Hardening of the Categories: Why Theologians Have Opposed “New Knowledge”
27 Morris cited by Marsden 163
30 See Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, (123-145) for an excellent description of the intellectual character of Evangelicalism..
31 David N. Livingston, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 170. Much of the following discussion is drawn from Livingston.
33 Bolton Davidheiser, Evolution and the Christian Faith (Nutley N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969), 38-39.
34 Morris, History of Modern Creationism (San Diego: Master Book publishers, 1984), 39.
36 As the intellectual ethos of society has moved into the postmodern era, the Enlightenment has become an intellectual whipping boy, in much the same manner as the medieval era was for the Renaissance. Yet, for all the faults and hubris of the Enlightenment agenda, it’s program also advanced human knowledge of the world in a manner heretofore unimagined. The Enlightenment agenda set the stage for the Modern world, and even the advent of Postmodernism has not nullified its legitimate insights.
37 Nancey Murphy (Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism) has observed that there was a split in the Enlightenment tradition following David Hume. The major portion of intellectual development followed Immanuel Kant’s phenomenology, while a significant but smaller stream followed Thomas Reid’s Common Sense. So from an epistemological perspective conservative theology also fell under the influence of enlightenment ways of thought.
38 Charles A. Whittuck, “Obscurantism, ”Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol.9, 442-443. Cited by Ramm After Fundamentalism, 19.
39 The emphasis on modern learning does not imply that the conclusions are right, but the focus is upon a methodology by which knowledge is obtained. Basically this involves the scientific method and critical inquiry that looks for evidence rather relying on tradition and credulity.
40 Ramm, After Fundamentalism, 19.
41 These terms are in quotation here because the situation was actually much more complex than the fundamentalist theologians and preachers perceived. There was in fact a large contingent of theologians who accepted the critical methodology flowing out of the enlightenment but remained essentially conservative and orthodox in the broader historical sense in their theological outlook. The Fundamentalists saw this group as simply liberal since they rejected (on supposed evidence) the traditional definition of biblical authority arising out of Protestant scholasticism.
42 Mark Noll had chronicled the evangelical abandonment of serious intellectual work in his Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). Here Noll laments the fact that evangelicalism excused itself from the world of intellectual pursuits and abandoned that world to the liberal and secular communities. The fundamentalist and evangelical communities adopted wholesale an anti-intellectual mindset that still characterizes it as a movement. (see particularly 122-145).
43 Charles Augustus Briggs, Whither? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889) 7
44 Charles Augustus Briggs, Whither? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1889) 7.
47 See, M. James Sawyer, Charles Augustus Briggs and Tensions in Late Nineteenth Century American Theology (New York: Mellen University Research Press, 1994)
48 See Alister McGrath, Studies in Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 467-472.