meow

P.s. Another prominent defense attorney has now spoken out about the litigious activities currently being engaged in by some of these SBL people. Mr. Greenfield's Simple Justice site is one of the most frequently read law blogs in the country.

XKV8R

lol. that didn't take long.
i told you he'd tout the simple justice post within 24 hours.

predictability is a beautiful thing, no?

(logged and forwarded - 7/20/2010)

spin

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?"

mountainman

86 ?

Toto

Update Scholars and Snakehandlers

spin

From the above, this is pretty classic:

After joining 10,000 attendees at SBL's 2009 conference in New Orleans, Daniel Wallace, professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, cited the "darker underbelly to the conference" and a bias by "left-wing fundamentalist" scholars against evangelicals.

"The prejudice runs deep—almost as deep as the ignorance," Wallace said in a blog post.

Who needs to comment on the irony?


spin

Petergdi

There isn't much irony. He knows about fundamentalists who write screeds against him because he doesn't come to the conclusions they want when he does textual criticism. He knows about people who call him a fundie because he believes the things that Christians normally regard as core beliefs. (This may be an historically correct meaning of the word, but it is not how the world now uses the term.)

In his use of the term, a fundamentalist appears to be someone who judges scholarship based on whether they like someone's theology or not. This seems to be consonant with how the word is generally used today.

Peter

spin

This is just more irony, be it just as unintended.

Fundamentalism regards an approach to a belief. Wallace's use is both vainly polemical and wrong, for he is not using it regarding belief at all.

The notion of "core" belief is irrelevant to the discourse. What is relevant is the demonstrated inability to look beneath the foundation (ie "fundament") beliefs, hence "fundamentalist", amounting to one who has an irreducible line they will not cross regarding belief. It is usually manifested in extremely literalist interpretations in order to safeguard that line.

It is silly to redefine words to suit one's beliefs (or for most other reasons), as has clearly been done here. The meanings of words are meant to be shared, so as to make anyone's communication as understandable as possible. The minority redefinition usually alienates the communication, making it obscurant. Here it simply becomes ironic that someone would try such a crass maneuver.


spin

Petergdi

Actually that's where he is following common usage. Fundamentalism is about separatism, not belief itself.

Joe-average believer is usually indistinguishable from the "fundamentalist" in that regard, and yet Joe-average believer is not a "fundamentalist" in normal discourse. So while etymology may be on your side, your definition is wrong for the word as used in normal discourse.

What is characteristic of "fundamentalism" as normally used is separatism. Anyone who does not measure up to a group standard of orthodoxy finds themselves excluded and sometimes threatened. Fundamentalism may originally have been only anti-modernist, but it quickly started to exclude plenty of the orthodox.


Nope. The redefinition started in the 1920s. And from then on plenty of people who were fundamentalist by your definition left the fundamentalist movement and are not regarded by most people as "fundamentalists." By the 1970s the redefition was complete enough that most people immediately understood that "islamic fundamentalist" didn't mean someone who would not compromise on what they regarded as the essentials of doctrine and practice, but separatist and exclusivist groups.

Peter.

spin

I guess the dictionary isn't your friend.

Of course, I could go on with other dictionaries, but I guess you'll abandon them because they tell a story of belief not separation.

That didn't really make much sense -- I mean how you reach your wrongness. I supplied the etymology to help not to constrain the term. I demur to dictionaries in their reflection of common usage.

I understand that you want to tout your redefinition, but sorry, you're just pulling the wool over your eyes. I can see in your eyes you believe what you said and there is some meaning to it, but it is just shifting definitions without cause.

Still resisting the rest of the world.

Your logic is like a redefining of the Amish as those religionists who wear old-style clothes without buttons.

(You think?)

You should look at Merriam-Webster's second definition.

The problem here is that you like your buttons and so feel excluded. You aren't really dealing with fundamentalism at all, just your own prejudices. Religious movements have generally always been separatist and exclusivist. My way or the highway stuff. It's not a trait inherent to fundamentalism per se at all.


spin