maranatha baptist theological journal volume 1.1

Maranatha

Baptist Theological Journal

Maranatha Baptist Bible College

Maranatha Baptist Seminary

Volume 1, Number 1

Spring 2011

Maranatha

Baptist Theological Journal www.mbbc.edu/journal ISSN 2160-1623

Published semi-annually by

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary 745 W. Main Street Watertown, Wisconsin 53094

920.261.9300 www.mbbc.edu www.mbbc.edu/seminary

Editor: Larry R. Oats

Communications and books for review should be addressed to the editor. The Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal is published two times a year (spring and fall). The Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal is a ministry of Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary. Copyright © by Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary. All rights reserved. Materials in this publication may not be reproduced without the permission of the Editor, except for reproduction for classroom use by students or professors.

Maranatha

Baptist Theological Journal

Volume One, Number One

INTRODUCTION 1

LARRY OATS

PRESIDENT’S PAGE 5

MARTY MARRIOTT

MARANATHA IS BAPTIST 9

DAVID SAXON

MARANATHA IS FUNDAMENTALIST 27

FRED MORITZ

MARANATHA IS DISPENSATIONAL 67

BRUCE MEYER

MARANATHA IS MINISTRY 103

BRIAN TRAINER

MARANATHA COMMITMENT STATEMENTS 125

BIBLE AND SEMINARY FACULTY

Introduction

Welcome to the first edition of the Maranatha

Baptist Theological Journal. This peer-reviewed journal

is the product of Maranatha Baptist Bible College and

Seminary. The purpose of the Maranatha Baptist

Theological Journal is to promote biblical scholarship

from a Baptist, dispensational, and conservative

theological position. Articles will be academic and

practical, biblical and theological, focused on the

needs of the pastor and church leader, and, above all,

faithful to God‘s Word.

Maranatha Baptist Seminary and Maranatha

Baptist Bible College educate men for pastoral and

related ministries and women for ministry

opportunities in cross-cultural studies, counseling,

and other biblically-based ministries.

Maranatha seeks to strike a balance between the

necessary academic studies suitable for an advanced

education with the practical experiential needs of the

fulltime minister. Therefore, Maranatha Baptist

Seminary has chosen to hire men as fulltime

professors in the academic areas of biblical studies,

theology, history, and languages. Professors in

pastoral studies and cross-cultural studies are

adjuncts who are currently involved in the area of

ministry in which they teach; in this way, our students

will be learning from current practitioners in the

arenas of practical theology.

2 Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal

Maranatha also seeks to assist men and women

who desire to remain where they are, while still

obtaining some biblical education. Some of these may

already be in a ministry they do not want to leave.

Others are not in fulltime ministry and have no call to

be, but they may want to enhance their ability to serve

in a volunteer capacity in their churches. Still others

are interested in entering ministry, but are unsure of

God‘s call on their lives and are not yet ready to uproot

their families and move to begin their seminary

education. Toward these ends, Maranatha Baptist

Bible College offers an online Bible Certificate

program, consisting of our undergraduate Bible core

and an online Masters of Arts in Bible. This allows

those who wish to remain in their current location to

actively pursue formal education. Maranatha

Seminary also offers virtual classes; these are our

traditional semester-based classes offered through the

internet, using technology on the Seminary site that

allows the student to see and hear both the professor

and the students, to view the class notes, PowerPoints,

and other materials the professor uses, and to ask

questions and participate in the discussion in real

time. Maranatha Baptist Seminary also offers one-

week modules in January, May, and June.

Maranatha believes that a Christian servant is

most effective when he or she has a comprehensive

working knowledge of the Old and New Testaments

and systematic theology. Maranatha believes that the

interpretation of Scripture needs to be thoroughly

grounded in a grammatical-historical hermeneutic that

Introduction 3

is based on a dispensational approach to the

Scripture. Maranatha believes that the most effective

Christian servant is one who gives himself to the

diligent study of the biblical text itself, especially in the

original languages if at all possible. The rewards of a

thorough academic preparation and continued study

of the Word over a lifetime of ministry are eternal.

Maranatha also believes that the education of a

person in ministry, whether as a vocation or volunteer,

is a continuing process. For that reason, Maranatha

has begun its own Theological Journal to assist

individuals in their ongoing education. The Maranatha

Baptist Theological Journal seeks, therefore, to provide

for the serious student of the Word a continuing series

of articles from which the teacher or preacher may

draw upon for sermon preparation, teaching,

evaluation of theological trends, background

information, proper exegesis, and other areas of

interest and benefit for the ministry. While the

majority of the articles will be written by the

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary faculty

and administration, contributing writers from our

movement will also provide additional articles

periodically.

This initial volume will be different than following

volumes. In this volume, we seek to identify who we

are, by providing you with articles that outline the

primary theological qualifiers of Maranatha. We are a

Baptist institution, thankful for our heritage, and

adhering to a New Testament ecclesiology. We are

fundamentalists, for we believe that there are core


doctrines of Scripture that cannot be compromised

without losing the truth of Scripture and the

confidence of salvation. We are dispensational, which

means that we hold to a literal, or perhaps better

called, a normal interpretation of Scripture. We are

ministry-oriented. All of the academic tools and

positions would be worthless if our students were not

committed to serve in local churches, mission fields,

schools, and other Christian ministries. We are

theologically conservative. The Maranatha Position

Statement that concludes this volume is an extension

and explanation of our doctrinal statement that will

give the reader a clearer understanding of Maranatha‘s

theological positions. We trust that you will be blessed

and challenged as you read this first issue of the

Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal.

Larry R. Oats

Editor

President’s Page

Maranatha has a rich and uncompromising

heritage in Baptist fundamentalism. I came to the

campus as a junior in 1974 with no understanding of

the ancient origins, recent history, or defining

principles of Baptists. I left the campus several years

later to serve the Lord, profoundly appreciative of our

heritage and thoroughly committed to the practice of

Baptist distinctives.

The duty to earnestly contend for the faith once

delivered to the saints is part of Maranatha‘s

institutional fabric. As I continued study in several

other schools, I discovered that the dedication, resolve,

and sacrifices necessary to fundamentalist principles

were lacking. My professors at Maranatha not only

taught the important truth of biblical separation

inherent in fundamentalism, but they were daily living

the principles. These professors could have taught in

other more prestigious schools, but they chose to

minister ―outside the camp‖ in special fellowship with

Christ and following His example. It was apparent to

this young student that it had cost something for them

to serve the Savior in the context of obedient

separation from apostasy and compromise.

One only has to reflect on the name ―Maranatha‖—

Behold, He comes—to know that the College is

committed to a dispensational hermeneutic. The last

stanza of the school hymn reads:


―Maranatha,‖ He cometh! Behold in the sky,

A SHOUT! a VOICE, the TRUMP OF GOD! Our Lord is

drawing nigh!

Believe Him, receive Him, look up and thou shalt be

TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORY with Him eternally!

Church-age believers are looking for His coming in

the Rapture. After that, the Lord will again begin to

deal directly with Israel, keeping His promises to His

chosen nation and completing His plan for her

millennial prominence.

Maranatha recognizes God‘s unique plans for both

Israel and the church. Maranatha‘s mission, defined

by God‘s plan for making Himself known in this

dispensation, is to train leaders for ministry in the

local church and in the world. Preparation for ministry

requires local church involvement, as well as personal

witness to the world in the context of campus

discipleship. Leadership opportunities on campus and

in local church participation, prepare students for

serving the Lord in any life vocation. They learn the

importance of discipline, duty, and deference to others,

as well as the highest values in time and for eternity.

Volume 1 of the Maranatha Baptist Theological

Journal (MBTJ) features four articles. The first three

describe Maranatha‘s foundational distinctives.

Maranatha‘s position theologically is Baptist,

fundamental, and dispensational. The institution‘s

methods and goals for student discipleship are

described in the last article of this volume.

President‘s Page 7

Our hope is that this volume will both inform

readers of Maranatha‘s identity and advance them in

spiritual understanding and Christian living. If these

goals are realized, we will be grateful to the Lord.

Marty Marriott

President

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary

MBTJ 1/1: 9-26

Maranatha is Baptist

David Saxon1

Shortly after arriving to teach at Maranatha

Baptist Bible College in 1999, I heard from one of my

colleagues that he was ―first a Baptist, and second a

fundamentalist.‖ I found that interesting because I had

always formulated my identity in the opposite fashion:

―first a fundamentalist, and second a Baptist.‖ My

reasoning was that one must believe the fundamentals

of the faith before the beliefs that make one a Baptist

even matter. The fundamentals relate to the gospel,

after all. What could be more foundational—

fundamental—than the gospel?

After serving at Maranatha for a number of years

now, I am beginning to understand my colleague‘s

formulation of the question. He is certainly not

suggesting that the Baptist distinctives are more

important, essential, or foundational than the

fundamentals of the faith. They are, however, more

defining. Affirming that one is a fundamentalist

certainly links one with a great and historic tradition

of belief in and defense of the gospel. The New

Testament, however, clearly proclaims that the central

institution in this dispensation for promulgating the

1Dr. Saxon is Professor of Bible at Maranatha Baptist Bible

College and Adjunct Professor of Church History at Maranatha

Baptist Seminary.


gospel is the local church. Saying that one is a

fundamentalist says little about one‘s understanding

of the local church and its purposes. Once one affirms

that he is a Baptist, understood historically, then he

has said a great deal about how he believes God is

working in this dispensation. For us at Maranatha,

being a Baptist includes adherence to the

fundamentals of the faith but adds additional

clarifying information about where we stand and why

we are here.

Maranatha is certainly a fundamentalist institution

and has been throughout its history. Furthermore,

Maranatha is committed to dispensational

hermeneutics. But the designation that made its way

into the very title of the institution is Baptist.

The Importance of Careful Definition

In an age characterized by ecumenical dialog, there

is a prevailing tendency to identify core elements in

one‘s faith that other Christians share and to celebrate

the unanimity that results from focusing on those

doctrines. In the case of organizations like the World

Council of Churches, such a process has led to the

abnegation of doctrinal commitment and the

relativizing of the very concept of truth. The result is a

pluralistic, postmodern religion that rejects the

Scriptures as the authoritative norm for theological

reflection.

Among evangelicals who claim to accept the

binding authority of God‘s Word, the distillation

Maranatha is Baptist 11

process results in different types of organizations and

movements, such as the Evangelical Theological

Society, Together for the Gospel, and the Christian

Coalition. These are three very different

organizations/movements, but each represents a

group of evangelicals who unite around a common

thread of agreement, despite widespread disagreement

in other areas.

Interestingly, fundamentalism is the same kind of

movement. When conservative premillennialists began

gathering at the Niagara Conference in the 1870s, they

exulted in the fact that they represented a wide

spectrum of Protestant denominations in North

America. They were united by their allegiance to the

fundamentals of the faith and the premillennial hope

of Christ‘s return. This limited focus has allowed

fundamentalism to be a transdenominational

movement ever since. When fundamentalists gather as

fundamentalists and for fundamentalist purposes, they

need not agree on non-fundamental issues, such as

church polity or hermeneutics.

For any fundamentalist, regardless of his

denomination, this allegiance to the fundamentals of

the faith is, in some ways, his highest ecclesiastical

allegiance. Before he settled whether or not to immerse

or sprinkle, he had to settle whether or not Jesus

Christ is God. The blood atonement takes precedence

over whether the church answers to the congregation,

the presbytery, or the bishop; i.e., the political

question is of little moment if we have not been

redeemed by the blood of Christ. The fact that the


fundamentals are the heart of the Christian faith and

determine whether or not someone is saved means

that there will always be some level of unity with

anyone who affirms those fundamentals alongside us

and declares his or her readiness to defend them.

Nevertheless, in this process of focusing on the

essential and fundamental and setting aside the

nonessential or non-fundamental lies a genuine

danger. Kevin Bauder, with a different purpose than

that of this article, has leveled a stringent criticism of

fundamentalism that addresses this danger:

―Fundamentalists have displayed a tendency to focus

upon the affirmation of an ever-shrinking list of core

doctrines (and, to be sure, those doctrines deserve

focus) at the expense of neglecting both doctrinal detail

and doctrinal breadth. Because they are cut off from

the Christian past, fundamentalists have little sense of

the extent to which they have truncated the whole

counsel of God.‖2

Once we have affirmed the gospel and the

doctrines that underlie the gospel, namely, the

fundamentals, we still have not said everything that is

important for the work of God in this dispensation.

Maranatha is committed not only to

fundamentalism, but also to the hermeneutic of

dispensationalism and Baptist ecclesiology, primarily

because we believe that the church—the local church,

in particular—is a doctrine of great importance to the

work of God in this dispensation. As Israel was the

2In the Nick of Time, August 21, 2009.


vehicle for divine action in the world during the

dispensation of law, so now God is working through

the local church to call out a people for His name. How

the church is constituted and how it functions are,

therefore, crucial questions that we dare not set aside

as unimportant matters.

Like the Catholics, Presbyterians, and Episco-

palians, Baptists chose their name from an aspect of

their ecclesiology, namely, their commitment to

believer‘s baptism by immersion. I doubt that any

Baptist would affirm belief in NT baptism as his

highest theological commitment, but Baptists chose

this appellation because it pointed to a truth that was

and is constitutive for Baptist churches: the fact that

NT churches are made up of regenerated and

immersed believers, whose one and only true baptism

is that which followed their salvation. The so-called

―Baptist distinctives‖ are basically scriptural

corollaries to this fundamental premise.

How Maranatha Got to This Point

Maranatha‘s history is rooted firmly in northern

Baptist fundamentalism. Her founder and first

president was B. Myron Cedarholm (1915–1997). After

studying at Eastern Baptist Seminary, Cedarholm

served as the pastor of a small Baptist church in

Philadelphia for five years before receiving a call to

serve with the new Conservative Baptist Association of

America in 1947. For three years Cedarholm

functioned as one of the missionary-evangelists of the


organization, and then in 1950 he was elected as the

second national general director. He served as the

general director until leaving the Association in 1965.3

Initially, the CBA of A was committed to preserving

Baptist theology, which, its members believed, was

suffering erosion in the Northern—soon to be

American—Baptist Convention. As CBAmerica

historian Stephen LeBar puts it, ―The very word

‗conservative‘ gives identity to the movement, because

the intent was to conserve (to keep, to retain) the basic

biblical distinctives that have historically distinguished

Baptists as a people of God.‖4 Liberals in the NBC had

been attacking or undermining the gospel since the

founding of the convention in 1907. The great

fundamentalist battles of the 1920s among the

Baptists had related primarily to the liberal assaults

on the fundamentals of the faith. In those battles

Baptists had participated in the great inter-

denominational conservative efforts, such as the

World‘s Christian Fundamentals Association, led by

Minneapolis pastor W. B. Riley, in addition to

distinctively Baptist organizations, such as the

Fundamentalist Fellowship and the Baptist Bible

Union.

3For a convenient survey of Cedarholm‘s life before coming to

Maranatha, see Kim Ledgerwood, Rich in Mercy: Forty Years of God’s Mercy at Maranatha Baptist Bible College (Watertown, WI:

Maranatha Baptist Bible College, 2008), 17–25.

4Stephen LeBar, ―Conservative Baptist Association of America Historical Perspective,‖ 2006, http:// www.cbamerica.org/

documents/history_CBA/CBA%20 Historical%20Perspective.pdf.


While recognizing the value of interdenominational

efforts in certain contexts, the Midwestern Baptists of

the 1940s and 50s believed they needed to carry on

the fight for the gospel within the context of NT—i.e.,

Baptist—ecclesiology. This is noticeable in the first

three ―fundamental principles‖ of the CBA of A listed

by Director Cedarholm, as summarized by LeBar:

1. It was a confessional body, declaring its

fundamental doctrines. However, Cedarholm

went on to say, ―The CBA believes that details

of interpretation and application are the

prerogative of the local church, under the

illumination of the Holy Spirit.‖

2. It was a fellowship of independent churches.

He emphasized that the Association is not a

denomination. It has no power to make

decisions for the churches or to impose

programs upon them. It has no desire to

establish centralized authority, ecclesiastical

connectionalism or dependent organizations

that the churches must support. ―However,

there rightly exists among the churches an

interdependency.‖

3. It had ―no organic relationship to the

organizations which its churches support.‖

Each of the agencies was independent of the

others.5

5Ibid.


The tension that Baptists have always felt between

centralization and autonomy is clearly present here.

The point is this: battling liberalism is important and

can probably be carried out by churches more

effectively if they ally with one another. Nevertheless,

doing church as the NT specifies is nonnegotiable, and

these Baptists insisted that they would not sacrifice

the autonomy of their local assemblies for any larger

purposes.

During Cedarholm‘s tenure as General Secretary of

the CBA of A, the great debate over Billy Graham and

his ecumenical evangelism erupted among the

churches Cedarholm served. The well-documented

rupture of the organization occurred in the early

1960s, with a fundamentalist minority separating from

the Association by 1965.6 Cedarholm clearly sided

with the fundamentalists and resigned that year,

accepting a call from Pillsbury Baptist Bible College to

be its second president.

The Minnesota Baptist Convention, like the

Conservative Baptists, emerged from the NBC,

separating officially in 1946. Ten years later, R. V.

Clearwaters, pastor of Fourth Baptist Church of

Minneapolis, led the MBC to convert Pillsbury

Academy into a Bible college. Pillsbury opened its

doors in 1957 under the leadership of Clearwaters

6For a portrayal of the events from the standpoint of the

evangelical majority, see Bruce Shelley, A History of the Conservative Baptists (Chicago: Conservative Baptist Press,

1981). Accessed at http://www.cbamerica.org/cba_ Resources

/Documents.php.


and, shortly thereafter, Monroe Parker. Both of these

men were also to figure prominently in the

fundamentalist fight in the CBA of A, and both were

warm associates of Myron Cedarholm; therefore,

Pillsbury‘s reason for existence was the desire of

Minnesota Baptists to have a fundamentalist context

for training their young people. The school was equally

committed to fundamentalist separatism and Baptist

ecclesiology.7

Cedarholm‘s presidency of Pillsbury was

numerically successful but featured unfortunate

controversy between Cedarholm and Clearwaters. This

controversy did not relate to theological matters; both

men were staunch Baptists and fundamentalists. In

1968 Cedarholm resigned from Pillsbury and began

Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Watertown,

Wisconsin. Theologically, Maranatha belonged to the

same tradition as Pillsbury and the militants who had

left the CBA of A (who now constituted the

Fundamental Baptist Fellowship). Maranatha existed

because fundamentalists needed Bible colleges, but,

like Pillsbury, it was oriented toward a certain

community within fundamentalism, namely, those

committed to Baptist polity.

This orientation was obvious to the first generation

of students at Maranatha. First, Cedarholm preached

7For an interesting history of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College,

see Jon Pratt, ―Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, A Legacy of Serving the Lord‘s Church: The Story of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College,‖ Vox Ecclesia 6:1 (Feb 2009), 6:2 (Apr 2009), and 6:3 (June 2009). Accessed at http:// edenbaptist.org.


on the local church so often that students‘ Bibles

almost literally fell open to Matthew 16:18. Second, the

academic dean was Richard Weeks, whose enthusiasm

for Baptist history was infectious. His collection of rare

Baptist works still remains a treasure trove for

Maranatha students. Third, the students discovered

that Maranatha‘s focus was unswervingly on local

church ministry. Throughout the school‘s history, the

faculty, staff, and student body have actively engaged

in ministry in the area churches. For his first twenty-

three years in ministry, Cedarholm poured himself into

local churches, and he obviously regarded his work in

higher education—both at Pillsbury and at

Maranatha—as an expansion of that focus rather than

a re-direction or mitigation of it.

Integrally involved in this vision for the local

church is the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

From the beginning, the Baptist insistence that

evangelism is a mandate to the local church to be

carried out through the local church dominated the

philosophy of Cedarholm and Maranatha. The goal of

evangelism is regenerated people, immersed into a

local body of believers, and experiencing discipleship

through the proclamation of the Word.

Thus, while acknowledging that non-Baptist

fundamentalists faithfully win souls and build

churches, Cedarholm and the other early leaders of

Maranatha conceived of every aspect of their ministries

as integrally connected to their identity as Baptists.

Therefore, to say, ―I‘m a Baptist first and a

fundamentalist second,‖ is another way of saying, ―I‘m


never just a fundamentalist; I am always a Baptist

fundamentalist.‖ The NT church is the context in

which the gospel—the fundamentals of the faith—is

lived out.

It is not surprising, then, to discover that these

leaders, especially Richard Weeks, devoted

considerable effort to carefully elucidating exactly what

constitutes a Baptist. What he achieved has become a

distinctive facet of Maranatha‘s ethos.

Maranatha’s Formulation of the Baptist

Distinctives8

Dr. Richard Weeks, Maranatha‘s first academic

dean, was an avid bibliophile and Baptist historian.

Well educated, he had pastored for several years in

Chicago before he went to Pillsbury and then finally to

Maranatha to teach Baptist Polity and Baptist History,

among other classes. Not content with the usual

BAPTIST acrostic for the Baptist distinctives, he began

a study of the various lists of distinctives identified by

a wide variety of Baptist writers—old and new,

northern and southern, American and European, and

especially fundamental Baptists of the early 20th

century. Out of this study he created a list of what he

8The majority of the next section was previously published in

Sunesis, an electronic publication of the Bible faculty of

Maranatha. See ―The Logic of Brapsis2: A More Excellent Way to

Spell Baptist‖ (Summer/Fall 2006) at http://www.mbbc.edu/ page.aspx?m=1490.


viewed to be the key Baptist distinctives, without

trying to force them into an acrostic grid. He also

established an order to these distinctives, considering

not so much that some distinctives are more important

than others, but rather that some distinctives tend to

flow out of other distinctives. The result was

BRAPSIS2. The following paragraphs will not seek to

prove each distinctive scripturally, since such

reasoning is readily available in other Maranatha

publications and, indeed, in any faithful analysis of

Baptist polity. Instead, this discussion will focus on

the logic that drove Dr. Weeks to organize the Baptist

distinctives as he did.

The first distinctive, of course, is ―B—Bible, the

sole authority of faith and practice‖ in the local

church. Other Protestant denominations might object

that they also hold this principle, which, indeed, is

generally regarded by historians as the formal

principle of the Reformation (justification by faith

being the material principle).9 What is distinctive about

Baptist theology is that Baptists regard the New

Testament as the source of their polity and the ruling

authority in their churches. Because the distinctives

are, by definition, ecclesiological and show how

Baptists differ from Protestant denominations, this

first distinctive has the role of establishing that the

9The authority of Scripture is the ―formal‖ principle in the

sense that it establishes the framework within which all the other

advances occurred. Justification by faith is the ―material‖ principle in that it was the main theological issue to be

hammered out.


rest of the points will find their authority in the NT

alone. This claim instantly sets Baptists apart from

Reformed models of the church that look to the Old

Testament and episcopal models that depend on

tradition for their principal authority. Incidentally, this

Baptist claim that the NT is the sole authority for

ecclesiological faith and practice is implicitly

dispensational, since dispensationalists insist that the

church is solely a NT phenomenon. The first and most

important point that Baptists derive from the

Scriptures regarding the local church is the makeup of

its constituency: ―R—a regenerated and immersed

church membership.‖ At a stroke, this thoroughly

biblical assertion rules out pedobaptism, the parish

church structure, and the state churches that

constituted Christendom from the fourth century until

modern times. If the church is made up only of

believers—those who have consciously chosen Jesus

Christ as their Savior—then the local church is

obligated to reflect as accurately as humanly possible

the body of Christ. Thus Baptist churches accept into

their membership only those who have professed both

by word and by scriptural baptism that they belong to

Christ. If ―B‖ is the formal principle of the Baptist

distinctives, consider that ―R‖ is the material principle;

that is, each of the remaining distinctives flows

logically out of the concept of the church as reflected

in the NT: a body of visible, baptized believers.

Can such a body answer to any authority outside

itself other than Christ? Can the local assembly guard

its purity if it answers to a human authority such as a


bishop or a presbytery? Baptists say no, affirming ―A—

the autonomy of the local church.‖ Baptists do not

deny the kinds of fellowship, cooperation, and

fraternity between local churches that are

demonstrable from the NT, but they recognize in each

local assembly the right and responsibility to carefully

guard its own purity. The purity of the church is the

corollary of the immediate headship of Christ over the

assembly. In other words, the stubborn Baptist

insistence on autonomous churches is just another

way of saying the ―submission of the local church is to

Christ alone as its Head.‖ Viewed in this way, it is easy

to see that ―P—the priesthood of the believer‖ is the

personal application of the principle implicit in the

autonomy of the church. Just as local churches

cannot be made to answer to manmade institutions,

such as the papacy, other episcopal overlords, or

extra-church presbyteries, so the individual believer

within the context of the local assembly answers to

Christ alone. We do not need the church to give us

authorized interpretations of Scripture or a priest to

hear our confession or dispense grace to us, and we

ourselves exercise the ministry of reconciliation. In

short, we do not need a priest because we are priests.

Can such a principle have even wider application?

Is there a sense in which every man answers directly

to Christ rather than to some ecclesiastical authority?

If, in fact, every man will stand individually before God

and give an account, then it necessarily follows that

each man is personally responsible for his own beliefs.

Baptists have historically defended the ―S—soul


liberty‖ right of every man to enjoy the freedom to

determine his own religious beliefs. No room exists in

such a view for coercion of religious persuasions or

ecclesiastical activities or for persecution of any sort.

The Baptist struggle for religious liberty is a glorious

theme in church history. It is remarkable that a great

many Baptists have paid the ultimate price for their

convictions while at the same time staunchly

defending the soul liberty of the very ones that were

persecuting them.

The final three distinctives in Dr. Weeks‘ list do not

connect as obviously to the previous four, but they are

important components of the Baptist witness. Having

already affirmed that only immersed believers belong

in the church, BRAPSIS2 now argues that Baptists are

not sacramentalists: they believe in only the two

ordinances commanded by Christ in the NT: hence,

―I—Immersion and the Lord‘s Supper, the only two

ordinances.‖ Of course, one must flesh out this

distinctive quite a bit to make it truly descriptive of the

Baptist position. By insisting that baptism is

immersion and only immersion, Baptists are tacitly

arguing that baptism is symbolic only, not

sacramental. How one performs baptism conveys the

symbolism the NT intends by the rite. Baptists believe

that the crucial fact about baptism is its ability to

picture the believer‘s death, burial, and resurrection

with Christ. When churches alter the mode of baptism,

they not only disobey the express command of Christ

(who, after all, said to ―baptize,‖ a Greek word that

clearly means to immerse) but also destroy the


symbolism of what the NT intends to be simply a

symbol. While some sacramentalists have immersed

(such as the Greek Orthodox), few have insisted on

immersion because the sacramental churches regard

the rite itself, not the symbolism of the rite, as the

crucial thing. Baptists react strongly against any

attempt to associate spiritual transactions with

physical or ecclesiastical activities. Here, perhaps, is

the connection with the previous distinctive. Each soul

is answerable directly to God; that is a fundamentally

spiritual assertion. External acts, such as the

ordinances and ecclesiastical affiliations, reflect or

perhaps symbolize spiritual realities, but they do not

create or sustain those realities.

Such reasoning naturally also leads Baptists to

understand the Lord‘s Supper symbolically as well.

Communion with Christ is not conveyed in some

special way by the physical activity. Dr. Weeks closed

his list with the two varieties of separation that should

result if one takes the previous six distinctives

seriously. Before this article addresses them, however,

note that the acrostic does not assert that Baptists

have only two offices. Dr. Weeks certainly believed in

only two offices, and the Baptist Heritage class at

Maranatha incorporates the belief in the two offices of

pastor and deacon in the lecture on the autonomy of

the local assembly. Historically, however, some

Baptists adopted the Reformed belief in ruling elders

who are distinct from the pastoral office. Today, some

Baptist churches are employing this Reformed model;

others are urging a plurality of elders but insist that


the pastor and elders have the same office though

sometimes varying levels of practical authority. In any

event, Dr. Weeks believed it historically inaccurate to

say that Baptists were distinguished by a belief in two

offices, and therefore he did not include this point in

BRAPSIS2. This is yet another indication that Dr.

Weeks‘ acrostic was carefully designed with both

historical and theological factors in mind.

It is interesting that Dr. Weeks believed that both

―S1—Separation of Church and State‖ and ―S2—

Separation: Ethically and Ecclesiastically‖ are Baptist

distinctives. The first of these points, which flows

logically out of the Baptist belief in soul liberty, is

undisputed and remains a magnificent contribution of

the Baptist churches to modern Western civilization.

Dr. Weeks also taught that Baptists are intrinsically

separationists. Given the substantial number of

Baptists in church history who have failed to maintain

either ecclesiastical or personal separation, one can

imagine this point in BRAPSIS2 facing significant

challenge. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical separation is the

necessary corollary of belief in autonomous churches,

and ethical separation is the biblical outworking of the

priesthood of the believer. It is interesting that since

1930, the large majority of fundamentalists have been

Baptist. As noted earlier, fundamentalism is defined by

the doctrines essential to gospel proclamation and

thus necessarily spans conservative denominations;

perhaps, though, the separation that has defined the

fundamentalist movement finds its most natural

affinity to Baptist ecclesiology. In short, Dr. Weeks‘


inclusion of separation, while controversial, may itself

provide an interesting insight not only into our

distinctiveness as Baptists but also our identity as

Baptist fundamentalists.

Conclusion

Maranatha views its historic commitment to being

Baptist as a commitment to the NT model of the

church. We value our non-Baptist brethren,

particularly those committed to fundamentalism, and

appreciate their contributions to the work of Christ.

Nevertheless, we are convinced that to the degree that

we successfully inculcate NT teachings into our

students, to that same degree those students will

choose to be Baptists.

This is a day in which many eschew labels and

regard them as unnecessarily divisive. We, however, do

not know of any other effective way of proclaiming our

adherence to the polity of the NT as it has been

understood historically by Baptists than by

proclaiming ourselves Baptists; and we do not hesitate

to align ourselves with the glorious history of men and

women who ministered, suffered, and sometimes died,

not for the label, but for the biblical truths the label

communicates.

Maranatha is Fundamentalist

Dr. Fred Moritz1

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary was

born in a theological tradition of fundamentalist,

Baptist, separatist, dispensationalist theology. My

assigned task is to speak about Maranatha as a

fundamentalist school. Others will write articles

dealing with other distinctive positions.

As far as we know, the term ―fundamentalist‖ was

coined by Curtis Lee Laws. The Fundamental

Fellowship within the Northern Baptist Convention

met for the first time in 1920 at the Delaware Avenue

Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York. After that

meeting Laws, editor of the Watchman Examiner, wrote

stating: ―We suggest that those who still cling to the

great fundamentals and who mean to do battle royal

for the fundamentals shall be called

‗Fundamentalists.‘‖2

Blaine Myron Cedarholm (1915–1997) founded and

served as the first president of Maranatha. Dr.

Cedarholm ministered out of the fundamentalist

1Dr. Fred Moritz was formerly the Executive Director of the

Baptist World Mission and is currently Professor of Systematic Theology, Maranatha Baptist Seminary.

2Larry D. Pettegrew, ―Will The Real Fundamentalist Please Stand Up?‖ Central Testimony (Fall 1982): 1, 2.


theological conviction that the Bible is the Word of God

and that those who believe it must ―earnestly contend

for the faith‖ (Jude 3). Cedarholm was the son of an

early fundamentalist preacher. His father, Anton

Cedarholm, had ministered as a singer for Evangelist

Dr. R. A. Torrey. He later served the Burton Avenue

Baptist Church in Waterloo, Iowa, as pastor. Through

his radio and pastoral ministry the church experienced

God‘s blessings.3

B. Myron Cedarholm was educated at the

University of Minnesota, Eastern Baptist Theological

Seminary, and Princeton Seminary. After a successful

five-year pastorate at the Lehigh Avenue Baptist

Church in Philadelphia, he was called to serve as an

evangelist with and then become the General Director

of the Conservative Baptist Association of America.

From 1947 through 1965 the association, during Dr.

Cedarholm‘s tireless and dynamic ministry, grew from

one hundred churches to 1800 in the fellowship.

Maranatha‘s founder began his ministry in the

framework of the Northern Baptist Convention, and he

left over the theological liberalism that pervaded the

convention and auxiliary organizations. He then

devoted eighteen years to the CBA of A and then

severed his connections to that movement because of

the compromises of ecumenical evangelism and the

New Evangelicalism. Throughout his ministry he

maintained a testimony of absolute fidelity to the Word

3http://familyaltarbroadcast.com/anton.html accessed July

30, 2010.

Maranatha is Fundamentalist 29

of God and the biblical fundamentals that provide the

framework for fundamentalism. He believed the

fundamentals, and in the words of Curtis Lee Laws, he

did ―battle royal‖ for them throughout his ministry.

I was a nine-year-old boy when Dr. and Mrs.

Cedarholm first came to our church for a Sunday

evening service. I still have the volume on Baptist

history that he gave me just before I enrolled at

Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in 1959. He later offered

advice about the choice of a seminary when I was a

junior in college. That advice has positively affected the

course of my entire ministry. He often served as a

trusted counselor when I was a pastor. We served

together in the ministry of Baptist World Mission. His

influence, advice, and convictions were positive and

godly. He evidenced a passion to glorify God and to

advance His work around the world through the

preaching of the gospel and the planting of local

churches. I thank the Lord for Dr. Cedarholm‘s godly

influence as a fundamentalist, Baptist, dispensa-

tionalist, and separatist leader.

Fundamentalism as a movement has not been

static. Many changes have occurred in doctrinal and

practical emphasis over the years. Some of these

changes have occurred because new attacks on

Scripture arose and new forms of compromise

developed. Some of these developments have been

positive, and others have been negative. The purpose

of this article is to describe the historical

framework in which fundamentalism developed

and to understand the nature of the movement.


Maranatha unashamedly self-identifies as an

institution of higher learning within the

framework of historic fundamentalism.

It is impossible to fully understand what

fundamentalism is and how it came about until we

understand the historical setting in which it

developed. In order to accomplish this task, it will be

necessary to at least sketch the development of

theological liberalism because that movement provided

the backdrop of attacks on Scripture against which

fundamentalism arose and developed.

The Rise of Liberalism

Theological liberalism appeared as a movement in

the middle of the 19th century. A survey of the history

makes it clear that this denial of Scripture began to

develop about two centuries earlier.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)

Spinoza was a Portuguese Jew who was born in

Amsterdam. He grew up with a Jewish education, but

was expelled from the Jewish community in

Amsterdam in 1656.4

His philosophy is important because his ―extremely

naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being,

and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy

4Steven Nadler, ―Baruch Spinoza‖ in Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy (2005), 2. Accessed at http://plato.stanford.edu/

entries/spinoza, May 14, 2008.


centered on the control of the passion leading to virtue

and happiness. They also lay the foundations for a

strongly democratic political thought and a deep

critique of the pretensions of Scripture and sectarian

religion.‖5

Spinoza‘s philosophy contained the seeds of the

rational theological liberalism that later developed. He

almost equated nature with God. ―Spinoza could be

read as trying either to divinize nature or to naturalize

God.‖6 His critics called his positional view of God

―atheistic materialism.‖7 He also placed great emphasis

on human reason. He reacted against the power

exercised in governments by religious authorities and

saw the clergy as ambitious and self-serving, desiring

to control their followers. He also reacted against the

support that civil governments gave to religious

authorities.

Spinoza also adopted an apostate view of the Bible.

He denied that the Bible is a revelation from God, but

instead argued that it is a source of natural truth,

saying it only teaches a simple, moral message: love

your neighbor. He accused Bible believers of idolatry

and worshiping words on a page. He denied that God

had any special place in His plan for Israel. He viewed

Scripture as strictly a product of history, not as a

supernatural revelation from God. He denied that

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible and that

5Ibid., 1.

6Ibid., 6.

7Ibid., 9.


the prophets predicted the future. He held that a later

scribe (perhaps Ezra) compiled the entire Old

Testament from existing records. Further, Spinoza

denied that miracles ever occurred.8

Spinoza lived 200 years before the formal

appearance of theological liberalism, but this brief

survey establishes that his teachings advocated ideas

which later developed into the full system of liberalism.

It is also easy to see the seeds of the movement later

known as secular humanism in Spinoza‘s thinking.

Spinoza‘s ethic (―love your neighbor‖) also appears in

John Hick‘s approach to pluralism.

Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791)

Semler was a German church historian and

biblical critic.

He was the first to reject with sufficient proof

the equal value of the Old and the New Testaments,

the uniform authority of all parts of the Bible, the

divine authority of the traditional canon of

Scripture, the inspiration and supposed correctness

of the text of the Old and New Testaments, and,

generally, the identification of revelation with

Scripture. . . . He led the way in the task of

discovering the origin of the Gospels, the Epistles,

the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse. He

revived previous doubts as to the direct Pauline

origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews, called in

question Peter's authorship of the first epistle, and

8Ibid., 19–23.


referred the second epistle to the end of the 2nd

century. He wished to remove the Apocalypse

altogether from the canon. In textual criticism

Semler pursued further the principle of classifying

MSS in families, adopted by R. Simon and J. A.

Bengel.9

Jonathan Edwards’ Early Alarm

Edwards (1703–1758) is best known as one of the

leaders of the Great Awakening in America. This

revival occurred in 1734–35 and again in 1740–43.

George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent were also

greatly used as preachers during these movements of

the Spirit of God.

Edwards is also remembered as one of America‘s

greatest theologians. It is most interesting to note that

Jonathan Edwards saw the beginnings of liberalism at

this time and viewed their development with alarm.

Near the end of his life, he wrote against a

philosophical skepticism that he saw coming to

prominence. ―The crucial issue was the widely popular

idea that reason should be the judge of revelation.‖10

This was the application of the Enlightenment to

matters of religion and theology.

Edwards grounded his preaching, theology, and

writing in Scripture. His view of Scripture and God‘s

9―Johann Salomo Semler‖ http://www.1911 encyclopedia.

org/Johann_Salomo_ Semler. Accessed May 9, 2008.

10George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, A Life (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2003), 476.

http://www.1911/


works in creation was that ―each was ‗a system‘ and

‗the voice of God to intelligent creatures.‘ Each pointed

to the mysteries of God‘s ‗unsearchable wisdom.‘ Yet

each was also intended to be a guide to rational

creatures.‖ Edwards understood that God gave

Scripture for the purpose of revealing Himself and

truth to mankind. He further ―tried to view Scripture

from God‘s perspective, as intricately designed . . . to

reveal the great end of creation, God‘s redemptive

love.‖11

The religious developments that alarmed Edwards

were markedly different than his view of Scripture as

God‘s Word and revelation to the human race. The

critics against whom Edwards wrote advocated ―that

Scripture was to be interpreted like other books‖ and

was ―most essentially a product of human history.‖12

Critics were, as early as Edward‘s time, arguing that

Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible,

and they were attacking the reliability of the Gospel

accounts of Christ‘s resurrection.13

Edwards recognized that if the Bible was a product

of history and not a result of God‘s revelation, then

there would be no absolute authority for human

conduct. ―Christian revelation would be dissolved into

cultural relativism.‖14

11Ibid., 478–79.

12Ibid., 480.

13Ibid.

14Ibid., 487.


It is important for us to understand this because

the themes of theological liberalism were present fifty

to one hundred years before they coalesced and

became widely known.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834)

Schleiermacher, a German theologian, preacher,

and classical philologist, is generally recognized as the

founder of modern Protestant theology. His major

work, Der christliche Glaube (1821–22; 2nd ed. 1831;

The Christian Faith), is a systematic interpretation of

Christian dogmatics.15

One of the first things we must understand about

Schleiermacher is his view of religion. He believed that

the essence of religion consists ―primarily in feeling;

belief and action are secondary.‖16 Religion was

―basically a feeling of dependence upon God.‖17 Even

the neo-orthodox theologians said that ―Schleiermacher

led the great defection whereby liberal theology

focused on human potentiality and religiosity at the

expense of God's own reality, majesty, and grace.‖18

15―Friedrich Schleiermacher,‖ http://www.britannica.

com/eb/article-9066148/ Friedrich-Schleirmacher. Accessed May

31, 2008.

16―Friedrich Schleiermacher,‖ http://www.island-of-freedom.

com/SCHLEIER.HTM. Accessed May 31 2008.

17Ernest Pickering, Biblical Separation, The Struggle for A Pure Church, 2nd ed. (Schaumburg, IL: Regular Baptist Press, 2008),

83.

18―Friedrich Schleiermacher.‖


Some of his most destructive work to biblical faith

was done in his writings on hermeneutics—the science

of biblical interpretation. ―Friedrich Schleiermacher is

usually regarded as the first scholar to insist that

biblical hermeneutics must be part of a general theory

of understanding.‖19

He questioned and denied the inspiration and

supernatural character of the Bible.

Given the great variety of ideas of inspiration, it

is best, first of all, to test what sort of consequences

the strictest idea leads to, i.e. the idea that the

power of the spirit extends from the inception of the

thought to the act of writing itself. Due to the

variants, this no longer helps us. . . . If one then

asks why the Scriptures did not arise in a totally

miraculous way without the involvement of

humans, we must answer that the divine spirit can

have chosen the method it did only if it wanted

everything traced back to the declared author.

Therefore, this interpretation must be correct. The

same point holds with respect to the grammatical

side. But then every element must be treated as

purely human, and the action of the Spirit was only

to produce the inner impulse.‖20 [Emphasis mine.]

He denied that Scripture universally applies to all

people. ―But for this reason we must not suppose that

19Moises Silva, ―Has the Church Misread the Bible?‖ in

Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation, ed. Moises Silva

(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 20, n.7.

20Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, ―General Theory and Art of Interpretation‖ in The Hermeneutics Reader, ed. Kurt Mueller-

Vollmer (New York: Continuum, 2000), 78.


their writings were addressed to all of Christendom. . .

. Whether the view that everything in the Scriptures

was inspired means that everything must relate to the

whole church? No.‖21

I must pause here to say that this liberalism that

denied the supernatural character of Scripture and

approached it from an experience orientation survives

to this day, and sometimes in the most surprising of

contexts. A few years ago I taught a course entitled

―History of Fundamentalism‖ to a group of Kenyan

pastors near Nairobi. When the preceding quotations

from Schleiermacher were read to those pastors, they

―pounced‖ on those statements and related that this is

exactly the rationale that charismatics in Kenya use to

justify allowing women in the ministry. The

charismatics allege that Paul did not write 1 Timothy 2

for the entire church, but only to address a specific

situation in Ephesus.

Wayne Grudem documents this same point in

Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth.22 In Chapters

3–12 he deals extensively with 118 different arguments

the feminists/egalitarians use to advocate their

position. There are two major issues that lie at the

heart of this debate. Grudem deals with the first issue

in Chapter 9, entitled, ―Evangelical Feminist Claims

About How to Interpret and Apply the Bible.‖ I was

amazed to read some of the interpretive approaches to

21Ibid., 80.

22Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth

(Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2004).


Scripture that the egalitarians use. They contend that

Moses, Paul, and other biblical writers used language

that reflected patriarchal and Greek cultures. They fail

to acknowledge that God inspired that language.

Some, including Walter Kaiser, try to prove that 1

Corinthians 14:34, 35 ―are not Paul‘s words, but are a

quotation from the Corinthians that Paul rejects.‖23

Hermeneutics has been a great debate in the

theological world for several years. The humanistic

idea that we must interpret Scripture no differently

than any other work of literature is at least as old as

Schleiermacher. Some Evangelicals are affirming that

position today. The hermeneutical approach of the

egalitarians often reflects that philosophy, and it

should cause alarm to Bible believers.

Karl Heinrich Graf (1815–1869) and Julius Wellhausen

(1844–1918)

Graf and Wellhausen‘s theory, also known as

―higher criticism,‖ was the final development that gave

shape to the idea we know as theological liberalism.

Judaism and Christianity had historically accepted the

fact that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible

and recognized that someone had been inspired by the

Holy Spirit to write Deuteronomy 34, which is the

story of Moses‘ death. He would not have been present

to write that! But none of these discussions and

questions raised any doubt about Moses being the

author of the five books. The Graf-Wellhausen theory

23Ibid., 238.


―grew out of a movement to find rationalistic, natural

explanations for the biblical text. Once one assumes

that supernatural revelation cannot occur, any other

explanation must take precedent.‖24

The Graf-Wellhausen theory developed over several

years. Jean Astruc, a French physician, argued that

two different names for God are used in Genesis

Chapters 1 and 2. In 1753 he wrote a work entitled

Conjectures in which he proposed the idea that two

authors, using the two different names for God, wrote

the separate chapters.25 Others took this theory and

added the idea that there was a ―priestly‖ writer and

also a separate writer for Deuteronomy. Thus the

theory became known as the JEDP theory. Not only

did these ideas deny that Moses wrote the Pentateuch,

but they also placed the dates for the Pentateuch

much later than is normally accepted. Graf brought

these developments together in his book The Historical

Books of the Old Testament, which was published in

1866.26 Wellhausen is the man who popularized these

views and wrote Prolegomena to the History of Israel in

1878. Others later developed the theory that Isaiah did

not write the entire book that bears his name, but that

two, or possibly three, or even four different authors

24Don Closson, ―Did Moses Write the Pentateuch?‖

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/moses.html, 3.

Accessed May 31, 2008.

25Colin Smith, ―Critical Assessment of the Graf-Wellhausen

Documentary Hypothesis,‖ http://vintage. aomin.org/JEDP.html 2002, 1. Accessed May 31, 2008.

26Ibid., 2.


wrote that book. Others asserted that Daniel was not

written during Israel‘s captivity, but after.

It is significant to note that Charles Darwin‘s book

The Origin of the Species was published in 1859 at the

very time this theory was being fully developed and

becoming popular. Sometimes one will read about

―historical consciousness,‖ which ―can thus be defined

as individual and collective understandings of the

past, the cognitive and cultural factors which shape

those understandings, as well as the relations of

historical understandings to those of the present and

the future.‖27 This theory holds that all we understand

about history (and biblical history in this instance) is

limited by the cultural factors in which people live and

function. This theory would naturally deny the reality

of revelation from God, and it would deny the

possibility of supernatural occurrences.

The resultant theological liberalism rests on

several philosophical presuppositions.

1. As noted above, it was an attempt to find

rational, natural explanations for the biblical

text.28

27―Definition of Historical Consciousness,‖ http://

www.cshc.ubc.ca/about.php. Accessed September 1, 2010.

28This is another of mankind‘s deliberate attempts to deny

God‘s revelation and reject His authority over their lives. It is a reflection of the Bible indictment of man‘s sin as recorded in

Romans 1:18–32.


2. This denies the idea that God created the

world by a direct act.

3. It denies the idea that the Bible is a revelation

from God. It is a repudiation of biblical

inspiration and authority.

4. It also attacks the validity of the supernatural

and of miracles.

5. It reduces Scripture to an account of how

man‘s religious thinking developed in an

evolutionary manner. It was built on the

assumption ―that religions move from a

primitive to a more advanced form over

time.‖29

6. Its result is to destroy the Bible as a standard

for human conduct. According to this theory,

The Ten Commandments and all other biblical

teaching simply reflect man‘s moral standards

at any given time in history. The same would

be the case for Old Testament and New

Testament pronouncements against homo-

sexuality or Paul‘s statements about women

in local church leadership roles.

7. It was an attack on both the Old and New

Testaments. The Graf-Wellhausen theory

centered on Old Testament studies and

popularized the movement. The earlier works

of Semler, Baur, and Strauss mounted a

similar attack on the New Testament. The

29Rick Simonsen, ―History of Fundamentalism‖ (Thika,

Kenya: Independent Baptist Graduate Bible Institute, 1996), 2.


work of Schleirmacher attacked Scripture on

the basis of hermeneutics, or how we interpret

the Bible.

This is a brief sketch of theological liberalism as it

developed from Spinoza to the mid-nineteenth century.

It was against the onslaught of these denials of

Scripture that fundamentalism developed and against

this philosophy that so many Bible believers stood.

Before leaving this part of our discussion, we

should note that liberalism gave rise to a new

movement after World War I known as Neo-Orthodoxy.

That movement was characterized by the teachings of

Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul

Tillich, C. H. Dodd, and others. Barth‘s theology ―came

to be known as ‗dialectical theology,‘ or ‗the theology of

crisis‘; it blossomed into a school of theology known as

neo-orthodoxy, which influenced theology for decades

and included thinkers like Emil Brunner and Reinhold

Niebuhr. Many Catholic theologians (like Hans Küng)

and evangelical theologians (like Donald Bloesch) have

acknowledged Barth's key influence on them.‖30

We do not devote attention to Neo-Orthodoxy in

this article because this movement evolved after

fundamentalism began to develop. Fundamentalists

withstood and exposed the errors of Neo-Orthodoxy,

but it developed after fundamentalism began to take

form.

30http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2000/issue65/5.23.html.

Accessed September 1, 2010.


The Birth of Fundamentalism

Throughout history God has raised up believers

who trust His Word and stand for it against the tide of

unbelief. He did that work as liberal theology made its

inroads in churches and schools. That phenomenon

took place on both sides of the Atlantic.

Fundamentalism, as a defined movement, arose in the

1870s as a reaction against theological liberalism. The

designations ―fundamental‖ and ―fundamentalist‖ are

of uniquely American origin, but the same spirit of

loyalty to God‘s Word and willingness to defend the

faith was apparent in Europe as well.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The most famous instance of one defending the

faith in Europe was the ―Downgrade Controversy‖ in

England. Charles Haddon Spurgeon led the defense of

the faith and fought the battle almost by himself.

Spurgeon saw the inroads of liberalism in the Baptist

Union of Great Britain. In 1887 he published two

articles in The Sword and Trowel, a paper that he

published from the Metropolitan Tabernacle in

London. In the articles he alleged that men in the

Baptist Union were going to ―downgrade‖ or leave the

―higher ground‖ of ―faith in the inspired Word of God

and the fundamental doctrines therein presented.

They were accepting lower, more humanistic views of


Scripture.‖31 Dallimore characterized Spurgeon‘s

attitude toward the inroads of the higher criticism and

evolution as ―militant opposition.‖32

Up to this time the Baptist Union had no formal

doctrinal statement, so Spurgeon publically called for

the Baptist Union to adopt a statement of faith that

clearly stated evangelical doctrine. He further urged

the Baptist Union to stipulate that a church or

individual must subscribe to that statement to

continue membership.33

The Baptist Union avoided the issue in their

meeting that fall at Sheffield, England. Thus, on

October 28, 1887, Spurgeon resigned his membership

in the Baptist Union. In his resignation letter he wrote:

―It is our solemn conviction that where there can be no

real spiritual communion there should be no pretence

of fellowship. Fellowship with known and vital error is

participation in sin.‖34

On April 23, 1888, the Union met again. More than

2000 attendees voted on a resolution that was

designed to appease the liberals and the Bible

believers, but the resolution amounted to a

repudiation of Spurgeon. The record is that more than

31Ernest Pickering, Biblical Separation: The Struggle for A Pure

Church, 2nd ed. (Schaumburg, IL: Regular Baptist Press, 2008),

88.

32Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of

Truth Trust, 1988), 203.

33Ibid., 205.

34Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Carlisle, PA: The

Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), 150.


2000 voted for the resolution and only seven voted to

support Spurgeon.35 Many of those who voted to

repudiate Spurgeon were graduates of his college or

pastors whom he had helped in some way. The

historical account records that there was great

cheering when the vote was recorded. It is often very

difficult to stand for truth, and many times we must

stand alone, or practically alone.

Fundamentalism as a Movement

Some ―historians believe the birth of

fundamentalism could be set at 1876. It was in 1876

that an interdenominational Bible conference met at

Swampscott, Massachusetts, to discuss the rising tide

of modernism. This was only the beginning of a series

of Bible conferences that ran throughout the late

1800s.‖36 This original Bible conference changed

locations several times and settled in New York. It

became known as the Niagara Bible Conference. In

1878 those attending this conference published a

confession that listed fourteen biblical teachings as

―fundamental‖ to biblical Christianity:

1. The verbal, plenary inspiration of the

Scriptures in the original manuscripts

35Pickering, 88–90; Dallimore, 210–212; Murray, 155, 156.

36Larry Harriman, ―How We Came to Be Where We Are Today,‖http://ifbreformation.org/OriginsofIBFs.aspx#C5.

Accessed June 2, 2008.


2. The Trinity

3. The creation of man, his fall into sin, and his

total depravity

4. The universal transmission of spiritual death

from Adam

5. The necessity of the new birth

6. Redemption by the blood of Christ

7. Salvation by faith alone in Christ

8. The assurance of salvation

9. The centrality of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures

10. The constitution of the true church by genuine

believers

11. The personality of the Holy Spirit

12. The believer‘s call to a holy life

13. The immediate passing of the souls of believers

to be with Christ at death

14. The premillennial Second Coming of Christ37

From this beginning, further revisions emerged.

The most well-known listing is the famous ―five

fundamentals,‖ which are commonly cited today. At

the beginning the ―five fundamentals‖ included:

1. The inerrancy of Scripture

2. The virgin birth of Christ

3. The substitutionary atonement of Christ

4. The bodily resurrection of Christ

37David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity: American Funda-

mentalism Since 1850 (Greenville, SC: Unusual Publications,

1986), 375–79.


5. The authenticity of miracles38

―Later fundamentalists usually combined number

five with one of the first four and included some

statement on the second coming of Christ.‖39

Fundamentalism as a movement developed in several

ways. The Bible conference movement flourished in the

United States. In addition to the Niagara Bible

Conference were D. L. Moody‘s Northfield,

Massachusetts, conference; R. A. Torrey‘s conference

at Montrose, Pennsylvania; the Gull Lake and

Maranatha conferences in Michigan; the Winona Lake

Bible Conference and Cedar Lake Conference in

Indiana; and Mount Hermon in California. These

conferences and others were founded as places to

teach and preach the Word of God and to emphasize

the fundamentals of Scripture.

Fundamentalists also published literature to

promote the cause of biblical Christianity. Moody Bible

Institute began a printing ministry in 1894. That

ministry published Moody Monthly magazine for many

years and still prints books and Christian literature as

Moody Press.

The Scofield Reference Bible was first published in

1909. This study Bible presented and popularized

dispensationalism. Speaking in 1990 at a World

Congress of Fundamentalists meeting in London,

38Larry D. Pettegrew, ―Will the Real Fundamentalist Please

Stand Up?‖ Central Testimony (Fall 1982): 1, 2.

39Ibid.


Stewart Custer observed that by popular usage the

Scofield Bible became the de facto Bible of fundamen-

talism. This study Bible is still printed and used, and

for at least fifty years it was the most commonly used

Bible by American Bible believers.

The Fundamentals was a twelve-volume series

issued by the Testimony Publishing Company between

1910 and 1915. This was a compilation of articles on

major biblical themes. It covered doctrinal issues like

the inspiration of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the

reality of miracles, the testimony of Christ to the Old

Testament, sin, eternal judgment, and justification.

A number of publishing houses began during this

era. These companies printed many books and

commentaries for those who believed the Word of God.

These included Zondervan, Eerdmans, Baker,

Dunham, and several others.

Fundamentalists reacted against the liberalism in

denominational schools. The result was the founding

of many Bible institutes and colleges across the

nation. Most of these were independent of any

denominational control. Some (such as Gordon and

Northwestern) were founded under the auspices of a

local church, with the pastor serving as president. The

following list is a sample and cites only some of the

most prominent of the schools.

1. A. B. Simpson was the founder of the

Christian and Missionary Alliance, which

was a fellowship of churches. He also

founded a Bible institute in 1872, known


today as Nyack College, the first of the

fundamentalist schools.40 This school was

never strongly identified with fundamen-

talism, though its doctrine was evangelical.41

2. D. L. Moody founded Moody Bible Institute

in Chicago in 1886.

3. In 1889 A. J. Gordon founded a Bible

institute in Boston that now bears his name

— Gordon College.

4. Northwestern Schools were founded by

William Bell Riley in Minneapolis in 1902.

5. The Bible Institute of Los Angeles was

founded in 1908, and in 1912 R. A. Torrey

became its first dean.

6. Dallas Theological Seminary was founded in

1924 under the leadership of Lewis Sperry

Chafer.

7. Bob Jones, Sr. founded Bob Jones College

(now Bob Jones University) in 1927 as part

of the same fundamentalist protest against

liberalism.

Some schools were also founded within

denominational frameworks as protests against the

liberalism in the denominations.

The Northern Baptist Convention was founded in

1907. Prior to that time the Baptist churches in the

40Beale, 89.

41From a personal conversation with historian Robert Delnay,

June 5, 2008.


north were independent, being affiliated with local and

state associations, and loosely bound together on a

national level by mutual interests in schools, mission

boards, and publishing houses. The ―architect‖ of the

Northern Convention was Shailer Matthews, a liberal

theologian and dean of the school of religion at the

University of Chicago. The Bible-believing churches

across the northern U.S. were deceived into joining the

convention, which was under the control of liberals

from the day it was born.

Most of the schools that became part of the

Northern Baptist Convention were either liberal or

heavily influenced by liberals. Bible believers were

concerned about trends in the convention and tried to

get control of it from the liberals. As part of that

attempt they began some new schools that were

committed to the inspiration and authority of

Scripture. Northern Baptist Theological Seminary was

founded in 1913 in Chicago. Some noteworthy

fundamentalist graduates of Northern were R. V.

Clearwaters, George Carlson, Robert Delnay, and

Richard Weeks. Well-known New Evangelical

graduates were Carl Henry (who later taught there)

and Warren Wiersbe. Eastern Baptist Theological

Seminary was founded in Philadelphia in 1925. As

previously noted, B. Myron Cedarholm graduated from

Eastern. Both of these schools have since left

fundamentalism. In 1927 the Baptist Bible Union

gained control of Des Moines University in Iowa. The

school struggled and folded in 1929.


Within Presbyterianism, Westminster Seminary

was formed in 1929 as a theologically orthodox school

within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Westminster‘s founding took place after the battle over

liberalism and biblical Christianity at Princeton

Seminary.42

Identifying Fundamentalism

This study leads us to the task of identifying what

fundamentalism was in its genesis. What was it that

the Bible believers from the 1870s stood for and

believed? What drove them and motivated them to take

the stand they took, pay the price they paid, and found

the institutions they brought into being? What

distinctive coalesced into the movement that Curtis

Lee Laws dubbed as ―fundamentalism?‖ What was the

fundamentalism to which R. A. Torrey, Anton

Cedarholm, and later B. Myron Cedarholm

subscribed?

A Theological Component

We cannot consider the history that led to

fundamentalism without understanding that theology

was at the heart of the nascent and then the fully

developed fundamentalism. The foundational doctrine

of the movement was certainly Bibliology. Modernism

42George W. Dollar, A History of Fundamentalism in America

(Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1973), 88.


had attacked the Bible, and the fundamentalists boldly

affirmed the supernatural character of God‘s Word.

Beyond that, fundamentalists subscribed to a fairly

comprehensive, commonly held body of doctrine. This

fact is substantiated by the fourteen points in the

Niagara statement and the broad spectrum of doctrinal

themes that were articulated in The Fundamentals.

Men and institutions who believed that the Bible was

the Word of God reacted when that faith was attacked

by scholars and leaders who had become apostate.

They formulated statements of doctrine to which they

could mutually subscribe. They wrote to enunciate

and defend biblical doctrines. They built churches,

schools, and mission agencies to perpetuate that

doctrinal framework. They believed the Bible and what

it taught. That conviction was ―in their souls,‖ and

they stood for it. The fourteen points of Niagara and

the ―five fundamentals‖ of the Presbyterians were

popular representations of those beliefs. The

Fundamentals (now available in four volumes) fleshed

out those beliefs in some detail.

William Ward Ayer understood this genius of

fundamentalism. Speaking to the National Association

of Evangelicals in 1956, he put the issue in historical

perspective:

Fundamentalism represents a resurgence of

ancient practices, which began not with Martin

Luther but at Pentecost. Fundamentalism is

apostolic, and the doctrine of justification goes back

to Paul. That branch from which the

fundamentalist movement sprang lived obscurely


through the ages and had never been completely

silenced even in the Dark Ages . . . What

fundamentalism did was to awaken the slumbering

apostolicism from lethargy. The theme of the

Reformation, like the cry of the fundamentalists

today, was ―back to the Bible and the Apostles,‖

with no mediator between men and God except

Christ. Fundamentalists are in the direct line of

succession to those preaching this same message.43

Ayer is right! Certain doctrinal and theological

distinctives have marked fundamentalists because

they come from the Word of God.

A Militant Component

Those who embraced this position were adamant in

their statement of their own position, and they were

also bold to expose and refute the higher criticism that

bred the denial of the Scriptures. In the 1880s

Spurgeon was outspoken in his opposition to the

invading apostasy. A reading of Hengstenberg, David

Baron, and others reveals that they ―took on‖ the

assertions of the higher critics and other opponents of

biblical revelation. The Fundamentals contained

several articles exposing the new theology. All these

indications took place before Curtis Lee Laws coined

the term ―Fundamentalist.‖ Just before the Laws

article appeared, W. B. Riley preached at the first

43William Ward Ayer, speech to the National Association of

Evangelicals, April 1956, quoted in Louis Gasper, The Fundamentalist Movement, 1930–1956 (Grand Rapids: Baker,

1981 reprint), 2, 3.


meeting of the Fundamentalist Fellowship in Buffalo.

His message dealt with unbelief in the Northern

Baptist schools. He affirmed his friendship and

affection for the leaders of several of those schools and

then proceeded to name them and expose their

unbelief.

Before moving on, let us pause here to reflect that

those two characteristics of fundamentalism are far

older than Spinoza in 1650, Schleiermacher in the

early 19th century, Graf, Wellhausen, or any of the

men who stood against them. They are not mere

historical reactions against unbelief that was current

at the time. Nor are those two characteristics built on

tradition because we look back to Curtis Lee Laws‘

famous statement. It is against that historical

backdrop and in that theological tradition that

fundamentalism was born.

But before the end of the first century Jude wrote

and said: ―Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write

unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for

me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should

earnestly contend for the faith which was once

delivered unto the saints‖ (Jude 3). There is a body of

truth that God has ―once for all delivered‖ to His

people. That is the ―whole counsel of God‖ (Acts

20:27). It must be declared as Paul preached it to the

Ephesians. It must be contended for as Jude exhorted.

The truth is God‘s truth. We believe it because He

revealed it. We are bold to contend for it at any cost

because He exhorts us to do that very thing. We are

convinced that there is a body of revealed truth which


must be accepted and which forms the basis for our

faith. We are further persuaded that ―the faith once

delivered to the saints‖ must be earnestly contended

for. That conviction and persuasion comes from the

Word of God itself.

Fundamentalism and Separatism

This militant component of fundamentalism

eventually manifested itself in another way—that is,

fundamentalism necessarily became characterized by

separatism. Some have criticized early fundamentalists

because later fundamentalists exhibited a separatist

spirit that was not evident in the early stages of its

development. Rolland McCune has observed: ―One

may rightfully distinguish between non-conformist

fundamentalism (pre-1930) and separatist fundamen-

talism (post-1930).‖44 McCune cites Beale noting that

―the separatist position did not solidify as a distinct,

militant movement until the 1930s.‖45 The early

fundamentalists sought to effect corrective measures

in their respective denominations. When those

attempts failed they separated from the apostate

denominations and formed new denominational

structures and new service agencies.46

44Rolland D. McCune ―The Self-Identity of Fundamentalism,‖

Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal (Spring 1996): 28. McCune is

citing David O. Beale, In Pursuit of Purity, 5.

45Beale, 5.

46It is beyond the purview of this particular paper, but we

must at least note that this is the separatism against which Harold John Ockenga reacted. In his book The Epistles to the


When there was no recourse in Presbyterianism,

the new Westminster Seminary and a new

Presbyterian ecclesiastical structure came into

existence. When the battle over liberalism was lost in

the Northern Baptist Convention, fundamentalists

formed new associations of churches, such as the

Baptist Bible Union, then the General Association of

Regular Baptist Churches, and later, the Conservative

Baptist Association of America. New mission agencies,

schools, and other service ministries also began. In

interdenominational circles, new fellowships of

churches like the Independent Fundamental Churches

of America (IFCA) and new schools, mission agencies,

publishing houses, and evangelistic outreach

ministries were formed. Fundamentalists had no

choice but to practice biblical separation when they

could not reverse the trends toward liberalism.

Pettegrew observed:

Thessalonians, Proclaiming the New Testament (Grand Rapids:

Baker, 1962), 3:136–37 he argued ―That there is a form of unbelief which may be permitted to exist within the churches;‖ and based

on 2 Timothy 2:16–26 he further argued that ―we are responsible

to seek to turn apostates from their error instead of separate from them.‖ [Emphasis mine] It must be observed that Ockenga rightly

emphasized the biblical command to seek the restoration of those

who embrace false doctrine (v. 24–26). At the same time we must

note that Ockenga completely overlooked the commands to

separation in the earlier verses of that passage (v. 16–19, 21–23). Garth M. Rosell, The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism (Grand

Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 174–78 says that Ockenga

viewed separatism as ―wrongheaded and dangerous.‖


What does all this tell us about the modern

fundamentalist movement? Without question,

ecclesiastical separation has rightly become a more

important aspect of the fundamentalist movement

in recent years. Some would even say that it has

become the distinctive.47

McCune assesses this issue saying of separatism:

―It is at once both the most maligned and/or

misunderstood distinctive of fundamentalism and

probably the most defining one. Fundamentalism and

separation walk in lockstep.‖48

Fundamentalism and Interdenominationalism49

We have already seen that fundamentalism places

primary emphasis on the supernatural character of

the Bible as God‘s revelation to the human race. It is

safe to say that fundamentalists are what they are

because they believe Scripture to be a revelation from

God, written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That

conviction is the fundamentalist‘s foundation — it is

our very reason for being.

We who are Baptists are quick to assert that the

very same tenet, the authority of Scripture, is also the

reason we are Baptists. The same Word that teaches

us our doctrine also mandates our practice. Chester E.

Tulga, longtime Research Secretary of the

47Pettegrew, 2.

48McCune, 27-28.

49This section from Fred Moritz, Contending for the Faith

(Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2000), Chapter 1.


Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, stated: ―The basic

tenet of the historic Baptist faith is that the Bible is

the Word of God and the sole authority of faith and

practice.‖50 British Pastor and historian Jack Hoad

states: ―It is the Biblical doctrine of the church, with

an unqualified submission to scripture as the Word of

God, which becomes the test of what is a baptist

church. . . . The baptist is a scripture-ruled believer.‖51

In the New Testament, we find that local churches

were independent of any outside controlling authority.

They enjoyed a voluntary, fraternal relationship with

one another (Acts 15:1–35). We find that only saved

people became members of New Testament churches

(Acts 2:47). The New Testament teaches only two

officers in the local church—pastors and deacons (1

Tim 3:1–13) and only two symbolic ordinances—

baptism and the Lord‘s supper (Rom 6:3–5; 1 Cor

11:23–34). Scripture declares that each believer is a

priest before God and has direct access into the

presence of God through the blood of Christ (1 Pet 2:9;

Heb 10:19–22). Jesus taught that the Christian lives in

two frames of reference — ―Caesar‘s‖ and ―God‘s‖ (Matt

22:20, 21). Therefore, we believe the church and the

state should be separate. We hold that these issues of

church practice (commonly called the Baptist

50Chester E. Tulga, ―What Baptists Believe About Soul

Liberty,‖ in The Baptist Challenge (Little Rock, AR: Central Baptist

Church, October 1997), 21. Tulga was the long-time Research Secretary of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship.

51Jack Hoad, The Baptist (London: Grace Publications Trust,

1986), 7, 225.


Distinctives) come from and are mandated by

Scripture.

Having said that, we must understand that

fundamentalism was an interdenominational move-

ment. Christians who believed the Bible and opposed

modernism set aside their denominational distinctives

to come together and lift a united voice for those

truths that made up the ―irreducible minimum‖ of

Christianity. They fought against liberalism in their

own denominations and also united outside the

denominational frameworks to fight against it. Richard

Harris, himself a Baptist, explains the thinking of most

fundamentalists on this issue:

There have always been honest differences of

interpretation on church organization, as well as on

other issues, among good men who love Christ.

There was a time when men could amicably differ

on issues which did not affect fundamental

Christian doctrine and still respect and firmly

defend one another. Great Christian leaders of the

past were able to respect those differences and yet

recognize that the men with whom they differed

were still Fundamentalists and brothers in Christ.

They were Christian statesmen.52

Speaking of the formation of the American Council

of Christian Churches in 1941, Harris goes on:

52Richard A. Harris, ―A Plea for Christian Statesmanship,‖

The Challenge (Bethlehem, PA: American Council of Christian

Churches, December, 1997), 1.


It made no difference that some of them were

Baptist, some were Evangelical Methodists, some

were Bible Presbyterians, and some of other

persuasions. Their fellowship was characterized by

their common belief that the Bible is the

authoritative, inerrant Word of God. All of them

believed in the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, His

substitutionary atonement for sin, His bodily

resurrection and ascension into Heaven and His

coming again in power and glory. Each believed the

Bible taught that the Church should be separate

from apostasy and Christians should be obedient to

Christ.53

The early fundamentalists represented many

denominational traditions, and fundamentalism was

an interdenominational movement. There should still

be a place for fundamentalists of various persuasions

to come together and stand together for ―the faith once

delivered to the saints‖ and against ―certain men crept

in unawares.‖ The American Council of Christian

Churches still performs a legitimate service. It is still

proper for the International Testimony to An Infallible

Bible to call fundamentalists from around the world to

stand united in a World Congress of Fundamentalists.

We need to help and encourage each other.

Latitude within Fundamentalism

Having identified the major characteristics of

historic fundamentalism, it is important to also note

53Ibid., 2.


that fundamentalists viewed certain issues as not

essential to their united stand for the great

fundamentals, and to the struggle that ensued for

them.

Denominational Distinctives

For better or worse, fundamentalism was an

interdenominational movement. As higher criticism

and the resultant theological liberalism invaded every

denominational body, fundamentalists united to fight

a common enemy, and in that battle they did not make

their denominational positions on church polity and

government an issue. Thus Lutherans, Presbyterians,

Baptists, and representatives from other denomina-

tions could meet for the World‘s Conference of

Christian Fundamentals in 1919. This does not mean

that their denominational distinctives were

unimportant to them. It means simply that they did

not emphasize them in the battle with unbelief.

Bible Versions

Fundamentalists simply did not make the use of a

particular Bible version an issue.54 Although he was in

England and not identified with the nascent

movement, it is noteworthy that Spurgeon read the

English Revised Version after its appearance in 1881.

54Rolland D. McCune, ―Doctrinal Non-Issues in Historic

Fundamentalism‖ Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal (Fall 1996):

171–177, discusses this issue in detail.


Several of his sermons survive in print in which he

preached from that version of the Bible.

A reading of The Fundamentals reveals that several

of the authors made reference to the 1881 English

Revised Verson or the 1901 American Standard Version

of the Bible. Anyone who has read collections of R.A.

Torrey‘s sermons recalls that he made frequent use of

and references to one of the two new versions. I stood

in his home in Montrose, Pennsylvania, and held one

of his Bibles. It happened to be a copy with the King

James Version and 1881 ERV in parallel columns.

Though the King James Version was the Bible of

common usage, Bible colleges routinely recommended

use of the American Standard Version and the New

American Standard for reference and study. In this

author‘s Life of Christ class in college, for example, the

professor assigned reading in a harmony of the

Gospels that used only the ASV.

Fundamentalists universally affirmed the verbal,

plenary inspiration of the Bible in the original

manuscripts. The ―Articles Put Forth by the Baptist

Bible Union‖ in 1923 serves as an example of a

fundamentalist statement of that time. It says:

We believe that the Holy Bible was (a) written by

men supernaturally inspired; (b) that it has truth

without any admixture of error for its matter; and (c)

therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the age, the

only complete and final revelation of the will of God to

man; the true center of Christian union and the


supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds

and opinions should be tried. (Explanatory)

By ―THE HOLY BIBLE‖ we mean that collection of

sixty-six books, from Genesis to Revelation, which, as

originally written, does not contain and convey the word

of God, but IS the very Word of God.

By ―INSPIRATION‖ we mean that the books of the

Bible were written by holy men of old, as they were

moved by the Holy Spirit, in such a definite way that

their writings were supernaturally inspired and free

from error, as no other writings have ever been or ever

will be inspired.55

At the same time, fundamentalists stood united

against unreliable Bible versions. The Revised

Standard Version Old Testament was published in

1952. The reaction by fundamentalists (and many

evangelicals) against the interpretation and faulty

translation of Isaiah 7:14 was immediate. When Good

News for Modern Man came out in 1966 and 1968,

fundamentalists again united to raise their voices

against its denials of the virgin birth and the blood of

Christ.

Calvinism and Arminianism

―Fundamentalism has never had a united voice on

Calvinism-Arminianism issues although by and large it

55http://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/bbu.htm. Accessed

September 7, 2010.


has been moderately Calvinistic, probably three or

four-point Calvinism.‖56

A cursory survey of The Fundamentals is again

instructive. L. W. Munhall was a Methodist. R. A.

Torrey was Congregationalist in his orientation. These

men were on opposite ends of the sovereignty/freewill

spectrum and discussion. And yet they were united for

the fundamentals of the faith. In later years Carl

McIntire and Alan MacRae were Princeton graduates

and Presbyterian. They were strongly Calvinistic in

their orientation. And yet good men could put their

differences aside to stand for ―the faith once delivered

to the saints.‖

Modern-day fundamentalists can learn from this.

No finite human being can finally settle the tension

between an infinite God‘s sovereignty and man‘s finite

will. Scripture leaves the issue in tension. Honest men

on both sides of the discussion admit their inability to

resolve the issue, and it seems that most of what

results from discussions of the matter is a fight!

Fundamentalists on both sides of the debate need to

learn again the wisdom of granting each other latitude.

Stridence on either side seems to produce intolerance

and contention.

Conclusion

The fundamentalist movement began to develop in

the 1870s as a defense of biblical doctrine and

56McCune, ―Doctrinal Non-Issues,‖ 177.


theology against the theological liberalism that

developed from 1650 and took shape in the nineteenth

century. The term came into usage in 1920.

Fundamentalism as a movement is the historical

expression at a particular point in history of the Bible

truth that God has revealed Himself to the human race

in His Word. This movement also takes at face value

that the divinely revealed truth is to be earnestly

contended for as Jude 3 mandates. At its best

fundamentalism is a ―back to the Bible‖ movement to

proclaim and contend for the truth.

Fundamentalism is therefore a theological and

militant movement. It was interdenominational by

definition. Fundamentalists also allowed each other

latitude in the use of Bible versions and in their

understanding of Calvinism and Arminianism.

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Maranatha

Baptist Seminary embrace fundamentalism in this

historical setting. We believe, teach, defend, and boldly

stand for ―the whole counsel of God‖ (Acts 20:27) with

―a conscience void of offence toward men and toward

God‖ (Acts 24:16).

MBTJ 1/1: 67-101

Maranatha is Dispensational

Bruce K. Meyer1

Throughout history, humanity has pursued

knowledge about God, His world, and His plans for the

world. Graciously, God has provided a revelation of His

story, a revelation of His work and plans for His

creation. Like any book, however, people can read the

Bible in such a way to distort the message and the

God of the Bible. Sadly, there have been many who

have fashioned distorted teachings using the Bible to

justify their bizarre beliefs and practices. Accurate

interpretation of the Scriptures is the key to

understanding Who God is and what He is doing.

Therefore, who should set the rules for interpreting

God‘s Word? Certainly God has not left His creation to

a hopeless state of uncertainty, never able to

understand His self-revelation. It should be obvious to

anyone seeking to understand a document that the

author is the determiner of the intended meaning,

since that person knows what he himself was thinking

when he wrote the document. Stein writes,

1Dr. Meyer is Professor of Biblical Studies, Maranatha Baptist

Bible College, and Adjunct Professor of Biblical Counseling,

Maranatha Baptist Seminary.


[W]hat the author willed to convey by the

linguistic symbols used (whether the symbols were

Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or Latin is immaterial)

possesses a meaning that can never change. What

a biblical author willed by his text is anchored in

history. . . . What a text meant when it was written,

it will always mean. It can no more change than

any other event of the past can change, because its

meaning is forever anchored in past history.2

The responsibility, therefore, of the biblical

interpreter is to understand the sacred text as the

author intended it to be understood. This is the nature

of the debate between dispensationalists and non-

dispensationalists—which system of interpretation

best allows the text to speak with authorial intent,

especially in prophecy?

Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Seminary is

committed to dispensational hermeneutics because

dispensationalism provides a hermeneutic that allows

the text to speak for itself. Therefore, because of the

essential characteristics that dispensationalism

espouses, this hermeneutical system provides a

superior interpretive template over covenantalism. The

author will demonstrate this superiority by examining

the importance of a dispensational interpretation, the

definition and biblical use of the term ―dispensation,‖

the essential characteristics of dispensationalism, and

the relationship of the testaments in dispensa-

tionalism.

2Robert Stein, ―Who Makes Up the Rules,‖ Rightly Divided,

ed. Roy Zuck (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 38 [emphasis added].

Maranatha is Dispensational 69

Importance of the Discussion

Often the author encounters individuals who

believe dispensationalism is primarily concerned with

eschatological issues.3 While many of the implications

of dispensationalism have shaped premillennial

eschatology, the hermeneutical system shapes many

other doctrines as well. Larry Oats, for example, has

explained how the covenantal approach allows for

evangelicals to justify their lack of ecclesiastical

separation.4 Their reasoning is that since the nation of

Israel existed with mixed conditions, then the church

today will exist with a mixture of true and false.5

Although for different reasons, even Ryrie

acknowledges this tension stating, ―[n]ot only has the

dispensational teaching concerning the church been

the subject of controversy, but also the ramifications of

that teaching in ecclesiastical life have been attacked.‖6

Additionally, denominations associated with

covenantal positions have for some time practiced

infant baptism, since, in their view, New Testament

[NT] baptism has replaced Old Testament [OT]

3Further, the author has encountered those who believe

erroneously that all who hold to premillennial positions are

dispensational.

4Larry Oats, ―Dispensationalism: A Basis for Ecclesiastical

Separation‖ (Conference on Baptist Fundamentalism, Watertown,

March 2003).

5Edward Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology

(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959), 136.

6Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism (Chicago: Moody, 1995),

123.


circumcision as the sign of the covenant for believers

in this age.7 Bromiley states that baptism is ―a

covenant sign (like circumcision, but without blood-

shedding), and therefore a sign of the work of God on

our behalf which precedes and makes possible our

own responsive movement.‖8 Therefore, baptism places

the child into a covenant relationship with God as he

awaits regeneration.9

Many nouthetic counseling authors incorporate

covenantal concepts in their writings. Frequently, such

authors comment that believers are ―covenantal‖

creatures and that they have a ―covenantal

relationship‖ with God. Such a focus would be

somewhat acceptable if those authors were referencing

only the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 in which

believers participate, but they are in fact referring to

the covenant of grace.10

In addition to these beliefs, the Presbyterian

Church (USA) has recently sided with Arab nations

against the nation of Israel regarding middle-eastern

7Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1982), 633.

8Geoffrey Bromiley, ―Infant Baptism,‖ Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 117.

9Berkhof, 287–8.

10Ibid., 633. Berkhof defines this covenant as: ―that gracious

agreement between the offended God and the offending but elect

sinner, in which God promises salvation through faith in Christ,

and the sinner accepts this believingly, promising a life of faith

and obedience‖ (277). This covenant furthermore forms the basis for the particular or limited atonement position so prevalent in

covenant theology (278).


policy, since, in their theology, the church has

replaced Israel and God has annulled His promises to

Israel.11 Ergun Caner, a converted Muslim, explains

that he is often the object of anger from Christians

because of his personal support of Israel.12 Such a

position is based upon a replacement theology, that is,

the church has replaced Israel and all the promises of

the Old Testament, since conditional, have been

invalidated.13

These examples illustrate a crucial point:

dispensationalism is concerned about the accurate

interpretation of Scripture resulting in both a solid

theology and a sound practice. Wrong interpretation

leads to a wrong theology and a wrong practice.

Dispensationalists disagree with these theological

perspectives because they are founded upon a wrong

hermeneutic.

The Definition and Biblical Use of “Dispensation”

The Greek word for ―dispensation‖ occurs

nine times in the NT and refers to the activity or

11Elwood McQuaid, ―Presbyterians Come Out of the Closet,‖

Israel My Glory (Nov/Dec 2004), 12. For further explanations of

these positions, see Gary Burge, Whose Land? Whose Promise?

(Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2003).

12Ergun Caner, ―The MBBs‘ [Muslim-background believers] ‗Dirty Little Secret,‘‖ Israel My Glory (Nov/Dec 2004), 8–10.

13Ibid., 10.


function of a steward.14 The term implies that an

authority has required a particular responsibility of a

steward, an accounting of that responsibility, and a re-

evaluation of the relationship based upon faithfulness

to the responsibility (Luke 16:1–2). Burggraff explains:

The world is seen as a household administered

by God in connection with several stages of

revelation that make up the different economies in

the outworking of his total program. These

economies are the dispensations in dispensa-

tionalism. Thus from God‘s viewpoint a

dispensation is an economy; from man‘s it is a

responsibility to the particular revelation given at

the time. In relation to progressive revelation, a

dispensation is a stage within it.15

Various men have defined dispensationalism as:

―a period of time during which man is tested

in respect of obedience to some specific

revelation of the will of God.‖16

14Walter Bauer, ― ‖ A Greek-English Lexicon of the New

Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. and

augmented by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, 2nd ed., ed. F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1979), 559. This word is also used in

Luke 16:2–4; 1 Cor 9:17; Eph 1:10; 3:2, 9; Col 1:25; and 1 Tim

1:14.

15David Burggraff, ―Determining Our Place in the World: A

Growing Difficulty for Modern Dispensationalism,‖ National Leadership Conference, Feb. 2003, Lansdale, PA., 2–3.

16C. I. Scofield, ed., The Scofield Reference Bible (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1945), 5.


―a stage in the progressive revelation of God

constituting a distinctive stewardship or rule

of life.‖17

―. . . a distinguishable economy in the

outworking of God‘s purpose.‖18

―. . . [a dispensation] simply refers to an

administrative arrangement in the plan of

God. . . . Dispensationalism as a theological

system attempts to discuss the nature and

relationship of the different administrative

arrangements within God‘s plan, ‗to rightly

divide the Word of God.‘ It seeks to explain

how the Bible fits together.‖19

Do the biblical authors, however, use the term

―dispensation‖ in the sense that is different from the

dispensational usage as some covenantalists argue,

namely as God giving a specific stewardship to man?

Paul not only recognizes this usage but he also uses

the word in this sense in three contexts. First, Paul

speaks of ―the dispensation of the fullness of times‖ in

Ephesians 1:10. In the context, Paul stresses the

doxological culmination of God‘s plans in the

millennial kingdom. This passage is significant for the

millennial debate, since Paul identifies the ―fullness of

17Lewis Sperry Chafer, Major Bible Themes, rev. John

Walvoord (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 126.

18Ryrie, 28.

19Darrell L. Bock, ―Charting Dispensationalism,‖ Christianity Today (12 September 1994), 27.


times‖ as taking place within history, rather than

during the eternal state. Furthermore, the apostle

explains that God will gather all things together in

Christ at that time. Therefore, the text explains both

the timing (―the fullness of times‖) and the purpose

(―gather together in one all things in Christ‖) of the

millennial rule of Christ. Hoehner confirms this

interpretation in explaining:

Hence, the ―times‖ are completed when Messiah

rules. This [Luke 21:24] is analogous to Eph 1:10,

for the mystery of this will is made known

according to his good pleasure which he purposed

in Christ for the administration of fullness of the

―times,‖ which is that future promised in the OT, . .

. discussed in the Gospels, . . . not fulfilled at

Christ‘s ascension, . . . and hoped for by the

church. . . .

Therefore, the fullness of time refers to the

future unification of all things under the headship

of Christ. It does not primarily refer to the present

church age but the future messianic age. That will

be the time of restoration and harmony under one

head.20

Second, Paul speaks of the present ―dispensation‖

in Ephesians 3:2, 9. Here, Paul contrasts the present

dispensation of the church with the previous

dispensation of the law. Therefore, Paul is

demonstrating the change that has occurred in this

dispensation (Jew and Gentile in one body) contrasted

20Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary

(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002), 219, 225.


with that of the law (a Gentile became a Jew first).21

Furthermore, Paul also highlights the progressive

nature of revelation as he now has the responsibility to

share this formerly hidden truth (―mystery‖) with

believers. The apostle recognizes both the need for

biblical distinctions in God‘s economy and the

progressive nature of revelation.

These three passages frame two important

considerations concerning dispensationalism. First,

dispensationalists are not reading the idea of

―dispensations‖ into the text, since Paul mentions

three distinct stewardship arrangements. Second,

although Paul mentions only three dispensations, he

does establish a key concept in the Scriptures that

allows for more. The distinctions in God‘s dealing with

man throughout the OT would argue for the necessity

of more dispensations, but are not absolutely

necessary for one to be a dispensationalist.22

Additionally, conservatives use other terms that do not

appear in Scripture, yet those theological concepts are

valid.23 One should note, however, that the definition

of the term ―dispensation‖ and its use in the NT do not

define what dispensationalism is as a system. These

definitions merely establish the functional concepts

within the system.24

21Ibid., 424.

22Ryrie, 47.

23The theological terms ―Trinity‖ and ―rapture‖ for example.

24John Feinberg, ―Systems of Discontinuity,‖ Continuity and Discontinuity, ed. John S. Feinberg (Westchester, IL: Crossway,

1988), 69.


The Essentials of Dispensationalism

There are additional reasons why dispensa-

tionalism is indispensable. These form the sine qua

non of dispensationalism—the essential features.25

First, dispensationalism provides a framework

(structure) for understanding God‘s plan as it unfolds

within Scripture (a philosophy of history) that centers

in God‘s glory.26 Without careful thought, some may be

inclined to believe that the Bible is merely a collection

of stories and teachings that take up space until one

can get to the really big story of Jesus. On the

contrary, the Bible is one grand story of God‘s plan for

His created world.

Dispensationalism provides an interpretive grid

that organizes the stories and teachings into a unified

whole, a philosophy of history that endeavors to

understand temporal history as culminating in a

purposeful conclusion (the millennial reign of Christ as

highlighted in Eph 1:10). The seven dispensations

explain how God‘s work is progressing towards a final

goal in the kingdom as illustrated in the following

table. Since God gave His revelation progressively in

history, He reveals His purpose for history through

that revelation in conjunction with the biblical

covenants throughout the OT. This overall framework

25The author is presenting the sine qua non in an atypical

order, from the more general to the specific.

26For a thorough treatment on philosophy of history, see

Ramesh Richard‘s three-part series, ―Premillennialism as a Philosophy of History,‖ Bibliotheca Sacra (Jan–July 1981): 13.


highlights God‘s doxological purpose in history, rather

than merely a soteriological purpose. This broader

purpose recognizes not only God‘s work with

redemption, but also with non-believers, nations,

kings, Satan, and nature.

Ete

rnit

y P

ast

Dispensationalism

TEMPORAL HISTORY

Ete

rnity

Futu

re

Innocence Conscience Human

Government Promise Law Church Kingdom

Individuals Families Israel Gentile

Nations

All

Nations

Covenant theology also recognizes the need for

these distinctions through biblical history. Charles

Hodge, a covenant postmillennialist, lists four

dispensations (his term): Adam to Abraham, Abraham

to Moses, Moses to Christ, and the Gospel.27 Berkhof,

a covenant amillennialist, describes two dispensations:

the old and the new. Oddly, Berkhof recognizes the

need to ―subdivide the [old covenant] into several

periods or stages in the revelation of the covenant of

grace‖ reminiscent of the dispensational

understanding.28 One should note that the use of the

27Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Oak Harbor, WA:

Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997 reprint of 1872 edition), 2:373–77.

28Berkhof, 292.


term ―dispensation‖ does not necessitate that person is

a dispensationalist.

The covenantal grid, however, does not allow for

sufficient dispensations to satisfactorily explain God‘s

plans in various epochs, since there are obvious

differences between what God was doing with Noah

then Abraham then Israel and now with the church. A

covenantal philosophy of biblical history focuses upon

three covenants: the covenant of redemption, the

covenant of works, and the covenant of grace.29

VanGemeren explains: ―Reformed Theology

wholeheartedly embraces the covenantal structure of

our relationship with God. God is in covenant with

mankind as he is with all of creation.‖30 These three

covenants relate to the historical structure of

Scripture, but fail to provide a purposeful goal within

temporal history besides redemption. As VanGemeren

confirms,

[T]he covenantal structure also helps us to

uncover our relatedness to Israel in the past, to

understand man‘s place in God‘s creation, to enjoy

the Father‘s presence and guidance in the history of

redemption, the oneness of salvation in the

mediator Jesus Christ with both Israel under the

29Renald Showers, There Really Is a Difference (Bellmawr, NJ:

The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, 1990) provides a thorough

analysis of the validity of these covenants, 7–18.

30Willem VanGemeren, ―Systems of Continuity,‖ Continuity and Discontinuity, ed. John S. Feinberg (Westchester, IL:

Crossway Books, 1988), 60. One should question how the non-

elect fit into this covenant relationship.


Old Covenant and the church in the New Covenant,

the ministry of the Spirit of God in transforming our

lives. The covenantal structure encourages

openness to God and his world and encourages the

Christian community to look toward the closure of

this age and the renewal of heaven and earth.31

As evident from this statement, the amillennial

system, the most popular covenantal position,

positions God‘s victory outside of temporal history in

the eternal state. Allis, an amillennialist, writes:

Such a picture of an ideal age raises only one

serious difficulty. It is whether the Bible and

especially the New Testament predicts or allows for

such a period of blessedness before the eternal

state is ushered in, or whether the picture given to

us by Isaiah is a description of that eternal state

itself under earthly forms and images.32

Furthermore, according to the covenantal position,

rather than Jesus manifesting a righteous reign in the

millennium, He ―reigns‖ in the hearts of believers now.

Satan is already bound in the sense that he cannot

deter the gospel. The unifying historical principle for

covenant theology is soteriological—the covenant of

grace (as illustrated in the following chart). As

Johnson clarifies, ―[i]t is not that the Reformed

tradition ignores the glory of God but simply does not

identify the theme as an interpretive key in canonical

31Ibid.

32Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Philadelphia:

Presbyterian and Reformed, 1945), 237.


interpretation.‖33 Therefore, covenantalism views the

promises pertaining to Israel in spiritual terms rather

than physical, since redemption becomes their primary

focus. If redemption lies at the heart of God‘s work,

there is no room, nor need, for promises relating to the

physical realm.

Eternity

Past

Covenantalism

TEMPORAL HISTORY

Ete

rnity

Futu

re

Covenant of

Redemption

Covenant

of Works Covenant of Grace

The National Church (or

Israel) merges into the Universal

Church

The second essential of dispensationalism is the

consistent application of a literal hermeneutic. Ryrie

stated in 1965 in his ground breaking book,

―[c]onsistently literal or plain interpretation is

indicative of a dispensational approach to the

interpretation of the Scriptures.‖34 Bernard Ramm, the

―classic‖ among hermeneutics authors, describes a

literal interpretation at length:

We use the word ―literal‖ in its dictionary sense:

―. . . the natural or usual construction and

33Elliott Johnson, ―Prophetic Fulfillment: The Already and Not

Yet,‖ Issues in Dispensationalism, Wesley Willis and John Master,

eds. (Chicago: Moody, 1994), 198.

34Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody,

1965), 46.


implication of a writing or expression; following the

ordinary and apparent sense of words; not

allegorical or metaphorical‖ (Webster’s New

International Dictionary). We also use it in its

historical sense, specifically, the priority that

Luther and Calvin gave to literal, grammatical, or

philological exegesis of Scripture in contrast to the

Four Fold Theory of the Roman Catholic scholars

(historical meaning, moral meaning, allegorical

meaning, eschatological meaning) developed during

the Middle Ages and historically derived from

Augustine‘s Three Fold Theory. It was particularly

the allegorical use of the Old Testament that the

Reformers objected to, and the manner in which

Roman Catholic dogma was re-enforced by

allegorical interpretation. Hence the ―literal‖ directly

opposes the ―allegorical.‖35

It is quite significant that the Reformers were quick

to identify the error of allegorical interpretation in the

Roman system, but retained the practice in their own

hermeneutic for prophetic genres.

With regard to symbols and figurative language,

Ramm writes:

All secondary meanings of documents depend

upon the literal stratum of language. Parables, types,

allegories, symbols, figures of speech, myths and

fables presume that there is a level of meaning in

language prior to the kind of language this kind of

literature is. The parable of the sower is understood

35Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3rd ed.

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 119.


only within the context of literal ―farm‖ language.

The symbolism of a lion is based upon what is

asserted about lions in literal speech. . . . In that all

non-literal statements are ―take-offs‖ from the more

original, more primitive literal language, then the

literal exegesis is the point of departure in all

interpretation, Biblical or extra-Biblical.36

Therefore, a literal interpretation allows for figures

of speech and metaphors, but insists upon contextual

markers that would indicate the use of metaphorical

language.37 Daniel, for example, describes the fourth

beast as having ten horns (Dan 7:23). The text explains

that the ten horns are ten kings (Dan 7:24) and that

the beast is the fourth kingdom on the earth (v. 23).

God uses symbols, but He identifies those symbols for

readers through textual indicators. Ryrie clarifies the

issue in saying:

Symbols, figures of speech, and types are all

interpreted plainly in this method, and they are in

no way contrary to literal interpretation. After all,

the very existence of any meaning for a figure of

speech depends on the reality of the literal meaning

of the terms involved.38

He adds further that ―to be sure, apocalyptic

literature does employ symbols in prophecy, but they

36Ibid., 124.

37Elliott Johnson, Expository Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids:

Zondervan, 1990), 194–5, lists several contextual clues: explicit

contextual statements, conflicting imagery, and juxtaposition of images.

38Ryrie, 80–1.


stand for something actual.‖39 The covenantal view

that one symbolic word can represent an unrelated

symbolic concept leads to a more subjective

interpretation that lacks contextual justification.

Ramm cautions, ―[t]o rest one‘s theology on the

secondary strata of meanings is to invite interpretation

by imagination.‖40 It is this author‘s belief that the

amillennial position is one remaining ―carry-over‖ from

the Catholic Church that the Protestant Reformation

has yet to jettison, although covenantalists have made

modifications that would distinguish their system from

Catholicism.

Ice clarifies the difference between a literal

interpretation and the interpretation of metaphorical

language when he explains:

The church will not be substituted for Israel if

the grammatical-historical system of interpretation

is consistently used because there are no indicators

in the text that such is the case. Therefore, one

must bring an idea from outside the text by saying

that the passage really means something that it

does not actually say. This kind of replacement

approach is a mild form of spiritualized, or

allegorical, interpretation. So when speaking of

those who do replace Israel with the church as not

taking the Bible literally and spiritualizing the text,

39Ibid., 87 [emphasis added].

40Ramm, 125.


it is true, since such a belief is contrary to a

macroliteral [textual] interpretation.41

Ice is highlighting the two senses in which

dispensationalists use the word ―literal.‖ The first use

of the word literal is what Johnson calls

―microliteralism.‖42 This use of the word focuses upon

whether one understands a word or phrase to be literal

as opposed to a figure of speech. This would be the

sense one would apply to the phrase ―I‘m so hungry I

could eat a horse.‖ Common usage, or ―historical

interpretation,‖ demands that the reader understand

that expression as a figure of speech (unless there

exists an actual glutinous person who is especially

partial to equestrian delicacies). The literal meaning to

that saying is that one is extremely hungry (a

macroliteral interpretation) rather than some other

spiritual meaning foreign to the expression. An

allegorical interpretation might look something like

this: the word ―hungry‖ speaks not of a physical

hunger, but a spiritual hunger as evident in David‘s

hunger for God. Horses in Scripture are metaphorical

for that which is unclean, since Israel often purchased

horses from Egypt (a picture of the world). Therefore,

the expression indicates that a person possesses a

spiritual hunger for that which is worldly and unclean.

The blatant misuse of metaphor in this example is

obvious, since people use the expression in everyday

41Thomas Ice, ―Dispensational Hermeneutics,‖ Issues in

Dispensationalism, Wesley Willis and John Master, eds. (Chicago:

Moody, 1994), 32.

42Ibid., 33.


use to communicate extreme physical hunger. The

context argues against a spiritualized meaning.

Ice‘s macroliteralism refers to the ―system that

views the text as providing the basis of the true

interpretation‖ of a text.43 One can diagram these

distinctions as follows:

Therefore, a text always has a literal meaning, but

the text may use figures of speech or symbols to

communicate that meaning. Even when Paul

deliberately uses symbolism (or allegory) in Galatians

4:21–31, he provides textual indicators that explain

his intended meaning: law = slavery to the flesh

(bondwoman, flesh, Mount Sinai, Hagar [Ishmael],

Jerusalem [vv. 22–25]) and Spirit = freedom from sin

(freewoman, promise, Jerusalem above, Isaac [Sarah]

43Ibid., 32 [emphasis added]. Ice uses definitions provided by

Elliott Johnson, 9.

Macroliteralism:

Text

Microliteralism:

Word or phrase

within a text


[vv. 26–30]). These symbols have a literal meaning that

Paul explains throughout his text. Feinberg rightly

identifies the fallacy within the covenantal system in

noting that the system‘s ―objection fails to recognize

the difference between kinds of language (figures of

speech, plain language, e.g.) and methods of

interpreting language.‖44

In Revelation, for instance, the text has a literal

meaning (macroliteralism), whereas the text may also

contain figures of speech (microliteralism) to convey

the meaning. Likewise, when God promises ―land‖ to

Israel throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jews

correctly understood God to mean land as ―physical

property‖ or ―territory‖ rather than ―spiritual blessings‖

because of God‘s promises beginning in Genesis 12.

For the nondispensationalist to insist that the term

―land‖ in the NT is now metaphorical for ―blessings‖ to

all believers, he must have some contextual basis for

making that claim. In other words, God must have

imbedded in the text a marker, a clue that He is now

speaking metaphorically, since He had previously used

―land‖ for centuries to mean literal land. The burden of

proof falls on the covenantalist to demonstrate the

annulment of the promises rather than the

dispensationalist to show they have not been annulled.

Covenantalists employ a literal approach

selectively, resorting to an allegorical approach in

prophecy (―land‖ equals ―blessing‖ or ―Christ‘s throne‖

equals ―the believer‘s heart‖). Ramm states that

44Feinberg, 74.


allegorical interpretation is ―the interpretation of a

document whereby something foreign, peculiar, or

hidden is introduced into the meaning of the text

giving it a proposed deeper or real meaning.‖45

Covenantalists, however, argue that their hermeneutic

views such statements as metaphors. Oswald Allis

remarks:

[W]hat may be called the popular and naïve

idea of a millennium is derived largely from such a

passage as Isa[iah 11]. It is to be a golden age,

when the ―the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,‖ when

none shall ―hurt or destroy,‖ when the earth shall

be ―full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters

cover the sea.‖46

Such a picture of an ideal age raises only one

serious difficulty. It is whether the Bible and

especially the New Testament predicts or allows for

such a period of blessedness before the eternal

state is ushered in, or whether the picture given to

us by Isaiah is a description of that eternal state

itself under earthly forms and images.47

The covenantal explanations of key millennial

passages are not without problems. Isaiah 65:17–25,

for example, contains images that neither fit the

church age nor the eternal state. Isaiah describes a

scenario in which death is rare (v. 20), a description

that rules out the possibility that this passage

describes the church age. The second half of the verse,

45Ramm, 223.

46Allis, 236.

47Ibid., 237 [emphasis added].


however, is especially problematic for the amillennial

position. Here, Isaiah states that a person who dies at

age one hundred is viewed as a youth and the one who

fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

This statement eliminates the eternal state as the

interpretation, since there will not be any death then.

God is saying more than ―there is no death then.‖ He is

allowing for the possibility of death to occur, but also

indicating that death, especially at an early age of one

hundred will be exceptional. This statement certainly

cannot refer to the church age, since living to one

hundred is not the norm now either.

Even clearer than the former passage, Zechariah

14 contains elements that cannot refer to the eternal

state (unless one spiritualizes). In verses 16–19, God

warns those who would choose not to participate in

the Feast of Tabernacles would experience drought

and plagues. The amillennial interpretation argues

that this reference teaches no such rebellion will exist

in the eternal state.48 This interpretation overlooks the

level of specificity with which God warns the potential

rebels. Zechariah records three verses of explanation

detailing the punishment for those who fail to

participate. There is more included in this text than

merely a metaphorical description of the absence of

rebellion.

48Thomas McComiskey, ―Zechariah,‖ in An Exegetical &

Expository Commentary on the Minor Prophets, ed. Thomas

McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 3: 1242.


In an effort to explain the features of Revelation

from an amillennial position, Anthony Hoekema

provides a good example of a ―metaphorical‖

interpretation:

Obviously the number ―thousand‖ which is

used here must not be interpreted in a literal sense.

Since the number ten signifies completeness, and

since a thousand is ten to the third power, we may

think of the expression ―a thousand years‖ as

standing for a complete period, a very long period of

indeterminate length. . . . we may conclude that

this thousand-year period extends from Christ‘s

first coming to just before his Second Coming.49

In explaining the binding of Satan in the abyss

during this period, Hoekema explains:

The word Abyss should rather be thought of as

a figurative description of the way in which Satan‘s

activities will be curbed during the thousand-year

period. . . . During the gospel era which has now

been ushered in, Satan will not be able to continue

deceiving the nations the way he did in the past, for

he has been bound. . . . We conclude, then, that the

binding of Satan during the gospel age means that,

49Anthony Hoekema, ―Amillennialism,‖ in The Meaning of the

Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press,

1977), 161. One should wonder in what way this is obvious.

Furthermore, this author believes that if the church is currently

in the millennium, as the amillennialists believe, then the church

has great cause for disappointment. Only if one interprets the lion

and lamb imagery to be, say, Lutherans and Presbyterians living in unity, can an individual say these conditions are currently

present.


first, he cannot prevent the spread of the gospel,

and second, he cannot gather all the enemies of

Christ together to attack the church.50

If it is true that Satan is bound at this moment

and, as Hoekema claims, that he is no longer able to

gather all the enemies of Christ together, then for what

purpose does God loose Satan at the end of this

amillennial church age? Amillennialists stumble over

the loosing of Satan at the end of the millennium, but

fail to provide a good answer for why God would loose

him at the end of their ―church age.‖ The

―metaphorical‖ or allegorical interpretation of the

nondispensationalist fails to answer many of the

specifics of many passages. A literal interpretation

allows the text to speak in a normal way without

creating the dilemmas of the amillennial position.

Third, dispensationalism allows for biblical

distinctions between Israel and the church, arising

from a consistently literal hermeneutic. The church

has not supplanted nor merged into Israel, but rather

Israel remains a nation (ywOG) not just a people (m[;) in

which God will work in the future (Rom 9–11), drawing

them to salvation in Christ.51 Dispensationalism

understands the church is an organism composed of

people from all nations, both Jew and Gentile alike,

but limited to those believers from the beginning of the

50Ibid., 161–62.

51Robert Saucy, ―Israel and the Church: A Case for Discontinuity,‖ in Continuity and Discontinuity, ed. John S.

Feinberg (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988), 245.


church (Acts 2) to the Rapture.52 The genesis of the

church at Pentecost is supported by the institution of

Spirit baptism which had not occurred yet in Acts 1:5.

Although Acts 2 does not mention Spirit baptism

occurring at Pentecost, Acts 11:15–16 does. This new

institution is the mystery of which Paul wrote in

Ephesians 2:11–3:7. In fact, Fruchtenbaum

demonstrates that the word ―Israel‖ in the NT refers

overwhelmingly to an ethnic group, not to the

church.53 Covenantalists argue that since there is one

program in God‘s work (redemption), there is but one

people of God. This position habitually cites Galatians

6:16 as linking Israel and the church. Grammatically,

the kai in this passage and the context of the book

eliminate the possibility that Paul is equating the

church with Israel.54

Non-dispensationalists see the church as existing

throughout the OT into the New. Berkhof describes the

covenantalist‘s view of the church in different

dispensations—the patriarchal period, the Mosaic

period, and the NT period. He adds: ―At the time of the

52Although God uses the term ―assembly‖ with reference to

either Israel or the church, one should not confuse a common trait (a group that assembles) as a common identification that

links the two. To share a common characteristic does not demand

that the two are one-in-the-same. God also uses the words

―assembly‖ and ―congregation‖ for the wicked (Ps 22:16; 26:5; and

Jer 9:2; 15:17).

53Arnold Fruchtenbaum, ―Israel and the Church,‖ Issues in Dispensationalism, Wesley Willis and John Master, eds. (Chicago:

Moody, 1994), 118–20.

54Ibid., 123.


flood the Church was saved in the family of Noah, and

continued particularly in the line of Shem. . . .‖ During

the Mosaic period, ―the whole nation constituted the

Church; and the Church was limited to the one nation

of Israel. . . .‖55 During the NT dispensation, Berkhof

claims,

The New Testament Church is essentially one

with the Church of the old dispensation. As far as

their essential nature is concerned, they both

consist of true believers, and of true believers only.

And in their external organization both represent a

mixture of good and evil. . . . In connection with

this the national boundaries of the Church were

swept away. What had up to this time been a

national church now assumed a universal

character.56

What is fascinating about the covenantal view of

the church is that covenantalists are so willing to

combine the NT terms for the church with the OT

terms used for Israel when there are essential

differences between the structure of Israel and that of

the church. At the same time, however, these same

interpreters refuse to make the connection between

millennial motifs in Revelation 20 and the OT concepts

that foreshadow the millennium.57

The implications of this hermeneutic are serious. If

Israel has merged into the church, there is no

55Berkhof, 570–72.

56Ibid., 571.

57Ibid., 699.


temporal or eternal future for Israel as a nation,

contrary to Romans 11. Second, many of the

prophecies in Scripture are meaningless for the nation,

but have rather strange implications for the church.

Exactly when does the church experience the strange

and extreme events of Revelation in the history of the

church? Better still, when does the church experience

the wonderful millennial characteristics covenantalists

claim for today? Third, as observed earlier, if the

church has replaced Israel, then one can make the

case that separation is nonessential. Fourth, if these

interpretations are correct, then the interpretation of

the Scripture becomes an exercise in subjectivity.

Continuity and Discontinuity

in the Testaments

At the crux of the arguments between the literal

and the allegorical interpretations is the question of

how to use the OT in light of the NT. Furthermore, this

is one of the most difficult topics in the study of

hermeneutics. Covenantalists see more continuity

between the testaments (Israel becomes the church

and baptism continues circumcision as the covenantal

mark), whereas dispensationalists see more

discontinuity (the church is a new program). Feinberg

clarifies the justification for a discontinuity position

when he states: ―Talk of continuity between the

Testaments seems misguided with so much apparent


discontinuity within each Testament.‖58 Feinberg‘s

statement highlights the distinctions within the

various biblical epochs, distinctions that

dispensationalism endeavors to respect. The issue that

causes the debate between covenantalists and

dispensationalists, however, is the question of how the

Testaments relate. Paul Feinberg frames the debate

this way:

It is difficult to think of any problem that is

more important or fundamental than the

relationship between the Testaments. There are two

Testaments; no one questions that. How do they

form one Bible? In evangelical, fundamental circles

traditionally two answers have dominated the

scene: Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.

Regardless of what one thinks of these approaches,

they should be seen as serious attempts to answer

this question. Not uncommonly the relationship

between the Testaments resolves itself into how one

ought to interpret the OT. It deals with the history

and institutions, as well as predictions about the

future, of the nation of Israel. How do these matters

relate to the church which is a multi-national body?

Is the church spiritual Israel, and thus heir to her

promises? Or are the church and Israel distinct,

each with a separate future? Or does the truth lie

somewhere between these apparent extremes?59

58Feinberg, 63.

59Paul Feinberg, ―Hermeneutics of Discontinuity,‖ Continuity and Discontinuity, ed. John S. Feinberg (Westchester, IL:

Crossway, 1988), 111.


While Feinberg thinks the truth lies somewhere

between what he considers to be two extremes, his

statement serves well in identifying the complexity of

the problems surrounding this issue.

Because of the size and importance of this topic,

this paper is not able to address the details of the

debate, but the author seeks to outline the main

issues. This paper has already discussed the merits of

the grammatical-historical approach to biblical

literature, regardless of the Testament one is

approaching.60 But the question of interpretation takes

on a slightly different form in this debate.

Covenantalists argue that ―the New interprets the

Old.‖61 This NT priority drives the amillennial position,

viz., that God has annulled the kingdom promises of

the OT, since He does not repeat them in the NT (an

evident argument from silence). Berkhof‘s comment

illustrates this covenantal tendency when he writes,

―Prophecies should be read in the light of their

60This issue is where the contemporary debate hinges

between traditional and progressive dispensationalists, a topic

outside of the scope of this paper. The traditional view states that

a prophecy, for example, has only one meaning and that the NT

does not alter that meaning. The progressive view, what progressives call a complementary hermeneutic, holds that a later

reading may ―deepen‖ or ―enhance‖ the meaning of an OT

prophecy, but does not change the meaning. See Elliott Johnson and Darrell Bock, Three Central Issues in Contemporary Dispensationalism, ed. Herbert Bateman (Grand Rapids: Kregel,

1999) for a comprehensive comparison of dispensational views.

61Bruce Waltke, ―Kingdom Promises as Spiritual,‖ in Continuity and Discontinuity, ed. John S. Feinberg (Westchester,

IL: Crossway, 1988), 264.


fulfilment, for this will often reveal depths that would

otherwise have escaped the attention. The interpreter

should bear in mind, however, that many of them do

not refer to specific historical events, but enunciate

some general principle that may be realized in a

variety of ways.‖62

Covenantalists argue that dispensationalists hold

an OT priority. The author disagrees with this

assessment, however, since the dispensationalist

begins with the OT and endeavors to understand the

progress of revelation into the NT (cf. the trajectory

between Daniel and Revelation for example).

Dispensationalists maintain that an OT passage

stands on its own. The text possesses a meaning that

the author intended before God provided the NT.

Therefore, no one has the right to alter that meaning

based upon later revelation, unless the NT specifically

states the annulment of a particular OT teaching (ex.

Torah). Later revelation may expand information that

helps the reader understand the events of previous

revelation (such as the tribulation or kingdom), but the

meaning of the text should remain the same because of

authorial intent. Therefore, the ―‗fulfillment‘ cannot

contradict the original meaning of a prophecy in its

historical context.‖63 Otherwise, the OT text was

62Louis Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation (Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1950), 153.

63Charles Dyer, ―Biblical Meaning of ‗Fulfillment,‘‖ Issues in Dispensationalism, Wesley Willis and John Master, eds. (Chicago:

Moody, 1994), 70.


meaningless to readers until such time when God gave

the NT ―commentary.‖

A second issue pertains to OT prophecies and what

constitutes fulfillment. NT authors use OT texts in

different ways; not always are they indicating a

prophetic fulfillment. In some cases an author may

use the OT prophecy as a parallel to the NT events.

Matthew‘s use, for example, of Hosea 11:1 is not a

―fulfillment‖ in the sense of the English word, since

Hosea‘s reference is to the Exodus redemption of Israel

from Egypt, a historical account rather than prophecy.

Matthew‘s purpose in citing Hosea is to show the ways

in which Messiah has accomplished (―fulfilled‖) what

Israel was unable to do successfully.64 Archer and

Chirichigno argue that Hosea is using the Exodus

deliverance as a prophetic type that finds meaning in

Christ‘s ―exodus‖ from Egypt.65

This passage illustrates one of several different

ways authors use the word . Bauer lists six

senses for this word as follows: (1) make full, fill (as in

an object or space) with content, (2) of time, fill (up),

complete a period of time, reach its end, (3) bring

someth. to completion, finish someth. already begun,

(4) fulfill, by deeds, a prophecy, an obligation, a

promise, a law, a request, a purpose, a desire, a hope,

a duty, a fate, a destiny, etc., (5) complete, finish, bring

64Ibid., 54–5. Dyer supplies a useful table that lists the

comparisons between Israel and Messiah.

65Gleason Archer and Gregory Chirichigno, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1983), 147.


to an end, and (6) complete a number.66 Even a cursory

glimpse of these senses reveals that the Greek word

has a broader semantic range in the New Testament

than does the English word ―fulfill.‖ Dyer states that

less than one-third of the occurrences of in the

New Testament fit the sense of prophetic fulfillment

(#4 above) and, therefore, an interpreter should not

assume that every time the word appears, a prophecy

has been fulfilled.67

Such is the problem that lies behind the debate

concerning Joel 2/Acts 2 and Amos 9/Acts 15.

Covenantalists argue for a fulfillment to support their

replacement theology. Dispensationalists argue either

for analogy or two referents. A correct analysis of a

fulfilled prophecy will include both an accurate

understanding of the original prophecy and a one-for-

one correspondence with the NT passage, the latter of

which is missing in both these examples.68 How then

should the interpreter understand passages in which

the word ―fulfilled‖ appears? Zuck lists the following

ways writers use the OT:

1. To point up the accomplishment or realization

of an Old Testament prediction

2. To confirm that a New Testament incident is

in agreement with an Old Testament principle

3. To explain a point given in the Old Testament

66Bauer, ― .‖

67Dyer, 53.

68Ibid., 70.


4. To support a point being made in the New

Testament

5. To illustrate a New Testament truth

6. To apply the Old Testament to a New

Testament incident or truth

7. To summarize an Old Testament concept

8. To use Old Testament terminology

9. To draw a parallel with an Old Testament

incident

10. To relate an Old Testament situation to

Christ69

A third issue for this problem is the question of the

human author‘s understanding of what he wrote. This

issue cuts to the heart of interpretation versus

fulfillment, that is, the sense or meaning versus

referent. Paul Feinberg explains these concepts:

The sense of a sentence is roughly equivalent to

its meaning, and the reference of that sentence to

the object or state of affairs referred to. . . . I think

that predictions in the OT had a sense, and that

sense was determinate. It was known to the author

and to those who heard or read what he had to say.

If sense was lacking or not intelligible, then it is

difficult to see how the utterance could have been a

revelation of any kind in its original context.70

69Roy Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation (Wheaton: Victor,

1991), 260–70. Zuck provides examples for each of these.

70Paul Feinberg, 117–18 [emphasis added].


Feinberg‘s explanation highlights two important

observations. First, the text itself reveals meaning

without the further explanation of later passages, or

else the revelation was not a revelation at all. Second,

there is a difference between the immediate meaning

and the subjective or objective referent. Moses and

Israel understood the protoevangelium, for example,

was predicting a coming deliverer who would come

from the woman, while the identification of the seed

(and other details) remained a mystery. The NT

presentation of the seed, however, remains consistent

with the OT prediction.

It is here that views over one‘s hermeneutic will

become sharply divided. Dispensationalists would

argue for a single intent of the author. Therefore, an

OT prophecy has a singular sense and the text carries

that meaning. Covenantalists argue for the sensus

plenior (double intent) or ―fuller sense.‖ This

methodology answers why the covenantalist can read

the church into prophecies concerning Israel, since a

―fuller sense‖ can reinterpret the Old Testament on

that basis. Nondispensationalists justify their sensus

plenior position on the basis of two passages: 1 Peter

1:10–12 and Daniel 12:6–9. They argue that these two

passages show the prophets did not always

understand the revelation they received. In both cases,

however, the prophets were not seeking further

information about that which they spoke, but rather

were curious about the timing of the events.71

71Ibid., 115.


Conclusion

The interpretation of Scripture is critical to an

accurate understanding and application of theology.

Without a hermeneutic that seeks the message God

intended, the Word can fit almost anyone‘s personal

agenda. Because dispensationalism endeavors to

respect the distinctions between the Testaments,

maintains essentials of a normal interpretation, uses

the concept of a biblical dispensation in a biblically

consistent way, and recognizes the theological

problems associated with non-literal hermeneutics,

dispensationalism provides a superior interpretive

template over covenantalism.

MBTJ 1/1: 103-123

Maranatha is Ministry

Brian Trainer1

The mission statement of Maranatha Baptist Bible

College and Seminary declares that we exist to develop

leaders for ministry in the local church and the world

―To the Praise of His Glory.‖ This maxim summarizes

well our intended goal. First, we are student-oriented.

Our primary intention is the development of people,

not the growth of properties, the manufacturing of

position statements, or the gain of a financial profit.

Second, we seek to influence. Whether in the home,

the church, the community, the workplace, or the

marketplace, leaders influence. Third, service is a key

way to influence. Servant leadership is demonstrated

throughout the text of Scripture and is modeled in the

person of Jesus Christ. Fourth, the sphere of that

influence is localized in the body of Christ, yet it

permeates the entire world. We desire that all our

students have personal ownership of the axiom that

―life is ministry, and ministry is global.‖ Fifth, the

ultimate aim for this purpose, for all people, and for all

of life is doxological. We exist to exalt God. Why does

Maranatha exist? To develop leaders—influential,

service-oriented church-centered leaders—for ministry

1Brian Trainer is the Chairman of the Department of Bible

and Church Ministries at Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Adjunct Faculty of Homiletics and Missions at Maranatha Baptist

Seminary.


in the local church and the world ―To the Praise of His

Glory.‖

This mission statement effectively declares our

purpose, but a delineation of the operative verb

―develop‖ is necessary. Many good institutions state a

similar, lofty objective. What distinguishes one from

another is the way in which each seeks to develop

students to achieve that purpose. The focal point of

this article is to communicate the foundational

principles that shape the methods Maranatha utilizes

in fulfilling its mission. How do we define spirituality?

How do we seek to develop spiritual leaders? What

means do we utilize to accomplish our purpose? This

article is a summary of the biblical principles which we

seek to embrace and enact as we develop spiritual

leaders for global ministry.2 Four truths summarize

the spiritual ethos Maranatha desires in order to

effectively develop spiritual leaders:

1. The Gospel is central to the mission of

Maranatha.

2. Internal growth is the primary focal point for

spiritual development.

3. The distinct environment of a Christian

college enhances spiritual development.

2The nature of this article is not intrinsically academic. The

purpose is not to exegetically develop or defend a position. This

article is a summary of principles of discipleship that were

internally placed in writing during the 2009–2010 school year. These principles impact the entirety of the discipleship emphasis

at Maranatha.

Maranatha is Ministry 105

4. External ministry involvement is necessary for

spiritual development.

The Gospel is Central to the Mission of Maranatha

The first principle Maranatha embraces to fulfill

our mission is to keep central the message of the

Gospel. The Gospel initiates our institutional mission.

God‘s ultimate goal for mankind is that they worship

Him in spirit and in truth. He is seeking worshippers.

Worship begins when a sinner, by grace through faith,

acknowledges his sinful condition and trusts the only

Savior, when the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus

Christ brings him to the knowledge of the glory of God.

His heart is regenerated, and he is delivered from the

power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of

the Son of God. It is then that all of the magnificent

biblical images of salvation and all of the benefits of

salvation become realities in his life. The Spirit of God

begins to permanently indwell him and becomes the

guarantee that all of the positional realities of salvation

will be completely fulfilled when final salvation,

glorification, is secured.

This message of the Gospel is central to the

fulfillment of Maranatha‘s mission. Leaders, intellects,

businessmen, politicians, lawyers, homemakers,

humanitarians and anyone else who lives outside of a

personal relationship with Jesus Christ squander their

lives. The message of the Gospel restores one to

fellowship with God, renews friendship with his

Creator, and reconciles him to his Father. Biblical


spirituality and leadership do not exist apart from the

Gospel. Maranatha should not exist unless it also

makes much of the Gospel.

Second, the Gospel initiates and empowers an

individual‘s spiritual growth. Until glorification takes

place, the believer is instructed to ―work out‖ his

salvation. He seeks to be changed into His image. He is

actively being transformed by the renewing of his

mind. He wants to know Jesus Christ, the power of

His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.

He practices daily death to self and the putting on of

Christ. He celebrates his union with Christ. As he

allows God‘s Spirit to direct his life, he reflects that

control through humility, submission, singing, giving

thanks, mortifying sin, and numerous other steps of

faith.

Progressive sanctification does not come out of

daily duties driven by self-discipline. We are not saved

by grace to then walk in the strength of the flesh. We

are not moralists or legalists who seek to live holy lives

by aspiring to standards of self-righteousness. Our

growth in Christlikeness is founded in Gospel truths.

Biblical spirituality and leadership are both birthed

out of the Gospel and empowered by it. The sanctified

life is one of faith which is produced by the work of the

Holy Spirit in our lives.

The message of the Gospel at Maranatha is not

limited to sharing its wonderful truth with the

unsaved. The ―old, old story‖ is frequently expounded

so that each believer can discover anew its precious

power as it fleshes itself out in his daily sanctification.


The Gospel is that which draws one to Jesus Christ

and keeps him before the cross.

Internal Growth is the Primary Focal Point

for Spiritual Development

The second practice that Maranatha enacts to

fulfill its mission is to biblically define spirituality.

Man is comprised of two primary parts: the

material and the immaterial. Regardless of one‘s

theological position beyond that delineation, the outer

man and the inner man are easily distinguished. For a

believer, God claims ownership of both. The outer man

is to reflect His glory as the believer affirms choices of

purity and wise stewardship; yet the fate of the outer

man is sealed from the moment of birth—it is

perishing. On the other hand, the inner man is very

much alive, and it is being renewed day by day in

holiness and righteousness. It reflects the image of

Christ. While the outer man faints, fades, and

validates mortality, the inner man grows, develops,

and evidences spirituality.

Maranatha seeks to influence students primarily in

the development of the inner man. Outer man

conformation without inner man transformation does

not further our mission of developing spiritual leaders.

Our desire is to see students changed from the inside

out. Spiritual growth is the developmental process of

the formation of a whole person in the Lord Jesus

Christ under the authority of Scripture, by the power

of the Holy Spirit for ministry in the local church and


the world in order to bring glory to God. Intrinsic

within this definition are multiple concepts:

1. Spiritual growth is a process: Spiritual growth is

not an end. It is a process. The task of Maranatha

is not to produce a finished product. The goal is

to create and maintain an environment in which

spiritual maturation can effectively take place.

Thus, we are careful not to identify a ―one-size-

fits-all‖ mentality of spirituality. We acknowledge

the individuality of each student‘s spiritual

background, spiritual struggle, and spiritual

growth process. Above a desire to see our

students reach a particular external standard of

perceived maturation, our aspiration is to see the

student moving in the right direction toward truth

and grace.

2. Spirituality integrates the whole man: Spirituality

is not limited to merely spiritual activities. The

great command is to ―love the Lord your God with

all your heart and with all your soul and with all

your mind and with all your strength.‖ Jesus

Christ, our ultimate model, increased ―in wisdom

and stature, and in favor with God and man.‖ In

light of this, we seek to integrate all aspects of life

in order to promote spiritual growth. The

classroom, the concert hall, the dorm room, and

the athletic field are all forums in which varying

aspects of spiritual growth can take place. Any

model of spirituality that stresses one aspect of

formation over another is rejected by the


institution. Historical examples of these

incomplete approaches include those that are

noted below. True biblical spirituality

incorporates elements of each of these

approaches.

The Activist Approach The Contemplative

Approach

Action

Morality

Externals

Pursuing God as holy

Quietism

Withdrawal

Hiddenness

Pursuing God as love

The Intellectual Approach The Mystical Approach

Analysis

Intelligence

Doctrinal accuracy

Pursuing God as truth

Intuition

Passivity

Meditation

Pursuing God as one

3. Spirituality is marked by a transformation of the

internal man: Biblical imagery of the spiritual life

identifies it as the formation of the inner man into

the image of Jesus Christ. A Spirit-filled life is

marked by the fruit of the Spirit, a life of joy and

thanksgiving, and an attitude of humility and

submission. Though these key indicators of a

truly spiritual man are not easy to assess, the


goal is to emphasize and model these before the

student body.

4. Spirituality is Word-centered: The spiritual life is

marked by obedience to the Word of God. The

path to spirituality is a correct interpretation of

biblical truth. No additional words or traditions

are necessary to completely equip someone to ―be

perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.‖

Thus, the presentation of biblical truth is the

most important activity on campus. The

Scriptures are the final authority. The most

conclusive act of a spiritual man is obedience to

the Word of God.

5. Spirituality is Spirit-dependent: A spiritual life is

the creation of God through the work of the Holy

Spirit. No man can change another man. Man can

be pressed by man to conform to an external

image or standard, but only God can transform

the heart and life. We acknowledge that no

amount of emphasis on spiritual growth will be

effective unless it is empowered by the Spirit of

God. Also, we will not be satisfied with any

amount of external conformation if it is not

accompanied by internal transformation.

6. Spirituality has a goal of external ministry: The

grace of God that brings us to salvation, identifies

us as His workmanship, and creates us in Christ

Jesus also empowers us for good works. The

spiritual life is not an isolated or independent life.

It demonstrates a vertical love for God that

manifests itself in an equally powerful horizontal


love for man which includes fellow believers,

neighbors, and the larger sphere of humanity who

abide outside of the love of God. This love

motivates us to redemptive action through the

venue of the body of Christ, the church. Acts of

external ministry will be distinctive for individuals

as they develop and utilize their unique

giftedness.

7. Spirituality has its ultimate end in the glory of God:

We live and move and have our being for the glory

and praise of our Creator and Redeemer. The

spiritual life is the renewal of our marred image

into the original image ―created in righteousness

and true holiness.‖ The progressive nature of our

transformation on earth awaits the perfected

completion when we arrive in heaven so that we

can worship God for all of eternity.

These seven principles are parameters for

Maranatha as we seek to see students developed by

the Holy Spirit for spiritual leadership.

The Distinct Environment of a Christian College

Enhances Spiritual Development

The Scriptures clearly identify the growth process

of a believer as a spiritual battle. Spiritual growth does

not take place naturally. It has both natural and

supernatural enemies. At times, even within the

context of a Christian college campus, these enemies

are more significantly poignant and powerful. A college

campus is populated by young people who are often


characterized by infant faith and incipient spiritual

maturation. The world, the flesh, and satanic forces

are threats which seek to devour them from within and

without. These enemies are obstructions to the growth

process and must be recognized, so that appropriate

action can be taken to eradicate some elements from

the environment, neutralize others within the

environment, and at least prepare students for their

onslaught whatever their source.

At Maranatha, we seek to identify these enemies

and, when possible, protect students from the fullness

of their onslaught. Part of this protection is

accomplished through an established, structured

discipline system. The structured discipline system is

a means of establishing environmental controls. These

controls do not produce spirituality, nor are they all

inherently biblical in themselves. They merely function

as a means to create an atmosphere in which spiritual

growth can thrive and potentially deadly enemies can

be thwarted. We do not want any member of the

Maranatha family to become dependent upon an

external system for spiritual safety. The battle that will

be fought by every member of the Maranatha family

must be won via Holy Spirit-dependent, grace-

motivated, Gospel-centered discipline. We recognize

that the ―grace of God that bringeth salvation . . .

teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.‖ A

structured system for spiritual accountability is not

antithetical to a Gospel-centered life. Both can exist

and be beneficial within a Christian community.


The purpose of our structured discipline system is

fourfold.

Functional Management. As an educational

institution which has a specified purpose, we must

institute specific rules for the sake of accomplishing

organizational objectives. These rules are not always

based upon biblical principles or moral necessities,

but are designed to assist all members of the

institution in functional aspects of educational and

campus life. Types of these rules include expectations

in basic cleanliness and timeframes for activities.

Moral Accountability. As a body of believers we

are instructed in Scripture to maintain watch care for

one another‘s spiritual growth. There are numerous

―one another‖ passages that provide guidelines for this

type of accountability. These include positive

commandments to provoke one another to good works

and seemingly negative commandments to identify the

unruly and rebuke him. Both of these are for the sake

of the growth of the individuals within the Christian

community. For this reason, we ask all members of the

Maranatha family to abide by rules that seek to

enforce biblical commands and implement biblical

principles. This category of rule is clearly inter-related

to biblical instruction and is communicated as more

than just institutional preference. Some of these

guidelines are birthed directly from the text of

Scripture. For example, we prohibit all forms of

swearing, cursing, and degradation of the name of

God. There are sufficient texts in the Old and New

Testaments that explicitly exclude such language from


a believer‘s life. Other rules that aid in moral

accountability are implicitly noted in Scripture and are

appropriate applications of principles in our

contemporary milieu. For example, Paul did not

address the challenge of the Internet in collegiate

settings; yet, there are sufficient biblical principles for

us to arrive at a rule that prohibits students from

viewing inappropriate material. Explicit New

Testament commands are true for all time regardless

of cultural context. As an institution, we consistently

seek to delineate and communicate the distinctions

between explicit biblical commands and the

application of biblical principles. We desire to model

before students the need for unquestioned obedience

in areas in which the Scriptures are clear, and careful,

wise discernment in areas in which the Scriptures

allow for personal application.

Distinctive Environment. Since Maranatha seeks

to prepare Christians for global ministry, we

intentionally create an environment in which external

influences are limited so that they not distract from

potential spiritual growth. We know that the allure of

the world is contrary to spiritual development. We

know that there are issues that may be inherently

morally neutral, but in our context they act as weights

or disruptions for young people who are training for

spiritual leadership. Like any organization whose

purpose is to prepare specialists, we are selective in

what we allow to impact our environment. Thus, we

desire to limit the distractions within our campus life.

In place of those diversions, however, we seek to create


spiritually healthy alternatives that promote holistic

growth without undue temptation. Examples of this

include the limited access students have in watching

television, guidelines in dating relationships, and

structured dorm activities. The goal is not isolation

from the world, nor do we suggest that limitations

create spirituality. But within our unique environment,

we deliberately protect students from what could be

spiritually unhealthy distractions.

Institutional Identity. Maranatha serves a broad

constituency of churches. As a servant to these

churches we seek to maintain a campus environment

that is consistent with our diverse constituency. When

doing so, we sometimes have to make choices that are

based upon our own institutional identity. Utilizing the

principles of Romans 14–15, we at times will create an

institutional rule to limit our biblical freedoms for the

sake of loving another brother in Christ. The goal of

such a rule is not to create a boundary for holiness,

but to communicate a bond of unity and love. These

rules do not intrinsically produce character or develop

leadership. They are not thrust upon students as

standards necessary for the rest of their lives. They are

unique to this institution as it seeks to model

principles of love and sacrifice for the sake of fellow

believers. These rules are not moral imperatives; they

are patterns for how Christians live peaceably

together. They may change as the constituency and

the world changes. An example of this type of rule is

our institutional standard for music. Maranatha

believes the Scriptures are wholly sufficient in


communicating what is acceptable music to God. We

also recognize that many who make a similar claim

come to differing conclusions regarding what is

―acceptable music to God.‖ We teach without

hesitation what we believe, but our institutional

practice does not demand that we sing, play, or listen

to everything that we believe is acceptable. Since fellow

believers within our constituency may strongly take

issue with a particular song or artist, we may choose

to sacrifice our liberty in playing or even listening to

that particular song. We do so not to be enslaved by

the conscience of another, but to exhibit a spirit of love

and unity. These are the types of decisions that all

broad-based institutions make. If improperly

understood or communicated, this type of guideline

can be confused with a rule for moral accountability.

When correctly understood, however, these

communicate love, honor, humility, and peace.

Maranatha believes that a structured discipline

system can enhance the spiritual growth of all

members of the community. We acknowledge,

however, that any structured system can potentially

lead to individuals who seek merely to conform to

external standards without any internal change. We

are concerned that some in fleshly arrogance deem

external conformation to rules as biblical spirituality.

This spirit of legalism is deadly to authentic

transformational sanctification, but we do not believe

that eradication of a structured discipline system is

the necessary response to this danger. We believe the

appropriate response is threefold. First, keep the


Gospel central to all that we do. Second, focus on

transparent internal spiritual growth. Third,

consistently communicate to students the reasons for

the structure. Young, growing believers of all ages can

thrive in a structured environment. A structured

system of accountability, accompanied by open

communication that clarifies the reasons for the rules,

a spirit of grace that enforces the rules, and

willingness for institutional self-assessment, is a

wonderful benefit for all involved.

External Ministry Involvement is Necessary

for Spiritual Development

Ephesians 2:8–10 are familiar verses that describe

the work of grace which brings one to salvation. Often

the emphasis of the passage is on the salvific act, but

the concluding phrase states that we are ―created in

Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before

ordained that we should walk in them.‖ The grace of

God that initiates the Gospel and spurs us to internal

spiritual growth also empowers us to outward acts of

service to our Savior. At Maranatha, we believe that

acts of service, good works, and involvement in global

ministry are the necessary outworking of salvation and

spiritual growth. We believe the order developed in

Ephesians is crucial to a healthy spiritual life.

Salvation is followed by sanctification which in turn

prompts service. Acts of service without either

salvation or internal development are not acceptable to

the Lord. Demanding acts of spiritual service in


students‘ lives without a corresponding emphasis on

spiritual growth leads to student frustration, legalism,

and a dutiful view of Christian ministry. On the other

hand, internal spiritual growth without external acts of

service is malformed. It lacks integrity and wholeness

and results in spiritual stagnation and arrogance. The

model presented by Jesus Christ is one of seeing the

needs of others, being moved with compassion,

speaking to them, and then touching their lives (Luke

7:13–14). Our Savior came to seek sinners and serve

His disciples. He came to change lives. The Great

Commission of Matthew 28 provides the framework for

what Christian service should look like.

First, Christ presupposes the scope of Christian

ministry by implying that disciples should be

traversing the world for the sake of His name. The

opening participle is a reminder that believers should

be going into the entire world. In other words, as

believers are going, we are to be making disciples. A

vital aspect of Maranatha‘s mission in developing

Christlike servant-leaders is to expose students to the

needs of the world. Maranatha has a strong history of

seeing its alumni serve overseas. Our desire to see God

glorified among the nations prompts us to pray that

more students would be thrust into the harvest and to

plan for more participation in global evangelism. To

meet that need, in 2007 Maranatha instituted the

Office of Global Encounters, whose sole purpose is to

assist students and faculty in participating in global

evangelism. The mission statement and core values of


Global Encounters correspond to the institutional

purpose.

Mission Statement:

Global Encounters exists to strategically

mobilize the faculty and students of Maranatha

into needy regions around the world for the

purpose of local church development.

Core Values:

1. Local Church Focus: The focus of Global

Encounters is joining God in actively,

passionately, creatively, and strategically

building and strengthening churches

throughout the world.

2. College Team Dynamic: Global Encounters

seeks avenues to expose students to multiple

geographical regions via short term

educational and mission teams, recognizing

that college students represent the future of

world evangelization.

3. Life is Ministry: The work of world

evangelization is the task of every vocational

and academic field. Global Encounters seeks

to utilize every student and faculty member‘s

individual expertise in reaching the lost of

the world.

4. Interdependence: The work of Christ in

building and strengthening churches

demands mutual partnerships among fellow

believers in various countries who are

committed to faithful obedience to the Word


of God. Global Encounters desires to assist

national pastors and schools when possible.

5. Excellence in Preparation: Global Encoun-

ters will emphasize the importance of quality

in business, character, and conduct in all of

its tasks.

6. Leadership Development and Vision:

Through the mission experience, Global

Encounters provides an opportunity for

students to personally develop as leaders

and to capture a vision for the world beyond.

Since 2008, Global Encounters has sponsored

twenty mission trips with over 350 students, staff,

faculty, and administrators participating. The goal of

these trips is to further the discipleship ministry of

Maranatha by exposing students to the needs of the

world and seeing them engaged in acts of service as

they minister to others. Providing global perspective is

vital to the fulfillment of Maranatha‘s mission of

developing the next generation of Christian leaders.

Second, the principal imperative of the Great

Commission is to make disciples. As believers span the

globe, they are to be disciple makers. At Maranatha,

we seek to be actively employed in the process of both

making disciples and producing disciple makers. This

is Paul‘s model in 2 Timothy 2:2. Disciple making is

the impact of one believer on the life of another

believer. The heart of Christian service is the

fulfillment of the ―one another‖ passages within

Scripture. Discipleship is not primarily a formal


program; it is a spirit of mutual love, caring,

confrontation, and edification. It is two believers

committed to each other‘s spiritual well-being. This is

the type of spirit and activity that we seek to cultivate

at Maranatha. The environment of transparent

interaction between students, staff, faculty, and

administrators is enriching. In the classrooms,

hallways, dormitories, offices, and homes, all are

invited to openly provoke one another to good works.

In conjunction with the spirit of disciple making on

the campus of Maranatha, there are also structured

opportunities for enhancing leadership skills as a

disciple maker. Paul indicates to Timothy that he is to

be ―committing‖ truth to others so that they can lead.

The concept of commitment communicates intentional

development of young men and women. Students at

Maranatha are offered multiple discipleship

opportunities by participating in dormitory leadership,

ministry societies, and multiple other co-curricular

activities. Within these avenues of outreach, students

can serve in over one hundred different leadership

roles. Each role has a structured program of

mentorship and discipleship. Students are encouraged

to think beyond their personal comfort zones. They are

challenged to serve others and then instructed in how

best to do that. Personal giftedness is assessed and

developed. Selfless living and leadership is

encouraged. Making disciples is the operative verb in

the Great Commission. Students who are growing

spiritually will be both discipled and discipling. These

concepts are at the core of Maranatha‘s ethos.


Third, the Great Commission implicitly communi-

cates the primary location in which lifelong spiritual

service and ministry takes place. The first step in

discipleship of a new believer is baptism. Baptizing

identifies the convert with the death, burial, and

resurrection of Jesus Christ. It also identifies the

believer with the visible body of Christ, the local

church. As evidenced in Acts and the epistles, the local

church is where the teaching ministry takes place. At

Maranatha, the local church is recognized as the

principal work of God in the world today. Maranatha is

committed to the primacy and autonomy of the local

church. All students attend a local congregation of

believers each Sunday and Wednesday. Many are

involved in weekly ministry. Each is encouraged to

realize that the local church is to be a priority in

his/her life. It is there that truth is taught, families

grow, gifts are used, accountability sharpens, and

Christ is exalted. Students make the local church a

positive habit of life. No artificial replacements to God‘s

body are provided or permitted for students. We

celebrate the privilege of manifesting the manifold

wisdom of God through the church.

External ministry is the supernatural result of a

Spirit-filled life. Activity is not the ultimate mark of

spirituality, but spiritually growing individuals will

serve. The biblical model for that service is a life of

discipleship in the context of local churches spread

throughout the world. Maranatha seeks to emphasize

each of those characteristics of Great Commission


living: a spirit of discipleship, the primacy of the local

church, and a vision for the world.

Conclusion

The mission statement of Maranatha Baptist Bible

College and Seminary declares that we exist to develop

leaders for ministry in the local church and the world

―To the Praise of His Glory.‖ This is a mission that

cannot be accomplished by the will of man. The

foundation for the mission is the power of the Gospel

message as it is applied daily. The focal point is the

internal spiritual development of each student. The

environment is controlled to provide an atmosphere for

maximum spiritual development and corporate

commitment. The outworking of that spiritual

development is a life of service in the local church and

throughout the world. We pray that God will continue

to empower us to fulfill this mission for ―the praise of

His glory.‖

MBTJ 1/1: 125-139

Maranatha Commitment

Statements

Maranatha‘s Doctrinal Statement originated in the

very first year of Maranatha‘s existence. During the

summer of 2009, the college Bible faculty and the

seminary faculty created an expansion of the doctrinal

statement and set forth the following declaration of its

commitment to biblical truth and its application of

that truth to the lives of its students, staff, and

faculty. The purpose of this statement was to make

clear to the Board of Trustees, as they commenced the

search for the fifth president of Maranatha Baptist

Bible College, the commitment of the Bible faculty to

biblical truth and the positions that Maranatha has

historically held.

1. Education: The Bible Department is committed to

a God-centered education. We acknowledge that ―of

Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things:

to whom be glory forever.‖ We seek to follow the

curriculum of the psalmist who sought to proclaim

the praises, power, and providential work of God to

the generations to come. Our ultimate goal is that

students would ―set their hope in God, and not

forget the works of God, but keep his

commandments.‖ We trust that this goal will

permeate all of our courses and thus produce a


humble dependence and passionate desire for the

person of God in both professors and students.

2. Exegesis: The Bible Department is committed to

biblical exegesis. Systems of theology are always

subservient to and to be sourced out of the

authority of the text of Scripture. The ultimate

responsibility of the Bible Department is to teach

individuals to be workmen in the text who strive

for an accurate understanding of the

Author‘s/authors‘ intent. Studies in the original

languages and employment of hermeneutical tools

are encouraged. We seek to equip the students

with exegetical skills which the Holy Spirit, the

supreme Helper, can then use to illuminate His

Word to the minds and hearts of the students as

they prayerfully submit to the authority of the text.

We are concerned for those individuals who

embrace systems of theology without first

obtaining the exegetical skills necessary to

evaluate those systems.

3. Personal Evangelism and Missions: The Bible

Department is committed to personal evangelism

and global missions. Regardless of vocational

calling, all believers are to recognize that life is

ministry and ministry is global. Fulfillment of the

Great Commission is the expected behavior of all

believers at all ages in all geographical settings.

Our desire is to instill within students the joy of

sharing the transforming message of the gospel.

Maranatha Commitment Statements 127

This will be accomplished through teaching

Scripture in the classroom, modeling evangelism in

our personal lives, providing structured

opportunities for students to be mentored in

witnessing, and encouraging our students to be

involved in evangelistic outreaches in the local

church. We affirm that the gospel must be shared

through the verbal communication of the death

and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not merely by the

living of a morally upright life. We also rejoice that

the chief end of sharing the gospel is the

glorification of God as His name is exalted among

the nations.

4. Leadership: The Bible Department is committed to

education that produces individuals who evidence

courageous, compassionate, and convictional

leadership. We are convinced that the Word of God

is relevant for every age and adequately equips

students to lead in this contemporary milieu.

Christian leadership must be distinctively different

from worldly leadership that is characterized by

personality, power, and politics. Our task is to

prepare servant leaders who have strong,

biblically-based convictions; who demonstrate

grace and Christlike compassion as they live and

communicate those convictions; and who stand

with resolute courage when the truths of Scripture

are mocked and attacked by the post-Christian

world.


5. Baptist Heritage and Polity: The Bible

Department is committed to Baptist polity and to

our heritage as Baptists. The Bible is the sole

authority for our faith and practice. From the New

Testament in particular, we derive the following

distinctives: churches are constituted solely of

regenerated and immersed believers. Local

churches are autonomous and self-governing. In

association with this distinctive, we teach that

each local church should have pastors to lead and

deacons to serve the congregation, and that the

ultimate earthly authority is the congregation

itself. Every believer is a priest before God, and all

humans enjoy soul liberty. Immersion and the

Lord‘s Supper are the only New Testament

ordinances and do not convey justifying grace (i.e.,

they are not sacraments). Finally, we as Baptists

hold to separation of church and state as well as

both personal and ecclesiastical separation.

We believe that various religious groups

throughout church history have held to key Baptist

distinctives and are therefore an important part of

our Baptist heritage. We reject the liberal notion

that Baptists invented the doctrines that

distinguish them, believing rather that Baptists

express New Testament teachings that have always

been present in some form in church history.

Modern Baptists acknowledge their early heritage

and from the early seventeenth century have a

continuous documented history. We reject the idea


that Baptists are the only true Christians or that

Baptist churches are the only true churches;

therefore we reject the Landmark Church History

theory that underlies these notions. The heritage of

Baptists, as defenders of soul liberty and

separation of church and state, should be known

and valued by all Baptists.

6. Dispensationalism: The Bible Department is

committed to a dispensational hermeneutic. In

every Bible course we teach and demonstrate

a normal, historical, grammatical interpretation of

the text of Scripture that is the foundation of

dispensationalism. This hermeneutic does not

preclude or exclude correct understanding of types,

illustrations, apocalypses, and other genres within

the basic framework of literal interpretation. It

does acknowledge the progressive revelation of

God‘s divine plan through time. Though various

stewardships of revelation are acknowledged, the

unifying salvific factor for all people for all time is

the necessity of responding by faith to the special

revelation given. The consequence of this

consistent hermeneutic is a distinction between

ethnic Israel and the New Testament church.

Covenants established between God and ethnic

Israel will be fulfilled in the literal sense in which

they were given and received. The unique

relationship between Christ and His Bride, the

church, is acknowledged and preserved.


Throughout all of eternity, the ultimate purpose of

His universal plan is that of glorifying Himself.

We reject covenant theology, its hermeneutic, and

the eschatology of amillennialism and post-

millennialism. Furthermore, we reject the

progressive concept that Christ is already reigning

on the Davidic throne.

7. The Church: The Bible Department is committed to

the primacy and autonomy of the local church.

God‘s principal work in the world today is the

building of the church. In the first four chapters of

Ephesians, God reveals to believers that His

primary interest in this dispensation is the church.

Ephesians describes the work of the triune God as

He blesses, chooses, predestines, adopts, redeems,

forgives, empowers, and enlightens a people for His

name to the praise of His glorious grace. The result

of these actions is the creation of a body and the

construction of a building called the church.

Believers are not to live independently of each

other, but are to be joined together as one new body

functioning as a single household of God. The

accomplishment of the task of bringing together

this redeemed group of strangers into a unified

body has a single intent: that all earthly and

heavenly powers would know the ―manifold wisdom

of God.‖


The local body of Christ, ―the pillar and ground of

the truth,‖ is under the authority of the Redeemer

and Chief Shepherd. As such she functions in an

autonomous fashion. Her members alone are

responsible for the safeguarding of their doctrine,

the working of their governance, and the choices of

their ecclesiastical practice. The role of the Bible

Department is to serve local assemblies, not by

establishing dictums to follow or practices to

uphold, but by equipping individuals for leadership

in the local church through biblical instruction.

8. Fundamentalism: The Bible Department is

committed to Fundamentalism. The fundamentals

of the faith have historically been defined as those

beliefs that are necessary to the biblical doctrine of

salvation combined with a high doctrine of

Scripture, so that we have an inerrant record of

those doctrines. Fundamentalism as an idea is

absolute allegiance to those doctrines united to a

willingness to defend those doctrines and to

separate from those who deny or contradict them.

Fundamentalism as a modern American movement

emerged in the late nineteenth century when

theological liberalism began to infiltrate and

overwhelm the mainline denominations, and a

generation rose up to defend the faith against

those onslaughts. The movement has gradually

taken shape over the last century as a separatist

wing of conservative Christianity, consisting


primarily, but not exclusively, of premillennarians

and Baptists.

Maranatha‘s origin lies squarely within the

fundamental Baptist movement. As such, we have

self-consciously identified ourselves as a separatist

institution serving primarily independent and

separatist Baptist churches. We reject the

evangelical mindset towards culture and the

tendencies to develop strategies for ecumenical

evangelism and to cooperate with non-evangelical

theologies. We see our mission as militant defense

of the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints. We

regard separation from disobedient brethren a

sometimes necessary step in order to maintain

fidelity to Scripture. In general, we believe that

cooperation is possible in proportion to agreement,

and separation is necessary in proportion to

disagreement. We also reject the attitudes and

actions of fundamentalists who elevate tangential

and eccentric teachings to the level of the

fundamentals of the faith and separate over them.

With our fundamentalist forefathers, we believe

that unity should be enjoyed when possible,

separation practiced when necessary.

9. Expositional Preaching: The Bible Department is

committed to expository preaching. Because we

acknowledge both the authority and the sufficiency

of Scripture and because we accept the literal,

grammatical, historical, and contextual


hermeneutic, we believe that the natural outcome

of an exegetical approach to the study of the

Scripture is expository preaching. Each book,

chapter, and verse exists within a communicative

framework designed to convey truth that is

germane to that particular pericope, a dynamic

that no other form of preaching fully captures.

Even when students present a topical sermon (e.g.,

doctrinal sermon), we believe they should present a

text or texts in an expositional style, systematically

unpacking the meaning of a particular text with

reference to that topic in its context.

Furthermore, based upon Paul‘s instructions to

Timothy, we strive for a balance between teaching

and exhortation (distinguishing the sermon from

either a mere lecture or a purely persuasive

speech). We also distinguish between exegesis and

homiletics (the study of God‘s Word and the

communication of God‘s Word). The expositional

sermon engages all the elements of human

response—intellect, emotion, and will. We endeavor

to demonstrate through our preaching the

deliberate movement from the text (exegesis), to

theology (the canonical context), to application (the

contemporary significance of the text), faithfully

demonstrating both the authoritative meaning of

the text and the authoritative relevance of the text

to today‘s Christian. We, therefore, acknowledge

that the effectiveness of preaching does not come

from the personality of the preacher or the delivery


of the sermon, but from the intentional exposure of

the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit

who uses it in the lives of the hearers.

We appreciate that God uses preachers who are

not expositors, but we strive to teach and model

the expository method. We reject anthro-centric

(health and wealth, positive thinking) and socio-

centric (social gospel) sermons. We choose rather a

theo-centric focus. Biblical preaching, therefore,

imparts specific truths of a particular pericope so

that an individual may know and trust the Savior

more.

10. Versions: The Bible Department is committed to a

position on the text of the Scriptures that honors

textual truths, historical discovery and local

church leadership. We believe in the verbal,

plenary inspiration of the Bible, the sixty-six books

of the Old and New Testament canon, which, being

inspired and inerrant in the original manuscripts,

is the final authority on all matters of faith and

practice. We believe that the Bible teaches the

complete preservation of the verbal revelation of

God, yet no passage of Scripture specifies the

manner in which God preserved His Word. Thus,

we hold that God has providentially preserved His

Word in the many manuscripts, fragments, and

copies of the Scriptures. We hold that the reliability

of any text, text type, translation, version, or copy

of the Scriptures is to be judged by the autographs


only. Thus any translation or version of Scripture

in any language is the Word of God if it accurately

reproduces what is in the original languages. We

believe that the translation of the Word of God

from the original languages into the language of

common people is a necessary activity and

essential for the spread of the Gospel.

We are thankful that the KJV of the Bible is an

accurate translation of the original languages. This

version is the preference of multiple churches

within our constituency. We use the King James

Version in the Maranatha pulpit and classroom.

We reject versions that reflect liberal or cultic bias.

We reject preservation positions that elevate any

version to the level of the autographs.

11. Soteriology: The Bible Department is committed to

teaching a biblically balanced soteriology. We

believe in the divine source of salvation, that all of

salvation flows from God‘s free and unmerited

grace. We also affirm the responsibility of all people

to repent of their sins and believe the gospel. We

recognize that good men have differed throughout

church history regarding the difficult questions of

election and predestination. While believing that it

is essential that every student of the Word work

through the numerous passages that touch on

these difficult issues, we grant both our faculty

and students the liberty to investigate the

sovereignty of God and the freedom of man in


various ways. We reject theology that denies the

responsibility of all people to repent and believe, or

the responsibility of all believers to evangelize

everyone they can. We do not support positions

that attribute the source of evil to God or that limit

the extent of Christ‘s atonement to the elect. We

also reject man-centered theologies that depreciate

human depravity, emphasizing free will to the

extent that they depend upon methodologies and

strategies as the crucial components in evangelism

and revival. We uphold the biblical doctrine of

eternal security. The Bible Department believes

that carelessly disparaging men as Calvinists or

Arminians is unhelpful and intellectually chilling.

At Maranatha the great doctrines relating to God‘s

gracious work are treated with reverence and

respect and believers are evaluated according to

their obedience and faithfulness to the Word

regardless of the labels men ascribe to them. Both

scholarship and truth require accuracy and grace

when evaluating men and ministries. We believe

professors and students ought to be able to

interact thoughtfully and respectfully on this issue,

bringing all of their theological formulations to the

bar of careful biblical exegesis.

12. Sanctification: The Bible Department is com-

mitted to the progressive nature of sanctification.

At salvation, believers are made positionally holy in

Christ and await the perfected holiness of heaven.

Until that time, an individual must wage war with


the flesh by a Spirit-empowered putting off of the

old manner of life and putting on of the new life as

he or she is being renewed in the Spirit of holiness.

This progressive battle is won as the man of God

utilizes the Word of God in the power of the Spirit

of God to become like the Son of God. Because it is

an individual battle, we recognize that each

believer grows at a different pace and that this

growth is manifested in various ways. We also

recognize that this growth toward Christlikeness is

initially an internal transformation of the heart

that results in external indications of biblical

change. We acknowledge that individual growth

involves an active mortification of the flesh that is

enabled by God‘s divine power rather than a

passive quietism. The nature of this work is an

active dependence upon God‘s Spirit as we walk in

daily fellowship with Him. Because there are a

variety of positions on sanctification, we, therefore,

foster a spirit of grace toward those believers who

are inclined towards alternative views.

13. Christian Liberty: The Bible Department is

committed to the biblical practice of Christian

liberty. We acknowledge that Scripture binds

believers together around non-negotiables such as

the gospel, fundamental doctrines, and clear

biblical mandates, but allows for a variety of

applications of biblical principles to areas not

specifically enumerated in Scripture. We encourage

all believers through their study of Scripture to


establish personal convictions that glorify God in

all areas of life and promote unity with fellow

believers.

Paul clearly defines in Romans 14 and 1

Corinthians 8–10 that believers are neither to be

―despising‖ nor ―judging‖ others because of

different practices in ―doubtful things,‖ but rather

are to receive one another as fellow-servants. We

reject all attempts to elevate extra-biblical

standards to the level of scriptural authority; such

attempts often divide the Body of Christ and/or

endeavor to establish one‘s holiness apart from the

work of Christ. Such practices lead to spiritual

elitism, pride, and inauthentic holiness that stress

the external over the internal. Believers must,

therefore, be convinced in their own faith of the

rightness or wrongness of a practice through their

personal study of the Scriptures and stand before

God in assurance of their faith while biblically

loving those of differing persuasions. We also

recognize the need for submission to institutional

standards but acknowledge these do not produce

holiness in and of themselves, but can be helpful

prior to the formation of personal convictions.

14. Contemporary Issues: The Bible Department is

committed to transparent interaction with students

on contemporary issues. Discernment is a

character quality and acquired skill that is

necessary for spiritual success. The ability to


practice keen insight and judgment in

contemporary issues cannot be developed in an

environment that limits discussion and hinders

transparency. At the same time, open discussion

without progression toward biblical answers does

not meet the standard of a valid education. It is

our desire to provide students a forum for

communication so that education in critical

thinking and biblical discretion can take place. In

particular, we recognize that our students are

being impacted by many conservative evangelicals

via their writings, speaking, and internet

communication. We acknowledge that many of

these men and women have made positive

contributions to the Body of Christ. We also note

that aspects of their teaching and practices fall

outside of the boundaries that we believe are

biblical. We seek to instruct and model for

students to ―prove all things, hold fast that which

is good.‖