Fundamentalists by PETER KREEFT

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Even though many fundamentalists think the Catholic Church is under the control of Satan and all or most Catholics are headed for hell, not all think that - and we shouldn't think the same of them.

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Sometimes you even find fundamentalists claiming divine inspiration for the King James version! The serious motive behind this foolish idea is to hold the line against Modernism even in translation. For many modern translations of the Bible are not translations at all but interpretations or paraphrases using the dubious principle of "dynamic equivalence" - i.e., the translator imagines what the writer would have written if he'd written modern English, rather than translating the actual words he did write. The fundamentalist's concern for word-for-word fidelity, though extreme, seems less mistaken than the revisionist's fast-and-loose guesses.

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(4) The crucial difference between fundamentalists and Catholics concerns the sufficiency of Scripture, Luther's principle of "sola scriptura." The fundamentalists insists he needs no Church to interpret Scripture, for he contends that (a) Scripture is clear, or that (b) it interprets itself, or that (c) the Holy Spirit interprets it directly to him.

All three substitutes for the Church are easily shown to be inadequate: (a)

Scripture is not clear, as it itself admits (2 Pet. 3:15-16). After all, if it's so clear, why are there 500 different Protestant denominations, each claiming to be faithful to Scripture? (b) Nor does Scripture interpret itself, except on occasion, when a New Testament author quotes or refers to an Old Testament passage, (c) Finally, heretics all claim the Holy Spirit's guidance, too. To rely on a private, personal criterion has been perilous and divisive throughout history.

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(6) The weakest plank in the fundamentalist's platform is surely his insistence on a literal interpretation of everything in the Bible - or almost everything. Even fundamentalists cannot take Jesus parables or metaphors like "I am the door" literally Fundamentalists specialize in literal interpretation of the beginning and end of the Bible, Genesis and Revelation, thus opening evolutionistic and eschatological cans of worms. Though Genesis itself suggests some sort of evolution (1:20a; 24a; 2:7a), it's a dirty word for fundamentalists. And though Jesus Himself does not know when the world will end (Matt. 24:36), fundamentalists love to make rash predictions - all of them wrong.

Here the fundamentalist makes the same mistake as the Modernist: confusing objective interpretation with personal belief, interpreting Scripture in light of his own beliefs rather than those of the author's. The literary style of Genesis 1-3 and Revelation are clearly symbolic, just as the miracle stories are clearly literal. Fundamentalist and Modernist alike fail to remove their colored glasses when they read.

Fundamentalists also confuse literalness with authority, fearing that if you interpret a passage nonliterally, you remove its authority. But this isn't so; one can make an authoritative point in symbolic language, e.g. about the power ("the strong right hand") of God.

One passage no fundamentalist ever interprets literally, however, is "This is my Body." The fundamentalist suddenly turns as symbolic as a Modernist when it comes to the Eucharist.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Kreeft, Peter. "Fundamentalists." National Catholic Register. (October, 1988).

Reprinted by permission of the author. To subscribe to the National Catholic Register call 1-800-421-3230.

THE AUTHOR

Peter Kreeft has written extensively (over 25 books) in the areas of Christian apologetics. ...

Peter Kreeft teaches at Boston College in Boston Massachusetts. He is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center.

Copyright © 1988 National Catholic Register