Your perspective helps solidify the principal being taught by Piper, which is also summerized at the end of your post. I agree whole heartedly with having the intent to know the truth about whatever the subject and struggling through all information available to find it. Even to the point where we may never no the whole truth. We must use to our advantage what truth and what principals we have to work with. Glory to God!

I agree with D.A. Carson’s observation. Mine has been similar in ministering in all kinds of churches. In fact, I notice some reformed folks are so militant that they have become the new fundamentalists as far legalism and narrowness goes. They are every bit as aggressive, in a more intellectual way, as the overbearing, anti-intellectual preachers that made fundamentalism a dirty word.

That’s why I think we have to be careful when putting labels on ourselves or others. To some being called a Fundamentalist, or Fundie, is an insult, while others see it as the importance of having a moral and ethical code in an immoral world. However, too many Evangelicals nowadays see that coming from a strictly legalistic point of view, opposed to progress. Knowing all kinds of folks in ministry, of different denominations and backgrounds, ike D.A. Carson I see a much wider diversity and tolerance than Fundamentalists are given credit for by their modern Evangelical peers.

I forgot Jerry Falwell died, I guess he is no longer either but he did drop the Fundamentalist title.

Jerry Falwell no longer goes by Fundamentalist. He is now an Evangelical.

My Dad (who is about the same age as Dr. Piper) and I have been fighting about the word “Fundamentalist” for years. The sad reality is that to most people younger than 40 the word means something completely different then to an older generation. As I have told my father many times this is not the result of a liberal conspiracy but the result of an entire generation of fundamentalist leadership (men like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) who rendered the word radioactive. On a separate but related point I recently came across an interesting definition of the word Fundamentalist in a scholar history of American Fundamentalism by the reformed scholar Joel A. Carpenter, in his book “Revive us again” he quoted another writer whose name I have forgotten who said “Fundamentalism is Orthodox Christianity gone cultic”. Like Dr. Carpenter I can’t completely endorse this definition but it is illuminating. How different the narrow clanish world of fundamentalist Christianity is compared to the warm generosity of classical orthodoxy.
God Bless
Steve in Toronto

This post doesn’t change anything except that you didn’t get Piper’s point before and now you do. You still think fundamentalists are closed-minded, anti-intellectual nasties.

God forbid someone call you a “fundamentalist.” Nevermind the fact that to much of the non-Christian world all conservative Christians (evangelical and fundamentalist alike) are “associated with imbalance and intolerance.”

Maybe you should read D. A. Carson’s comments on Fundamentalists vs. Reformed (found here):

…we often have a perspective on fundamentalism that is sociologically no longer quite valid–[that] fundamentalists are ignorant, bad-tempered, hate-filled; [that] they know more what they’re against than what they’re for; and so on and so on and so on and so on.

[...]

You know what I’ve discovered? This new generation is amongst the most gentle, thoughtful, quiet, personally loving group of students we’ve got on our campus. What can I say? On all kinds of issues they are trying to be discerning and wise, and even when I disagree with them on this or that or the other—and some of them don’t leave us at quite the same place as when they came in—nevertheless, in terms of personal demeanor and so on, we think of fundamentalists as being hate-filled, bomb-throwing types, [but] it just isn’t my experience.

You know some of the toughest customers we have to handle on our campus? Some brands of Reformed Baptists [laughter]. Because for some of them, you know, every issue is A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE. And then it’s very difficult to recognize that there are different degrees of importance within the Scripture itself. Otherwise why should the apostle Paul say, “As a matter of first importance”, and so on. And everything becomes an issue over which you divide.

So our stereotypes are changing. Sociologically, our stereotypes are changing.

And out of that framework to see [that] there is a new generation of young Christian thinkers [and] leaders who are coming out of the fundamentalist movement—many of whom are sliding towards a more Reformed theology and a more catholic theology in the best sense of “catholic”—and who are not giving up on the firmness with which they hold to allegiance to Scripture. My hat’s off to them, and if there are ways in which we can mutually benefit one another by thinking through what Scripture says on many, many issues then we ought to be trying to do that sort of thing.

By George, I think you’ve GOT IT, Michael!!
Amen to this post. We need not be afraid when we stand for God’s truth!

Michael, from day 1 this is what I love about your approach to theology: irenic and yet not afraid to go against the status quo.
Being Biblical is so much more important that fitting into a particular theological camp or for that matter being accepted by those who have there own set of spiritual rules.

Call me what you will, Liberal, Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Emergening, whatever. Let us just be as honestly Biblical and as Christ like as possible.

I’m with you here. I’m sure you picked this up yesterday, but there is nothing to get Fundamentalists talking quite like mentioning the relationship between them and conservative evangelicals. Especially us young guys. We could talk (and do talk) about that until the day we die

Amen,
We should always speak the Truth regardless of if it is going to make us look good, bad, liberal, conservative, or whatever. The Truth is greater then how we appear.