BRAVO

i agree with kashmir. i think your answer is quite good. i wish 9marks had chosen you as the blogger to include in their roundtable.

i noticed you didn't mention anything about separation. i wonder why that didn't rank as high in your list as it did in minnick's.

did you understand "we" differently? do you think that it's not a lesson broad evangelicalism can learn from fundamentalists? or do you just think it is a less important lesson than the ones you chose?

In my mind, you can learn about separation from a lot of groups throughout history. Fundamentalists didn't invent it, nor did they perfect it. But who else demonstrates these five lessons so well?

Separation is implicit any time one is serious about something eternally consequential. Even Mark Driscoll practices some rudimentary separation. When Fundamentalists have to keep thundering about separation it suggests a short supply of topics that they think are worth thundering about.

billy bob:

I didn’t mention separation because I don’t believe Fundamentalism teaches us anything useful about separation.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Separation had been well demonstrated throughout church history, often to very good effect. I don’t think fundamentalists succeeded at modeling separatism; I think more often than not separation was a pretext rather than a commitment, and it was often misguided.

Fundamentalism caricatured separation. Imagine an Amish boy of 18 visiting a fundamentalist college campus. What instances of separation would impress him? Its embrace of the theater? its stress on sport and entertainment in personal life? its obsession with sex? its commitment to modesty? simplicity of life? its contempt for personal vanity and the pride of life? its study of cosmetology?

And you don’t even have to imagine Amish. Imagine Puritan, imagine Victorian….

Fundamentalism majored on minors. It reacted to a very narrow set of cultural provocations. One mentions fundamentalism in a forum like 9Marks and you get predictable responses. Regrettably people conclude that fundamentalism took separatism too far, and this is the lesson we should take from them.

Quite the opposite, it made separatism an idiosyncratic, parochial thing. You can’t take separatism too far any more than you can take humility too far; all you can do is twist it into something ridiculous and affected. When neo-evangelicals look at fundamentalism, what do they see? Anti-rock, anti-sideburns, anti-Hollywood [not the historic anti-theater], anti-cooperation with someone who sang in the community Messiah, anti-Graham and pro-Norris….

Now they are performing The Importance of Being Earnest.

Sorry, I don’t see fundamentalists as teachers of separatism in the salutary sense.

"conscience is central to obedience."

Dissidens, what would you say is the relationship between conscience and the moral imagination?

I would say that the moral imagination is indispensable to the conscience. Without a moral imagination a conscience is nothing more than an uninformed, amoral set of external constraints. (A Sunni Muslim child in the 21st Century has a rather disturbing set of dos and don’ts which serve as his conscience.)

One might argue that a young child’s conscience doesn’t benefit from a moral imagination, and in some sense is a merely rudimentary conscience; some sort of moral consensus of his family and tribe. But since the virtues of family and tribe properly inform all consciences, I wouldn’t want to deny that—for children and idiots—it is a socially functioning conscience.

The moral imagination is what informs, matures and actuates the conscience. It aligns a man with the external world and the metaphysical dream.

So we hope the Muslim child can exercise his moral imagination to consider what justice and mercy require of him.

I see. Thus, when moral imagination is neglected, conscience is neglected - and thus obedience is enforced by diktat.

That is what I believe. And no diktat has the force of conscience or the nuance necessary for a righteous life.

E.g., I should not get off the hook just because I refuse to listen to rock-n-roll, I should question everything for truth, goodness and beauty. And I’m a good example: I think rock-n-roll is boring. I’m an easy saint and I don’t have to search my heart with a candle like the rest of you reprobates.

Doesn’t sound like sanctification to me.

While I generally like the BJU creed (short and concise, easy to remember, nice cadence when reciting it, etc.), it has always amused me (somewhat) that there is not a single reference in the BJU Creed to "separation" which (it seems, at least arguably) later become almost the sine qua non for BJU's existence. Why? Apparently, separation was not "the" issue that drove fundamentalism in its earlier years (when the BJU creed was written back in the 1920s). The "importance" of "separation" was added later. Think about that for a minute. In the infancy of fundamentalism, the doctrine of "separation" wasn't important enough to even be listed in the core document (the "Creed") that was (we are now told) supposed to summarize the "fundamental doctrines".

And, ironically (to me), the founding documents of BJU (I'm told) provide that the university's creed can never be modified so they're stuck with it - even though it doesn't mention or refer to the "doctrine" of separation.

Walter,

BJU has often made clear that the founding documents contain something of a poison pill for the institution if it ever turns away from the creed. I would take that to mean that they took separation very seriously from the very beginning--enough to build into the system a mechanism by which it could be put out of existence.

Uncultured One,

I agree with your first sentence. But, to me, the opinion in your second sentence doesn't follow from the first. But we may be quibbling because I was imprecise in what I meant by "separation". More particularly, what kind of separation - doctrinal or something else?

Admittedly, BJU took (and takes) fundamental doctrines quite seriously. Seriously enough to close the system if/when there's deviation from the fundamental doctrines set forth in the creed.

Separation is not, however, one of those doctrines (at least it's not mentioned in the creed). Perhaps, you view "separation" as separating from those who don't subscribe to the vital (fundamental) doctrines set forth in the creed. In that sense, I suppose your point (doctrinal separation) makes sense.

But what BJU (to me at least) became known for in more recent years was separation from other evangelical Christians who believed in EVERY clause of the creed, but who had different music, hairstyles, views on drinking, end times, etc. That is the sort of separation to which I referred. And, in that sense, separation (perhaps lifestyle or conduct separation) was not (it seems to me) an important part of the BJU philosophy at its founding. That's the only point I was trying to make.

I thought that Weaver's metaphysical dream and the moral imagination were almost, if not actually, the same thing. What are the distinctions between them?

Hmmm. I didn’t mean to confuse things for you.

I said “the moral imagination is what informs, matures and actuates the conscience. It aligns a man with the external world and the metaphysical dream.”

In the same way the eye enables a man to observe a lighted object, the moral imagination is the capacity by which a conscience apprehends and understands the dream. It allows a man to align himself to a moral environment outside himself.

Thanks, that clarifies things. Effectively then, whatever informs or shapes the moral imagination is of primary importance, because it affects the seat of moral judgement, which is the basis of our every act.

Yes. That is what I believe.

What misinforms us misshapes us.