May 19, 2017 Show with Aaron Dunlop on “Confessions of a Fundamentalist”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 19th day of May 2017.

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I am very happy to have as my guest today for the very first time Aaron Dunlop.

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He is a native of Northern Ireland and he's a graduate of Geneva Reform Seminary in South Carolina, which is the seminary of the

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Free Presbyterian Church of North America. He is an author and he's the founder of thinkgospel .com.

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Today we are discussing his book, Confessions of a Fundamentalist and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Aaron Dunlop.

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Thank you, Chris. And in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Also a former fundamentalist.

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Thank you, good to be here. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarntzen at gmail .com.

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chrisarntzen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. But if you must remain anonymous due to a personal and private matter that you're asking about, perhaps you disagree with your own pastor or your own spouse or your own family on a certain theological issue involving our topic, well, we will grant your request to remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable.

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Otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And Aaron, before we even go into the discussion of the book,

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Confessions of a Fundamentalist, I'd like to know something about thinkgospel .com.

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What exactly is that? Well, thinkgospel .com was a website that I began a number of years ago while I was pastoring in Victoria, and it was simply, at that time, a very simple presentation of the gospel.

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It was an evangelistic outreach of our church. It developed into a blog in which

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I dealt with many historical issues, biblical issues, simple gospel questions, and it has since developed into a daily devotional.

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Yes, I've looked it over. It's quite an impressive website, and for any of our listeners who would like to investigate that website later, it's thinkgospel .com,

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T -H -I -N -K, gospel .com. And I'd like to know also something about your upbringing, the religion of your childhood, if any, and how eventually our

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Sovereign Lord providentially drew you to Himself and saved you. Okay.

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I would just say, in connection with the previous question, I tell my children that think gospel is our model, and it should be their model, and it, in many ways, is the impetus behind the book and the ability to think the gospel through in our lives and to think through the gospel.

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And so, it has a number of different aspects and angles to which we can go to it.

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But I was brought up in a Christian home, in a fundamentalist home. My parents received in 1970, in Northern Ireland, into the

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Free Presbyterian Church and became members. My father, very soon after his conversion, entered the theological hall or the seminary of the

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Free Presbyterian Church and became a minister in that church. I was born just a few or five or six years after, as I say in the book, after Ian Paisley became associated in a stronger way with Bob Jones and the

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North American connection was strengthened. So that was my upbringing.

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I was saved in 1979 as a young child. My mother led me to the Lord, and I simply knew that night, as my mom was doing devotions, family worship, as we called it, that I needed a

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Savior, and she pointed me to Christ. Praise God. Well, from my understanding over the years,

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I've gotten to know a number of Free Presbyterian pastors and members of the

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Free Presbyterian Church. In fact, they are some of my favorite preachers. Very powerful, gospel -centered, unwaveringly committed to the

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Scripture, no matter how unpopular. I have been very impressed.

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In fact, many years ago, John Greer, who is now back in Northern Ireland, he was at one time pastor of the

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Free Presbyterian Church of Melbourne, Pennsylvania. He had come at my invitation to the church where I was a member, and he participated in the

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Bible conference at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York.

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And I have just really gotten to love a lot of what I have been hearing preached from these men.

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In fact, Dr. Mark Allison, who is now the president of Geneva Reform Seminary, where you graduated in South Carolina, he has been a guest on my program a number of times.

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So, from what I understand, the Free Presbyterian Church of North America was founded by Ian Paisley, am

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I right? That's correct. He was involved in the founding.

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In my book, I dedicated to five of the elders who left the Irish Presbyterian Church.

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And while Ian Paisley's name is most generally associated with the founding of the church, I believe that the five elders need recognition because they sacrificed their livelihood, some of them, to leave the

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Irish Presbyterian Church. And at that time, Ian Paisley was a young gospel firebrand of a preacher, and he was known throughout

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Northern Ireland at that time for his gospel preaching. And so they applied to him. In fact, it was around in March of 1951 that a mission was denied them, that access was denied them to the church.

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And so it revolved around him, that's correct. He had already left the

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Irish Presbyterian Church as far as his own local church was concerned in the Ravenhill Road, and the

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Free Presbyterian Church was born in March 1951. And it is a very conservative denomination.

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In fact, some of our listeners, or perhaps even most of our listeners, will be surprised to learn that not all

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Presbyterians believe in infant baptism because quite a number of the pastors within the

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Free Presbyterian Church of North America and the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the mother church, if you will, many of the men in the ministry in that denomination are actually

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Baptists in regard to the ordinance. They believe in believers baptism by immersion only, but there are paedo -baptists as well in the ministry of this denomination, and I know that the word

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Presbyterian in the name is more in regard to the polity of the denomination. That's correct, and the history behind that, of course, goes back to the founding of the church.

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The five elders who left La Sarra Presbyterian Church were, of course, Presbyterian, but Ian Paisley was a

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Baptist or an independent, and when they asked him to head up the new denomination, obviously he was a

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Baptist, they were Presbyterian, and his congregation then had to vote to form or to go into the

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Free Presbyterian Church. So it was a matter of pragmatics at the beginning, 1951, that they would be open on the issue of baptism, paedo -baptism and credo -baptism.

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So yeah, most of our men would probably be credo -baptists, but there are a number of paedo -baptists among us.

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I am no longer a member of the

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Free Presbyterian Church, but I will make it clear that the book was printed and written while I was in the

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Free Presbyterian Church. I'm writing from that perspective.

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Yes, it's interesting that you said that there's the majority of men in the ministry of the

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Free Presbyterian Church are credo -baptist, believers only Baptist, in regard to the ordinances.

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I have yet to meet a paedo -baptist in the Free Presbyterian Church, but I'm sure that they're there.

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I keep hearing that there are some there. There are, yeah. Well, the book that you have written, quite a provocative title,

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Confessions of a Fundamentalist, I think it probably would be wise for us to have you define what is a fundamentalist or what is fundamentalism, because in this day and age, in the 21st century, the majority of people hearing that term are not hearing it in regard to Christianity, they're hearing it in regard to Islam.

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And that's obviously not, it's not a very flattering thing to be associated with that type of fundamentalism, which involves violence and all kinds of things.

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But obviously there is a entirely different meaning to fundamentalist Christianity, and if you could define that for me.

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Fundamentalist Christianity has, as it is known today, is known mostly from a negative perspective.

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The book is written as a fundamentalist, and I did that purposefully.

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I grew up in a fundamentalist movement, and I still maintain that I am a fundamentalist, but I like to clarify it.

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Fundamentalism as it historically developed was simply a defense of the faith. It was a robust defense of the faith, it became a militant defense of the faith, but it developed, unfortunately, into a mentality.

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So it was not so much a defense of the faith, but it became known as a mentality.

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And so I believe, as most conservative evangelicals would, I think, if they were pressed, would say they were fundamentalists in the idea or the theological idea of fundamentalism.

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But what I would call the sociological or the movement, it developed into a fighting movement, and I deal with this in the last chapter of the book, and also one of the chapters that deals with the war psychology.

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It was known for its fighting, and Marsden defined a fundamentalist as an evangelical who is angry about something.

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That's what it is known as today, and that's why many people have jettisoned the title. That's why they no longer want to be known as one who fights or one who is militant.

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Yes, I often feel awkward when someone—it would typically be an unbeliever or perhaps a liberal who would ask me on occasion, are you a fundamentalist?

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And I have an awkward feeling in saying no, because I know that the origins of fundamentalism were very noble and biblical, and so I typically say, well, what do you mean by that?

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And then if they define something that I am against, I will tell them what

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I oppose in their definition, and then I will elaborate more on what I believe.

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But I really don't like totally jettisoning the term fundamentalist and, you know, abandoning it altogether.

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Right, there is today the term a resurgent fundamentalism, and that is coming from more progressive evangelicals who look upon men such as Al Mohler, John MacArthur, John Piper, who are taking the stand on many issues in current theological debate, and they look upon those men as a resurgent fundamentalism.

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But the title, you know, fundamentalist movement, what is being jettisoned and what is being disliked among evangelicals is the idea of a movement that was not only a theological movement but a political movement, a cultural movement.

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You know, in America, fundamentalism was closely associated with MacIntyre's fight against communism, the moral majority in the 1970s and 80s, which was closely linked with the

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Reagan government. In Northern Ireland, it was closely linked with anti -Catholicism and the

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Unionist fight against the Republican movement in Ireland.

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And in Canada, it was closely linked with anti -Catholicism in Ottawa. So it associated itself very much with a cultural and a political, and so many sermons of the fundamentalists in the mid -century there were newspaper exegesis, and that's what many men have disliked about it and why it's been jettisoned.

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And I want to remind our listeners about our email address, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, if you have a question for our guest on fundamentalism and specifically on his own theological journey.

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But before I go to any of our listener questions, if you could really describe the development of the movement.

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I mean, you've already mentioned some of it, but can you get into more detail on the development of the fundamentalist movement?

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You mean historically? Yes, and what you are addressing in that chapter in your book. Okay, yeah.

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Well, I link, and my studies specifically were born out of a couple of things.

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I'm working on a biography of the first fundamentalist split in North America, which happened in Vancouver in 1927, and the key figure there was a man called

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J .B. Rowell. He's unknown to many evangelicals and fundamentalists today, but I'm working on his biography.

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So that study developed, and then as a new generation is coming into the church and I discover that many are leaving fundamentalism,

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I began to ask myself the question, what's wrong, and why is fundamentalism losing so many young people?

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And that's where the studies were born out of. The development

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I link with the three countries, the only three countries in the world in which a fundamentalist movement developed were

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America, Canada, and Northern Ireland, and my studies particularly deal with Canada and Northern Ireland.

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Of course, I don't need to teach Americans about fundamentalism in America. Well, I may need a lot to learn about it because it's not something that was actually much a part of my background, so don't cut yourself short there.

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Right. The movement in Northern Ireland, it's interesting.

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It developed specifically what I call a fighting fundamentalist, developed in the 1950s and into the 60s with Ian Paisley.

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Ian Paisley pursued a friendship with MacIntyre in the 1950s and 60s, and then with Bob Jones.

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So that, he brought American fundamentalism into Northern Ireland. There was a fundamentalism before that in the

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Irish Presbyterian Church where men like Greer, W .J. Greer, left the

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Irish Presbyterian Church and started what became known as the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. That was a more moderate church.

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It was fundamentalist, it was conservative, and it was separatistic in that it separated from the

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Irish Presbyterian Church, but it was more moderate. There were movements like that in North America, such as J.

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Gresham Meechan. There were also movements like that in Canada, and I maintain that the separatist movement in British Columbia and Canada, which spearheaded, by the way, the separatist movement in all of North America, was a more moderate separation, and that's what

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I would advocate, is a moderate separation. Even Ian Paisley, you know, when

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I look at the history of Ian Paisley in the 1940s and in the early 50s, in the early days of the

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Free Presbyterian Church, he was moderate. He was preaching for the Irish Presbyterians while it was a church that was majority liberal.

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He was preaching for other churches that associated with him, but something happened in the 1950s and 60s that cut off all association with the

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Irish Presbyterian Church, and we became more isolated. We became more associated with American fundamentalism, and a belligerence crept in, and that's what

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I take to task in the book, is the belligerence that crept into it. Even in North America, you had men like McIntyre and T .T.

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Shields in Canada, where there was personality clashes, power struggles.

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That's what I'm taking to task in the book, in the development of the movement, and so while I agree with the essential beginnings of the movement, it is what it developed into that I have problems with.

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We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, the thing that always puzzled me about the friendship between Bob Jones University and Ian Paisley is that Bob Jones University has had a history of being vehemently anti -Calvinist, and yet Ian Paisley seems to have been an unwavering, strong, committed

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Calvinist. How could this friendship continue with the two theological systems being in such strong opposition to one another?

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That's one of the anomalies of a fundamentalist movement, in that there was a lot of inconsistencies within the movement.

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They would separate from one person for a lesser sin, if you like, than another person.

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Ian Paisley was a Calvinist, there's no doubt about that, but he was a soft, if I can use the term, a soft

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Calvinist. He practiced up until the 1990s, he practiced the altar call, which was typically associated with Arminian evangelism.

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Right, what was the first thing you said before the altar call? I didn't hear what you said, I'm sorry. That Ian Paisley was a

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Calvinist, there's no doubt about that, but even his association with Bob Jones, both of them together were very anti -hyper -Calvinistic, and they made statements, the

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Congress of Fundamentalists made statements against hyper -Calvinism.

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So they found a common bond in their fight against the hyper -Calvinism.

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Ian Paisley, as I said before, was a soft Calvinist. The hard edges of hyper -Calvinism were well knocked off him.

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Yeah, well if he was... Ian Paisley was a phenomenal gospel preacher and passionate about souls, and so his

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Calvinism was very much in the background when it came to the preaching of the gospel, and therefore he could engage in altar calls and so forth.

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Yeah, he would have to have compromised on Calvinism to have the altar calls. It's interesting though that the men that I have met within the ministry in the

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Free Presbyterian Church of North America, they seem to be very committed Calvinists, unwaveringly so. Yes, and you know, when you look at the history of Free Presbyterianism in Northern Ireland, and I think this is important to keep in mind, and I want to keep in mind also when

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I discuss the book, I don't want to condemn these men for the situation that they found themselves in.

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I think there was problems in how it developed, but the Lord used Ian Paisley in a phenomenal way in the 1950s and 60s, and I would say, and many would agree with me on this, that what we saw in Northern Ireland in the 1950s and 60s was a breath of revival, genuine revival through the preaching of Ian Paisley.

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That I cannot deny, and I won't deny, but what developed then in its association with North American fundamentalism is what

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I'm taking to task, what I have problems with. But the Lord used his preaching in a phenomenal way across Northern Ireland.

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The Free Presbyterian Church today is the third largest, or the second largest,

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Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, and I believe that Ian Paisley's ministry had a phenomenal impact on the

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Evangelical Church across Northern Ireland. Even an impact on Irish Presbyterianism, I think, when the history books are written, it will be seen clearly that Ian Paisley had an impact across Northern Ireland.

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And I think I mentioned that in the last chapter of the book, in dealing with the personalities of fundamentalism.

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And you go on to a chapter that you have titled,

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Conviction, Courage, and Biblical Authority. If you could tell us about that. Well, that chapter is really a defense of fundamentalism.

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Like I said, I'm reading from a fundamentalist perspective. I experienced what it was like to study in what the fundamentalists would call a new evangelical college.

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I studied in France for a year in an evangelical language school, and I experienced there, as I outlined in the first part of that chapter, what it was like to fight against evangelicals on core issues of biblical teaching, and they were denying them.

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And as a fundamentalist, and my friend, Jim, who was in the class with me, we were defending key issues of biblical practice in this evangelical school, and it came to mind later when

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I heard what John MacArthur said, never did I believe that I would spend most of my life trying to rescue the gospel from evangelicals.

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That's what MacArthur has been doing for most of his ministry, and he said that a number of times, actually. I've heard at least two times when he said pretty much those exact words, and I discovered what that was, what he meant by that when

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I was in France. I was mocked by other evangelicals for my dogmatism in holding to Scripture.

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In the debates in class, I would take my New Testament, my French New Testament, and that became a point of mockery.

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And then, as I said, the one guy who left before I was leaving the college, he said to me, he says,

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I admire your courage. I couldn't do that, but I admire your courage, and I thought to myself, that is in microcosm what the evangelical,

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New Evangelical Fundamentalist fight is all about. I think the

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New Evangelicals, many of them were afraid of the fight.

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They were afraid to take their stand. As R .C. Spohle, Jr. shared in an article in Table Talk in 2006, he called the

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Fundamentalists, our Fundamentalist betters, because they took their stand. They weren't afraid to lose the accolades.

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They weren't afraid to lose the positions in the seminaries and colleges, and they took their stand. And so that's what that chapter is really.

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Fundamentalists had courage. They had spunk. They weren't afraid of what others thought about them.

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When I think about it, the Apostle Paul tells us in Acts Chapter 24, that we're to live with a conscience void of offense toward God and man.

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And I think the Fundamentalists tried to live with a conscience that was void of offense toward God, and many of them didn't care what man thought, and they trumped all over men, and their conscience wasn't void of offense toward other men.

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The New Evangelicals of yesteryear, I think, were so busy trying to live with a conscience void of offense toward man that many of them ignored the conscience that was void of offense toward God.

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But the two are not mutually exclusive. The Bible doesn't give us commands that are mutually exclusive, and both are possible.

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And that is that balance in the middle that I'm calling for in the chapters of The Bigger Way Forward.

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There is a better way to be a Fundamentalist. There is a better way to do Fundamentalism, and that's the balance that I'm calling for.

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You know, I don't want to, and I wrote that chapter specifically as a defense of a

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Fundamentalist, because I don't want to jettison my heritage, and I don't want to deny the fact that the

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Lord used those men in the Fundamentalist movement. And so I'm walking,

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I realize that I'm walking a very fine line in defending

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Fundamentalism, and yet dealing with Fundamentalism in the way I have.

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And I know unfortunately that many of my Fundamentalist brethren disagree with me, some vehemently, and I'm willing to,

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I'm willing to deal with that. But that was, that chapter was a defense of Fundamentalism. And by the way,

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I think I forgot to tell Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, that you have won a free copy of Confessions of a

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Fundamentalist by our guest today, Aaron Dunlop, and that's compliments of Tentmaker Publications, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, that's

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CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service, who will be sending out that copy to you, and look for a return address on the shipping label that says

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CVBBS .com, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com.

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And we thank Todd and Petty Jennings, the owners of CVBBS .com

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for their faithfulness in supporting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and for shipping out all of our winners in our audience, their free

30:21

Bibles, books, DVDs, CDs, and other items that we give away to those submitting questions.

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So hopefully you'll be getting that in the mail very soon, Ronald, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron and keep spreading the word about it in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and beyond.

30:39

And we're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages, so don't go away.

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Welcome back to the program.

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If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Aaron Dunlop, a native of Northern Ireland, graduate of Geneva Reform Seminary in South Carolina.

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He's an author and founder of ThinkGospel .com. We are discussing his book,

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Confessions of a Fundamentalist, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

32:48

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

32:58

USA. And you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. And I have a question from Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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She says, greetings to Mr. Dunlop from a member of the Free Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis and follower of ThinkGospel .com.

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Thank you for that devotional site. Excuse my ignorance, but could you please educate me quickly on how the fundamentalist movement in Ireland related or fit into the history of the

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Catholic -Christian tensions in that country? Right.

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Well, it's outside of the purview of my book, but it's a very fascinating question, and I think it relates also to the fundamentalist movement in North America.

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And that goes back to what I believe is what I call the

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British Protestant imperialism. The British Empire developed as a counter -movement or in direct tension against Catholic Europe.

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And so to be British meant that you were Protestant. The two were synonymous. British and Protestantism went together.

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When that came over to Canada, you had men like T .T. Shields. In fact, most of the early fundamentalists in Canada were

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British -born. In my subject, in my book, the biography that I'm working on was

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British -born. T .T. Shields was British -born, and a number of other men in Canada were

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British -born. So there was this cultural fight to maintain this

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British Protestant imperialism. That, I believe, is also seen in North America, in America rather, in the culture of fundamentalism developed as a cultural fight.

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It was a fight not just to maintain theological verities, but it was a fight to maintain cultural identity.

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In Northern Ireland, it developed around the Republican movement where, and here we're getting into Irish history, which is extremely complex, and we're not going to fix it this afternoon, but it developed in the fight.

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The South of Ireland maintained that they owned this part in the North, the six counties

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North, which had voted in 1921 to stay with Britain. And so I believe, if you go back far enough in the history of fundamentalism, it has that desire to stay with Britain.

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And that's the fight even today, unionism versus Irish republicanism. Ian Paisley was closely linked with both.

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In fact, the church, he was a founder of Presbyterianism, and he's known across the world as the founder, not only of the church, but of the political party, the

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Democratic Unionist Party, which was a party which is explicitly fighting for union with Britain.

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And that, I believe, is the essential link between fundamentalism in Northern Ireland and the

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Irish struggle for republicanism versus unionism.

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That answers your question, but I think it goes a long way, I think, if she can, it gives her some leads to follow up, that she can do further research.

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Thank you so much, Aaron, from Indianapolis, Indiana, and you have also won a free copy of Confessions of a

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Fundamentalist by our guest Aaron Dunlop, compliments of Tentmaker Publications and compliments of CVBBS .com,

36:43

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com. You also have a chapter that really,

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I think, gets at the heart of what we are discussing today, it's titled The Dangers of the

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Fundamentalist Mentality. Yes, The Dangers of the

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Fundamentalist Mentality is a chapter that deals specifically with the and as I pondered fundamentalism and what it developed into,

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I could see both by experience and by what I was reading in the history of fundamentalism,

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I could see fault lines developing early in the movement. And I think they have developed into what

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I call in the chapter, a shallow evangelistic outreach and a tendency toward legalistic holiness.

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I think the two are closely linked. And when you think of a shallow evangelistic outreach, and don't get me wrong, fundamentalists were extremely evangelistic.

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In fact, the church in North America grew exponentially because of fundamentalism.

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Churches were developing and established all over America because of fundamentalist outreach.

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So it was a very evangelistic movement. But it was,

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I believe, and I'm brushing with a broad brush, I understand that it was a shallow evangelism.

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And even today, I think, and I can see it in many circles, this call to the gospel, this altar call where men and women are called up the aisle, they don't know the substance of the gospel.

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And many preachers are preaching the gospel, there's just invitations, there's no substance to it.

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As one man said to me, he says, my preacher, fundamentalist preacher, he says, it's all invitation, no substance.

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And when I hear statements like that, within the fundamentalist church, it upsets me.

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I struggle with that. And I had to go and to search what is the problem?

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And why is there this shallow evangelistic preaching? And I think it's linked, that shallow evangelism is linked with the legalistic holiness.

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If you don't know what you're saved to, if you don't know the substance and the glory of the

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Christ who calls us to salvation, the sovereignty of God in salvation, the work of the

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Holy Spirit in salvation, and the indwelling enjoyment of the third person of the Trinity, then you have to replace sanctification with something else.

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If you haven't got the fullness of Christ in the gospel, as not only your savior, but your sanctifier, then you have to replace that sanctification with something.

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And I think fundamentalists tended to replace it with a legalistic holiness, a set of principles, a list of do's and don'ts.

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And that, I think, is the danger, the heart of the danger of fundamentalism.

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Now, obviously, we have to clarify things because of the fact that we are living in a day and age when you have churches that would describe themselves as evangelicals, that are pro -homosexual, that are pro -same -sex marriage.

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Immediately, I'm thinking of Matthew Vines, who is a self -identified homosexual or gay man.

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I don't use that term myself because I don't think it's appropriate of that movement to be robbing good words from our vocabulary and identifying themselves that way.

40:53

But there are people who say the very same things about you and I and about basic, ordinary, born -again

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Christians who have biblical morality, and they will say, well, you're just legalistic for trying to prohibit love, marital relations between two people of the same gender.

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And, of course, you know, that goes to many other issues in life where, although the fundamentalist may go overboard with focusing or harping on the clothing that we wear, we would be in agreement that there are some women who walk into churches that you could not tell the difference between them and a prostitute by what they're wearing.

41:51

So, I mean, could you define exactly what you specifically mean when you are talking about legalistic holiness?

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Yeah, there are different levels of legalism. There's a legalism that maintains

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I need to do something to be saved. That, of course, is heresy. We're saved by faith alone, and fundamentalists would reject that.

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But there's a legalism also that is linked to our sanctification, and it's nuanced.

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You know, I'm not saying most people say, well, I wouldn't be legalistic. So it's very nuanced.

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But the whole idea, you look at the history of fundamentalism, the idea of holiness was developed around the length of our hair, whether a person, a lady, wore makeup or not, hairstyles.

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These things, these personal things were the measure of holiness in a person's life, and they were very geographically oriented also because in North America in the 1970s, if you were in a fundamentalist school, it was illegal in some schools to have your hair touching your collar or your ears.

43:09

In Northern Ireland, that wasn't an issue. The makeup issue of makeup,

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Bob Jones famously said, if the barn door needs painted, paint it. That was him that said that, huh?

43:27

In North America, women wore makeup, but in Northern Ireland, for a

43:32

Christian in my circles, when I was growing up to wear makeup, it was very worldly. So I think worldliness was identified by things we do, not about the nature of the heart or the disposition of the heart.

43:47

And that's what I mean by illegalism, that it was more oriented towards externals.

43:55

No, and my argument is that fundamentalism developed into a movement that was not a spiritual movement, and let me clarify that.

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Fundamentalism developed as a fighting machine against liberalism. Its key and almost exclusive goal was to defend the object of faith, the seven principles or seven theological dogmas.

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But I think it dropped the ball when it came to developing the subject of faith, the faith of the individual and growing individuals in the faith.

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And I think that is the key problem with fundamentalism. But while it was defending the object of faith, there were many people in the movement who were struggling with their own faith and struggling with the development and growth of that faith that were just left hanging and were never developed and never grew.

45:00

And I think that's the heart of it. Yeah, in 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verses 3 through 4, we have

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Paul saying, "...the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and they will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."

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Now, typically that would be a frequently preached text within fundamentalism, and it's usually about preachers who are trying to appease people by letting them get away with behaviors and practices that are sinful and trying to remove the sting of sin and remove the fear of hell from their hearts and minds.

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But isn't it true that these very same fundamentalists can be guilty of the very same thing?

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Because if you are preaching to the choir, as the saying goes, where you're always talking about women with short skirts and men with long hair and rock and roll music and things that the people in the congregation are not doing, and they could be sparing these people from the actual sins that may be rampant in those congregations, like pride, like bigotry, like arrogance, like not helping your brother in need financially or other ways, even sexual sins of the eyes and heart that are not involved in scantily dressed women.

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It could be people who are just privately going through their own lusts and so on.

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There are a lot of things that fundamentalists may be very guilty of that their pastors are not even addressing, because they're only harping on the things that those outside of their own walls are doing.

47:16

Am I right on that? Right. Yes, and I think, you know, when I look back at the history of the movement, it developed as a movement to fight against theological liberalism, but it never developed beyond that, and there was theological aberrance, aberrant theology that came out in the more recent years that fundamentalists have not dealt with, and I think in many ways the movement was stuck in a time warp where it could defend the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ, but when it comes to open theism, to the charismatic movement, these issues are now being defended not by the fundamentalists, but by what the fundamentalists would call the new evangelicals, which is a term that they still use.

48:10

So they were stuck back in this defending the faith against liberalism, but they never really moved beyond that, and so they weren't preaching to their people, and again,

48:24

I'm brushing with a broad brush, and from my own experience, they weren't preaching to the people about those things that you just mentioned, about the heart issues, and I say in the book, in the last part of that chapter, worldliness is not so much what we reject of this world, the material things, the pleasures, the fashions, it has more to do with how we respond to the influences of the world around us.

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It is not so much about right living as it is about right thinking, not so much about things as it is about thoughts.

48:57

I think fundamentalism tended to externalize holiness and missed the internal growth of holiness.

49:07

You know, I think of it, and one of the reasons, as I said before, why I began to write on this issue was the struggles that I saw my peers struggling within the movement, and another generation coming up, a generation that are moving into fundamentalism and rejecting fundamentalism, they were struggling with issues, and many of them, you know, got saved out of the world, and they were thrown straight into this defense of the faith before they knew what faith they were defending.

49:42

You know, they were told what you wear, this is how you must look, this is what you must say, this is the

49:49

Bible you must take and hold and use, and without giving the reasons behind those things, and so they weren't allowed to grow in grace individually in the gospel, they had to conform to a movement, and I think in many respects that has destroyed many

50:07

Christians within the movement. Yes, I think that you're absolutely right as far as the lack of depth, theological depth, that many within the movement have because they are not only focused on a very narrow circle of subjects typically, the thing that I find amazing is that the fundamentalists whose claim to fame is the inerrancy of scripture and the literal interpretation of the scripture,

50:43

I find so often them being terrified of actually getting into long discussions about certain scriptures that refute what they believe, and I'm speaking here particularly about this doctrines of sovereign grace or the reformed faith or Calvinism.

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Now of course I know that there are fundamentalists who are Calvinists, who are very strongly identified with the doctrines of sovereign grace, even if they do not use the label

51:11

Calvinist or reformed, but I can tell you about a friend of mine who came out of a

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King James only independent fundamentalist Baptist background, and he over the course of years that I knew him became a full -blown theologically reformed five -point

51:32

Calvinist Baptist pastor, and he told his father -in -law who is very, very anti -Calvinist, his father -in -law who's also a pastor, he told his father -in -law that he was going to be preaching on Romans 9, and he had not yet broken the news to his father -in -law that he had come to embrace the doctrines of grace, and he told his father -in -law he's going to be preaching on Romans 9, and his father -in -law said, wait a minute, wait a minute, you got to get my sermon notes, you got to get the, please look at my sermon notes first, and he said that in the sermon notes where for instance the text in Romans 9,

52:09

Jacob I love but Esau I hated, he said in his notes to his son -in -law, do not read this, and he also said when you preach the

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Romans 9, you got to do it quick like ripping off a band -aid, because if you dwell too long in the texts, people are going to start being confused, and they're going to be misreading the

52:37

Bible and misunderstanding things. The man was just basically afraid of what the inerrant

52:43

God -breathed word was saying in that chapter. Yeah, I think obviously fundamentalism developed against liberalism, and liberalism was identified specifically with scholasticism, scholars, and universities, and that's where liberalism was coming out of,

53:09

Germany and into Britain and across to Europe, and so many fundamentalists were afraid of education, and they avoided, and that's

53:22

I think where the proof texting came from, rather than get into the meat and study of scripture to deal with the depth of scripture, they began to use this proof texting, and everything was defended by a series of proof texts, because they just were afraid

53:44

I think of study. You know you look at E .W. Pink, he came across America to study, and he struggled with the lack of study, with the lack of intelligence, theological intelligence in North America, and it's a fascinating study, the life of E .W.

54:07

Pink and the development of Reformed literature even to this day, but there was that fear of education.

54:15

In fact, I've had ministers, I've had a colleague, a friend of mine said to me, I don't need history, all

54:22

I need is my Bible. That has been heard over and over again, and I was shocked when

54:30

I heard it. That basically means, I am so smart that I don't need a teacher.

54:37

That's basically what it means, because obviously you're discounting centuries of the most brilliant minds that ever lived in Christendom.

54:45

You think, oh, I don't need them. I'm smart enough to know what I need to know, and even better than anybody else or whatever.

54:52

But we are going to go just to a break right now, and before I go to that break,

54:57

I want to read you another question, because it's fairly lengthy, and I'll have you answer it when I come back from the break.

55:05

In fact, I will also email you the question again as well. This is from my listener in Slovenia, Joe in Slovenia.

55:14

He says, Dear Brother Chris, while I wholeheartedly agree with the need to critique what became the fundamentalist movement that engaged heavily in culture war politics,

55:23

I think it is unwise to surrender to the term fundamentalist or fundamentals. As has been pointed out, the historical beginnings of fundamentalism were solidly biblical conservatism.

55:36

If we abandon the term fundamentalist and the fundamentals because some have abused them, then we must also abandon the terms

55:43

Calvinism and reform for the same reasons. What can be done to restate the fundamentals of the

55:49

Christian faith in an effort to reform modern evangelicalism without falling into the error of partisan politics?

55:57

Thanks for fundamentally sharpening us today. Well, I'm going to be emailing this question to you from Joe in Slovenia, Aaron, and then we will have you answer it when we return from our break that we are having right now and that we are entering into,

56:14

I should say. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

56:20

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages.

56:26

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

56:32

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56:41

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hcbible .org call 609 -494 -5689 609 -494 -5689 harvey cedars where christ finds people and changes lives well we are back with our guest for today aaron dunlop who is a native of northern ireland a graduate of geneva reform seminary in south carolina an author and the founder of thinkgospel .com

01:03:24

we are discussing his book confessions of a fundamentalist and uh i uh before the break was reading you the question that we received from joe in slovenia and i will read that to you again even though you have the question in front of you i'll read it for the benefit of the audience especially those that tuned in late but joe in slovenia says well i wholeheartedly agree with the need to critique what became the fundamentalist movement that engaged heavily in culture war politics i think it is unwise to surrender the term fundamentalist or the fundamentals as has been pointed out the historical beginnings of fundamentalism were solidly biblical conservatism if we abandon the term fundamentalist and the fundamentals because some have abused them then we must also abandon the terms calvinism and reform for the same reasons what can be done to restate the fundamentals of the christian faith in an effort to reform modern evangelicalism without falling into the error of partisan politics if you could aaron respond to joe in slovenia hello joe um there's a couple of issues there that i i see we're coming from and i understand the question i hope but the idea of terms and i'm not one for terms personally but the idea of terms we all need labels we all have labels whether we like them or not and many have jettisoned the term fundamentalist and fundamentalism because of the association the negative association that has developed around that i think that it comes down to the intensity of abuse in a given term like for instance our brother was referring earlier to gay the word gay was used historically to mean happy or colorful uh it's to use today to speak of a particular uh type of person homosexuality and so we don't use the term gay today while it is historically and linguistically a good term we don't use it so the intensity of abuse determines whether we want to jettison a term or not i'm not necessarily defending the jettisoning of the term i still hold to the fundamentals i in particular company ie in the company where i can explain myself i call myself a fundamentalist i'm not ashamed of that if i can explain what i mean by a fundamentalist same goes for calvinism reformed or whatever uh so yeah there are problems many terms uh need explanation there's a term that has been and you mentioned in your question also this engaging heavily in culture war and politics um i think that is one of the problems historically of fundamentalism we engaged in culture wars back in the 1980s jerry farwell published a book uh called um the fundamentalist phenomenon and in that book his final chapter he was dealing with the resurgence of fundamentalism now when jerry falwell spoke of a resurgence of fundamentalism he's talking of the moral majority a political movement but you have today men who speak of a resurgence of fundamentalism in the little book uh the spectrum of evangelicalism roger olson speaks of men like al moeller and john piper and those men who are defending key aspects of theology as a resurgent fundamentalism so i don't think the term is going to stick uh the idea the term resurgent fundamentalism i think it's just too long of a title conservative evangelicalism is typically the term that is used now and i think as i mentioned one of the chapters in the book is a term that's probably to go on to melt the two the fundamentalists and the evangelicals together into what i call uh a new conservative evangelical identity i think i hope that answers your question well thank you joe and slovenia and guess what especially since you've provided an american address in georgia you are getting a copy of of a fundamentalist where we are shipping this uh to your daughter in georgia and uh to your attention and we thank you so much for participating in today's program this is being given to you compliments of the publishers tent makers publishers who provided these copies of the book today and also compliments of crumblin valley bible book service cv bbs .com

01:08:13

cv for crumblin valley bbs for bible book service .com we'll be shipping that book out to you and we thank todd and patty jennings again for their faithful support of iron sharpens iron radio and that's interesting you mentioned jerry fullwell the majority if not all of the fundamentalists that i know who are friends of mine and some who are just acquaintances they would have viewed jerry fullwell as a compromising liberal right that's correct and my co -host riff and buzz taylor has a question well since you brought up jerry fall well i might as well tell you just a little bit about my background with the issue um this is my co -host buzz taylor as as you already know i i did graduate from bob jones university in the late 70s and um uh it it took me a while to uh get used to the fact that there were other people outside of bob jones that actually um loved lord and were were serving him and and so forth you know i was i was definitely in that that fundamentalist uh mold that uh many people respond negatively to and i remember as i was preparing for uh being a pastor that my biggest concern uh of pastoring wasn't so much my theology as it was well am i going to accidentally befriend myself to the wrong person and become known as a neo -evangelical and you know ousted from fundamentalism because i didn't know because it was such a long list of who you could hang out with and who you couldn't and uh you know if you send a lot of students to bob jones university you you could do a lot of stuff but if you didn't you couldn't and i saw so much of this this kind of stuff going on there and it was with the publishing of jerry fallwell's magazine that i understand didn't really last too long but it was called the fundamentalist journal and in the first few issues of the fundamentalist journal he went through and described some of the history of fundamentalism and it was the first time i realized now something that i had considered myself a part of for like five years all of a sudden i started to realize what it really was about it wasn't all the who's who's it was well of course uh this didn't come up in our conversation aaron but uh it had a lot to do with the niagara bible conference at alcott new york and uh some of the meetings there uh and i that's when i realized it it centered in on certain uh truths of the faith that were considered needed that they considered needed to be defended and narrowed it down to the inspiration of the bible the virgin birth and deity of christ the blood atonement to the bodily resurrection and second coming uh under those titles there were a lot of groups that could have been included in fundamentalism that weren't because of things like long sideburns and wire rim glasses and things like that but um could you explain a little bit more about how um the niagara bible conference at alcott fits in because you mentioned a lot of the the history in ireland and uh in canada but i didn't hear much about the united states so by i'm not um going to uh admit that i'm an expert on american fundamentalism most of the book just by as a side the book was written particularly from personal experience and it is in that sense autobiographical right but it's also written from my research when i went to look at the history of fundamentalism i discovered that men within the movement were actually admitting the faults that i had already identified but nobody was ever dealing with them and i deal with that in a chapter later on in the book uh is fundamental which is you know these issues the fighting the war psychology the separate the nth degree separation those are issues that men were the movement but nobody was dealing with it and so that was that was the history behind my um the development of the blogs but the fundamentalist movement developed in america in a series of bible conferences you mentioned the agro there and prophecy conferences and it's we ought not to forget also that the plymouth brethren um and other groups such as the pentecostal church were responses to liberalism uh in the church and so in many respects the plymouth brethren is a fundamentalist church and part of the broader movement pentecostalism was also a response to the fundamental liberalism the pentecostals was the most radical response they said to the liberals you deny the supernatural god let me show you what the supernatural god can do he can heal you know we can speak in tongues so that was the most radical response to liberalism and many of the many of the in british columbia anyhow many of the early fundamentalists baptists in particular associated closely with the pentecostal church until they discovered that it was going too far in the doctrine of faith healing and speaking in tongues but we should not forget that those those churches are part of the broader fundamentalist movement and the brethren of course plymouth brethren developing out of the uh and develop the prophecy the prophecy um on bible conferences in north america and develop what then rhymed dispensationalism which was particularly identified with um in in america not so much in canada because most of the fundamentalists in canada in the baptist church were calvinistic a millennial in the early 1900s interesting yeah that was not so in america and in northern ireland uh they were calvinistic of course also and typically the most part i think pre -millennial but not dispensational america was it was alone in its desire for dispensationalism now uh in reading the description of your book on the solid ground christian books website which is the american uh location for anybody wishing to order the book later on if you live here in the united states solid -ground -books .com

01:14:46

who sponsored this program solid -ground -books .com the description in the description of your book it says this book was never intended to be a book but the very people the author wrote about wanted him to publish it can you explain that yes um i just mentioned the brethren there and even since i published it i've been talking with with brethren people who are now leaving brethrenism and entering into a conservative evangelical churches because they have identified in the brethren movement the things that i'm writing about this myopic separatistic mentality and so i'm discovering now after publishing it that there's a broader application not only in fundamentalism in the movement that we know but in the brethren circles and that surprised me um but yes when i when i wrote the articles it was just a series of blogs i started writing and um i was encouraged by many of my own age my own generation back in ireland to publish and put them in in a more permanent presentation of a book and so you know that's why i called it the confessions of a fundamentalist there i was looking at a review of the book online uh just yesterday or the day before and an individual was complaining that this was just wasn't really a book there was uh in the book well i titled it the confessions of a fundamentalist because i'm dealing with specific items that i'm dealing with in the confessions uh it wasn't intended to be a book originally it was a series of articles um and it was resonating with my generation and a younger generation you know i mentioned john macarthur earlier back in the 1980s you remember the whole travesty over the blood issue john macarthur's position and i remember in the late 80s the belligerence and the stand against john macarthur on his on his stand on the blood and i mentioned it in the book i believe he was teaching what the reformers and the puritans taught and um the fundamentalists had followed a man called the han in the book the chemistry of blood which was a travesty because i think it it confused it confused the whole idea of the of the death of christ yeah it didn't make it very superstitious uh in regard to the physical blood of christ yeah not all fundamentalists would have followed rigidly what the han taught but the han taught that when adam and eve sinned in the garden they got blood poison but really on salvation then was a blood transfusion you know that was the problem of a medical doctor trying to force his medicine into biblical teaching that's not a it's not a good idea you know take the bible and force it into your medicine but don't do it the other way around but but not all fundamentalists followed that as rigidly but his book was i believe a watershed in that whole discussion and john mccarthur was was hauled over the coals uh in a cannibalistic fashion with regard to his views um i mean he was he was basically saying that the shed blood of christ uh was the prophesied way that god was going to atone sin and the the death of christ and his receiving the wrath of the father on calvary were the important things that was not that the blood had some kind of magical property isn't that what he was basically saying right rightly saying right that's correct and i've heard preachers myself heard preachers saying that the blood of jesus cleanses us the same way as bleach cleaned the toilet in my mind that's a serious unfortunate um perspective to take john mccarthur was teaching reformers taught and puritans taught that the the death of christ necessitated blood shedding and the blood the references to the blood which is um for the most part in the new testament the death of christ is referred to as the blood and it's a metonym for his bloody death it's not so much it's not the blood of christ that is the essential element it's the blood shedding of christ under sudden nuance that's so important in fact in fact that person who came up with the analogy of the bleach and the toilet being an allegory for the blood of christ cleansing us and it's the same thing that person doesn't understand sin he doesn't understand the depravity the depths of evil that are involved in men's sin because if you want to use a proper analogy it would not only be that the toilet was cleaned with clorox it would have been that the house was raised to the ground and and a brand and a brand new mansion was erected with the brand new plumbing right yeah it wasn't just cleaning like a stain off of the uh i mean that's a really poor analogy that he was gonna well it is a poor analogy but the bible the bible speaks of the blood cleansing us i mean to then figure out what does it mean for the blood to cleanse us and that's that's my contention let's go to the scripture and and figure out what it means theologically uh without without being infected by the hands uh by the hands misunderstanding of the blood you know it speaks of the bible speaks of washing and cleansing and we need then as as the illusions as pastors and as christians to go to the bible and figure out what that means from a theological and a legal perspective we have uh cj in lindenhurst long island new york who says you were talking about the fundamentalists being guilty of preaching myopic separation could you please uh differentiate between that and the separation that we as christians should all be involved in obviously i am hoping that you do not believe that we have ecumenical relationships with roman catholics and those who are liberals on issues including homosexuality and abortion can you please be more specific about what you mean by myopic separation you know i deal with that in in the chapter entitled to fly in the fundamentalist point and essentially if i could condense it is that the idea of separation uh was a blanket just a blanket separation from anybody who didn't agree with us rather than taking rather than taking separation on an individual basis which calls for discernment calls for prayer which calls for a love and respect for others who disagree with us the fundamentalists developed into the place where they would separate over separation they would separate look at the personalities of fundamentalism in america alone men who separated from other men because they disagreed with them on on very basic issues personality clashes and they were separating from them i think they just took separation and just went wild with it and in this respect i believe that in that area the fundamentalist movement was a new thing to the church in that it did not link back to the reformers to the puritans um it was a it was a completely different take on what biblical separation is and i think the separation of the fundamentalists adhered many fundamentalists adhere to today is as old as about 100 years old uh you know you read you read the history of the church john calvin and his letters to many people in europe you read about ch spurgeon at the end of the 1800s in in england and all of the organizations that spurgeon had and the openness of mind and heart that they had towards other churches who were engaged in those ministries with him uh and i just i felt and i feel that fundamentalism used separation with without discernment it was just a blanket we we don't associate with anybody who disagrees with us and of course when you're so rigid as that then there has to be necessarily inconsistencies come into it so you're going to see inconsistencies but i believe and i believe in separation uh no doubt i believe in separation from ecumenism i believe in separation from apostasy and i believe in in separation from those who associate with apostasy and you know in many respects many fundamentalist churches have a have a good um doctrine of separation on paper but it's how it played out in practice was the issue you know um there was an inability to disagree with somebody and still maintain a friendship and that was the that's the problem i think that developed in the movement yeah i mean some of the uh the separation that i have experienced in regard to having it explained to me by my fundamentalist uh baptist friends uh is so uh much involved in micromanaging it becomes pharisaic and it becomes arrogant and self -righteous it becomes ridiculous to a point where uh you know i don't uh fellowship with that church because in their library they have books by r .c.

01:25:08

sproul and r .c. sproul has made very favorable comments to about thomas aquinas and they're you know that kind of a thing uh i mean that's where you're you're entering into the realm of insanity at some point aren't you that's correct and you know i like to refer to i don't want to brush them all with the same all fundamentalists with the same brush and so i like to refer to those who who are so um nth degree separatistic as as hyper fundamentalists because you have men in the hyper fundamentalist category who are trolling the internet at publishing houses to see whether they're using different versions of the scripture to see what maps they use in their bibles and i'm calling for separation on on on the minutia of christian living and to me that is it's a travesty it's an absolute travesty that i would call hyper fundamentalist and i wouldn't want to associate that with all fundamentalisms yeah i i have a i have a friend who is a fundamentalist baptist pastor who actually for years in my dialogue with him was saying some very refreshing and encouraging things about uh we have to get back to the roots of why the fundamentalist movement uh was required and we have to get away from uh legalism and um slandering our brethren by exaggerating their their flaws and things like that and right and he was going on and on but then he refused to attend a conference that i was attending because somebody that i know and love and respect in fact i believe he's one of the most powerful preachers in the world uh he said i'm not going there because that man is preaching there and he has preached in churches where they accept rap music so it's not even that the man that was preaching accepted rap music it's that he's preached in places that have accepted rap music and i told him wouldn't you preach in a jehovah's witness kingdom hall if you were invited i mean if you were given free reign to proclaim the gospel to those people wouldn't you go i mean so i think that's where you're getting it's just i think it's tragically sad and and self -righteous i can't help but use that term yes um you know i mentioned earlier that the fundamentalist movement in british columbia uh which was which spearheaded separation it was the first church in north america to to as an official separate entity to separate in 1927 and that model that they used was more spurgeonic it followed spurgeon uh in that it it did not um it did not throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak uh as as separation developed in america it became more separatistic and i think developed more along personality problems and just it just began to snowball but the initial separation which was mostly british men in british columbia and in canada in general it was more of a a moderate and i use that term in my book these men were known as moderate fundamentalists and and you know they they took their stand they obviously separated some of them some of them sacrificed for their stand in the gospel but there were there was an urban disposition about them and a moderate uh approach to the to the whole to the whole discussion that gained in respect and in fact the church the baptist church that split in 1927 grew greater in proportion than the fundamentalist churches in america and i think there's a there's a connection between that the the method that they used in separation uh and the growth that they they saw later on and by 1970 that baptist church that separated became about the fellowship of evangelical baptists was greater than the church that it that it left uh so it's a very interesting study how that more moderate approach you know you have men in in england like martin jones it was a moderate in fact jones came to america in marine mentions this in the biography of lloyd jones and lloyd jones chastised t .t.

01:29:58

shields for his belligerence um in dealing with issues uh so that moderate approach i believe should have been maintained unfortunately it didn't he also uh rebuke fairly sternly uh j .i

01:30:16

packer and john stott for their ecumenism there was a split in 1966 between when i believe it was john stott uh actually chastised lloyd jones publicly and disagreed with him publicly and there was a bit of a separation between packer and and uh and lloyd jones i can't remember the details of that but but lloyd jones changed and i mentioned this in the book lloyd jones at that stage wanted in the early years of his ministry wanted a unity only in the gospel but as he developed he discovered that this you needed narrower lines and so towards the end of his ministry he was more separatistic than he was at the beginning and he didn't want the broader influence to use ian murray's term he didn't seek the broader influence that he had sought of the earlier and he believed he believed in the in the principle of judges that the remnant would maintain the uh the orthodox face um so in england that was in england it's interesting that there was no fundamentalist movement developed in england um and that's an interesting study in itself did it take the belligerence and the fighting war psychology of the north americans to get something moving um my friend michael hagen made that point to me in a conversation one time and it struck me that there was no fundamentalist movement in england and there's no evangelical church in england to speak off it's splattered there's no unified evangelical witness in england there's splatterings of small churches across the country but there's no unified witness evangelical witness and it's an interesting study that it take the that it take the uh the shouting and the blustering of fundamentalists to to get the people wakened up yes michael haken is one of my favorite guests here on hawaiian trippin's iron radio he's a really a brilliant man and a very humble and precious brother in christ i'm going to read a question to you again and i'm going to go to a break because it's fairly lengthy and have you uh answer the question when we return from the break i'm also going to email it to you again so you have it right in front of you oh and by the way cj and lindenhurst long island you have won the final copy of confessions of a fundamentalist by aaron dunlop of compliments of tent maker publishing and also compliments of the cumberland valley bible book service cvbbs .com

01:33:03

so thank you very much for the question we have murray in kinross scotland who says to confirm what aaron dunlop has just said concerning ian paisley i heard the big man give a lecture on augustus top lady during which he declared i'm a five -point calvinist and all my five points are sharp he then proceeded proceeded to promote the gospel fully and unapologetically i was interested in the comments regarding the free presbyterian church and arminianism bob jones university and hyper calvinism do you think that ian paisley et al would have been conscious that arminian associations and a full and passionate preaching of the gospel would do no harm at all in a country like northern ireland with a large open brethren movement it would surely make the free presbyterian church a lot more welcoming place than some of the very narrow gospel halls in northern ireland with their rules and regulations and that was murray in kinross scotland and i will have you respond to murray when we return from the break uh aaron and uh and if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own before we run out of time and we are running out of time fairly rapidly our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:34:26

chris arnzen at gmail .com please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the usa and you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable hi i'm chris arnzen of iron sharpens iron radio are you a christian looking to align then you'll want to check out thriving financial they're not your typical financial services provider they're a not -for -profit fortune 500 organization that helps their nearly 2 .4

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that's batterydepot .com well we are back and we are going to conclude our conversation over the next 25 minutes or so with Aaron Dunlop a native of Northern Ireland graduate of Geneva Reform Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina and he is the author of a book we are discussing today

01:37:43

Confessions of a Fundamentalist and if you'd like to join us our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

01:37:49

chrisarnsen at gmail .com well before the break as you know Aaron we had a listener in Kinross, Scotland and that was

01:38:05

Murray in Kinross, Scotland and he says to confirm what

01:38:10

Aaron Dunlop has just said concerning Ian Paisley I heard the big man give a lecture on Augustus Toplady during which he declared

01:38:18

I'm a five -point Calvinist and all my five points are sharp he then proceeded to promote the gospel fully and unapologetically

01:38:27

I was interested in the comments regarding the Free Presbyterian Church and Arminianism slash

01:38:33

Bob Jones University and Hyper -Calvinism do you think that Paisley et al would have been conscious that Arminian associations in a full and passionate preaching of the gospel would do no harm at all in a country

01:38:48

Northern Ireland with a large open brethren movement it would surely make the Free Presbyterian Church a more welcoming place than some of the very narrow gospel holes in Northern Ireland with their rules and regulations can you comment on Murray and Kinross, Scotland's comments and questions well

01:39:07

I hope I understand this question the point that he made so the quote that he gives is surely very

01:39:14

Paisley -esque I'm a five -point Calvinist and all my five points are sharp he was unapologetically

01:39:21

Calvinistic and there was nobody could touch Dr. Paisley when he was on the gospel his understanding of the gospel was astounding even as a young man in college and I've done some research on him and spoken to men who knew him at college as a young man in college he distinguished himself in his knowledge of the scriptures and his ability to preach the scriptures and to preach the gospel and in the 40s just as a young 20 year old early 20s he was known across Northern Ireland as a gospel preacher and with regard to his association with Bob Jones and the

01:39:58

Arminian connection with Bob Jones he was also a very open -minded man and obviously

01:40:05

I grew up in the church but I didn't get to know him very much I wasn't involved in ministry in the pre -presbyterian church in Northern Ireland but towards the end of his life

01:40:15

I got to meet with him and speak to him quite a bit in my research and I met with him when

01:40:21

I was over there and spoke to him on the phone a number of times a very gracious man on a personal level he's known across the world as a thundering blustering politician but on a personal level he's a very gracious man and his brother by the way was a brethren preacher of some renowned in Canada just died a couple of years ago and so Ian Paisley was a very open -minded man with regard to the brethren movement and other churches

01:40:54

I hope that's answering your question I'm not sure I think as I said before his gospel preaching affected the brethren movement

01:41:07

I believe also in Northern Ireland affected the Irish Presbyterian Church and affected other evangelical churches and he had friends in all of those churches at midnight so I believe his preaching affected those churches

01:41:22

I can't speak to the brethren movement in Northern Ireland I have many friends in it but I have no knowledge of the workings of brethrenism in Northern Ireland well thank you go ahead

01:41:35

I'm sorry are you there brother yes sorry

01:41:40

I interrupted you go ahead I'm just saying I hope that answers Murray's question okay well thank you

01:41:47

Murray in Kinross Scotland and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and keep providing us with excellent questions for our guests keep spreading the word about the program in Scotland and beyond we have

01:42:00

Seth in Greensboro North Carolina who says most fundamental churches here in the south use the

01:42:06

King James Version translation even though some are not KJV only why do you suppose so many refuse to use modern translations such as the

01:42:17

NASB or ESV etc do you believe it's traditional reasons legalistic reasons or perhaps other reasons and I'm sure you wouldn't disagree with me

01:42:29

Aaron it could be all of those reasons that he gave yeah I think I think you probably find when you analyze that all of the above um fundamentalists as I said before were um interested in maintaining a particular

01:42:46

Christian culture and that's another fascinating study especially in the south and the

01:42:52

Bible Belt where we're set from an interesting book that you might want to read is

01:42:58

Russell Moore's book Onward Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel and in that book he says the

01:43:05

Bible Belt is teetering towards collapse and I say let it fall and later on and it's a very it's an extremely interesting idea that he's presenting here and I think it's a novel idea to many

01:43:21

Americans but he said if the Bible Belt falls the loss of the Bible Belt may be bad news for America but it can be good news for the church

01:43:30

I think fundamentalism has tried for too long to maintain a

01:43:36

Christian culture and they're losing the church the substance and depth of the church and that would be my contention with the movement uh obviously there are individuals in in movement who are of whom that would not be true but the movement

01:43:51

I think is trying to maintain a culture a Christian culture uh and they're losing the depth of of substance of the church and I you know

01:44:01

I think that you could link that in with its desire to use the the King James only many of them believe obviously that the

01:44:09

King James is the best translation the KJV only not only not maintain that the

01:44:15

King James is the best translation they reject all other translations that I have an issue yes in fact a a free

01:44:23

Presbyterian uh church pastor once said to me that although he exclusively uses the the

01:44:31

King James version he told me that he believed it was heresy to declare one of the other modern uh one of the modern respected translations as not being the word of God he actually said that that would be heresy which many

01:44:48

King James only advocates would very vociferously claim that's true

01:44:53

I agree with him on that uh so I think it comes down to personal personal choice and of course some of it is it seems uh uh it seems like really uh superstition not very far off from the uh right wing of the traditionalist

01:45:12

Catholics that insist on uh Latin in their masses uh you have these people from uh

01:45:21

New York and the south of the United States uh insisting upon Old English in their

01:45:28

Bible it makes really no sense obviously somebody I don't agree with the argument of TR only or textus receptus only but they would have more of an argument that was respectable than a

01:45:41

King James only uh especially when you consider there were no Baptists on the translation committee of the

01:45:48

King James Bible and they were Baptists actually being executed in England in 1611 so it makes no sense that Baptists would be

01:45:57

King James only to me at all right yeah I haven't heard the link between the

01:46:02

Latin bulgate and the King James only but um I think it is you know a lot of people have got hung up on this idea that the

01:46:12

King James is whether it is or not there's a discussion for another day uh but to deny another version

01:46:20

I think is uh it's not it's just wrong it's wrong amen look at this sorry go ahead man

01:46:28

I was just going to say that it seems that a lot of fundamentalists uh they only read what other fundamentalists say in opposition to things like uh reform theology and so on they don't really read the the reformers or the puritans themselves they are and I'm of course

01:46:47

I'm I don't mean the broad brush but I'm saying those that are very often the most vociferous in their hatred for the reformed faith and other things outside of their circles uh they they don't even read the the people that they are attacking uh and and very often slandering because because they're only reading those that people well and I think that's why the fundamentalist movement if the movement is still alive it's it's on palliative care but the reason why the movement has has been deteriorating in the past 40 years especially the past 10 years

01:47:27

I think there's a there's an increase and that is because um many young people now are on the internet they discover that John MacArthur has been preaching the gospel for 40 years when many of the fundamentalists were denying that and and they were listening to him and so the the fact that they have gotten it wrong on men like John MacArthur who have been preaching the gospel for so long there's this it has undermined the integrity of many fundamentalist preachers and if they've gotten wrong on this well what else have they gotten it wrong on and so a lot of a lot of young men are going to fundamentalist colleges already conversant with reformed theology because they're listening to really men who are writing a reformed for the most part you know

01:48:12

MacArthur, Sproul, Piper, all these men, Al Mohler, they're listening to these guys and they go into fundamentalist colleges already conversant with reformed theology and so I think the resurgence of fundamental of the resurgence rather of reformed theology and literature is is seeping in and growing

01:48:32

I think into the fundamentalist movement and for that I'm thankful. And in fact one of the things that I would

01:48:38

I'm sure you agree that the worst element of fundamentalism is far too often throwing the baby out with the bath water they like for instance some of those men that you listed who are very popular amongst reformed

01:48:54

Christians like Al Mohler and John Piper and some others I've had Dr. Mohler on this program

01:49:00

I have not yet had John Piper on the program but they say things at times that I disagree with and a typical knee -jerk reaction of a fundamentalist will be well

01:49:12

I don't want anything to do with him because he said that he won't listen to any of the other brilliant things that the man said or insightful biblical things that the man said and he will not only not read anything else by that person but he won't even associate with anybody who likes that person you know it's that kind of a thing that really becomes you know like I was saying before it borders on insanity that you cannot learn greatly from someone even if you disagree with them.

01:49:43

That's right and you know I think we have to learn to disagree respectfully and be able to like eating fish eat the meat and leave the bones you know you disagree with somebody well we have to identify whether it's a fundamental upon which we disagree or a secondary issue that I think is where we have to study to be more careful about.

01:50:10

Is fundamentalism chasing its own tail? I think so there has been you know and part of the whole this whole study

01:50:23

I've discovered when I've read fundamentalist writers they've been complaining for 40 years about the war psychology there's been in fact the world congress of christian fundamentalists was developed in 1956 with Paisley and Bob Jones specifically to counter the problem of schism and division among fundamentalists and so for 40 years and this shocked me and it discouraged me actually when

01:50:49

I discovered that for 40 years the fundamentalist movement had been dealing with the issues that I struggled with and that my generation and the next generation are now struggling with and it disappointed me that they've never been able to deal with the issues they've never been able to to address the issues correctly because I think they've had the ball and chain of a war psychology that they're not going to let go of and and it's going to drag that that psychology is going to drag it down and kill the movement and I think it

01:51:20

I think it has pretty much killed the movement. What do you mean by that?

01:51:27

Go ahead and continue. Sorry in that respect I believe it is chasing its own tail.

01:51:34

Who are the fundamentalist silent moderate majority in your opinion?

01:51:42

They're men in the movement friends of mine who who know the issues who agree with me that what

01:51:49

I'm writing about but for the sake of the movement they're unwilling to to stand and and speak publicly.

01:51:59

You know you know that that means something right there uh very there's something very significant about that because what

01:52:05

I have noticed in my associations and friendships with fundamentalists and I can tell you that I think that there is something similar perhaps even going on with reformed

01:52:17

Christians in certain circles is that there is a fear there's a fear amongst ministers not to be fundamentalist enough or reformed enough and they're oh and there's especially with the fundamentalists there is an up onemanship if you know what

01:52:35

I'm saying right where uh there is almost a contest on who can hate rock music more and who could be more old -fashioned than the other church and there's a fear of being accused of liberalism or moderate thinking uh by by other fundamentalists and I write that there's like there seems to be a men plagued with fear am i right well yeah it's the same on the other side you go to the reform movement and if this individual comes out of arminianism and it becomes reformed he has to swallow the whole pill so to speak uh he's what what r .c.

01:53:12

spool said caged calvinists yeah caged staged calvinists yeah that's right we have to for the first 10 years of the reform before later in the public but that in so that's true in the reformed movement which

01:53:29

I believe by the way is a movement and I believe many of the reform movement are going to be dealing with the same issues that we're dealing with now in the fundamentalist movement a movement like that that is not checked that is not moderated will always bring difficulty and and it's one and I we're going to see that in reformed church uh because it's becoming a movement it's becoming personality oriented yes that's a study for another day and what do you mean by fundamentalism and the new conservative evangelical evangelicalism identity well

01:54:07

I think we've you mentioned it before but perhaps you could articulate more on that yeah that's just this idea that fundamentalists are there's this um leading a fundamentalist and young people they're coming out into a broad evangelicalism they're finding that in broad evangelicalism there's an orthodoxy uh and there's a a love and a desire for the inerrancy of scripture for to stand for the truth in many respects a resurgent fundamentalism they're finding men who are defending the faith and so I think we're going to find that as fundamentalism dies and as evangelicalism becomes um more squeezed into a neat stand against her we're going to find a unit a unified church again

01:54:57

I hope in a new evangelical identity and I think that's what we're finding you know in the in the in the

01:55:04

North American church well if you could wrap up what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before they leave this broadcast today that idea actually of a unified church uh and and to to get away from trying to defend a culture as as opposed to defending the faith to love the lord in the church to respect the church to love the church in within the culture and to be a light in the culture rather than defending a culture and to bring it to the church love the church that's christ's body and from that body and from the local church we can shine the light of the gospel into hearts and minds around us in in our respective cultures whether you're in canada america northern ireland or china

01:55:55

I think much of the stuff that we're dealing with in fundamentalism and in this idea of protestant imperialism it cannot be translated into countries like china or african countries or wherever and if your christianity cannot translate to another country easily

01:56:12

I think we have to find problem with it and so just love the church and love christ

01:56:18

I don't want I don't want to be found simplistic by the way uh there's a lot of depth to what

01:56:24

I'm saying there when you when I'm saying love the church and love christ the head of the amen well we have time for one more uh question from a listener we have bb in cumberland county pennsylvania who says

01:56:36

I cannot understand the love that fundamentalists have for charles finney fundamentalists typically despise roman catholic religion with a passion and yet they embrace finney as a hero and he undoubtedly was more pelagian than even the most ardent roman catholic if you could respond to that oh yeah funny obviously popularized revivalism uh which which fundamentalism carried on uh so but they but they did not see it obviously they were armenian but they did not again

01:57:15

I think they lost touch with the theology and were more interested in the practice of evangelizing that that's what they would identify with some of what's funny uh the practice of of evangelizing yeah they obviously they obviously haven't really read finney uh even though they act as if he's a hero because finney clearly believed in a works righteousness salvation he was uh and many of them you know many of I think it was more belly green by the way who popularized any of them in north america um

01:57:52

I would not so much associate it with fundamentalists to be to be fair and it's that's ironic too because uh billy graham is uh an extreme an extremist in the ecumenical movement and so on right so it seems perhaps it was when billy graham was younger and known as a fire brand in fact he was known in his initial uh stages uh of a as a preacher as a fundamentalist right and he made a conscious decision to side with the uh the liberals and others because he knew that they would be larger crowds and and so on that's what i've heard uh when i read he went he went to bob jones university and for your listeners do a study on key evangelicals in north america who's who got their grounding their heritage and fundamentalism it's a fascinating we owe fundamentalism a great debt uh but i'm dealing with the issues that developed in the movement but you do a study your listeners on key men in the evangelical church in north america who were who got their heritage and fundamentals it's fascinating well uh don't forget that our guest's website is think gospel .com

01:59:10

think gospel .com if you live in the united states and want to purchase a copy of confessions of a fundamentalist go to solid -ground -books .com

01:59:20

solid -ground -books .com you can also go to cumberland valley bible book services website cvbbs .com

01:59:28

cv for cumberland valley bbs for biblebookservice .com if you live in the uk go to tentmaker .org