The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology

Posted on April 12, 2011 by

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. , ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

At the very height of the evangelical discovery of postmodernity, Vanhoozer edits this little collection of articles that purports to tell its readers about the various flora and fauna of the postmodern condition. Vanhoozer’s opening article is valuable in setting the stage for the book. Vanhoozer deftly describes what postmodernity is without making it seem messianic, as some other authors might make it seem (see James K. A. Smith’s corpus on the same subject). He is rather forthcoming regarding postmodernity’s pitfalls as well as the variegation of thought that moves under the aegis of postmodernity. Vanhoozer cites two sources which provide four-part typologies for classifying postmodern theology. He then goes on to deconstruct postmodernity with its ethic of freeing the repressed other who constantly seems to disappear, and its reflexive denial of certainty, making any object of faith nearly impossible.

The next chapter aims at describing Anglo-american postmodernity by invoking the critique of Cartesian modernity in Nicholas Lash. In this chapter, Nancey Murphey and Brad Kallenberg seek to demonstrate the force of postmodern theology’s contention that knowledge is socially constructed.

The third chapter seeks to describe Lindbeck and his school of postliberal theology at Yale. Although Hunsinger gives basic credit to Lindbeck for his founding of postliberal theology, he is nevertheless critical of him as well. Apparently progress has been made since Lindbeck. This leaves one with the suspicion that postmodernity is really just more modernity turned in on itself. According to Hunsinger, there have been more appealing postliberal proposals since Lindbeck. Hunsinger’s main clarifying statement concerning postliberalism is the admission that all knowledge assumes certain a priori beliefs anterior to that knowledge, and that constructs of knowledge are necessarily analogical. Hunsinger seems to opt for Frei’s high Christology, as one of those a priori tenets held by postliberal theology, with an open view of salvation.

The chapters on postmetaphysical theology and deconstructive theology both deal, to a certain extent, with the thought of Jacques Derrida and his import for theology. Postmetaphysical theology seeks to remove being as the primary category for understanding reality. The primacy of being in Western thought led to “ontotheology” which this postmetaphysical theology rejects. Indeed, according to Carlson’s explanation of Jean-Luc Marion, God is prior to being. It is the love of God that provides for being as a gift. Ward’s chapter on deconstructive theology is a bit more negative, asserting with his Radical Orthodox colleagues, that Derrida has provided a transcendental argument for nihilism.

Reconstructive theology seems a poor name, but it is the name by which Griffin christens Process Theology. This chapter is followed by a chapter on feminist theology. These two chapters are somewhat predictable even if they seem odd juxtaposed to one another. The former seems focused on the unity of reality, while the latter seems more focused on the otherness of certain realities.

Long’s treatment of Radical Orthodoxy is probably not the best out on the market. Smith, Milbank, Ward, and Pickstock seem to give better accountings of the project which seeks to affirm the sociological aspects of knowledge as well as a certain giveness of reality.

The first half of Vanhoozer’s collection of essays deals with a description of postmodern theologies. The second half treats the effects of postmodern theology on Christian doctrine. Our esteemed editor opens this section with an essay that seeks to affirm postmodernity’s repristination of tradition as important to the task of exegesis. For Stiver, theological method is first and foremost hermeneutical. Cunningham seeks to use the trinitarian formula as a paradigm for doing theology. Cunningham’s approach  is reminiscent of some of Vanhoozer’s earlier work in his First Theology. Clayton promotes panentheism as a resolution to the dilemma posed between an objective world or an animated world. I am fairly certain that Clayton may have presented a false dilemma.  After Webster’s foray into anthropology, Lowe seems to bring the same criticisms to classical Christology and soteriology that N. T. Wright does in his fresh perspective on Paul. The West’s soteriology is too individualistic for both Lowe and Wright. Grenz summarizes his ecclesiology of human community in Christ and in the Spirit, and Ford reappropriates Bonhoeffer’s theology for postmodern spirituality and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Vanhoozer’s collection is a mixture of introduction and application, but it does neither very well. One would be hard pressed, however, to find something better in so handy of a size.

Posted in Culture, Philosophy, Postmodernism, Theology | 1 Comment

Book Review: Avery Dulles, S.J., Models of Revelation

Posted on April 7, 2011 by

Avery Dulles, S. J., Models of Revelation (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1985).

Avery Dulles’ work on revelation exists as a sort of companion volume to his Models of the Church which I believe was published about five years later by the same publisher. The format is very familiar to any educated reader of theology. “Any educated reader” implies a broader audience than the profession of theology. Certainly, theologians have and will make use of it, and clergy as well; but Dulles seems to be writing to all those interested in religion, not just to the guild. The format follows that of H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic Christ and Culture in that it seeks to abstract types or species out of a morass of possible entities. It seems that these sorts of books, a staple for the middle to late Twentieth century, come with three or five distinct possibilities. Dulles provides five, and, all things considered, his methodology fits his project much better than Niebuhr’s ever did. Niebuhr’s types or models never fit any one thing and Niebuhr decided to argue for one model to take precedence over the others despite a lukewarm commitment to even that. Niebuhr set out to do what really he could not do because of a plenitude of variables contained within his project. Dulles remedies Niebuhr’s shortcomings by applying the method to something it can encompass. Dulles’ models of revelation have relatively obvious points of demarcation. They tend to be distinct even if adherence to one model or another is not consistent. Dulles provides a two-pronged approach to his project. First, he outlines the available options in the field. Second, he synthesizes the options in the field under what could arguably be called a sixth model, but Dulles presents it as a common denominator of all the models as they stand. As a test for this common denominator, Dulles places this concept of revelation through all the salient aspects of Christian faith and practice in order to determine whether or not the proposed common denominator maintains its integrity in helping to define and communicate the essence of the faith and its incarnation in conduct. He applies this test not through merely his proposal, but his proposal as found in each of the previously reviewed five models of revelation. His success at this, to a certain degree, will depend on the judgment of the reader. In brief compass, Dulles’ approach is essentially empirical. Indeed, it is arguably Baconian, following his rough outline in observation, hypothesis, and testing. The following is a description of Dulles’ process and a review concerning his effectiveness.

Dulles, at the beginning of the book lays out the issue for his readers. He rehearses the basic difficulties for revelation such as epistemology, psychology, historical theology, and comparative religions just to name a few. He briefly considers a revelation-less Christianity of Karl Jaspers and F. Gerald Downing promising to deliver an answer through the remainder of the book. Dulles also sets up criteria by which to attest the models of his project. These are considered to be “relatively neutral” (Dulles:17), indicating that Dulles, at this point, belongs to the intellectual frontier between modernity and postmodernity. Dulles moves from the past into the future, and, while sensitive to criticisms voiced by a nascent postmodernity, nevertheless retains his modernist methodologies. His criteria includes “faithfulness to the Bible and Christian tradition, internal coherence, plausibility, adequacy to experience, practical fruitfulness, theoretical fruitfulness, and value for dialogue (Dulles:16–17).” The reader should notice that almost all of his criteria are subjective; only giving the illusion of being objective much like we find in sociology.

Following his foundation for the study and methodology for embarking on his enterprise, Dulles takes the reader through a history of the doctrine of revelation, summarizing briefly the premodern period of Christendom only to go into great detail concerning eight modern trends in Christian theology concerning revelation. Clearly this pluriform teaching concerning revelation spanning only about 200 years is the agitation providing a raison d’être for this study.

The next five chapters give exposition to the five models currently in play within modern Christendom. I will treat these briefly. The first model is revelation as doctrine. This roughly corresponds to Lindbeck’s positivist cognitive approach to doctrine, but Dulles does not treat it with disdain. He describes two varieties: conservative evangelicalism and Catholic Neo-scholasticism. The first variant tries to allow Scripture to interpret itself while the second allows the life of the church to aid in interpreting the Scriptures. Dulles is careful to recognize the intellectual congruence of both inerrancy and propositionalism. Inerrancy makes sense within the model and propositionalism is not to be misunderstood as leveling the text to mere propositions. Nevertheless, Dulles finds this model falling short of the criteria mentioned above.

The second model is revelation as history. Whereas the first model placed the locus of revelation in a text, the second model places it in acts and deeds found in history. Dulles places C. H. Dodd, the Heilsgeschichteschule of Cullman and von Hofmann, and Pannenberg within this model. For these theologians, God primarily reveals himself through his mighty deeds, often for his people and against his foes. Dulles finds this model to be biblical and plausible, but it fails in its coherence because many of the historical deeds are related in a text. Dulles notes in somewhat negative finality that the Hebrew “dabar” may refer to both word and event (Dulles:67).

The third model is revelation as inner experience. This model and the two treated subsequently reveal a more subjectivist slant than the previous two, perhaps highlighting the fault line that makes this study necessary. This view encompasses the liberal Protestant pietist theologians like Schleiermacher and Ritschl, as well as their Catholic counterparts like George Tyrrell, and Anglicans like Evelyn Underhill and Dean W. R. Inge. In fact, under this heading, Dulles lists a multitude of adherents. These theologians view revelation as an inner subjective feeling that may only be precipitated by the aforementioned words and deeds. Dulles’ definition and explanation is thorough and complete even if C. H. Dodd’s position now spans two categories. Dulles finds merits and deficiencies in this model as well. Its subjectivity undermines its value in the criteria of productivity.

Dulles’ fourth model is the ever popular revelation as dialectical presence. In this category, Dulles places all the variegations of crisis theology from Barth to Brunner to Bultmann. The revelation of God is inherently existential. It seeks to handle the difficulty of a series of contrapuntal theological propositions: the transcendence of God and his imminent revelation in Jesus Christ, the holiness of God, and man’s sinfulness. There just seems to be no real way to God from below, but human experience and the revelation of Christ seem to tell these theologians something different. The Bible becomes the locus of oracle, not the product of oracle. Dulles spends some text explaining the various themes found within this model and concludes with his standard catalog of merits and deficiencies. Particularly deficient is the recognition of word and deed revelation with no real means of allowing this to happen, so the revelation is veiled. Its significance is not recognized until the appropriate crisis arrives.

Dulles’ fifth and final model is revelation as new awareness. This wins the award for the most subjective, ephemeral, and ethereal. In this model, revelation does not occur in the specifics of words, deeds, feelings (although they come close), or crisis. Rather, revelation is a heightened awareness. This works in and through human abilities that may be latent, but are energized so that the subject experiences a new perspective. In this model, the external reality which the perspective communicates nearly dissolves in the heightened perceptions of the subject. Again, Dulles duly adjudicates merits and criticisms, most of which should seem obvious.

This ends the most useful portion of Dulles’ project. What he does in categorizing, summarizing, and critiquing provides useful information to any student of theology, but his goal to provide some common denominator by which all may fulfill the criteria he has set up seems a tall order. In fact, it seems to look an awful lot like the death rattle of a modernist methodology within the field of theology. Dulles seems to sense that modernist means of theological method have been and are being quickly supplanted by a new way of doing theology. His frequent references to Heidgegger, Polanyi, and anonymous allusions to Gadamer mark well that he has kept current in the field. His provision of the common denominator of symbol itself straddles the two worlds of modernity and post modernity. He describes symbol in such a manner so that it is flexible enough to remain relative, supplying whatever lacks in any of the previous five models, and, yet, it remains a neutral ground for discourse – a sort of Diltheyesque Holy Grail of common discourse. It stands as a modernist chimeric fantasy in capitulation to postmodern criticisms.

Dulles draws upon more aesthetically communicable ideas to promote his concept of revelation as symbol. Indeed, he calls Coleridge and Yeats as witness to the validity of his proposal. But, looking back, from the vantage point of 2009, Dulles’ proposal seems like a simplistic tautology. Language is symbol. Historical acts are symbol. Inner experiences may be reduced to symbols (sounds almost Jungian). The tension of dialectics may be captured in symbols. A heightened sense of perception may be best communicated in symbols. These are the proposals he lays before his readers, who, after the passing of some 25 years, find nothing new here regarding perceptions of how language and experience work. Derrida has so trumped Dulles such that reading this seems like reading Copernicus’ theory of a heliocentric solar system. It is no breakthrough for us now.

Dulles continues to apply the symbolic model to each of the other five models as they, in turn, grapple with the basic questions of Christian theology: Christ, Bible, Church, Revelation, and Eschatology. His treatments of these aspects are mixed. At best the symbol metaphor may help with dialogue, but it will never help theologians using a specific model to recognize others using a different model as legitimate Christians. Symbol may be useful for understanding how another model says what it says, but the diverse premises of the other models preclude harmony. Dulles’ understanding of how symbolic epistemology aids theology or works with theology is useful, but it will never put an end to critiquing theology on the basis of difference. It only puts an end to dismissing certain theologies as out of hand because it brings to light the authoritative presuppositions that lie close to the heart of the theological method of each model.

Posted in 20th Century Theology, Culture, Fundagelicalism, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Isaac Massey Haldeman: Religous Imagination – Theology

Posted on March 31, 2011 by

Religious Imagination

Perhaps more attached to his fidelity and fueling his fighting and finishing, Haldeman’s religious imagination is of singular importance. A lifetime of sermons, books, pamphlets, and even architecture bespeak of a man who had more on his mind and heart than merely the religious empires of the likes of Riley and Norris. In fact, Haldeman’s pulpit faithfulness and fearless denunciation of error resemble most closely those lesser fundamentalists of R. E. Neigbour, Oliver Van Osdel, and R. T. Ketcham. While the accuracy of this assessment cannot be fully answered in this brief article, it points toward a question that should be asked and one that should be answered. Can significantly different motives be assessed to different early fundamentalist leaders or are they all of a piece? Do they all share in the same grimy and grubbing game of one-upsmanship to build empires as big as their egos? I believe that their may be reason to believe otherwise, and Haldeman’s life and ministry may be but one example of a significantly different motivation than empire and ego. The difficulty at present is that little extant materials exist that reveal the depths of Haldeman’s inner man. Scant if any correspondence is presently available to the researcher, but shortly a search for this holy grail may be underway. If research could establish a deep, abiding, and overriding motivation for Haldeman’s ministry, the fact may be established that here existed a fundamentalist of few pretensions and less ego than existed in his empire building fundamentalist contemporaries who flourished during the latter years of his life. Do any clues exist to give warrant to what may be an overly optimistic assessment of his character? Combining his biography with some aspects of his ministry may just lend us some clues that partially affirm this assessment. Clues exist in his theology and aesthetic temperament.

Theology

Beyond being just fundamentalist, Haldeman was also dispensational, premillennial, and pretribulational. It can be argued that he was the first to bring the full weight of dispensationalism devoid of spiritualized eschatology, against liberals who spiritualized the resuurrection of Christ. Nearly half of his monographic corpus is dedicated to eschatology. The other half is divided fairly evenly between dispensational teaching, modernism, and false teachings like Theosophy and Christian Science. While much, if not most, of fundamentalism  tended toward pretribulational premillennialism; the slightly more than novice student of fundamentalism knows there were other eschatological views. If  J. Gresham Machen cannot be called a fundamentalist, T. T. Shield can and was. He was also an amillennialist. Furthermore, If Cauthen took the time to divide between those in early liberal theology, would it be much of a stretch to suppose that fundamentalists did not possess similar variegation?. Even their transitional figures were of a different sort than their later exponents. Strong and Mullins were more accomodating to the new theology and more progressive than their later champions of orthodoxy. It also seems that some fundamentalists were more interested in promoting empires and conveniently used their conservative convictions to divide a market of churchgoers, donors, and circles of loyalty. Others, it may be demonstrated, remained faithful to their convictions, leveraging every fiber of the ministry against the swelling tide of liberalism and modernism. These were men who developed a message that overshadowed their personality. They developed a theology not a constituency.[1] This may only be speculation, but Haldeman’s insistence on a dispensational, premillennial, and pretribulational theology and his denunciations of anything less may explain his lack of significant involvement in the broader fundamentalist movement. While he seems to have been friends with quite a few within the fundamentalist fold, he was very clear on where his allegiances resided within the spectrum of doctrine allowed in that fold. His fierce denunciation of Philip Mauro, who abdicated his dispensational beliefs for amillennialism and then repudiated his former teaching in a book, indicates the degree to which Haldeman held and cherished dispensationalism.[2] Perhaps, his rigid repudiation of even a minority report within fundamentalism may have marginalized his influence in the movement. Nevertheless, his constant preaching, teaching, and writing in the service of promoting dispensational eschatology – to almost an excess, seems to point to some goal beyond mere empire. He preached and wrote in such a way so as to exclude his close fellowship within broad fundamentalism.

While Riley, Norris, and others may have used the old theology; they failed to promote its ability to capture imaginations outside the walls of their ministries. They seemed, rather, to draw people to their ministries by the controversies and curiosities they stirred up. In turn, they used the human capital built up from their ministries to fund schools, mission agencies, and conferences to their own liking. To be sure some of agencies they founded that were parallel to denominational agencies may have been necessary because of the pollution of modernism. Upon further reflection, however, especially in the case of the Northern Baptist Convention, these opportunistic fundamentalists only seemed to establish their many empires to confront the empire of the other. Oftentimes these many empires of fundamentalism pitted themselves against each other in struggles for control.

Haldeman, by way of contrast, had a theology to promote. In his early years of ministry it centered on the gospel. Then it grew into an exposition of the dispensational premillennialism of the Scofieldian sort. Following that, in a manner analogous to an oblique military maneuver, he made a minor directional change to take on modernism. He used an inerrant Bible to substantiate the supernatural biblical truth in view of a coming supernatural and empirically verifiable second coming and millennial kingdom. In his argument Haldeman usually asserting that the things that modernists will not believe now because of Lessing’s ugly ditch will be abundantly verifiable in the future. He provides a basis of such an assertion by relating narratives from the Bible that demonstrate that those who ignore the authoritative testimony given to them, no matter incredulous the testimony may seem, are always shown to be wrong in the end. In two of his famous diatribes against modernism, “Jericho Theology”[3] and the “The New Religion.”[4] he argues this line very effectively.

Whereas other fundamentalists used the empire that they had built as a platform to advance fundamentalism against the onslaught of modernism, Haldeman used his preaching and writing. Much of Haldeman’s preaching and writing co-opted the biblical historical accounts of divine and obviously supernatural events breaking into the past visible world of humankind with the biblical prophetic account of divine providence breaking into the future visible world. The former was empirically verifiable, and in like manner, the latter would be as well.

[1]Admittedly, my alleged fundamentalist taxonomy needs to be further developed and substantiated.

[2]Isaac Massey Haldeman, The Kingdom of God: What Is It?–When Is It?–Where Is It? An Answer to Mr. Philip Mauro’s “Gospel of the Kingdom” (New York: Francis Emory Fitch, 1931), 17–21.

[3]Isaac Massey Haldeman, The Signs of the Times (New York: Charles C. Cook, 1913), 95–122.

[4]Isaac Massey Haldeman, The Signs of the Times, 123–49.

Posted in 20th Century Theology, Baptist History, Culture, Fundagelicalism | Leave a comment

A seminary wherein music plays a crucial role:

Posted on March 29, 2011 by

Music formed a huge part of the communal life a Zingst and Finkenwalde. Each day around noon everyone gathered to sing hymns or other sacred music . . . [Bethge] told them about Gumpelzhaimer, who lived in the sixteenth century and wrote sacred music and hymns, especially polychoral motets. Bonhoeffer was  intrigued. His musical knowledge went back to Bach, but Bethge was familiar with the music that preceded him. He widened Bonhoeffer’s horizons to that earlier sacred music and to composers such as Heinrich Schütz, Johann Schein, Samuel Scheidt, Josquin de Prez, and others, and that music was incorporated into the repertoire of Finkenwalde.

There were two pianos in the manor house. Bethge said that Bonhoeffer “never turned down a request to join in playing one of Bach’s concertos for two pianos.” He also said that Bonhoeffer particularly loved singing a part in Schütz’s vocal duets, “Eins bitte ich vom Herren”* and “Meister, wir haben die ganze nacht gearbeitet.”** . . . He loved Beethoven, and Bethge said “he could sit down at the piano and simply improvise the Rosenkavalier. That impressed us greatly.

as quoted in Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer, p. 267

Oh, to have a seminary like that! A place where students actually enjoyed learning music from the masters of the past. We deprive ourselves and slight our Lord of much rich worship when we limit ourselves to the immediate and familiar. Not too mention the offense that we must bring before our Lord when we offer music shaped by affections that were trained by the banality of popular culture.

*”One thing I ask of the Lord”

**”Master we have toiled all night.”

Posted in Culture | Leave a comment

Learning piety from pagans . . .

Posted on March 28, 2011 by

Bonhoeffer on learning the proper Christian response to the Third Reich’s imposition upon the German Evangelical Church (Reich Church) from Gandhi:

[I]t sometimes seems to me that there’s  more Christianity in their “heathenism” than in the whole of our Reich Church.

as quoted in Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer, p. 248

I’ve heard something like this before . . .

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Isaac Massey Haldeman: Part 4 – Engaged in the “Battle Royal”

Posted on March 24, 2011 by

By the time Haldeman’s ministry had surged into the “roaring twenties,” Haldeman could boast of two other accomplishments. The first was a unanimous call to the prestigious Clarendon Street Baptist Church sometime after the death of A. J. Gordon. A call which he appreciatively declined.[1] The second accomplishment was that of being awarded Doctor Honoris Causis in the form of a Doctor of Divinity from the Baptist Theological Seminary in Liberty, Missouri.[2] This latter accomplishment is confirmed by the newspaper’s use of the appropriate honorific when subsequently reporting Haldeman’s’s disgust with the Interchurch World Movement.[3]

On April 25, 1920, just prior to the newspaper report which was published May 3, 1920, the church minutes record the adoption of the following resolution against the Interchurch World Movement.[4] It bears all the earmarks of Haldeman’s rhetorical style and was neatly handwritten onto the lined paper of the note ledger:

Resolved that the First Baptist Church desires to put itself on record as having no fellowship with the Interchurch World Movement and refuses the invitation of the Northern Baptist Convention to participate herein[sic] for the following reasons:

It is post-millennial in its attitude and teaching.

It is socialistic, educational and ethical.

It preaches an ethical, rather than a sacrificial Christ.

It preaches a moral, rather than the penal sacrifice of Christ.

It preaches a social rather than a personal gospel.

It seeks to save society, rather than the individual.

It makes civilization and not salvation the supreme purpose of the church.

It talks of the teachings, ideals and principles of Christ and not of the atoning blood of Christ.

It substitutes the kingdom of Christ for the church of Christ.

It confounds the gospel of grace with the gospel of the kingdom.

It teaches the kingdom of Christ is to be established by preaching the gospel, while Scripture declares the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ only at His Second Coming.

It preaches regeneration but means regeneration of society.

It seeks to turn the churches into community centers, to be interested in all that may interest the community; while the Scriptures demands[sic] the church shall come out, be separate from the community and be interested in one thing – the preaching of Christ and him crucified.

It holds out the hope that the world is growing better; while the Son of God declares it will grow worse and become as it was in the days of Noah.

It teaches the golden rule intelligently applied, instead of the personal and second coming of Christ will give peace to the world.

It has nothing to say about the joys of heaven and seems to have forgotten to anything about the woes of hell.

It so emphasizes mere ethics that it opens the door for the satanic ministry of a bloodless righteousness.

It threatens pastoral liberty and local church independence.

It is enthusiastically supported by all theological seminaries, professors, preachers and teachers who do not stand for a whole Bible as the fully inspired Word of God.

It is modern theology in disguise of evangelical and missionary appeal.

It has the hands of Esau but the unchanged voice of Jacob.[5]

The fact of this proposal was reported by the Times as well as a prognosticatory remark by Haldeman that “in five years this thing will produce an ecclesiastical autocracy on the one hand and a church sovietism on the other. Have nothing to do with this movement if you are a believer.”[6] This dissension opened up a volley of profuse indignation from both sides. The Interchurch World Movement cabinet voted to answer Haldeman’s attack. The report includes words like “deplorable,” “deep regret,” “too bad, “absurd,” and “utterly false” to describe what these Interchurch leaders thought of Haldeman’s position. Despite these seemingly innocuous circumlocutions for censure, the newspaper reports that Dr. John Y. Atchison, who was director of the movement, stated that the reason why the Interchurch World Movement took the uncharacteristic decision to answer this attack was that Haldeman’s remarks came “at the most critical time of our financial campaign.” He even accuses Haldeman of making a calculated attack on the movement.[7] In less than a week, Haldeman renewed the attack in his Sunday evening sermon wherein he congratulated the Southern Baptist Convention for voting against participating in the movement and reported that he had received letters, since his first sermon on the subject, threatening him with bodily violence if he persisted in his denunciations.[8]

As the controversy surrounding the Interchurch World Movement moved into the background, the essence within it came to the foreground; the issue of modernist versions of Christianity versus fundamentalist versions of Christian orthodoxy. In 1923 the battle raged within the Protestant Episcopal Church. As the PEC dealt with the issue of modernism coupled with the necessities of their own communion’s hierarchy, the newspaper did not miss the connection with Haldeman’s own condemnation of religious modernism. At the end of an article on the controversy with the PEC, the writer inserts that others were to speak on the subject and listed Haldeman as preaching on the question, “Is the Present State of the Faith in the Protestant Church a Sign that Protestantism is Breaking Down?” At neighboring Calvary Baptist Church, fundamentalist firebrand, John Roach Straton was to speak on “The Devil’s Lies vs. God’s Truth About the Bible.”[9] Later, that same year, Haldeman would again be reported as attacking the modernists.[10] The vitriol against modernism would continue from his pulpit until his death. While it cannot be confirmed for certain that this was all his later ministry consisted of (i.e. the denunciations of religious modernism and modernists), from the papers’ reports and his the catalog of his own writings, this seems a roughly accurate picture of the situation.[11]

The last seven years of Haldeman’s life seem punctuated by honors, illness, and attacks on the usual suspects – religious modernism, Romanism, and the new demon of bolshevism. In 1926 the church celebrated his fortieth year as pastor at First Baptist. The paper reports that a gift of $15,000 was awarded the pastor who planned on using it to pay off the mortgage on his home at 389 West End Avenue.[12] His connection to “Fundamentalism and the ‘Blessed Hope’ of our lord’s imminent pre-millennial return” is reported clearly by the papers through the words of fundamentalist luminaries such as William L. Pettingill and William E. Blackstone, who are reported as sending accolades to the aging preacher.[13] That same year, Haldeman’s and First Baptist’s connection to the broader national fundamentalist movement would be highlighted when, the “Texas Tornado” and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, J. Frank Norris, shot Dexter Chipps. The paper’s article reported that, according to First Baptist of Fort Worth’s own J. J. Mickle, Chipps was part of a three man conspiracy to kill Norris. The connection to the New York City church came out because Norris had been invited to speak at Haldeman’s church four months earlier for the last two Sundays in August. Haldeman himself was on vacation out of town at his farm in the Catskills[14]. The sexton averred to speak for the church, stating that the invitation to speak would not be rescinded “until his case is fairly presented.” Others in the church were reported as stating that the decision to continue the invitation to Norris would be made by Haldeman. One stated that the members of the church believed that Norris would “withdraw from the engagement.” Clearly, the news that Norris shot Chipps was sensational even as far north as New York City.[15]

Beginning in 1926, Haldeman would begin to experience illness that kept him from the pulpit. An illness kept him out of the pulpit at least six months, ending in November of 1926, perhaps coinciding with some of his usual summer vacation.[16] Again, in March of 1928 at 84 years of age, he experienced another illness that kept him out of the pulpit at least a week.[17] In  October of 1931, Haldeman reveals to his congregation that he must immediately seek surgery to remove cataracts from his eyes. He used this setback to admonish his congregation concerning the infidelity and impotency of modernism.[18]

Then, in October 1932, he returned to the pulpit after an illness which lasted five months during which time “his life had been despaired of several times.” He used the occasion to preach the imminent return of Christ and that his depression served to somehow ready him for that day.[19] Another illness would precede his terminal illness by a matter of months.[20]

Between these illnesses and toward the end of March 1930, the newspaper reports in several articles concerning the celebration of Haldeman’s forty-sixth anniversary at First Baptist and his sixty years overall in the pulpit. One article reported that at the age of 85, Haldeman preached twice on Sunday and taught a Bible class, that he said more words per minute than Billy Sunday, and that he still usually preached to a crowded church.[21] Another article reporting on the festivities tells of him spending his five month summer vacations writing books, his satisfaction in the amount of ministry-ready young men in First Baptist’s Young People’s Union, his prohibiting women from the pulpit, and his rule that no social functions were allowed in the church.[22] Two more articles would report on the event.[23] Evidently, the Times editorial staff felt that this was a story worth covering well.

The last article, in which the Times reports on Haldeman’s ministry while he is yet alive, speaks of Haldeman’s returning after yet another illness of several weeks and preaching on Christ’s humanity and deity – that he is “co-equal and co-eternal with God.”[24] On September 27, 1933 I. M Haldeman expired. On the following day the papers reported his death with a portrait of the Rev. Dr. I. M. Haldeman and a brief review of his life and career. The church clerk minutes note with an asterisk and an entry on Wednesday, September 27, 1933: “Our Pastor, Rev. Isaac Massey Haldeman after a serious illness of long duration, departed to be with the Lord after an uninterrupted ministry of over forty-nine years.”[25] An entry concerning a baptism intervenes on the following Friday before the description of the funeral services on Saturday, September 30, 1933:

Funeral Services for Dr. Haldeman were held at 8:00 P.M. with an audience which filled the church to capacity. Dr. Cortland Meyers of California had charge of the service and the sermon was preached by Dr. Curtis Lee Laws Editor of the Watchman-Examiner. The body lay in State in the Church until the internment which was at Woodlawn Cemetery, Monday, October 2, 1933.[26]

The papers also note the size of the crowd and the speakers. They report Laws as eulogizing on Haldeman by means of the Apostle Paul’s statement in 2 Timothy, “I have fought the good fight. I  have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”[27] A little more than two weeks later the Southern New York Baptist Association sent a note of condolence to the members and friends of First Baptist.[28]

Thus ended the earthly life of Isaac Massey Haldeman and the record of the observances to follow. Perhaps Curtis Lee Laws’ summed up Haldeman’s life quite well and succinctly in his  invoking 2 Timothy 4:7. Haldeman certainly seemed to display all the traits typical of a fundamentalist, and, judging by his death very early in the movement’s history, it might even be considered that he was the archetypical fundamentalist. But, was there more too this giant of early fundamentalism than just fighting, finishing, and fidelity?

[1]I. M. Haldeman, “A Personal History,” 5 Apparently, Haldeman could not remember the year, but only seems to remember the century as he provides only “19” with extra blanks to follow.

[2]I. M. Haldeman, “A Personal History,” 5 See comment on not 52 above. The same applies to this record.

[3]“Assails Interchurch Drive,” New York Times, 3 May 1920, 12.

[4]For a brief treatment on the Interchurch World Movement see (George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870–1925 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1980], 166), or for a new edition: (George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, Second Edition [New York: Oxford University Press, 2006], 166) . For a more in-depth description and its relation to the Northern Baptist Convention see (Robert George Delnay, A History of the Baptist Bible Union [Winston Salem, N. C.: Piedmont Bible College Press, 1974], 20–25). Delnay points out that it was the issue of Northern Baptist cooperation in the Interchurch World Movement with its own New World Movement that triggered the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy among Northern Baptists (p. 22).

[5]First Baptist Church of New York City, “Church Clerk’s Notes 1883–1993,” mixture of handwritten and typewritten church business notes (1883–1993), 213–15.

[6]“Assails Interchurch Drive,” New York Times, 3 May 1920, 12.

[7]“Answers Attack on Church Drive,” New York Times, 4 May 1920, 10.

[8]“Threatens Dr. Haldeman,” New York Times, 10 May 1920, 13.

[9]“Modernists Renew Attack on Bishops,” New York Times, 30 December 1923, 1.

[10]“Attacks the Modernists,” New York Times, 31 December 1923, 5.

[11]The following articles make reference to Haldeman’s tireless polemic against religious modernism and liberalism: “To Discuss Doctrine in Many Pulpits,” New York Times, 2 May 1924, B2; “Many Preach Today on Church Dispute,” New York Times, 20 January 1924, E2; “Fosdick’s Initial Sermon,” New York Times, 31 May 1925, E3; “Pastor Sees Signs of Modernist Plot,” New York Times, 5 October 1925, 24; “Assails ‘God of Science’,” New York Times, 11 November 1929, 23; “Haldeman Scores Baptist Liberals,” New York Times, 8 December 1930, 24; “Pastor Assails Moderns,” New York Times, 27 April 1931, 25; “Dr. Haldeman Urges Spiritual Values,” New York Times, 13 October 1930, 34; “Congregation Rises to Back Haldeman,” New York Times, 19 October 1931, 18; “Haldeman Upholds Jesus as Deity,” New York Times, 30 November 1931, 20; “Christ as Man and God,” New York Times, 6 March 1933, 11; “Haldeman Calls Liberals Infidels,” The New York Herald, 24 December 1924, 4.

[12]This appears to be about a block west and a half of a block south on the west side of West End Avenue. With only a visual reference and without research into re-zoning and renumbering of the residences on the street, it appears to still be standing and used. It is a red brick row house type structure.

[13]“Topics of Interest to Churchgoers,” New York Times, 12 June 1926, 12.

[14]It was the practice during Haldeman’s pastorate, for Haldeman to take a sabbatical from June through October/November. More than likely, Norris was to fill the pulpit in Haldeman’s absence.

[15]“Plot to Kill Norris Charged by Church,” New York Times, 20 June 1926, 9 Of interest also in this article is the reported telegram text from Fort Worth to New York, reading “Case of absolute self-defense. Men came to Dr. Norris’s study to kill him and he defended himself. The church of one mind, heavy hearted but with faith strong.”

[16]“Lays His Recovery to Prayers of Flock,” New York Times, 15 November 1926, 24.

[17]“Haldeman Back in Pulpit,” New York Times, 26 March 1928, 24.

[18]“Congregation Rises to Back Haldeman.”

[19]“Dr. Haldeman, Ill 5 Months, Resumes Pulpit; Tells Flock Depression Has Divine Purpose,” New York Times, 24 October 1932, 13.

[20]“Christ as Man and God,” New York Times, 6 March 1933, 11.

[21]“Baptists to Honor Dr. Haldeman Today,” New York Times, 26 March 1930, 29.

[22]“Dr. Haldeman Marks 60 Years in Pulpit,” New York Times, 27 March 1930, 22.

[23]“Baptists Honor Haldeman,” New York Times, 29 March 1930, 24; “Marks 46 Years’ Service,” New York Times, 31 March 1930, 14.

[24]“Christ as Man and God.”

[25]First Baptist Church of New York City, “Church Clerk’s Notes 1883–1993,” 359.

[26]First Baptist Church of New York City, “Church Clerk’s Notes 1883–1993,” 359.

[27]“1,000 Hear Eulogy of Dr. Haldeman.”

[28]First Baptist Church of New York City, “Church Clerk’s Notes 1883–1993,” 362.

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. . . not even up to the level of fundamentalists?

Posted on March 23, 2011 by

Dietrich Bonhoeffer apparently had this to say about his fellow students at Union Seminary in New York:

[The Union students] become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level.

as quoted in Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer, p. 99

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