Listened to Coast To Coast last night....

Between 1909 and 1915 the brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart, whose wealth came from oil, underwrote The Fundamentals, a series of twelve paperback books. The preface to the volumes explained their purpose: “In 1909 God moved two Christian laymen to set aside a large sum of money <$300,000> for issuing twelve volumes that would set forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith, and which were to be sent free to ministers of the gospel, missionaries, Sunday school superintendents, and others engaged in aggressive Christian work throughout the English-speaking world.” Three million copies were distributed. Each volume contained seven or eight essays. Aside from studies of strictly doctrinal matters, there were attacks on modern biblical criticism, critiques of scientific theories, personal testimonies, commentaries on missionary work and evangelization, and accounts of heresies. The last category included essays on “Catholicism: Is It Christian?” and “Rome, the Antagonist of the Nation”.

There were sixty-four contributors, including scholars such as C.I. Scofield, compiler of the Scofield Reference Bible; “W. J. Eerdman and his son, Charles; H. C. G. Motile, Anglican bishop of Durham; James M. Gray, dean of the Moody Bible Institute; and Warfield himself. They included Presbyterian ministers, Methodist evangelists, editors of religious periodicals, professors, even an Egyptologist. As Edward Dobson, an associate pastor at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, put it, “They were certainly not anti-intellectual, snakehandling, cultic, obscurantist fanatics.”

The fundamentals identified in the series have been tallied variously, some listing as many as fourteen points. Most commentators agree on at least these five: (1) the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture; (2) the deity of Christ, including his Virgin Birth; (3) tire substitutionary atonement of his death; (4) his literal resurrection from the dead; and (5) his literal return in the Second Coming.

Keating, Karl (1988). Catholicism And Fundamentalism (pp. 16-17, Kindle edition). Ignatius Press.