Wednesday, May 04, 2011

If You Had To Guess . . .

. . . what organization would you say was being referred to here—by one of its leaders?
I have never been interested in having some kind of big tent for the _________________. I was instrumental in writing the doctrinal statement for the _________________, and we made it as tight as we possibly could, particularly on bibliology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. Unfortunately, some people sign that statement every year, but do not genuinely hold to some of its most important tenets.
No fair googling, and if you've read the original source, maybe let some others play for a bit.

And just to be clear, historically, indifferentists (to borrow Machen's term) are the people who believed the doctrinal statements themselves but were happy to make common cause with the ones who didn't.

14 comments:

Andy Efting said...

ETS

Paul said...

FBFI

Anonymous said...

I would have gone with FBFI, but since it is taken and you referenced indiffs, I will go with Gospel Coalition.

Ben said...

Andy, that would make sense from a doctrinal integrity standpoint, but ETS actually has a remarkably minimalistic doctrinal statement—basically inerrancy and Trinitarianism.

Ben said...

Paul, you just know the world too well, don't you?

Here's a link to the comments made by Mike Harding, FBFI board member.

Brandon said...

the aspect of "not being sure signees actually hold to the more important tenets" almost makes me think of the SBC or some sub-set of it.

Brandon said...

granted, of course, that FBFI (knowing Ben like I do) would have been my first guess as well.

Ben said...

Brandon, see the correct guess in the comments above. If it's any consolation, I'm sure I'd have guessed the SBC when I was your tender age. ;-)

Don Johnson said...

Ben

Are you trying to make some kind of point with this post?

If so, it isn't obvious to me what it is. Given the state of human nature, I am afraid the same sort of thing could probably be said of almost every Christian organization.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Ben said...

Don, what do you think the fundamentalist position is on associating with people who sign doctrinal statements they don't believe?

Don Johnson said...

Well, I think if you can find them out, you would attempt to change their minds, or expose them and expel them. However, you would have to ask Mike what he means by 'not genuinely hold', and what he might know of it.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Anonymous said...

Ben, if this was about evangelicals, you might get some people going on and on about their failed system. We could hear about 60 years of failure.

However, since it is about the Fundy movement, you get asked if there is a point.

Being the skinniest kid at fat camp is cool with some I suppose.

Anonymous said...

You don't just get asked if there is a point, you get told that it's just human nature and everybody does it . . . "Given the state of human nature . . ."

Keith

Anonymous said...

In the referenced post, Bob says

"Dave Doran has been slower about coming around to seeing what those of us with no dogs in the race could see as soon as we left our colleges and seminaries in the 1990s."

Which is quite plausible. However, it's also true that the same could be said about many who left these same colleges and seminaries in the 80s and probably the 70s too. There were plenty of guys in those years (same years as Dave Doran?)who saw this stuff waaay back then.

Of course if those guys wanted to graduate -- not just leave -- they had to keep their applications to Dallas or Masters or Grace (this was before Mohler, Dever, Piper, etc.) top secret until after graduation.

In other words, this is not a new phenomenon. In fact, one could argue that the FBF got a bit better for a while in the 90s than it had been in the 80s -- when we used to call its paper the Fistfitin' Backbitin' Fundamentalist Journal.

Keith