By Harriet A. Harris
Oxford University Press. 384 pages. £48.00 (hardback)
ISBN 0 19 82690 9
This is the fruit of research engaged in by Dr. Harris at Oxford University and eventually resulting in the awarding of a D.Phil. It is a courageous attempt on the part of an 'outsider' to understand fundamentalists and evangelicals, assessing their strong points as well as their weaknesses, and particularly to analyse how they are related to each other, not simply historically, but as a matter of theology and method.
Evangelicals will, I think, be surprised (and no doubt annoyed) by this book. Surprised by a certain eccentricity in the selection of its material. For example, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who is undoubtedly one of the most formative influences of British evangelicalism, hardly gets a mention, whereas two whole chapters are given over to Dutch neo-Calvinism!
The annoyance, and to a large degree disappointment, comes with the choice of James Barr as Dr. Harris's guide. One gets the impression that she relies too heavily upon his critique which can hardly be considered to be without bias and animus. A much more stimulating and insightful volume would have resulted if Harris herself, while engaging with Barr, had been able to forge her own path. Instead, there is an all too willing and uncritical acceptance of the critics of evangelicalism without assessing rigorously enough the strength of their case.
Biblical inerrancy
Central to Dr. Harris's thesis is that, protestations by evangelicals like Stott and McGrath notwithstanding, at heart, fundamentalists and evangelicals have one overriding feature in common - an inflexible conception of biblical authority. Following Barr, and from a different theological stable, Ernest Sandeen, it is argued that the doctrines of infallibility and inerrancy which bind fundamentalism and evangelicalism together are underpinned by a rationalism which borrows heavily from Scottish Common Sense Realism and given theological weight at Princeton in the last century (the influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism has been proposed by George Marsden).
The charge is that fundamentalism is essentially rationalistic (p.316) and this, together with evangelicalism's concern (almost obsession) with the factual reliability of the Bible, make it less amenable to the insights of modern scholarship. For, by an a priori commitment to the factual truthfulness of the Bible, any evidence which casts doubt on this is ruled out of court as inadmissible or subject to an alternative interpretation from the beginning. Thus, for all evangelicalism's claim that unlike fundamentalism it is willing to engage with modern scholarship, when the crunch comes, it is its prior commitment to the infallibility or inerrancy of Scripture which wins out. So, while James Dunn is not considered fundamentalist by Barr (and presumably by Harris), Howard Marshall is, because 'typically of conservative interpretation (he) abandons the literal sense as soon as it would imply error or disagreement in the Bible' (p.73).
False assumption
What is not considered seriously are the arguments advanced by respectable evangelical scholars for their stance towards the Bible and the various nuances given to their claims. It is also assumed that such a 'high view' of Scripture is a relatively modern phenomenon more or less beginning with the Princetonians, specifically with the 1881 article entitled 'Inspiration' by Warfield and Hodge. This is not so.
Such a view can be traced much further back long before the influence of post-enlightenment rationalism. The Roman Catholic Von Eck writing to Erasmus who postulated that Matthew made slip of memory in Matthew 2.6 argued: 'Listen, dear Erasmus: do you suppose any Christian will patiently endure to be told that the evangelists in their Gospels made mistakes? If the authority of Holy Scripture at this point is shaky, can any other passage be free from the suspicion of error?' That was in 1518. The same is found in Augustine of Hippo: 'I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture; of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.' Later, Spinoza, no great lover of orthodox Christianity, disdainfully acknowledged that his theological contemporaries laid down beforehand 'as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of Scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true and divine' (1670). Later, Pope Leo XIII was to insist that: 'Divine inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it absolutely and necessarily.'
In other words, the commitment evangelicals show to Scripture is not simply a reaction to the onslaught of 19th-century rationalistic liberalism by employing a rationalism of their own and which by inertia and concern for evangelical self-identity is still with us today, it is historically and theologically integral to mainstream Christianity. While it may be true that Hodge and Warfield drew upon Common Sense Realism, as today evangelicals might draw upon Wittgenstein to expound in a fresh way traditionally held views, it would be wrong to make the genetic fallacy and imply this was the source of such views.
Misrepresented again
Harris concludes that: 'Evangelicals need to explore theoretically the relation between the experience of believers and the rational and historical grounding of their faith.' This has been and is happening. The parody of an evangelical/fundamentalist that he is only concerned with a Bible which deals in 'facts' still dominates in liberal circles. The more sophisticated and intellectually and spiritually enriching understanding of the Bible as a communicative act of God (which is still dependent upon certain things being objectively true - if Christ has not lived and died, we can hardly proclaim he has died for our sins, for instance) as advocated by the likes of Helm, Thiselton and Vanhoozer are simply not given space, let alone any credence. The result is that many evangelicals reading this book will feel that in the majority of cases they have been misrepresented and, yet again, misunderstood.
