History of American Protestant Fundame

[kayre]

I read the first essay of The Fundamentals before I began sharing notes here, so a brief review: it's a bit startling that the very first of these important essays is on The Virgin Birth of Christ, given that fundamentalists tend to be very wary of Mary (couldn't resist)... as it turns out, while the virgin birth is important in this scheme, the virgin herself isn't, and is hardly mentioned. The importance is strictly that Jesus was conceived in a miraculous way that shows how unique and special he is, and in fulfillment of Scripture as they understood it.
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cellio asked when Bible study groups became a thing, and I look forward to following up on this. The broad answer is 'contemporaneously with Luther', thanks to Luther's emphasis on the authority of Scripture, and wide availability of Bibles thanks to translations and the printing press. But I will be looking for clues of how lay study of the Bible grew, and varied among different groups.
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The 2nd essay is On the Deity of Christ. It argues that Christ's deity is proven equally by Scripture and by "the general fact of the whole manifestation of Jesus Christ, and of the whole impression left by Him upon the world." Basically the latter seems to boil down to "I just know it in my heart". The Scriptural arguments all tend to be self-referential; one verse 'proving' the truth of another, etc.

This one was written by one Benjamin B. Warfield. In reading about him, I'm surprised to find references to fundamentalism being a middle ground between intellectualism and revivalism; I tend to associate it with the latter pretty strongly. Another question to watch as I study.

Comments

[gingicat]

Continuing to read, I just don’t have the knowledge to comment properly.

[amaebi]

I can perceive the element of intellectualism, though-- you narrate the incessant grinding of inference and cross-checking and internal-proofing around the chosen axioms. It sounds as if it gets all spider-webbed and tripping-over-itself and contains some logical fallacies, but it's thinking and intellectual discourse. And I'd bet that, as usual, some people are doing perfectly good inference based on axioms I would reject....

[cellio]

So, "fundamentalism" in the sense of "emphasis on fundamental principles" rather than on *evangelizing* those principles?