Index to Posts on My De-Conversion

• Audio: Interview on CommonSenseAtheism

• From Fundamentalist Evangelical to Agnostic Atheist

• Why Do I call myself FormerFundy?

• Audio: Interview on The Priest and Rabbi Show

My Name Equals 666

After yesterday's music videos, Highway to Hell and Running with the Devil, some people might think that I am a Satanist now. No, I am not. I no more believe in Satanism as a religion than I do Evangelical Christianity. Actually one can only believe in Satan if one believes in Christianity.

Nevertheless, you might find it interesting that my name, Ken Pulliam, actually does equal 666. Below is a post I originally ran on Nov. 26, 2009.

It was the summer of 1983 and I was sitting in a Ph.D. class at Bob Jones University on the Book of Revelation. Dr. Stewart Custer was waxing eloquent on Revelation 13:18: Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number [is] 666. He was explaining the various interpretations of this passage. Some said it just referred to the number of man repeated three times (the number six is held by some to be the number of man in the Bible, the number seven is the number of God, etc), sort of like an ungodly trinity. Others believed it refered to a literal human being whose identity could be found by adding up the value of his name.

At this time in history, Arabic numerals were not used in the Graeco-Roman world but rather each letter of the alphabet had a corresponding numerical value. For example, in Greek, the first letter alpha equals one and beta, the second letter, equals two, etc. The same was true with the Hebrew alphabet. Many Bible scholars on this basis identified the beast of Revelation as Nero. They argued that the Greek spelling of his name, “Nerōn Kaisar,” transliterates into Hebrew as “נרון קסר”. When you add up the values of each Hebrew letter you get 666.

I thought this was fascinating so I decided to add up the letter values in my name. Ken Pulliam transliterates into Greek as Κεν Πυλλιαμ. When I added up the value of each letter, I was flabbergasted. The letters equaled 666. I thought this can't be possible. I added them up again thinking maybe I had made a mistake. I added them up a third time. There was no way around it. My name equaled 666.

I admit this actually bothered me for awhile. Then I realized that there were billions of people on the planet and, while I didn't know the precise statistical formula, I was certain there were probably thousands of people whose name also equaled 666.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I am sure that some of my former colleagues and students probably think that I am the man of sin or at least a type (forerunner) of the last great embodiment of evil. After all, I am an apostate. I knew the truth, believed the truth, and then turned away. Hebrews 6:4-6 says there is no hope for me.

For [it is] impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put [Him] to an open shame.

So I guess for those fundamentalists and evangelicals that take the Bible literally, this is just further proof that it is the Word of God. What further proof do you need (spoken with tongue firmly in cheek)?

A Former Missionary with Wycliffe Translators in now an Agnostic Atheist

Ken Daniels was a missionary in Africa when his doubts finally overtook him and he had to leave the faith. He describes his intellectual journey in his recently published book: Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary . It is available on-line but I would highly recommend buying the book and distributing it widely. It may be the single best book to give to an honest doubter. It is written on a layman's level and will resonate with anyone who is an evangelical. It also has an irenic tone and does not come across as condescending.

Daniels' evangelical credentials are impeccable. He was born on the mission field and reared by missionary parents. He graduated from LeTourneau University and Columbia Biblical Seminary. He joined Wycliffe Bible Translators soon after graduation from Seminary and began linguistic studies in order to translate the Bible into the dialect of a particular tribe in Africa. He spent a number of years in Africa as a missionary among these peoples. Daniels commitment and dedication cannot be questioned. Yet, he, as I, found that he had to be intellectually honest with himself and leave the faith. This was an incredibly hard thing to do. He was on the mission field, churches were supporting him, his entire family on both sides were Christians, all of his friends were Christians, his whole life revolved around Christianity. He writes:

If I could patch things up by forcing myself to believe again, I would do so in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I have tried that several times, only to be besieged again by doubt, and have come to the conclusion that attempting to will myself to believe that which in my heart I do not believe is futile.

I can fully relate to Daniel's statement. You cannot force yourself to believe something that you sincerely know is false. It just doesn't work no matter how hard you try.

Often ex-believers are asked why we don't just drift off into the sunset. Why do we find it necessary to explain why we have de-converted from the faith? Is it because we feel the need to justify our unbelief? Daniels gives one of his reasons:

It grieves me to witness bright, promising young men and women distracted by the study of fundamentalist theology, or by the prospect of traveling the world to convert people from one empirically unverifiable form of supernaturalism to another. I regret having used up the best years of my youth pursuing religious goals.

I agree. When you consider all of the man hours as well as all of the money that is invested in religion, its mind-boggling. What if all these resources were poured into a purely humanitarian effort? Wouldn't the world be a better place?

Another reason why we former Christians feel the need to explain why we left the faith is because our motives are constantly being judged. Daniels elaborates:

Some of my readers might wonder, "Why did he do it? Why did he leave the riches of his faith for the despair and danger of unbelief? It couldn't be that he sincerely believes Christianity to be untrue; there must be some deep underlying issues he's dealing with, some flaw, some hidden agenda, some dashed expectation." I have been asked this question directly, and my response has been this: you can dig as deeply as you like, and when you get to the bottom of it, you'll find I believe what I believe because I think it's true. There may indeed be some hidden issues that have driven me to this point, but if so, they are as hidden to me as to anyone else. I have shared freely with others and with God the matters I consider relevant to the question, but nothing definitive has turned up.

Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, have a very difficult time accepting the notion that one could leave the faith for intellectual reasons. There has to be a deeper reason, they muse. He probably has a secret sin that he wants to indulge in and he doesn't want to submit to the authority of God and the Bible, or he has been hurt personally by Christians or a church and has taken it out on God, or some difficulty in his life has caused him to become bitter against God and Christianity. Daniels explains how a Christian might "internally process" a de-conversion story like his:

He appears to be sincere, and he seems to have been a genuine believer, but he has now rejected God, so despite appearances, it may be that he never experienced a true relationship with God. According to Hebrews 10:26-27, the penalty for rejecting Christ after having followed him is divine judgment with no further hope for redemption, so Ken must be in danger of this fate. He claims his motives are pure, and that he truly perceives Christianity to be untrue, but there must be some fundamental flaw in him, something that marks him off from other believers who remain faithful to the faith, or he could not justly be subject to the judgment described in Hebrews 10. I don't know what it is, but I trust God's word over Ken's. His willingness to embrace something as problematic as evolution and to believe that the universe could have formed by chance must indicate an underlying desire to disbelieve despite the evidence for God and the Bible. At times he displays an argumentative, arrogant spirit, which may reveal a willful rebellion against God. Perhaps his motives are not as pure as he claims.

On the other hand, he does seem to be aware that he's putting the eternal fate of his soul in jeopardy if he turns out to be wrong, so he must have a high degree of confidence in his belief that the gospel is not true. What could possibly have motivated him and driven him to such a degree of certainty that he would be willing to invite the disapproval of his friends, family, supporters and mission board, to live without the hope of a hereafter, to abandon his calling and sense of purpose, and to risk divine judgment? Perhaps 2 Thessalonians 2:10b-11 pertains to him: "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie ..." This could mean he truly does believe what he says he believes, but God has brought this on him because of his rebellious spirit and his failure to acknowledge God for who he is.

We former believers are usually told that we were not "real" Christians. If we had been true believers we would not have departed the faith (I John 2:19) [see this link, especially comment 7]. My former Pastor had a saying, not sure where he picked it up, a faith that fizzles at the finish had a fatal flaw at the first . His brand of Calvinism demanded that he explain apostates in this fashion. The problem with saying that, however, is two-fold. 1) These individuals do not know my heart. I was as sincere in my belief and trust in Christ as I think anyone could be. 2) If I was not really saved, even though I thought I was, they cannot know for sure that they are genuine believers today. If, as Calvinism says, all genuine believers will persevere in their faith until the end, how does one know that his or her faith is genuine until the very end? There is always the possiblity that they may turn away sometime before they die thus proving that their faith was not real. So, there is no assurance of salvation for the consistent Calvinist.

I will be sharing some additonal insights from Ken Daniels' book in upcoming posts. Again, I highly recommend it.

Atheists in the Pulpit

I came across a fascinating article yesterday in the Washington Post by Daniel Dennett entitled, Skeptical Clergy a Silent Majority. The article deals with a study that was done by Dennett and Linda LaScola of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He begins the article by saying:

Here are some questions that have haunted me for years. How many preachers actually believe what they say from the pulpit? We know that every year some clergy abandon their calling, no longer able to execute their duties with conviction. This can never be a decision taken lightly, and many of them labored on for years before taking the leap. Are they the tip of an iceberg? Is there a problem of deep hypocrisy separating many pastors from their flocks? What is it like to be a non-believing preacher? How do they reconcile their private skepticism with the obligations of their position? And how did they get into their predicament?

Dennett and LaScola interviewed five Protestant pastors who are all still currently serving their churches, yet have given up belief in God (you can read full interviews here). Three of these men are in liberal churches and two are in conservative churches. Some people, I think, would initially react by saying, how hypocritical of these men to continue preaching when they no longer believe what they preach. I can sympathize with that sentiment but I can also sympathize with the preachers because I used to be in their same shoes.

I started having serious doubts about my faith sometime in the year 1994. I can remember being in El Paso, Texas preaching in a Baptist church and during the middle of my sermon, the thought hit me, you don't really believe what you are saying. It was a frightening thought and almost disrupted my sermon. I was taught to attribute such thoughts to the devil. So I went back to my room and prayed for the Lord to defeat the devil in my life and to increase my faith. I decided to investigate as thoroughly as I could all of the issues that were causing me to doubt my evangelical theology. I was in my 8th year of teaching in a Bible college. I never shared with anyone the nature of my doubts because frankly that is not allowed in strict evangelical circles. It was okay for students or new Christians to have doubts but not for a leader and especially not for someone with a Ph.D. in Theology who was entrusted to teach young people studying for the ministry.

At the end of the 1995 school year, I decided that maybe what I needed was a less academic role and a more pastoral role. Thus, I accepted a position as a Pastor at a local Baptist church in Arizona. I spent two years there and my doubts became worse. The last 6 months of my stay, I was convinced that the Bible was not the Word of God and that evangelical Christianity was like every other religion that exists, man-made. Those 6 months were difficult because I felt like a complete hypocrite. I had to get up and teach something that I personally could no longer believe.

The honorable thing, some would say, would have been to resign immediately. I agree but its difficult when you are married, your wife doesn't work, you have two small children, a mortgage and no marketable skills. What could I do? Resign and go to work at Walmart? It was a very difficult situation. Fortunately, in my case, someone approached me who was starting a new business, a recruiting business, and asked me if I would like to run the administrative part of it. I was delighted. I resigned the church and began my new career. It has worked out very well for me and I have been in the executive recruiting business now for 13 years.

So, I do sympathize with these men, but I also think that they need to find a way to get out of the ministry for the sake of their own sanity and self-esteem. In addition, they need to get out for the sake of their parishoners. I believe its wrong to intentionally mislead them. One of the pastors had this to say about his role:

Here’s how I’m handling my job on Sunday mornings: I see it as play acting. I kind of see myself as taking on a role of a believer in a worship service, and performing. Because I know what to say. I know how to pray publicly. I can lead singing. I love singing. I don’t believe what I’m saying anymore in some of these songs. But I see it as taking on the role and performing. Maybe that’s what it takes for me to get myself through this, but that’s what I’m doing.

I think that is sad and its unhealthy for the church and for the preacher. I wonder how many preachers are doing the same thing as this man every Sunday?

Here is the story of Scott Campbell , an evangelical Baptist pastor who found himself in the pulpit although he no longer believed.



I must also ask why do Christians have so many doubts if the Christian religion is true? Someone in the comment section on the article by Dennett and LaScola said this: Even the most devout and confident among us will have days when we step into the pulpit praying, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." To which another person replied:

I have often heard religious people say this, and frankly, it boggles my mind. This kind of crisis of confidence seldom, if ever, happen to people in other lines of work. A programmer does not wake up thinking that computers don't really work after all. Biologists don't worry that natural selection doesn't exist. Farmers do not question the wisdom or benefit of growing carrots. With all due respect, it seems to me that if you have difficulty believing something, or you keep coming up with reasons to doubt, you should immediately stop trying to believe it. Put aside religion and if compelling evidence emerges later on, you can always go back to believing. (I'll grant it would hard to do that if religion is your livelihood.) When a programmer develops grave doubts about a design, it is time to abandon that approach and try something new. A Democrat who decides Republican ideology makes more sense should change parties (and vice versa!). What possible benefit can there be to holding back and trying to persuade yourself to ignore a logical conclusion that fits the facts? It is an abuse of your own intellect. You can't do it anyway; your mind rebels. You just give yourself a headache -- or neurosis. It is like trying to eat food that tastes rotten.

He is correct. We don't doubt most things that we believe. Why do so many doubt Christianity? Could it be because its really not true?

What is Evangelical Christianity?

I have entitled my blog, Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity. There is considerable confusion today over exactly what constitutes Evangelical Christianity. So, I want to take the time to clearly define what I mean when I use the term Evangelical.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines evangelical as: emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.

The English word originated around 1531, according to Merriam-Webster. This, of course, was the time of the Reformation. Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel in 1517 and the Reformation was on. During Luther's lifetime, the churches which followed his teachings were known as Evangelical Churches. It wasn't until after his death that they came to be known as Lutheran Churches. Eventually, evangelical became more or less synonymous with Protestant.

Going back to the Merriam-Webster definition, note that there are essentially five components to it.

1. Salvation by Faith
2. Atoning Death of Christ
3. Personal Conversion
4. Authority of Scripture
5. Importance of preaching vis-a-vis ritual.

Each one of these beliefs were forged in opposition to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church of the 16th century. Salvation by faith alone (sola fide)apart from works was the great re-discovery of Martin Luther. In his study of Paul's Letter to the Romans and especially chapter 1 verse 17 (For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."), Luther became convinced that the teaching of the apostle had been lost in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. He felt that good works and rituals had been added to faith and thereby destroyed the pure grace of God in salvation. Thus, his emphais on salvation by faith alone.

This faith, however, must have the correct object. It can't be faith in the sacraments of the church or faith in one's good works but faith in the atoning death of Christ as the payment for one's sin. Luther and Calvin were very instrumental in developing what would later be called the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement.

When one came to rest his or her faith in the atoning work of Christ, one was converted. Later evangelicals would call this experience being born-again, being saved, or accepting Christ as one's personal savior.

Luther and the Reformers insisted that the ultimate authority for Christians was not the pope nor the church but the Bible itself (sola Scriptura). This has always been a hallmark of evangelical Christianity.

The URL for my blog is FormerFundy.blogspot.com. When I was a Christian, I considered myself a Fundamentalist and an Evangelical. What is the difference in the terms? The term fundamentalist orginated in the early part of the 20th century as evangelicals took a stand against Modernism or theological liberalism. They maintained that there were certain doctrines that were fundamental or essential to the Christian faith. While there was never complete unanimity on the fundamentals, they always included the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection and the second coming of Christ. These doctrines were some of the specific ones being denied by the theological liberals of the day.

Until the late 1940's, the terms evangelical and fundamentalist were more or less synonymous. There might have been a slight difference in emphasis. Fundamentalist were known more for what they were against whereas Evangelicals were known more for what they were for. In 1948, Harold Ockenga called for a New Evangelicalism. One that would be more open to dialogue with liberals. He felt that evangelicals should infiltrate the liberal seminaries and denominations rather than separate from them. Some evangelicals embraced Ockenga's call and others rejected it. Those who rejected it preferred to be called Fundamentalists. Thus, separation from liberalism became the hallmark of the fundamentalists.

Today, both terms, evangelical and fundamental, have taken on different connotations. Fundamentalism has become a term of derision and is used to refer to just about any kind of religious fanatic, including abortion clinic bombers, Mormon polygamists, and Islamic terrorists, etc. Evangelicalism has become a catch-all term to refer to just about any Christian who is not a theological liberal, a cultist, or a Roman Catholic. There is a great diversity of beliefs within modern day evangelicals from self-help gurus like Joel Osteen to charismatic healers like Benny Hinn to religious right leaders like James Dobson.

So, in order to clarify, when I use the terms evangelical or fundamentalist, I am using them in the historical sense of the terms.

My Name = 666

It was the summer of 1983 and I was sitting in a Ph.D. class at Bob Jones University on the Book of Revelation. Dr. Stewart Custer was waxing eloquent on Revelation 13:18: Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number [is] 666. He was explaining the various interpretations of this passage. Some said it just referred to the number of man repeated three times (the number six is held by some to be the number of man in the Bible, the number seven is the number of God, etc), sort of like an ungodly trinity. Others believed it refered to a literal human being whose identity could be found by adding up the value of his name.

At this time in history, Arabic numerals were not used in the Graeco-Roman world but rather each letter of the alphabet had a corresponding numerical value. For example, in Greek, the first letter alpha equals one and beta, the second letter, equals two, etc. The same was true with the Hebrew alphabet. Many Bible scholars on this basis identified the beast of Revelation as Nero. They argued that the Greek spelling of his name, “Nerōn Kaisar,” transliterates into Hebrew as “נרון קסר”. When you add up the values of each Hebrew letter you get 666.

I thought this was fascinating so I decided to add up the letter values in my name. Ken Pulliam transliterates into Greek as Κεν Πυλλιαμ. When I added up the value of each letter, I was flabbergasted. The letters equaled 666. I thought this can't be possible. I added them up again thinking maybe I had made a mistake. I added them up a third time. There was no way around it. My name equaled 666.

I admit this actually bothered me for awhile. Then I realized that there were billions of people on the planet and, while I didn't know the precise statistical formula, I was certain there were probably thousands of people whose name also equaled 666.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I am sure that some of my former colleagues and students probably think that I am the man of sin or at least a type (forerunner) of the last great embodiment of evil. After all, I am an apostate. I knew the truth, believed the truth, and then turned away. Hebrews 6:4-6 says there is no hope for me.

For [it is] impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put [Him] to an open shame.

So I guess for those fundamentalists and evangelicals that take the Bible literally, this is just further proof that it is the Word of God. What further proof do you need (spoken with tongue firmly in cheek)?

My Discussion with the Priest and the Rabbi

On this past Monday, I was on 97.1 FM Talk Radio in St. Louis. On the Dave Glover show, he has a regular segment called The Priest and The Rabbi. On Monday I was invited to give the skeptic's viewpoint on the existence of God. As is the case with talk radio, you really don't have much time to make an argument. It is more limited to soundbites. You can listen to the podcast here. The date is Oct. 26th and the discussion begins on the middle segment of the three hour show and continues over to the last segment.

The priest really had little to say during the show. His major point was that he believed the death of Christ was not a payment for sins but rather a demonstration of the love of God. This is the theory proposed by Peter Abelard in the 12th century in reaction to Anselm's satisfaction theory. It is usually called the Moral Influence Theory.

While I could not go into detail on the program, I think this view is even more problematic than PST. First, because it still has to explain away all of the many passages in the NT which clearly teach that Christ died in our place as a substitute for the penalty we deserved as sinners. Those who hold this theory have to excise much of the NT on this subject. Second, how does Jesus being executed as a criminal show us that God loves us? I don't get it. God loves us so much that he allowed the wicked Romans to nail his Son to a cross and die in a most excruciating manner. If that shows love, then its not the kind of love I am interested in emulating. In addition, it certainly doesn't show much love for his only begotten Son. The priest said that God did not bring this about, the Romans did. But once again, you will have to explain away many passages of Scripture which say clearly that this death was planned "before the foundation of the world" by God himself.

If you say, well, it shows us how much Jesus loves us, I still don't get it. By placing himself in a position (he knew that going into Jerusalem at the time of the Passover was going to be very dangerous for him) whereby he would be executed shows love? I think it shows stupidity. How does Jesus placing himself in a situation where he gets tortured and killed show us God's love? That is a strange kind of love.

The rabbi, who was more conservative than I expected, takes the Torah as the divine revelation of God. I asked him, if it is a revelation from God, why does God order the killing of whole groups of people including women, children and even infants. You can listen to his response and my answers on the podcast but I think his position is extremely weak. Basically he said that if God did it, it must be right. But then he contradicts himself by saying that man only know morality because the Torah teaches it to him. Yet some of the things that the OT God does are clearly unjust and even immoral by the standards of western morality which is supposed to be based on Judeo-Christian principles. So, I guess its a case of do what I say not what I do?

In addition, the rabbi argued that he believes in the God of the Jews because of unbroken, person to person tradition dating from the time of the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. I responed to him that if that is his reasoning, then he ought to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, because there were reports of eyewitnesses who saw a resurrected Jesus and who passed along those stories all the way down to us today.

He argued that the difference between what happened at Mt. Sinai and what happened on Easter morning is simply the number of people who were eye-witnesses. He maintained that 600,000 Jews (the whole nation)saw what happened at Mt. Sinai, whereas only a few supposedly saw a resurrected Jesus. My response was that if the Jews really did see what happened at Mt. Sinai as recorded in the Torah, its passing strange, that they immediately began to worship a golden calf as they waited for Moses to come back down from the mountain. I think if I had just seen indisuputable proof that God exists, the last thing I would do is make an idol and start worshipping it. I think this made him a little angry (he later sent me an email apologizing for calling me ignorant).

So all in all, it was an enjoyable discussion for me and if you are interested in hearing it, you can go to the website mentioned above.

Preview of Upcoming Attractions

The purpose of my blog is to explain Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity. I am not sure how long it will take me to systematically discuss all the issues that led to my loss of faith. I am willing to take as long as necessary.

So far, I have focused on the atonement. I chose this one first because it was, in some ways, the one that shook my faith the most. I distinctly remember a time in the early 1990's when I was on top of my roof in Arizona fixing the evaporative cooler when the thought struck me: How could someone dying 2000 years ago have any effect on me today? It was a startling thought. As any good Christian evangelical, I attributed the thought to Satan or one of his demons. I remembered the passage in 2 Cor. 10:5: Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I thought that I need to cast down this imagination and bring my thoughts into the captivity of Christ.

The question kept resurfacing in my mind and I embarked on a thorough study of the atonement to assuage my doubts. Instead of resloving my doubts, though, they just became stronger. More doubts and problems with regard to other doctrines that I was teaching came into my mind. I tried to study those as well. Eventually, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I no longer believed the Evangelical Theology that I was teaching and preaching. This whole shift took several years.

While I am not finished discussing the problems with the Atonement, I want to preview for you some of the other issues that eventually led to my apostasy. These problems, and others (the list below is not exhaustive), will be discussed going forward on my blog, although not necessarily in this order.


1. The Problem of Evil

Here I will focus primarily on Natural Evil, i.e. hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, childhood cancer, birth defects, etc. I will focus on these because I don't think the free-will argument can come close to answering the problem of natural evil. (I am not sure it answers the question of moral evil, either, but it certainly doesn't answer natural evil.)

2. The Problem of the Bible as Divine Revelation

Here I will deal with many questions including: If the Bible is a divine revelation, why is it so ambiguous (i.e., subject to multiple interpretations)? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it include so much "worthless material"? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it contradict itself? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it contain so many divergent theologies? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why was there so much controversy over the canon and why did it take so long for Christians to agree? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why did God allow not only the original mss. to disappear but also the copies made in the first couple of centuries, thereby leaving us with no certain way of reconstructing the original documents?

3. The Problem of the Resurrection

Here I will deal with the lack of substantial evidence for believing in the resurrection of Jesus. I will interact with William Craig's arguments, N. T. Wright's and others. I will also deal with the fact that Christian theologians cannot agree on the nature of Christ's resurrection "body."

4. The Problem of the Incarnation

Here I will deal with the various Christologies that existed in the first four hundred years of the Church and how "orthodoxy" eventually won out.

5. The Problem of the Trinity

Here I will deal with the various ideas relative to the Godhead during the first three hundred years of the Church and how "orthodoxy" eventually won out.

6. The Problem of Christians

Here I will deal with questions such as: Why is there little or no evidence in the lives of Christians that Christianity is real? Why is conversion and life-change not unique to Christianity? In other words, why can you find people who have converted to Mormonism or Islam or some other religion who made drastic life changes? Is there really a psychological explanation rather than a supernatural one?

So, I think you can see that this blog will be continuing for a long, long time. I look forward to exploring these issues and your comments along the way.

As a side note, I will be travelling by car from Phoenix to Atlanta this week and will probably not be able to do much posting. I will be on the radio on Monday at 6:20pm Eastern time discussing the existence of God with a priest and a rabbi. You can listen on-line here . The podcast will also be posted at the radio's website within a couple of days of its airing.

News Flash!!

I have two important news items to share with my blog readers today:

1) Hector Avalos (Ph.D., Harvard), John Loftus (Th.M., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), James Linville (Ph.D, University of Edinburgh) and I today announce that we intend to start a new society which will meet annually in the same city and at the same time as the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and The Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS). We three men, along with some other interested parties, will have an exploratory meeting on November 20th this year in New Orleans (6:30pm at the Marriott Hotel) to organize the Society. While the name for the new society has not yet been decided, the three main goals will be:

a. Promote scholarship of the Bible from a non-religious viewpoint.

b. Produce scholarly critiques of religionist biblical scholarship, and how it functions to maintain the authority and value of the Bible in the modern world.

c. Form a counterweight to the Evangelical Theological Society, and perhaps engage in cordial dialogue and debate with its members through written formats and through joint sessions.

2) I will be will be on 97.1 FM Talk Radio in St. Louis on Monday October 26th at 6:20pm Eastern time. I will be part of a program discussing the existence of God. The other two participants will be, Father Jeff Vomund and Rabbi Shmuel Greenwald. The discussion will last until 7pm Eastern. You can listen live at their website. They will also have the mp3 recording of the discussion on their website the next day.

I am excited about both of these news items. The Society proposed above will attract some top notch scholars and will prove to be a valuable anti-dote to the dogmas of evangelical theology. The talk program will be my first venture into this format. I will have to contain myself to short sound bites as the format will not allow for any kind of in-depth discussion. Hopefully, though, it will prove thought provoking for the listeners.

Why Do I Call Myself “FormerFundy”?

Some may wonder why I chose this nickname. Well, its because I was a Fundamentalist Christian for about 20 years. I was "saved" and baptized in an independent, Fundamental Baptist church, Galilean Baptist Church, in Norcross, GA. Later, I became a member of Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, GA, which was started by Curtis Hutson, a former editor of the Sword of the Lord magazine. The Sword was founded by John R. Rice, one of the leading fundamentalists of the 20th century.

I graduated from Baptist University of America in Decatur, GA in 1981. BUA was associated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which was started by followers of J. Frank Norris, a major fundamentalist leader in the early part of the 20th century. Then I went on to Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, perhaps, the most well known fundamentalist Christian college in the world.

After earning an M.A. (1982) and a Ph.D. (1986) in Theology at BJU, I went to teach at International Baptist College in Tempe, AZ which was founded by James Singleton (also the Pastor of Tri-City Baptist Church). Singleton was a board member and active speaker in the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, a group that originally came out of the Northern Baptist Convention in the early 20th century. The term “Fundamentalist,” while a pejorative term for many people, was held as a badge of honor by the people with whom I associated.

Fundamentalists, like me and those I was connected with, considered themselves to be the heirs of true Biblical Christianity. The term “fundamentalist” was coined by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of the Northern Baptist paper The Watchman-Examiner, in 1920. He coined the word to describe those “who still cling to the great fundamentals and who mean to do battle royal” against theological liberalism. His article appeared in the context of the conflict between theological liberals and theological conservatives in the Northern Baptist Convention.

The term also gained popularity as a result of the publication of The Fundamentals, a series of 90 essays in 12 volumes published from 1910 to 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). The essays were originally financed by Lyman Stewart in 1909 to set out what they believed to be the fundamentals of Christian faith. These were to be sent free to ministers, missionaries, Sunday School superintendents and others active in Christian ministry.The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called by them Romanism), socialism, modern philosophy, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn (an early term for a particular Christian movement which later mostly became the "Jehovah's Witnesses" denomination), Spiritualism, and evolutionism. . The authors included conservative theologians from many different Protestant denominations. They differed on a number of “minor doctrines” but were unified in their agreement on the “fundamental (essential) doctrines” of Christianity.

The fundamentalist movement has gone through some significant evolution from the 1920’s to the present day, but in the early part of the 20th century, virtually all theological conservatives were basically considered to be fundamentalists--at least by the popular culture. When I came into the movement in the late 1970’s, a number of divisions had taken place. Fundamentalists at that time were known for their insistence on separation from theological liberalism and “worldliness.” All of the churches that I attended at that time were pastored by men who had separated from the Southern Baptist Convention. Liberalism had infiltrated the SBC through the seminaries and most of the faculty in the convention schools no longer accepted the Bible as the inspired, inerrant, Word of God. This caused “a battle for the Bible” to take place within the convention (see Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence). Some stayed in and fought, e.g., W.A. Criswell, Paige Patterson, and Charles Stanley, while others left the convention, citing 2 Corinthians 6:17: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate," saith the Lord, "and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you.”

This new breed of fundamentalists believed it was compromise and actually sinful for people to remain in a liberal denomination and thereby support their liberalism. So, these fundamentalists (of which I was a part), not only condemned the liberals in the SBC but also condemned the conservatives who refused to leave the SBC. Those who refused to separate were considered “New Evangelicals” (a term of derision in my movement). One of the main focuses came to be who is REALLY a Fundamentalist? As if that term itself was somehow equivalent to all that was good and holy. Bob Jones University and the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, especially, became obsessed by identifying who was a real Fundamentalist and who was not. This obsession continues today among many in the group (for example, see postings on SharperIron).

When I use the term FormerFundy to describe myself, all I mean is that, at one time, I held certain doctrines to be fundamental or essential to the Christian faith. These fundamentals included: 1) The Bible is verbally and plenarily inspired by God; 2) Jesus Christ was the virgin born, sinless, Son of God who made a perfect, vicarious atonement on the cross to redeem man and was literally raised from the dead on the 3rd day; and 3) Man is saved by faith alone in the finished work of Christ. Anything short of these essentials was not true Christianity in my view.

I realize that in today’s world, the term “fundamentalist” has a host of other connotations, virtually all bad. It is used to refer to any type of religious extremist or obscurantist. I obviously am not using the name in that sense but in the more historical sense as I have described above.