When it comes to the fundamentals of the faith, I’m grateful to be considered a fundamentalist. I’d suggest the defining distinction between fundamentalists and evangelicals is that evangelicals have an aching hole in their souls that longs for the world’s approval. To their credit, fundamentalists just don’t care. Good on them I say. That distinction, however, is not the only one there is. At least one distinction is a strike against fundamentalism.
Fundamentalists have long practiced what is called “second degree separation.” This is an ethic that suggests that a person is not only guilty for all that they have done, said or felt, but that they are guilty for all that those they are willing to work with have done, said or felt. TD Jakes is outside the circle of the acceptable because he embraces a form of heresy known as modalism. That should be clear to all. A fundamentalist, however, would put outside the circle anyone with an orthodox view of the trinity that doesn’t put TD Jakes outside the circle. If you’re not completely for us, they argue, you are completely against us.
Don’t misunderstand. Any evangelical that is unphased by the modalist heresy is foolish, wrong, in a dangerous place and likely soft. Any evangelical should be able to say the same thing. Second degree separation, however, finds the evangelical unphased by another’s modalism guilty of that which does not phase them. The unphased evangelical is drawn outside the circle by the fundamentalist.
Perhaps the strange case of Outside the Camp will help make this more clear. Outside the Camp is a tiny splinter group of professing believers who claim to believe in God’s sovereignty over all things, that see themselves as Calvinists. But we’ve just gotten started. The OTC crew also believes that those who do not believe in Calvinism cannot be saved. They believe that Arminians will go to hell when they die. But wait, there’s more. As if this weren’t bad enough, step three is where it gets truly bizarre. According to Outside the Camp, not only must one rest in the finished work of Christ alone in order to be saved, not only must one rest in Christ but also must be a Calvinist to be saved, but one must believe that one must rest in the finished work of Christ and be a Calvinist but one must believe one must believe in Calvinism in order to be saved, in order to be saved. Clear?
To put it another way, to these poor, misguided souls, people like Calvin, Zwingli, the Puritans, Edwards, Hodge, Warfield, Hodge, Machen, Sproul are all in hell because they, while believing in Calvinism, don’t believe believing Calvinism is strictly necessary. That’s not a good place to be, not a good position to take.
Please note- I’m not confusing fundamentalism with the Outside the Camp camp. Each, I’m sure, repudiates the other. They do, however, have this second degree separation concept in common with each other. Note this as well. If you’re a fundamentalist practicing second degree separation, I’ll disagree with you, but as a brother in Christ.