Cult-Like Tendency in Modern Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism, part one

One common feature of cults, a major one, is a belief in a total apostasy.  They justify their existence with the fiction that they represent the original, divine teaching, when the truth is that they've invented new doctrine not found in Scripture.  If it's new, it really isn't true.  Paul said that some would depart from the faith, not all (1 Timothy 4:1).  Neither would the gates of hell prevail against Christ's church (Matthew 16:18).  Here's what occurs.  In this age in which we live, saved people are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  He is the Spirit of Truth.  A particular teaching inspired by the Holy Spirit is not going to disappear.  The Holy Spirit leads and teaches and guides.  He isn't going to allow for the elimination of one of His truths.  God's doctrine is not going to change.  It was faith once and for all delivered (Jude 1:2-4).

With everything in the first paragraph being true, churches, believers, should not expect new doctrines.  If there were a doctrine that seemed new with what may seem to be no historical attestation, one would expect the only possible way that the obvious historical position to be overturned would come from overwhelming exegetical evidence.  However, the latter is, if not unlikely, probably impossible.  What I'm talking about here should be the hard fast understanding of Christians.  When new doctrine might be invented, come on the scene suddenly without any trace of previous existence, it ought to be doubted.  Everyone should be suspect of its veracity.  The reception of the new doctrine ought to be considered to be cult-like.

Before I start in on what you've been really waiting for, please make sure you read the first two paragraphs, because they buttress the rest of the post.  Second, I understand that cult-like is inflammatory.  I know that.  It is, however, the kind of terminology that the ones with the new teaching use to describe those with the historic teaching.  And they'll say it with no evidence, no basis or proof.  This is cult-like.  New doctrine that originates in the 19th and 20th centuries is cult-like.  I also call it a tendency, which softens it a little.  Maybe it shouldn't be softened at all, because it is serious, but I want it to go down a little easier, and like Mary Poppins said, "Just a teaspoon of sugar...."  That's my disclaimer.  Now for the application part.

This list will be eclectic, so don't assume that I'm ranking in some order of importance.  Some of it is interpretation and other is application.

Was there a total apostasy on bibliology?   Every presentation of a doctrine of preservation of Scripture in written materials since the invention of the printing press reads as "we have all the words of Scripture available to us in the language in which they are written." That was defended exegetically and doctrinally.  The defenders knew the existence of textual variants.  Still they believed in a perfect, error-free verbally preserved Bible in their own hands.  They didn't mistake preservation for inspiration, but they did believe that what was inspired, the original text Old and New Testaments, was preserved.  That would mean that those words were still inspired, since they were preserved.

Enter textual criticism.  Doctrine changes.  Were they basing this on new evidence of historical doctrine?  Does this trace itself back to a total apostasy of orthodox bibliology?  Can a so-called science, a kind of forensics, overturn what Christians believed and taught?  This is a cult-like tendency.  The sort-of mainstream Christian media is ignoring this bit of truth for the same type of reasons that the mainstream public media ignores selective important news.

The change and then denial of the historic doctrine has a domino affect.  We've got new words that were not a part of historic bibliology to stake out and protect the new view on the preservation of Scripture.  One of these is inerrancy.  If you use google books and do a search between 1600 and 1850, you won't find men using the word inerrancy as a technical, biblical term.  I found it used 2 times in relations to the Bible, none before 1800.  It's a technical term today that has dumbed down what we should expect for God's Word.  It doesn't mean that we have the same words.  However, the same perfection as having the same words is how a man used the term in 1836.  And then after 1850, you find the word used 2,330 times, just an explosion of usage, and  almost all of those after 1890.   The doctrine of inerrancy, ironically, was a doctrine of errancy.  The doubters had to form a new definition of a perfect Bible with errors and that doctrine would be inerrancy.  It isn't a historic doctrine.  It's an invented one to give the impression that these theologians believe in a perfect Bible.  When they say perfect, they aren't saying the same words as the originals.  They are saying perfect, as in, there are no errors in the teachings, and even if there are, those are corrected in some other context.  All of this, as I read it, was to give people some stable idea to hold onto, since Christians no longer believed that they held all God's inspired Words in their hands, in order to keep people from apostatizing.  This is what evangelical and even fundamentalist seminary professors are drilling into their students, so that they don't produce any more Bart Ehrmans.

More Later