Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Andy Naselli

A Shrewd Observation by Sherlock Holmes

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holmesJenni and I are enjoying listening to The Complete Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes dramatized by BBC (64 CDs, 48 hours, and featuring a full cast), and we found the following statement particularly striking when we heard it last night:

It’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all.

-Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an agnostic

How to “sustain meaningful discourse without resorting to name-calling or cowardly equivocation”

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Kevin DeYoung‘s “Defining Discourse Down” in First Things is superb. I benefitted from it even more after re-reading it this evening.

This part hurts the most:

We are all proud. Because I’m proud I get hurt when people disagree with me strongly. Because I’m proud I feel the need to give thirteen qualifications before I make an argument, not usually because I’m a swell guy but because I love for people to love me and loathe for them to dislike or misunderstand me. Because I’m proud I hedge my criticisms so that I won’t have to publicly repent and recant when I go too far and get something wrong. Because we’re proud, protectors of self more than lovers of truth, we often don’t discuss things with candor or with verve.

Read the whole thing—esp. the last four paragraphs.

The “Fundamentalist” Label: An Interview with John Woodbridge

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John D. Woodbridge is research professor of church history and the history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he has taught since 1970. One of his areas of expertise is the history of fundamentalism and evangelicalism. (I benefited from taking a seminar with him on that subject in fall 2007.) His father, Charles Woodbridge, taught at Fuller Seminary (cf. George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism) and later wrote The New Evangelicalism (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1969). So John Woodbridge has had a front-row seat on this issue since childhood.

Trinity Magazine recently published this useful interview:

John D. Woodbridge. “The ‘Fundamentalist’ Label: An Interview with John Woodbridge.” Trinity Magazine (Spring 2009): 7–9, 23.

The subtitle of this evenhanded interview captures its theme: “We regularly hear people from different religious backgrounds referred to as ‘fundamentalist.’ Is this labeling appropriate?” Woodbridge responds to nine questions and statements:

  1. What do you think the word “fundamentalist” means to people today?
  2. Where did this concept of “world fundamentalisms” come from?
  3. Were there any other significant contributing factors?
  4. Is it legitimate to use the word “fundamentalist” for Muslims?
  5. How does this usage misunderstand actual American fundamentalism as well?
  6. I think what happens in the media is that they end up thinking about the kind of people who bomb abortion clinics, then assume that that’s really where this type of Christianity leads.
  7. What can happen because of this popular misusage of “fundamentalism”?
  8. Has anyone challenged the assumptions of Fundamentalisms Comprehended?
  9. There is a challenge in all this for us as evangelical Christians as well.

Read the whole thing.

For a more thorough handling of this issue, see the following:

Timothy George and John D. Woodbridge. “What’s in a Name: Are We All Fundamentalists?” Pages 123–50, 182–83 in The Mark of Jesus: Loving in a Way the World Can See. Chicago: Moody, 2005. 192 pp. This important chapter traces a significant etymological trajectory of the label “fundamentalist” and usefully overviews fundamentalism’s history.