Are you a fundamentalist?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1991.

I am tempted to take advantage of your honest question and ask you to go further and tell me what you mean by fundamentalism. You will find, if you should read True to the Faith,¹ that I have a problem with this term.

'Fundamentalism' as a word goes back to the Latin fundamentum, which means 'foundation'. It is a biblical term and concept. In Ephesians 2:20, Paul remarks that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Paul is presumably talking here about the person of our Lord and of those doctrines which he and his apostles have taught us. I would insist that, as Christians, we must adhere to these fundamental doctrines of the faith that have been delivered to us by our Lord and his apostles; and I feel sure that many would not regard this attitude as being 'fundamentalist'.

Of course, you may feel that it is my interpretation of these doctrines that is fundamentalist, in the sense that I am too dogmatic and insistent upon my own interpretation. That, of course, is an ever-present tendency with us all. My response would be to say that I freely admit that my interpretations must always be subject to appeal to the authority of the New Testament itself; and where my interpretations are untrue to the New Testament, then my interpretations are false.

But in this context, the belief of the Roman Catholic Church is that my attitude here is false; there is an official magisterium in the Roman Catholic Church that lays down the interpretations that all true believers must accept. It was by the authority of this magisterium that Professor Hans Küng was prohibited in 1979 from teaching as a Roman Catholic theologian;² and by similar authority the Vatican moved to restrict the left wing Liberation Theology movement in South America. As I understand it, a devout Roman Catholic would not describe this authoritative dogmatism on interpretation as being fundamentalist. They would, in fact, approve of it. What then is fundamentalism? It is a genuine mystery to me what people mean by the term nowadays.

To take another area, I hold my views firmly, as you know; though subject as always to correction by closer understanding of God's word. Therefore, when reading Peter's statement, 'there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved', I take this at its face value. Because of this my liberal friends in the World Council of Churches dub me, and those like me, fundamentalist, and argue that such an attitude promotes racial tension and strife.

Now, I believe that our Lord forbids us either to propagate or to defend the Christian faith by force of arms or by political discrimination of any kind—and I regret the many and sad examples that have occurred throughout the centuries, of Christians forgetting our Lord's prohibition and using the power of the state or of their armies to try and impose the Christian faith on others and to eliminate heretics. Those to me seem real examples of what is called fundamentalism.

But here arises a very interesting thing. In recent years, when political activists in Africa and South America have urged that, in the name of Christ, they had a duty to take to arms and guerrilla warfare in order to 'liberate' the poor, and have actually killed fellow Christians in the process, the World Council of Churches has not denounced them as fundamentalists who are prepared to shoot people who do not agree with their views. Far from it, they have supported their guerrilla activities by large grants of money from the coffers of the World Council of Churches. That being so, I ask myself again, what do they mean when they accuse me of fundamentalism, and yet approve of these guerrilla methods in the name of Christianity?

As you see, I am genuinely mystified by what people mean by fundamentalism, and will be grateful for an elucidation of the term. Fundamentalism is obviously seen to be something bad—and, of course, I do not want to be something bad.

Ever truly yours,

¹ See David Gooding, True to the Faith, Section Five: Christianity and the Pagan World, pp. 343–343.

² Küng’s writings questioned traditional church doctrines such as papal infallibility, the divinity of Christ, and teachings about the Virgin Mary. In 1979 a Vatican censure banned him from teaching as a Catholic theologian.