CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM
To properly investigate the nature of Christian fundamentalism, one must begin with an investigation of Gnosticism, because, as I will briefly show, Christian fundamentalism is actually a special case of Gnosticism with a few added features thrown in for political effect. Basically, Gnosticism is the belief that the world, and man, was created by a lesser, capricious god, variously called the "demiurge," and is utterly corrupt and irredeemable. However, a few human beings have a divine spark of the highest god. This spark is trapped in utterly corrupt human flesh, and can only be reunited, at death, with the highest god, through the acquisition of special knowledge handed down from teacher to disciple. For the Gnostic pseudo-Christian, Jesus was a Gnostic teacher. Moreover, Gnostics of the early Christian era argued that since human flesh is corrupt, Jesus, who was not corrupt, was actually an apparition with no human nature, and was, therefore, beyond human suffering.
To counter the heresies of the Gnostics, which denied, among other truths, the scripture that reads, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good", the early Church leaders formulated the Apostles Creed:
I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born from the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended to hell, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended to the heavens, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty, thence will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh, and eternal life.
New heresies followed. First was "Adoptionism" which held that Jesus was a mere man, adopted by God at His baptism, at which time He received divine power. Then there was "Donatism" which argued that the Church should consist only of the pure and resolute—the "Elect," and that the rites can only be validly administered by the elect, in whom the Holy Spirit is uniquely present. However, the most famous heresy was that of Arius of Alexandria, who preached that God, who is immutable, created Jesus, who is mutable. Jesus, though mutable, never possessed a corrupt, human nature, and therefore, is an intermediate deity between man and God.
Each of these heresies can readily be exposed as variations of Gnosticism. All such heresies have one thing in common: they attempt, in one way or another, to separate man from God. To do so is to deny a central tenet of Christianity: that all men are created in the image of God.
For the true Christian, Christ was both Man and God simultaneously. Christ was living proof that there is no unbridgeable "gap" between man and God. Thus, the Church, under the leadership of Athanasius, formulated an expanded creed at Nicaea, in 325.
I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things come into existence, who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures and ascended to the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge living and dead, of whose kingdom there will be no end; and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified, who spoke through the prophets; in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins, and look forward to the resurrection of the dead.
At this point, the heretics were far from giving up the fight. Rather, they became subtler in attacking the union of man and God in Christ. Nestor, the Patriarch of Constantinople, for example, argued that calling Mary "Theotokus" (God-Bearer), as Christians were wont to do, compromised the full humanity of Christ. Nestor held that Christ had two distinct natures, one human, and one divine, and he minimized the full and true nature of Christ’s divinity. The "Monophysites," on the other hand, minimized the true nature of Christ’s manhood, and emphasized His divinity. Saint Cyril led the fight against these heresies at the Council of Calcedon (451), which concluded that
Jesus Christ was and is the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood…begotten from the father before the ages as regards his Godhead… and from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokus, as regards his manhood… made known in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by union.
Following the Council of Calcedon, Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, was excommunicated as a Monophysite. He proceeded to form the Coptic Church. Nestor, meanwhile, was exiled.
At this point, the politics of the Byzantine Empire became a key factor in Church affairs. The Byzantines, desiring to hold together their Empire, which was divided by the Coptic heresy of Alexandria, tried a compromise: Monothelitism, which held that Jesus has two natures, but one will. Ultimately, this led to the 680 Council of Constantinople, which concluded that Jesus has two natures, and two wills.
In any case, by this time, yet another division in the Christian World began to emerge between Byzantium and Rome. Under the influence of Augustinian theology, the Roman Catholics had made an addition to the Nicene Creed, which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, "and from the Son." The implications of the addition, known as the Filioque, are simple: If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then the Father and the Son are equal. If the Son is equal to the Father, then, by virtue of His human nature, man is united with God, in the Son. Hence, there is an unbroken relationship between God and man. Man, therefore, wholly participates in the divine essence. Under the influence of the heretics, the Byzantines rejected the Filioque, and ultimately split from the Catholic Church in 1054.
The next major split in the Church was the Protestant Reformation. The most unfortunate feature of the Reformation was its reintroduction of the notion of the Elect. It is hard to argue that this notion is little more than a revival of Donatism, which itself falls dangerously close to the original Gnostic heresy—that only a few human beings have a divine spark. It is in this heresy that modern Christian fundamentalism flourishes.
Modern Christian fundamentalism traces is roots to the preaching of John Nelson Darby, a 19th Century British preacher. Britain in the 19th Century was in the process of rapidly expanding its Empire, principally through the projection of naval power into the East. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire was collapsing, and leaving key territory vulnerable to foreign control. One such territory was the strategically located Palestine. Whoever controlled Palestine controlled the land-route from Africa to Eurasia, as well as the shortest potential sea-route from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, and beyond. It is no wonder that the French, the Russians, and most especially, the British coveted Palestine.
ZIONISM
In 1840, Antony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftsbury, published a work entitled State Prospects for the Jew, which was, in fact, the founding document of modern Zionism. In the pompous tone of a British nobleman, Shaftsbury wrote that the Jews, "though admittedly a stiff-necked, dark-hearted people," should be encouraged to emigrate to Palestine, because Palestine was "a country without a nation, and the Jews were "a nation without a country." The same year, John Nelson Darby published a work entitled The Hopes of the Church of God in Connexion with the Destiny of the Jews and the Nations as Revealed in Prophesy. Darby argued that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was part of a divine plan. The issue comes clearly into focus when one considers an 1845 British Colonial Office report which bluntly stated that, "the establishment of the Jewish nation in Palestine, as a protected state under the guardianship of Great Britain would place us in a commanding position in the Levant from whence to check the process of encroachment, to overawe our enemies, and, if necessary, repel their advances." Quite simply, the British created modern Zionism in order to control Palestine.
The competition was stiff, especially from the Russians, who commanded a large naval fleet based in the Black Sea, and had significant influence in the remains of the Ottoman Empire. In order to control Palestine, the British would need to beat back the Russians. War was inevitable.
DARBYISM
The key propagandist for the war-drive was none other than John Nelson Darby. His numerous sermons went approximately like this: Russia is the source of mankind’s greatest evil. The return of the Jews to Palestine is essential as a precondition for the return of Jesus. True believers who support the creation of a Jewish state would soon be "raptured" into heaven, thereby escaping a "Great Tribulation" brought on by the "Antichrist." The Great Tribulation would conclude when Jesus destroys the evil Russian army at the "Battle of Armageddon." Jesus would then establish a kingdom with the few surviving true believers, who would all live together in paradise for 1000 years.
Darby’s message worked quite well. Soon he imported it to the United States, where it also became quite popular, particularly the demonization of Russia, which had been an American ally. With the United States, spellbound by Darbyism, Britain had a free hand to defeat Russia in the Crimean War of 1854. By 1865, British hegemony in Palestine was complete.
From these beginnings, the British Empire became the largest, and perhaps the most brutal empire the world has ever seen. "The sun never sets on the British Empire," one could brag. Today, the British Empire is called the Commonwealth. It encompasses approximately 30% of the world’s landmass, and 25% of the world’s population. British and British allied banks and corporations presently control the largest share of international trade, finance, and strategic raw materials in the world.
John Nelson Darby, spreading his poison, toured the United States six times between 1859 and 1877, and trained many disciples. One of his disciples, Dwight L. Moody, set up the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago as the publishing house and command center of strict Darbyism in America. Among Moody’s recruits was Cyrus Scofield, a former confederate soldier, embezzler and forger who converted to Darbyism in prison. Scofield’s reference Bible, first published in 1909, is the standard for fundamentalists to this day. Another Moody recruit, Rueben Torrey, founded the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA), in 1907. In 1947, BIOLA graduate, Wilbur Smith, founded the Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. Smith trained Billy Graham, perhaps the most influential fundamentalist preacher in U.S. history. Smith also trained Bill Bright, who founded the Campus Crusade for Christ, which recruits thousands on secular campuses every year.
Yet another strict Darbyite institution is the Dallas Theological Seminary, whose Chancellor from 1952 to 1986, John F. Walvoord, wrote Armageddon Oil and the Middle East, a bestseller which reportedly was a White House standard in 1991, when George Bush consulted Billy Graham in preparation for launching Operation Desert Storm. One of Walvoord’s students, Hal Lindsay, authored The Late Great Planet Earth, which became one of the top bestsellers ever, and insured that Darbyism, which is now known as Christian fundamentalism, would dominate mainstream Protestantism in the United States and beyond.
As a result of the Darbyite phenomenon exploding on the stage of world history, it is not necessary to cite the book and page number that expounds the fundamentalist belief structure. One only needs to question their neighbor, or the man or the woman on the street. Fundamentalists are everywhere, especially in the United States.
What is most alarming about what fundamentalists believe is that man is a ‘fallen’ wretch. This is an anti-Christian, Gnostic belief. Man can only be redeemed if he is privy to special knowledge; that is, he must know the right ‘prayer.’ This, again, is Gnosticism. The end is nigh for the non-believer, and the believers will be ‘raptured,’ so who cares if the world goes to hell? It’s utterly corrupt anyway. Gnosticism! As this miserable world is destroyed under the rain of God’s mechanically pre-determined, and presently prophesied fire of vengeance, my soul, my ‘divine spark,’ will be reunited with Jesus, in Paradise. Gnosticism! Gnosticism!
Thomas Rooney