520 - Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism
By James Barr
Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1978. 379 pp. $7.95 (paper).

In this highly polemic volume James Barr of Oxford uses "fundamentalism" according to British parlance, as equivalent to "conservative evangelicalism." Only secondarily does he deal with "fundamentalists" in the current American sense of strict separatists, such as the dispensationalist variety. He mainly attacks British conservative evangelical scholars associated with Inter-Varsity Fellowship, their American counterparts such as those associated with Christianity Today, and their intellectual forebears, especially Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield. Throughout this work, Barr displays, almost nothing but disdain and contempt for conservative evangelical scholarship. He says that he does "not find any of its arguments to have validity except in very minor respects" (p. 9). Fundamentalism, he maintains, is "a pathological condition or Christianity" (p.5).

This volume resembles nothing so much as some conservative evangelical polemics that (as he points out) treat critical biblical scholars like himself "as filled with prejudice and incompetence" (p. 141). Evaluations of Barr's work, therefore, will vary widely according to the degree that readers consider either conservative evangelicalism or critical biblical scholarship worthless nonsense.

It may be helpful in discovering the issues involved to ask how two groups of presumably intelligent Christians have come to regard each other as foolish and incompetent. the ease is a rather clear one of what Thomas Kuhn describes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. A revolution in basic paradigms takes place in a scientific field (in this case, biblical studies). Advocates of the new approach regard theirs as "normal science" and soon consider findings based on the old paradigm as not simply wrong, but not even science at all. Champions of the old models find the data advanced for the new approach similarly irrelevant and unintelligible.

In the case of Barr versus conservative evangelicals, the fundamental issue, as he makes clear enough, is their assumption of what Scripture is. Conservative evangelicals consider God to be in some important sense the principal author of Scripture. Barr, by contrast, finds God's role in inspiring the writing down of the text "a very important one" (p. 288). Hence, he treats biblical documents as basically human and fallible, although extremely important since God was with Israel and the ancient church in selecting them as Scripture. Immense differences, of course, follow from these opposing points of view. Barr, however, is reluctant to admit that critical scholars are limited by their presuppositions just as conservatives are. He appears to believe that the superiority of the critical view follows simply from common sense

522 - Fundamentalism

and being "open," whereas conservative views are "closed" (cf. p. 185) and offensive to anyone of rational sensibilities.

Barr is nonetheless sometimes quite perceptive in identifying conservatives' assumptions. Conservatives, he points out lacking any belief in the authority of the church, are in danger of being left with personal faith alone as the basis of their commitment. Therefore, they often become almost obsessed with supplementing their faith with objectively rational proofs of Christianity. A keystone in their intellectual edifice is the inerrancy of Scripture in matters of historical fact (a view that Barr takes as a defining feature of fundamentalism). This view, says Barr, reflects an approach to truth borrowed from natural science based on a Newtonian model. God's truth, they assume, must be revealed as precise fact. Much of conservative biblical scholarship, as Barr shows by many examples, is contorted from preoccupation with confirming this view of truth.

The values of such criticisms are offset considerably by being placed in the context of other arguments, which are simply untrue or unfair. For instance, repeatedly he accuses conservative scholars of sheer ignorance: ". . . the fundamentalist picture of. what non-conservative theology is like is not based on any deep study of the latter . . ." (p. 164). Moreover, many times (as in the instance just quoted) he attributes to all conservative evangelicals the traits of some. Furthermore, he sets up several no-win situations for conservative evangelical scholars. If they reject all modern critical methods or insights, they are obscurantists; if they do consider some, they are inconsistent or "simply hanging on the coat-tails of non-conservative work..." (p. 232).

This book apparently is written to free young converts from the shackles of conservative evangelical influences. It has a strong, sometimes quite impressive, personal element. Barr himself clearly has been deeply hurt by conservative evangelicals who virtually have read out of the church former friends, like himself, Fundamentalists, he says, consider themselves the only true Christians on earth. His response raises important questions about the legitimacy of such pretension to both spiritual and intellectual superiority. But the irony of this volume is that it has so many of the very traits it most strongly criticizes.

George Marsden
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan