I pitched my “Five New Fundamentals” question to the crew at Theopolis, and they’re running with it. Their article is well worth reading; they got some heavy hitters to weigh in, people I’d never get access to. Hopefully, that will spark further discussion (and more articles). By all means, go and read it!
In a nutshell, here’s the question:
In response to a ruinous drift away from the historic Christian faith, there was a widespread movement in 20th-century American Christianity to uphold what they termed the “Five Fundamentals” of the Christian faith:
- The inspiration and infallibility of the Bible
- The virgin birth of Jesus Christ
- Substitutionary atonement through Christ’s death on the cross
- The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ
- The historicity of Jesus’ miracles
Of course these are not the Five Most Important Truths of Christianity for all time, as though we had a prioritized list that fell from heaven on golden plates. These five truths were foundational elements of Christianity that were under attack at that historical moment. At other times, such a list might have included the deity of Christ (in A.D. 325), or the full deity and humanity of Christ (451), or justification by faith (1517), or the necessity for individual new birth (1741), or the reality of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing ministry (1906).
The faith once delivered to all the saints doesn’t change, but the enemy is always tempting us in different guises. It’s far too easy to stoutly resist the temptations of yesteryear and still get owned by the current batch of temptations. So our task is to continually articulate the unchanging Christian faith in a way that cuts against today’s vain imaginations. I’ve found articulating a current five fundamentals to be a useful exercise. Of course there’s nothing magical about the number five; it’s just a convenient number for discussion. Five is short enough that you have to edit (and won’t drown the discussion in a list of 100 things), and long enough that there’s no pressure to identify The Single Biggest Thing.
What about you? What would be on your list of five fundamentals for today?
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