Tag: commentary

Dave Doran on Why the Label “Fundamentalist” Doesn’t Work Anymore

~ Bob Hayton ~ 9 Comments

Dave Doran has posted some reflections on where we are after the Advancing the Church conference, with respect to fundamentalism and conservative evangelicals (or at least where he is coming from). Of course separation and fellowship are the twin concerns for today’s fundamentalists: just how much fellowship can we permit with conservative evangelicals who don’t proudly wear the label “Fundamentalist”? Now that Kevin Bauder has clarified his current stance and hesitations over extending full fellowship to someone like Mark Dever, perhaps Doran sees the need to clarify some statements of his own. In any case, the last few posts on Doran’s blog have been meaty and traced the development of his thinking on these questions over the last 20 years or more.

In yesterday’s post, Doran discussed fences, shibboleths, fundamentalism, non-fundamentalist separatists, and more. His conclusion is worth posting here in full, but I encourage you to read his whole post (or better yet scroll down from here and read the last several “reflections” posts). I’m glad Doran continues to explain his take on things as the questions he’s exploring need to be hammered out by fundamentalists, and have needed to be for several years (or more).

…I am not advocating extending Christian fellowship to those who have denied the faith. I am not advocating toleration of those who do it. Just the opposite, in fact. I am advocating that these very specific questions be the ones that govern our decision making. Those questions are the baseline for fellowship and cooperation. A lot more matters to me than these, but anything other than the right answers here prevents it. The circle of people that can answer these questions satisfactorily is not limited to self-professing fundamentalists. IOW, there are separatists who don’t claim to be fundamentalists. My fellowship is limited to those self-professing fundamentalists who are genuine separatists and also other genuine separatists even if they don’t call themselves fundamentalists.

That last sentence prompts the real question of the hour””will the self-professing fundamentalists build a fence that excludes people who won’t limit their fellowship to only those who claim the label of fundamentalism? Is that label so tied to the essence of the biblical position that to not wear it means you fall on the wrong side of the fence? If so, is that a fence that can be defended biblically and practically?

I agree almost entirely here. I still consider myself a fundamentalist in many respects, but I’m not in a church which considers itself part of the fundamentalist movement. Yet the concern for doctrinal purity and biblical living is equal to or more than what I have found in many fundamentalist churches. I’m interested to hear your take on this, too. Do you agree or disagree with Doran? I’m all ears.

Fundamentalists & Evangelicals Together? — The Advancing the Church Conference Evaluated

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t listened to the audio from Calvary Baptist Seminary’s Advancing the Church conference yet, as it wasn’t available until yesterday or so. I started listening to the panel sessions, and plan to listen to most of the messages. I have been reading several reactions to the conference, however, and I wanted to make my readers aware of the conference and the discussion it has generated.

The conference featured fundamentalist leaders Dr. Dave Doran (pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church and president of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Allen Park, MI), Dr. Kevin Bauder (president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, MN), Dr. Tim Jordan (pastor of of Calvary Baptist Church in Lansdale, PA) and Dr. Sam Harbin (president of Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary in Lansdale, PA). The guest of note, and the keynote speaker, however, was Dr. Mark Dever (pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC and president of 9 Marks Ministries). Mark Dever, is a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention and is not a fundamentalist (in the sense of the fundamentalist movement common in independent Baptist churches). Mark Dever is a leader among the conservative evangelicals, and his ministry focuses on equipping local churches and promoting historic Baptist church polity.

So at ATC, we had Fundamentalists and Evangelicals Together! Well, at least one evangelical, together. I don’t know if the acronym FET will work as well as the one which marks another contemporary Church phenomenon (ECT)**. And furthermore, I am not sure what we have here is any kind of official convergence bringing opposing factions closer to a mutual agreement. But I, for one, am encouraged by the participation of Mark Dever in the ATC conference, and the fellowship that was shared publicly and in private between the fundamentalist leaders mentioned and Mark Dever.

To help understand what happened at ATC, the following news reports will help.

Baptist Bulletin has three articles reporting on the conference:

Brian McCrorie and a few others, contributed several summaries of the panel sessions and individual sessions on the Sharper Iron Event Blog. Click here for all the Event Blog posts, and click here for Brian’s concluding thoughts about his experience at ATC.

Dr. Kevin Bauder gave his reflections, which amounts to a very long blog post detailing his own personal conclusions, presently, about Fundamentalists working together with Evangelicals. For those wondering if Kevin is ready to eject from fundamentalism, this should answer your question with a resounding NO. Personally, I think Kevin Bauder is defining separation to broadly and ready to apply it to quickly — but that’s my general take on most of fundamentalism in general. If you’re interested you can see a bit of an exchange between yours truly and Dr. Bauder in the comments under that long post. I think Dr. Bauder clarifies himself but I still disagree.

Here is the link to where you can freely download the conference audio. Warning the file sizes are quite big.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. I’m interested to hear if anyone attended this conference or has listened to some of the audio/followed the blog conversation thus far. Are we looking at an eventual collusion between conservative evangelicals like Mark Dever and fundamentalists? Personally, I think both groups could be improved through such a scenario.

**I should note, that I am not in favor of the goals of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

Another Zondervan Book Giveaway

~ Bob Hayton

The deadline for entering the book giveaway I’m hosting here at Fundamentally Reformed, for Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill is just about up. The drawing will be held 8pm Central time tomorrow (Wednesday, March 2). You’ll want to be sure you enter that.

Along these lines, I wanted to let my blog readers know about a giveaway hosted at the group site KJVOnlyDebate.com that I manage. Once again Zondervan is sponsoring the giveaway. We’re giving away one 2 volume commentary set each week through the month of March. Swing on by and enter this week’s contest. Just click the button below.

John Sailhamer’s Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Solomon

~ Bob Hayton ~ 8 Comments

I came across the NIV Compact Bible Commentary and was delighted to find that John Sailhamer was its author. I’ve so enjoyed his The Meaning of the Pentateuch, that I picked up his commentary on the Pentateuch. I’m going to have to pick up this compact Bible commentary of his as well.

I was able to read the section on the Song of Solomon and was fascinated by Sailhamer’s insights, which I plan to share here. The following quotes are from his treatment of the book on pages 359-361 in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1994), emphasis added.

Sailhamer begins by briefly recounting the traditional figurative interpretations of the book and the quite literal modern interpretations.

Although it is, on the face of it, just that–an ode to human love–one must ask whether it was originally intended to be read as such by its first audience. There are some indications within the book itself that suggest it was not…. There is no question that the book is a poetic drama of a lover’s longing for his beloved and of her willing complicity. To suggest, however, that this drama of two lovers is, in fact, the intent of the book is to confuse the poetic imagery with the purpose of the poem.

He is careful to say that this does not “justify the wholesale allegorizations of the poem that have characterized much of its history.” He admits the picture of the relationship of God/Christ with Israel/the Church, is a wonderful picture, but avers “there are no clues within the book itself to support such a reading. In the last analysis, one’s interpretation should come from within the book itself, and preferably from the clues given by the author himself.”

Sailhamer goes on to uncover several clues which do confirm that there is more to the Song than may meet the natural eye, however. He first points out from the overall structure of the book, that “the ‘reflections of love’ of the lover and the beloved do not progress and build in intensity in the course of the poem itself.” This is no average love story. He also argues that “though the poetic imagery comes close at times to suggesting the lover and his beloved have in fact come together and joined themselves in that union that they so longingly describe, the structure of the book itself suggests that has not yet happened.” Rather, the “lovers’ quest is an ideal, a longed-for desire that lies beyond their own grasp.”

Setting aside these preliminary observations for the moment, we come to Sailhamer’s focus on the “larger structural movement given to the poem by the author.” The repeated refrain throughout the book reads, “Do not arouse or awaken love until she [NIV, it] so desires” (2:7b; 3:5b; 8:4b). The meaning of this refrain comes from its connection to 8:5b where the author links it with the last statements made by the beloved (the woman): “Under the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth.” In this connection, Sailhamer sees an allusion to two other key biblical texts: the prologue of Proverbs (chapters 1-9), and the account of the Fall in Genesis 3.

If an illusion [sic] is intended to these passages, it suggests that “the beloved” in the Song of Solomon is intended to be understood as a personification of “wisdom” and Solomon, or “the lover,” is intended as a picture of the “promised seed” of Ge 3:15, i.e., the Messiah.

He goes on:

What appears to have happened in the composition of the Song of Songs is that the author has seen in this love-song the possibility of a portrait of Israel’s long-awaited messianic king. Solomon, the son of David (cf. 2Sa 7:16), whose quest for wisdom characterizes the central core of the book of Proverbs, speaks in the prologue of that book of binding wisdom to himself and on his heart (Pr 3:3; 7:1-3) in the same way that in this book [Song of Solomon] the beloved says, “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm” (8:6). Moreover, in Proverbs Solomon says, “Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister'” (Pr 7:4), just as here the beloved says, “If only you were to me like a brother” (8:1). An extended comparison of these two books suggests that these are not mere coincidental similarities of words and phrases, but rather a deliberate “inter-textuality,” or allusion of one text to another. Such verbal links and allusions between the personified Dame Wisdom in the book of Proverbs and the young beloved in the Song of Songs invite our attempts to see a larger purpose behind this love song. I have suggested that such a purpose is to be found in the growing messianic hope found in these sections [i.e. the Wisdom Literature] of the OT.

Thus far then, Sailhamer has shown “the Song of Songs is intended as a portrait of the promised Messiah’s love for divine wisdom.” He goes on:

The Messiah is here pictured by Solomon, and “wisdom” is personified by the young and beautiful beloved. Throughout the poem the notion of love is idealized by the fact that its obtainment lies in the future. The quest for wisdom was aroused “under the apple tree” (8:4a), probably an allusion to the time of the Garden of Eden when the first woman “saw that the fruit of the tree was…desirable for gaining wisdom [and] she took some and ate it” (Ge 3:6). The obtainment of wisdom, however, will come only when one like Solomon comes to claim his beloved.

Sailhamer also sees the reference to “there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth” (8:5b) as suggesting that the author of the Song of Solomon “also understood both the promised ‘seed’ in Ge 3:15 and the reference to Eve as ‘the mother of all living’ (Ge 3:20) messianically.”

The result of these inter-textual links, “if… intended by the author of this book” then,

…would place this song on a quite different level than that of an ode to human love. It would, in fact, give credence to the traditional attempts to see more in this poem than meets the eye. It would also provide some guidelines along which the symbolism of the book is to be read.

One final argument supports Sailhamer’s conclusions:

Finally, such a reading of the book would also provide needed insight into the underlying justification for the book’s inclusion into the OT. There is general recognition today that the time of the formation of the OT canon coincided with a significant surge in the hope of the imminent return of the messianic king. This book was included in the canon, one might say, because it was intended as a picture of the Messiah.

I am not one to discount seeing the Divine Author’s hand behind the human book as intentionally foreshadowing future covenant realities. I would see no problem in taking Sailhamer’s lead and affirming that this authorial intent was expanded in the wisdom of God, to allow the book as we have it in our Bible to suggest analogies between Christ and the Church. Think of the many songs that have been written culling from the poetic imagery of this Song of Songs.

Still, I had never seen Sailhamer’s reasoning for seeing a human authorial intent behind the Song of Solomon including an explicit Messianic connection. I’d be interested to know, if any of my readers knows whether Sailhamer has written more explicitly of this connection. The section on the Song is only a few pages long in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary. Along these lines, I’d also love to know what you think of this. Does this ring true to you? Or do you think Sailhamer is off base?

You can pick up a copy of this little book at Amazon.com or direct from Zondervan.

Quotes to Note 26: D.A. Carson on the Diminishing Authority of the Scriptures

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

Here is another jewel by D.A. Carson from his recent book, Collected Writings on Scripture (Crossway, 2010; compiled by Andrew Naselli). In the conclusion to his essay, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture”, Carson turns his sights on conservative Christianity and our own contribution to the diminishing authority of Scripture. The following excerpt is a bit lengthy, but I trust it will prove helpful. I found it painfully close to home as I think about many sectors of fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

Carson starts this section with, “A high view of Scripture is of little value to us if we do not enthusiastically embrace the Scripture’s authority.” He goes on to allege that we “reflect the antiauthoritarian stance that is currently endemic to the Western world.”

He continues:

This libertarianism has engendered two surprising children. The first is a new love of authoritarianism among some believers: they do not feel safe and orthodox unless some leader is telling them exactly what to say, do, and think. Inevitably this brings some power lovers to positions of religious leadership, supported sometimes by a theology that ascribes “apostleship” or some other special, charismatic enduement to them, sometimes by a theology of churchmanship that makes each pastor a pope. The authority of the Scriptures is in such instances almost always formally affirmed; but an observer may be forgiven if he or she senses that these self-promoted leaders characteristically so elevate their opinions over the Scripture, often in the name of the Scripture, that the Word of God becomes muted. The church cries out for those who proclaim the Scriptures with unction and authority while simultaneously demonstrating that they stand under that authority themselves.

The second is a fairly conservative mood, a reaction to the times, that some interpret as a great blessing. But this conservative swing does not appear to be characterized by brokenness and contrition. Far from it: it is imbued with a “can do” mentality not far removed from arrogance. Many of the most respected religious leaders among us are those who project an image of total command, endless competence, glorious success, formulaic cleverness. We are experts, and we live in a generation of experts. But the cost is high: we gradually lose our sense of indebtedness to grace, we no longer cherish our complete dependence on the God of all grace, and we begin to reject themes like self-sacrifice and discipleship in favor of courses on successful living and leadership in the church….

Mere conservatism must not be confused with godliness, mere discipline with discipleship, mere assent to orthodox doctrine with wholehearted delight in truth….

Along with the arrogance has come the exegetical and philosophical sophistication that enables us to make Scripture support almost anything we want….

…even some of us who would never dream of formally disentangling some parts of the Bible from the rest and declaring them less authoritative than other parts can by exegetical ingenuity get the Scriptures to say just about whatever we want–and this we thunder to the age as if it were a prophetic word, when it is little more than the message of the age bounced off Holy Scripture. To our shame, we have hungered to be masters of the Word much more than we have hungered to be mastered by it.

The pervasiveness of the problem erupts in the “Christian” merchant whose faith has no bearing on the integrity of his or her dealings, or in the way material possessions are assessed. It is reflected in an accelerating divorce rate in Christian homes and among the clergy themselves–with little sense of shame and no entailment in their “ministries.” It is seen in its most pathetic garb when considerable exegetical skill goes into proving, say, that the Bible condemns promiscuous homosexuality but not homosexuality itself (though careful handling of the evidence overturns the thesis), or that the Bible’s use of “head” in passages dealing with male/female relationships follows allegedly characteristic Greek usage, and therefore, means “source” (when close scrutiny of the primary evidence fails to turn up more than a handful of disputable instances of the meaning “source in over two thousand occurrences). It finds new lease when popular evangelicals publicly abandon any mention of “sin”–allegedly on the ground that the term no longer “communicates”-without recognizing that adjacent truths (e.g., those dealing with the fall, the law of God, the nature of transgression, the wrath of God, and even the gracious atonement itself) undergo telling transformation.

While I fear that evangelicalism is heading for another severe conflict on the doctrine of Scripture, and while it is necessary to face these impending debates with humility and courage, what is far more alarming is the diminishing authority of the Scriptures in the churches. This is taking place not only among those who depreciate the consistent truthfulness of Scripture but also (if for different reasons) among those who most vociferously defend it. To some extent we are all part of the problem; and perhaps we can do most to salvage something of value from the growing fragmentation by pledging ourselves in repentance and faith to learning and obeying God’s most holy Word. Then we shall also be reminded that the challenge to preserve and articulate a fully self-consistent and orthodox doctrine of Scripture cannot be met by intellectual powers alone, but only on our knees and by the power of God.

(D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture [Crossway, 2010], compiled by Andrew Naselli, pg. 106-109; originally part of a chapter in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon [Zondervan, 1986], ed. by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge. Emphasis added.)