FunDUHmentalists Considered as Not Christians
It occurred to me a while ago while I was musing that Fundies (the dumb end, at least), do not really believe that Jesus is God.
Sola Scriptura (Bible Only) has dragged them mumbling and gibbering out of Christianity and into the theological weeds planted by the Marcionites in the 1st & 2nd Centuries. The New Testament, after all, nowhere says explicitly -- in just those words -- "Jesus is God", nor does Jesus say "I am God" -- explicitly.
Doubting Thomas says "My Lord and my God" -- Jesus says "Before Abraham was, I AM" -- and the Jews understood exactly what he meant, and were going to stone him -- but that's not quite "I am God", as the various brands of Arians gleefully point out. The FunDUHmentalist then says:
"If'n it ain't in the Bah-bul, whur ah kin read an' un'erstan' it real plain, ah don' gotta bee-leev it!"
Sola Scriptura also presupposes not only Lowest Common Denominator (i.e. stupidest) sorts of interpretation, but also the individual chaos we see in Protestant theology -- as Martin Luther observed, "...every milkmaid will be interpreting scripture."
At best, Fundies seem to see Jesus as a good ol' boy:
"When ah git t' heaven (an' it's a shure thang, 'cause ah'm all-ready Saved"), me 'n' Jesus is gonna kick back and enjoy some brews."
At worst, they seem to consider Jesus as a Salvation Vending Machine -- you drop in your 4 spiritual quarters:
"Ah tayk Jheez-zay-yus (at least 3 syllables) Kee-rayhst as mah Low-urd an' Save-yur!"
. . . an Clink, Rumble, Thunk-a-thunk, Ker-CHUNK!, out comes a can of Salvation Brew. Pop the top, and chug it down:
"Ahhhh -- thet's gooood -- 'n' lasts fur-ever, too!"
(Except that it doesn't -- the next time he runs into a spell-binding wowser of a preacher, he'll be convinced that the last time really didn' take, and do it all over again -- like Fundy baptism.)
If Jesus isn't God, who and what is left? The God of the Old Testament, of course -- usually shorn of his fatherly and loving aspects -- a vast, thundering Presence, engaged in scaring the goo out of all & sundry, like every Bible-bashing preacher contaminated with Calvinism loves to do.
The other side of Sola Scriptura is Bible-Worship -- Bibliolatry. Once you give up worshipping Jesus, the only thing you have left is the Bible. Not only is the Bible itself (paper and ink) sacred, but every verse in it is separately sacred, and to be used to prove how sacred the Bible is. Can anyone say: "Circular reasoning"?).
Bibliolatry also resuscitates all 620+ Commandments of the Jewish Law. These no-longer-Christians have turned themselves into the very Judaizers who St. Paul contended with. They also set themselves above the Apostles, whom we see deciding in Acts 15 that Christians need not be bound by that Law. Makes one wonder just who this "Lord and Master" they invoke is!
The titles "Lord" and "Master", nowadays, are mostly used in BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism) games. Other than in Fundamentalism, they have only very tenuous meaning. The very tenuousness may indeed explain their attractiveness to Fundies -- the idea that you can get to heaven by repeating a short and meaningless phrase is awful tempting. When the Stupid Do Theology, Theology is Reduced to Bumper Stickers.
Calvinists bray about a "sovereign God". The intersection of the meanings of "sovereign". "lord", and "master" are all in _COMPULSION_ -- the right and ability to compel the obedience and agreement of the subject person, over-ruling and over-whelming their personal will.
Now, there is no question that Jesus _CAN_ over-ride individual will -- He is the one by whom and through whom all things came to be (who do you think throws the switch when the Father says: "Let there be light!"?) We see Him and His Father in both the Old and New Testaments, constantly _ASKING_ that we voluntarily turn to Him. From the cries of Jeremiah in the OT ("Turn, O Israel, from evil-doing..."), to the heroic opening of herself by the girl Mary ("Be it done to me according to Your will") -- we see that our free will is central to our salvation. Not Fear and Compulsion; Love and reaching out.
The point is that God wants us to turn willingly and lovingly to Him, as He reaches out lovingly and willingly to us. The cold and capricious sadist who is the Calvinist god is not the loving Father Jesus speaks of.
Fundies are quick to quote John 3:16 -- "God so loved the world, that He sent his beloved son into the world to save sinners."), but they seem to miss that little word, "love". It's as if Jesus is nothing but a Salvation Vending Machine -- put in your quarters, and get your can of Salvation -- and that's it.
The Nicene Creed says of Jesus: "...one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. Through Him all things were made." -- this from 1200 years before Protestantism was invented.
The Gospel of John begins: "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [. . .] 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not."
These are much grander conceptions than a Salvation Vending Machine. He is the SON, the Second Person of the Trinity. It is He "By Whom, and Through Whom, and In Whom we live and move and have our being."
Bibliolators know Him not; the Babdist who said 'Creeds interfere in the relationship between the individual and God" knew Him not.
Bibliolatry substitutes "Bible" for "Jesus" -- and they seem to interpret John 1:1 as: "In the Beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with God, and the Bible was God." (The Bible being the "Word of God" of course.) This goes right along with the dementia of the fringe crazies (KJV Only) who think that the only _REAL_ bible fell from heaven into King James' lap, all perfectly typeset and bound.
Another excrescence of bibliolatry is the idea that anyone who can quote the Bible is a Good Guy(tm) and a REAL CHRISTIAN (tm), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Now Mohammedans (clearly not Christian), Jehovah's Witnesses (a mind-control cult who outright deny Jesus' divinity), and Seventh Day Adventists (who ignore Jesus in favor of Ellen G. White, and practice increasingly bizarre "prophecies") all quote the Bible -- and as the saying goes "The Devil can quote Scripture to his own ends."
Without any authority other than their own imaginations, and without the leaven of a critical education (or any at all), FunDUHmentalists are extremely reluctant to "judge" and confront even blatant blasphemy, much less subtle and debilitating heresy.
It is clear, then, that much of the non-Christian content of FunDUHmentalism is due to the lack of education in what the Church has and does teach. Whether this lack is genetic (i.e. those incapable of learning better fall into it), the result of human laziness, or there are darker forces (the Devil) behind them -- is not clear.
(An apology, by the way, to well-educated Fun_DA_mentalists who have learned -- and do -- the Work of the Lord, and who understand some of the depth of what the church means by "God of God, Light from Light, Very God from Very god" -- with them, I have no issues.)
Sola Scriptura (Bible Only) has dragged them mumbling and gibbering out of Christianity and into the theological weeds planted by the Marcionites in the 1st & 2nd Centuries. The New Testament, after all, nowhere says explicitly -- in just those words -- "Jesus is God", nor does Jesus say "I am God" -- explicitly.
Doubting Thomas says "My Lord and my God" -- Jesus says "Before Abraham was, I AM" -- and the Jews understood exactly what he meant, and were going to stone him -- but that's not quite "I am God", as the various brands of Arians gleefully point out. The FunDUHmentalist then says:
"If'n it ain't in the Bah-bul, whur ah kin read an' un'erstan' it real plain, ah don' gotta bee-leev it!"
Sola Scriptura also presupposes not only Lowest Common Denominator (i.e. stupidest) sorts of interpretation, but also the individual chaos we see in Protestant theology -- as Martin Luther observed, "...every milkmaid will be interpreting scripture."
At best, Fundies seem to see Jesus as a good ol' boy:
"When ah git t' heaven (an' it's a shure thang, 'cause ah'm all-ready Saved"), me 'n' Jesus is gonna kick back and enjoy some brews."
At worst, they seem to consider Jesus as a Salvation Vending Machine -- you drop in your 4 spiritual quarters:
"Ah tayk Jheez-zay-yus (at least 3 syllables) Kee-rayhst as mah Low-urd an' Save-yur!"
. . . an Clink, Rumble, Thunk-a-thunk, Ker-CHUNK!, out comes a can of Salvation Brew. Pop the top, and chug it down:
"Ahhhh -- thet's gooood -- 'n' lasts fur-ever, too!"
(Except that it doesn't -- the next time he runs into a spell-binding wowser of a preacher, he'll be convinced that the last time really didn' take, and do it all over again -- like Fundy baptism.)
If Jesus isn't God, who and what is left? The God of the Old Testament, of course -- usually shorn of his fatherly and loving aspects -- a vast, thundering Presence, engaged in scaring the goo out of all & sundry, like every Bible-bashing preacher contaminated with Calvinism loves to do.
The other side of Sola Scriptura is Bible-Worship -- Bibliolatry. Once you give up worshipping Jesus, the only thing you have left is the Bible. Not only is the Bible itself (paper and ink) sacred, but every verse in it is separately sacred, and to be used to prove how sacred the Bible is. Can anyone say: "Circular reasoning"?).
Bibliolatry also resuscitates all 620+ Commandments of the Jewish Law. These no-longer-Christians have turned themselves into the very Judaizers who St. Paul contended with. They also set themselves above the Apostles, whom we see deciding in Acts 15 that Christians need not be bound by that Law. Makes one wonder just who this "Lord and Master" they invoke is!
The titles "Lord" and "Master", nowadays, are mostly used in BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism) games. Other than in Fundamentalism, they have only very tenuous meaning. The very tenuousness may indeed explain their attractiveness to Fundies -- the idea that you can get to heaven by repeating a short and meaningless phrase is awful tempting. When the Stupid Do Theology, Theology is Reduced to Bumper Stickers.
Calvinists bray about a "sovereign God". The intersection of the meanings of "sovereign". "lord", and "master" are all in _COMPULSION_ -- the right and ability to compel the obedience and agreement of the subject person, over-ruling and over-whelming their personal will.
Now, there is no question that Jesus _CAN_ over-ride individual will -- He is the one by whom and through whom all things came to be (who do you think throws the switch when the Father says: "Let there be light!"?) We see Him and His Father in both the Old and New Testaments, constantly _ASKING_ that we voluntarily turn to Him. From the cries of Jeremiah in the OT ("Turn, O Israel, from evil-doing..."), to the heroic opening of herself by the girl Mary ("Be it done to me according to Your will") -- we see that our free will is central to our salvation. Not Fear and Compulsion; Love and reaching out.
The point is that God wants us to turn willingly and lovingly to Him, as He reaches out lovingly and willingly to us. The cold and capricious sadist who is the Calvinist god is not the loving Father Jesus speaks of.
Fundies are quick to quote John 3:16 -- "God so loved the world, that He sent his beloved son into the world to save sinners."), but they seem to miss that little word, "love". It's as if Jesus is nothing but a Salvation Vending Machine -- put in your quarters, and get your can of Salvation -- and that's it.
The Nicene Creed says of Jesus: "...one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. Through Him all things were made." -- this from 1200 years before Protestantism was invented.
The Gospel of John begins: "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [. . .] 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not."
These are much grander conceptions than a Salvation Vending Machine. He is the SON, the Second Person of the Trinity. It is He "By Whom, and Through Whom, and In Whom we live and move and have our being."
Bibliolators know Him not; the Babdist who said 'Creeds interfere in the relationship between the individual and God" knew Him not.
Bibliolatry substitutes "Bible" for "Jesus" -- and they seem to interpret John 1:1 as: "In the Beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with God, and the Bible was God." (The Bible being the "Word of God" of course.) This goes right along with the dementia of the fringe crazies (KJV Only) who think that the only _REAL_ bible fell from heaven into King James' lap, all perfectly typeset and bound.
Another excrescence of bibliolatry is the idea that anyone who can quote the Bible is a Good Guy(tm) and a REAL CHRISTIAN (tm), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Now Mohammedans (clearly not Christian), Jehovah's Witnesses (a mind-control cult who outright deny Jesus' divinity), and Seventh Day Adventists (who ignore Jesus in favor of Ellen G. White, and practice increasingly bizarre "prophecies") all quote the Bible -- and as the saying goes "The Devil can quote Scripture to his own ends."
Without any authority other than their own imaginations, and without the leaven of a critical education (or any at all), FunDUHmentalists are extremely reluctant to "judge" and confront even blatant blasphemy, much less subtle and debilitating heresy.
It is clear, then, that much of the non-Christian content of FunDUHmentalism is due to the lack of education in what the Church has and does teach. Whether this lack is genetic (i.e. those incapable of learning better fall into it), the result of human laziness, or there are darker forces (the Devil) behind them -- is not clear.
(An apology, by the way, to well-educated Fun_DA_mentalists who have learned -- and do -- the Work of the Lord, and who understand some of the depth of what the church means by "God of God, Light from Light, Very God from Very god" -- with them, I have no issues.)
posted by Sam'l B. at
4:33 PM
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