Pensees: Thinking Through the Zichterman Conversion

Thinking Through the Zichterman Conversion

This Section will attempt to achieve my first goal as stated here. The goal, I said,was as follows:

1. First of all, since I have the fundamentalists of Zichterman’s former circle in mind, I want to show what his conversion is not. The goal here is to help people to understand the theological leap that Zichterman is making in relational terms. In other words, to whom does Zichterman relate?

This Section will have multiple parts and I will try to keep the word count down to about one thousand. To borrow from Blaise Pascal, the author of the real Pensées said, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

Section I, Part One

If you are a new Christian you are probably confused by the idea that there are literally millions of people who are Christians and yet the differences between them are so significant to them that they cannot even agree to worship together. This, of course, is one of the sad effects of sin. Sin is always anti-relational. Therefore, one of the happiest thoughts we have about heaven is that one day all of God’s people will enjoy perfect unity.

Until then, however, those who really profess Jesus Christ are on a pilgrimage toward that unity and are obligated to make hard choices about which Christians they will identify with while they are making their way to that longed-for harmony. Consequently, groupings of Christian people develop over time. These groupings are formal and informal.

Formal and Informal Groupings of Christians

Examples of formal groupings of believers would include Presbyterianism, Baptists, and Methodists. These groupings or classifications of people may take shape around certain values or teachings of Scripture and are often easily identified by creeds, doctrinal statements, and distinct practices. For example, Baptists baptize by immersion. Other Christians do not practice baptism this way.

Examples of informal groupings may be formed by common values, cultural experiences, shared interests, and shared doctrinal emphases. By saying “informal” I do not wish to imply for one second that these groupings are any less important. In fact, it is often the case that these are more significant in the Christian walk than the formal groupings. Examples of informal groupings may include charismaticism, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and the emerging church. While doctrine is certainly implicit in the formation of these classifications, none of these have a formal creed by which you can easily distinguish their distinctions. Yet, the Christian who is serious about his or her pilgrimage to heaven will eventually have to reflect long and hard on the grouping of Christians he or she walks with because whether he likes it or not the grouping of Christians of which he is a part has shared values and doctrinal emphases that make it distinct from other groups.

Most of the time, our association in a particular grouping of Christians is providential. In other words, we had nothing to do with our place in the great family of God. We were either born into a Christian family and naturally continued in the Christian group and denomination they were a part of, or when we converted as adults we simply stayed with the group of Christians that God used to bring us to a saving knowledge of Himself. Yet, as I stated earlier, the serious minded Christian is sure to ponder hard on the distinctions of her “brand” of Christianity sooner or later. And this is a good thing.

The biggest danger, however, is for the persons who have been brought up in one of these milieus to think that their Christian identity is somehow vitally dependent on their group identity. They are closing their mind to Christian truth and healthy growth if they begin to think that Christian identity and identity with any group other than the one they know are mutually exclusive. There are no fundamentalists or evangelicals in heaven. There will only be redeemed sinners. Yet we are too often inclined to think that the heart of Christianity is the exclusive property of our group. This erroneous thinking sneaks up on the unsuspecting Christian who often hears broad generalizations about the other groups.

For example, when many fundamentalists were growing up, they heard about those other Christians, the evangelicals, or the “new evangelicals.” The term “evangelical” became a catch-all phrase for anybody who was not self-identified as a fundamentalist. Consequently, names of outstanding Bible teachers like John MacArthur were tossed into the same basket labeled “evangelical” as, say, the conniving tele-evangelists of the 1980s. Yet the difference between the two was so vast. The men and their doctrines were significantly different.

To be fair, in some ways this could not be helped. As I will try to explain later, the believers who did not want to be grouped with those who called themselves “fundamentalists” readily embraced “evangelical” as their identification. Over the years they have begun to see that “evangelicalism” is practically meaningless anymore because there are so many groupings of Christians under that term that one can not fully identify the values, doctrines, and teachings of any Christian merely because he claims to be evangelical. However, the fundamentalists were not the only ones who indiscriminately tossed the names of any non-fundamentalist Christian into the same catch-all basket, evangelicals did the same. “Fundamentalism” became their term for any believer that resisted the broad and undefined definitions of Christianity that were everywhere within evangelicalism. Thus, names like Dave Doran and Kevin Bauder are indiscriminately tossed into the same wastebasket labeled “fundamentalists” as names like Jack Hyles and Peter Ruckman even though the one pair is significantly different than the other.

The end result is that the people who grew up in either circle had a completely useless understanding of the terms that identified the other group. Worse, since both groups became the catch-all baskets for the each other’s rejects, they soon lost all understanding of their own groups! A huge identity crisis developed.

Sub-groups

Naturally, the groupings of believers as either evangelicals or fundamentalists were so large and diverse that many, many sub-groups developed and these are identified in various ways. For example, within the group of believers who self-identify as fundamentalists, you will see that many choose to align themselves with denomination or association that defines their sub-group best. Those of us who are independent minded do not like to admit it, but we cannot help the fact that fairly accurate descriptions of our theology can be made by the group of Christians we align ourselves with.

For example, if a believer is an enthusiastic supporter of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, you may reasonably assume that he is Calvinistic and Dispensational in his theology with a strong fundamentalist commitment. (What any of these terms mean is at this moment irrelevant for the purposes of the point I am trying to make). On the other hand, if a Christian is an enthusiastic supporter of The Master’s Seminary you may reasonably assume that he is slightly stronger in his Calvinism and Dispensational in his theology, but very disinclined to be labeled fundamentalist.

Interestingly, the difference between the DBTS believer and the Master’s believer is very small compared to differences they may have with other believers within their own larger group! Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary has done a marvelous job, in my opinion, of repudiating the errors of the KJV-only movement. Consequently, there are some KJV-only fundamentalists who would question the seminary’s right to be labeled fundamentalist. They would rather toss them into that nasty bin labeled “evangelicals!”

In the same way, the Master’s Seminary has done an outstanding job of repudiating the Seeker-sensitive Movement within Evangelicalism and there are many from that movement that are very inclined to toss the Master’s Seminary into that ugly wastebasket labeled “fundamentalism!”

Thus, when Joe Zichterman left Northland Baptist Bible College and went to Willow Creek, he left one grouping of believers that self-identify as fundamentalists and found a home with another group of believers that identify as evangelicals. However, as we have seen, the step could be a very small step or an incredible leap. Which is it?

To be continued.