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I have at times called them gnostics and deitists, but to suggest they are really dualists? Zimmermann makes this charge on pages 11-12 after he defines the term, dualist, to refer to “any unlawful separation of the divine revelation from its mediation through beings and things.”
You know it’s true. For fundamentalists, Scripture is this non-quantifiable object, a paradoxical quirk that exists outside space and time separate from both God and the pages it is written on. Oh, and he even hints as the gnosticism of fundamentalism when he speaks about a “spiritual… certainty.” Fundamentalists separation the flesh and the spirit in an unwarranted way.
But, he does’t just stop there. He calls those who “neglect… sacramental realities” Christian dualists as well.
What really makes all of these dualists? Because they forget that “all human knowledge is mediated.”
Anyway… a dang fine way to begin a book.
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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“any unlawful separation of the divine revelation from its mediation through beings and things.”….unlawful? Someone must be on drugs. What or who’s law. I am giving you a leading question. Please don’t say God’s laws.
Gary, you are going to have read the book, first.
However, unlawful is a nice way of saying that fundamentalism breaks the “laws” of Christian tradition and philosophy
That’s what I was afraid of. Crusades, inquisition, and my favorite Numbers 31:17-18 and Leviticus 14:14. Athanasius and numerous others. I hope we have evolved to the 21st century, regardless of tradition. Laws have evolved too, for the Homo sapiens.
but that is the argument of the book – what anchors our humanism?