though he had unbounded confidence in the apologetic power of the rational appeal to people of common sense. In a remarkable passage written in 1903, he pulled out all the stops in urging the powers of reason to advance Christianity:

  It is the distinction of Christianity that it has come into the world clothed with the mission to reason its way to its dominion. Other religions may appeal to the sword, or seek some other way to propagate themselves. Christianity makes its appeal to right reason, and stands out among all religions, therefore, as distinctively “the Apologetic religion.” It is solely by reasoning that it has come thus far on its way to its kingship. And it is solely by reasoning that it will put all its enemies under its feet.22

  With this opinion of the power of unaided reason in demonstrating the truth of Christianity, it was essential to Warfield’s position to maintain that intellectually the believer and the non-believer stood on common ground. This common-ground approach eliminated from Warfield’s apologet
ics the use of a venerable line of explanation for the failures of reason. In the traditions of Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards the Fall was often regarded as having so blinded the human intellect that natural knowledge of God had been suppressed and therefore no one could have true understanding without receiving the eyes of faith. A version of this approach had recently been revived by conservative Calvinists in the Netherlands, including Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper. Reflecting Continental philosophical trends, these theologians postulated an antithesis between Christian thought, the first principles of which recognized God’s sovereignty over all creation, and non-Christian thought which was predicated on human autonomy. Just as the premises concerning the most basic aspects of reality were opposed, said Bavinck and Kuyper, so also would be the conclusions that Christians and non-Christians would reach concerning reality. Warfield, although he had some close contacts with these Dutch Calvinists, was utterly mystified by this approach to apologetics which he described as “a standing matter of surprise.” True to the demands of Common Sense, Warfield saw the effects of the Fall on human consciousness as pervasive but quite limited. “The science of sinful man is thus a substantive part of the abstract science produced by the ideal subject, the general human consciousness, though a less valuable part than it would be without sin.”23

  How then, if Christian and non-Christian reason are essentially part of one human consciousness, does one explain the undeniable fact that human inquiry so often leads to totally wrong conclusions. Among traditional explanations were moral error,24 faulty reasoning, speculative hypotheses, metaphysical fancies, and the prejudices of unbelief or false religions. It was disturbing, however, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century to find that scientists who had been reared as Christians, morally upright, and certainly reasonable, were abandoning the faith as a consequence of their scientific studies. Warfield was particularly concerned with the case of Charles Darwin. Part of the explanation of Darwin’s rejection of Christianity, he observed, was that he placed too much weight on speculation and hypothesis so that he developed an “invincible prejudice” or “predilection for his theory of the origin of species.” In addition, Warfield saw a more basic issue, which he feared might be a widespread problem in the scientific community. Concentrating so intensely on their narrow scientific investigations, they were losing their capacity to deal with spiritual, moral, or ethical matters. “We can only account for Mr. Darwin’s failure to accept the guidance of his inextinguishable conviction here,” concluded Warfield, “by recognizing that his absorption in a single line of investigation and inference had so atrophied his mind in other directions that he had ceased to be a trustworthy judge of evidence.”25

  Early in the twentieth century Warfield confronted the manifestation of this same problem in the growing rejection of the miraculous, not only by scientists, but even among theologians. In this case he saw a bias in their first principles. “Mere unreasonable dogmatism” prejudiced the opponents of miracles. The solution, however, was not to set one worldview or set of premises against another as competing hypotheses. Rather it was the Baconian method of setting a body of facts, objectively knowable by unbiased and dispassionate observers against the eccentric and prejudiced biases of all competing worldviews. “In other words,” Warfield concluded triumphantly, “are the facts that are to be permitted to occur in the universe to be determined by our precedently conceived world-view or is our world-view to be determined by a due consideration of all the facts that occur in the universe?”26

  With the most influential conservative element in the Presbyterian church holding this view of the utter perspicuity of truth27 and Scripture, it is hardly surprising that the controversies in that denomination were more protracted and severe than elsewhere. If one takes into account that fundamentalist and conservative reactions to liberalism were often just what they claimed to be, reactions against major modifications of traditional Christianity, then these Presbyterian conservatives were the most consistently clear in identifying the central changes that had taken place. At the same time, their peculiar views of Scripture and of truth involved them in equally heated debates over much narrower issues, such as the inerrancy of Scripture or revision of the West-minster Confession of Faith. The broad and narrow versions of the issues, accordingly, were easily confused on both sides.

  The Presbyterian furor reached its peak in the 1890s. Early in the decade moderately liberal leaders attempted a revision of the Confession of Faith, which was defeated in 1893.28 In the meantime conservatives counterattacked by bringing in succession formal action against three of the most famous of the progressive seminary professors, Charles A. Briggs, Henry Preserved Smith, and Arthur Cushman McGiffert. By the end of the decade all three had left the Presbyterian church as a result of these actions. Union Theological Seminary in New York severed its ties with the denomination in 1892 in response to the General Assembly’s actions against Professor Briggs. Although some broad issues of departure from Calvinist orthodoxy were involved, in each case the specific allegations concerned the narrow issue of inerrancy. On several occasions during the decade the General Assembly declared that the doctrine of inerrancy was a fundamental teaching of the church.29

  As in other denominations, something of a truce seemed to prevail during most of the first two decades of the twentieth century; yet conservative Presbyterians were using the time to retrench themselves in the positions they had committed themselves to and successfully defended during the intense battles of the 1890s. This defensive strategy had an important bearing on the larger fundamentalist movement. For one thing it seemed to establish a precedent for the successful restraint of liberalism by formal ecclesiastical action. For another, it helped to characterize the movement as committed to defending a few fundamentals of faith. This latter effect, which was ironic in view of the elaborate confessionalism of conservative Presbyterians, apparently was not entirely intended. In 1910 the Presbyterian General Assembly, in response to some questions raised about the orthodoxy of some of the graduates of Union Theological Seminary, adopted a five-point declaration of “essential” doctrines. Summarized, these points were: (1) the inerrancy of Scripture, (2) the Virgin Birth of Christ, (3) his substitutionary atonement, (4) his bodily resurrection, and (5) the authenticity of the miracles. These five points (which included both the narrow issue of inerrancy and some of the broad issues concerning the supernatural in Christianity) were not intended to be a creed or a definitive statement. Yet in the 1920s they became the “famous five points” that were the last rallying position before the spectacular collapse of the conservative party. Moreover, because of parallels to various other fundamentalist short creeds (and an historian’s error), they became the basis of what (with premillennialism substituted for the authenticity of the miracles) were long known as the “five points of fundamentalism.30

  As the issues broadened in the decades of relative peace at the beginning of the century, so apparently did conservative Presbyterians’ willingness to cooperate with others who had a strict view of Scripture and were adamant against compromise on the essential supernatural elements in Christianity. With these increasingly important criteria in mind, the dispensationalist and Keswick Bible teachers, with whom the Princeton party had many disagreements, looked more and more like worthwhile allies. The conservative wing of the Presbyterian church, of which Princeton was only the leading edge, already included some prominent leaders from the more evangelistically oriented movement. Although Princeton and the interdenominational Bible teachers’ movement developed their views of Scripture and of the essential importance of the supernatural for independent reasons, they had much in common philosophically, and therefore spoke the same language and defended the faith in similar fashion.31

  The emergence of this alliance is most clearly perceptible in the foundation in 1903 of the Bible League of North America. This organization, with its journal, The Bible Student and Teacher, was initially dedicated to semi-popular scho
larly defense of the faith. It had the leadership predominantly of prominent conservative professors at Northern and Southern Presbyterian seminaries. Soon, however, dispensationalists became active in the movement, regular contributors to the journal (on non-dispensationalist themes), and board members.32 By 1913 board membership of the journal had been expanded well beyond the alliance of conservative Presbyterians and dispensationalists, with the editorship in the hands of a Methodist. The journal’s name was changed to the Bible Champion, which signalled a more militant and popular stance. This anti-modernist coalition had one principal goal— “to maintain the historic faith of the Church in the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible as the Word of God.33 The outlines of a broad fundamentalist alliance were emerging.