This is a very serious question. Please prayerfully answer.
I am a lifelong Baptist, starting in the SBC as a child and going through both Freewill and Independent Fundamentalism (KJV Only). For the last two years , I have been Reformed, and it has been as if a light was turned on in my heart. However, yesterday I read on "PuritanBoard" that their staff,mods,and membership seem to be overwhlmingly anti-Fundamentalist. I think I would expect disagreement on some issues, but calling "Bob Jones University" EVIL is a bit much. Refering to Dr. John R.Rice, one of the sweetest men in any pulpit, as causing their "skin to crawl" with revulsion. Have I made a mistake? I cannot get on the Puritan Board site, so I ask you instead....What's going on here?
Julian of York
Fundamental Reformed and proudly KJV ONLY
It depends on what you mean by "fundamentalist." If you mean the classic definition of somebody who, against the pressures of liberal theology, retains a belief in "the Fundamentals," then all conservative Reformed and Puritans are fundamentalist in that sense.
However, the way the word is typically used by anyone who has a clue about theology (as opposed to idiots wanting to compare violent Islamists and polygamist Mormons to theologically conservative Christians),
fundamentalist usually refers to the evangelical wing of the fundamentalist reaction--Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, everybody conservative except Reformed and Lutherans, basically. Conservative Reformed and Puritans tend to dissociate themselves from this kind of "fundamentalism" because as a whole it has pursued a rather anti-intellectual direction, especially in its opposition to the Doctrines of Grace. That's not to say that there aren't intellectually honest fundamentalists who can rationally defend their beliefs. However, by and large, fundamentalism relies on sensationalism and straw-man arguments, which makes fundamentalist opponents of Reformed soteriology and sacramentology especially obnoxious.
Not all Calvinists are welcome there. I personally don't like the Puritan Board and have been kicked off twice for not holding to a Sabbath and for saying I agree with John MacArthur on some things they condemn as dispensational like acknowledging a separation between Jews and Gentiles claiming gentiles are grafted into a Jewish church etc. People like John MacArthur aren't even welcome there at all. They treat him and those like him like pariahs. They would deny him membership if he tried to join. You have to be 100% confessionally Reformed to be a member. That means you can't disagree with anything your stated confession says unless you submit an exception that the admins approve of and they probably won't approve as they are puritanical. They allow their members to confess the Westminster and the LBCF but among those who confess the Westminster is debate that the LBCF is even reformed at all but 1689ers are allowed there anyway. It's a very small and legalistic club. It's a Puritan board. If you are 100% Puritan sign up. If not, avoid it. They aren't even mainstream like Piper, MacArthur, et all. So, take what they say with a grain of salt. I don't know if you heard that guy recently stand up in the question and answer period at St. Andrews with RC Sproul and Sinclair Ferguson and foolishly accuse Sinclair Ferguson of taking the L out of Limited Atonement along with Piper, but that guy is a good example of what the Puritan Board is like. He's probably a member.
So, no, not all Calvinists hate fundamentalists. Most Calvinists don't even belong on the Puritan Board so don't worry. The admins of the PB think it takes a lot more than just confessing the 5 points and scriptural inerrancy to be "reformed." They don't have a monopoly on the word. In the modern vernacular Reformed means a conservative Christian who confesses 5 point Calvinism. The PB don't use the modern vernacular and instead insist on speaking an outdated language that no one else uses and thus they remain isolated in their little non evangelical bubble splitting hairs.
It
does take more than just confessing the 5 points and scriptural inerrancy, and to act like that is legalism is to play fast and loose with the meaning of
legalism. To be "legalistic" is either (1) to say that something beyond faith in the death, burial, and Resurrection of Christ in history is required for salvation, or (2) to add man-made requirements to the law of God. PuritanBoard is doing neither. PuritanBoard is saying that if you're going to use the word
Reformed, use it correctly. If you just hold to the five points, you're
soteriologically Reformed, but are you
sacramentally Reformed? Are you
ecclesiologically Reformed? Are you
politically Reformed? Are you
dispensationally Reformed? I mean, imagine I only adopted the semi-congregationalist church government of the SBC, but retained my paedobaptist sacramentology, yet I went around calling myself a "Southern Baptist." Or imagine I accepted consubstantiation but retained my belief in the 5 points and my exclusive psalmody and my rejection of man-made holidays like Christmas, yet I went around calling myself a "Lutheran."
It's the same thing when credobaptists call themselves "Reformed." They're
soteriologically Reformed, but that doesn't give anybody the warrant to co-opt the name for the whole package.
And note that there's no stipulation in any of that which says that you have to be a paedobaptist to be saved, or that a woman's hair must be at least
X inches long, or anything of that sort. That would be legalism. There's none of that in this discussion. There is, at most, a concern that people have the right doctrine sacramentally, ecclesiologically, politically, and dispensationally. But that's not legalism. That's concern for orthodoxy. And if you think those things are frivolous to split hairs over, then I would invite you to consider that the apostles themselves split hairs over it, because they would never have written half the things they wrote in their epistles if these matters were indifferent.
