Why are Bible-fundamentalists encouraged to study the Bible, but not its origins or church history?

Question

I would think knowing about how the Christian church began, how the Bible was compiled, who compiled the Bible and early Christian beliefs would behoove anyone who claims to be Christian. But apparently, this only seems to be important to Catholics. I guess that's why they are Catholic, rather than some other form of Christianity which began anytime from the 16th century to the present time.

Lady Phoenix ... That's exactly my point. You "can" study whatever you like...so why not do it? I suppose hearing revisionist history from a pastor is much simpler than reading.

By the way, the only ones who are "so desperately needing" to justify their existence are the Bible-fundamentalists... who say everyone that believes differently than they do are going to hell.

Answer 1

To understand the problem you need to understand Luther's problem. Luther would have sorrowed at what he created. In fact, toward the end of his life he did. Fundamentalists are Protestant zealots. It is always useful to look at any zealot or group of zealots because they believe the party line in its truest and most literal sense. This is true whether we are talking John Paul II, St. Francis of Assisi, Meno Simmons, or Fundamentalists as a group.

Luther had the problem that his teachings contradicted first and second century teachings. He knew this. It is important to remember that Luther rejected James, Jude and Revelations. He rejected some of what is now considered scripture and all of the writings of the people trained by the apostles and who were ordained by them. Polycarp was one of the redactors of John's Gospel. So to drop Polycarp's writings leaves John's writings open to any discussion you want. The same is true for Ignatius or indirectly for Irenaeaus.

Luther ran down the logic train that the church must have gone wrong somewhere and in that logic train, he rejected papal authority. In doing so, he recognized that he had rejected the only authorizing party for the bible, so he wrote his own. His is often, correctly, accused of altering the bible. This sounds terrible now, but was not historically uncommon, even in Luther's day. It wouldn't necessarily have even been considered wrong at the time. Certainly Luther had no problem with it.

Out of this mess, which is now called the middle ages, came Luther's five solas, of which one is sola scriptura.

Sola scriptura is a weak principle. It is weak because it implies that God only grants salvation to those who could read. Others, of course would be eligible, but would be helpless to get to God without a reader. It also requires that you have a known true set of scriptures. We know, factually, that there are 400,000 variant New Testament passages. We know that the writings of the apostolic fathers, when they quote scripture, and they were the original readers, do not match what we use as scripture.

Fundamentalists as Protestant zealots live the five solas, not just the scripture. In doing so, they are inadvertently adopting a religious tradition. They reject "apostolic" tradition in favor of Protestant tradition.

Since the scripture alone is all that is needed, any other book is not really necessary unless it serves a practical purpose. You can therefore then ignore any compilation process, church history process and any other early beliefs clearly held in the first century but not clearly spoken of in scripture.

They just do not see the point of reading it, I think. There is a great book by Scott Hahn, who was an evangelical theologian and scripture scholar. He accidently picked up a powerful and tremendous work on scripture. It was saying all the things he was saying by reading the bible and the Jewish commentary on covenant theology. He got to the end, looked at the author to get more books and realized it was a Catholic priest.

They do not read Catholic stuff because they see no point. This lead him down a journey of discovery. He read another book by a Catholic priest and he had the terrifying insight that Catholics may be more scriptural than Protestants. His wife, also a theologian, was very distressed so they called another Protestant theologian to come help. The two of them consumed Catholic books, from the Fathers forward. The goal of calling the friend was to get himself back on the true way.

As they read, they both entered into a deep religious crisis. So they called a leading theologian from Harvard. The theologian's response on certain key Protestant beliefs was that they are not defendable from the bible, they are simply beliefs that are held by Protestants. They cannot be defended, just accepted.

Ultimately, the friend he invited to return him to the way, was received into the Catholic Church and chided him for taking so long in doing what he needed to do. Scott eventually became Catholic and in the end, so did his wife.

As long as people talk past each other, they do not really talk.

Answer 2

How about studying the original languages of the Bible? I have taken on that endeavor a few years ago. It is fascinating what you can learn from learning the original Hebrew and Greek. I say you are doing all the right things. Don't stop what you are doing. May I suggest reading a book on the History of Christianity? Learn just how the Christian faith that you know know was handed down through the last 1900 years. I would love to spend time in Bible study with you.

Answer 3

There's a telling indication in the book liner for the book "Peter and the Keys." A number of Protestant historians note on the liner that the historical case for a Petrine ecclesiology is in fact quite strong. The scriptural support is incredibly strong, and the writings of early Christians are very nearly a lock.

That alone is why evangelical pastors do not encourage their flock to study about the history of the church and the bible (to the extent that they themselves are even aware of it): if people knew how strong the case for the Catholic view of history really was, some of their own fundamental tenets would come into question.

Answer 4

Before the word "Fundamentalist" entered the public eye in a negative context, it simply meant getting back to the origins of christianity, coming from the word "fundamental" which in essence means "original teachings".

It is also connected to the main question as to why "Christian Fundamentalists", do not study their "later christian history" more than in the most superficial way.

"Fundamentalist" christians tend to stick to the history based on the contextual evidence of the books of the bible, thus they will ignore later "Church Fathers" especially those that came after the Nicene Council in 325 A.D.

Ante-Nicene Fathers, or the "Apostolic church fathers" who came before the Nicene Council are usually the basis of what protestant teachings are based on as opposed to those teachings that came after this council.

The writngs of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, Hermas, Epistle to Diognetus, Papias, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus who lived in the 1st century are only 2nd in importance to the Apostolic Writings by the disciples themselves.

Since it is from this time onward that "paganism" and "church tradition" started being equated with equivalent wheight to that of the scriptures themselves, most writings historical and otherwise (theological) were influenced by this continued encroachment (especially after the council of Nicaea), until eventually what the church many times said, had nothing to do, and many times directly contradicted scripture itself.

It is due to this situation that Luther and later, Calvin, would break with the Catholic church,but it does not mean to say that they stopped being catholics. They merely initiated the process, because the process of returning to the "fundamentals" of christianity is not complete, even today.

Jor-el

Answer 5

Excellent question. And why don't they insist on following and requiring their followers to read the original Greek and Hebrew?

But lets take step back and ask what do they mean by fundamental? While I've studied the Greek and Hebrew texts and some of the Latin translations and even looked briefly at the abominable translation job done in the early 1600s my knowledge of the more contemporary religious creations becomes cloudy.

Do they mean 'fundamental' as in the 'origins' or as in 'the important basics'.

Very different things. Being a student of its history my first assumption was 'origin' however they might not mean that.

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Quella Bella- But what do you mean by 'bible'? If you have read even a single page in the original language I commend you if not then aren't you a hypocrite?

Answer 6

Once I got into studying the history of the Bible and the Church, I left fundamentalism. That may be the answer right there.

Answer 7

because knowing the true history of the Church would expose them to the light and they don't want it.

by the way, what an excellent question! God bless you!

edit: happy to see you!

Answer 8

We DO study the Bible's origins, dear one. But give us a bit of a break here. There aren't many of us on the board who are Theologians or who have a degree in Biblical history, etc. We're just ordinary Christians who love the Lord and His Word.

I've studied the Bible for over 50 years and the more I learn, the more I realize that I still have MUCH to learn.

Unless you are wise beyond the majority of educated Christians, please stop trying to bash us. It only makes you appear ugly.

God bless!

Answer 9

Because our Lord only directed us to study the scripture and if he wanted us to study the historical evidence behind it he would have directed us to do that also.
John 5: 39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

Answer 10

Fundies aren't actually encouraged to read the ENTIRE Bible. They just pick out the parts they can feel warm and fuzzy about, and ignore the many violent, immoral, and sick parts.