« Back to Issue 52

Fidelity without Fundamentalism

Author:	Gerard Hughes
Published By:	Darton, Longman and Todd (London)
Pages:	162
Price:	£6.99
ISBN:	978 0 232 52800 8

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

There seem to be a number of new publications at present dealing with how to be a faithful Christian without descending into an intolerant, rigid literalism. As a born-again, Bible-believing Christian, I always wonder when I read such books whether I would be considered a ‘fundamentalist!’ It is of course a dirty word these days. Hughes, a Catholic theologian with clear ties to a tradition, yet with a heart for engaging with the contemporary world, defines fundamentalists as “those who believe their version of the truth to be The Truth; who believe that whatever opposes the truth must be opposed; who believe that their Traditions embody the Truth exclusively; and that those who sign up to it are the only ones accepted by God.”

According to this definition, perhaps I’m not quite a fundamentalist. I believe that there are certain core truths, but that there are grey areas in secondary issues. I believe that other Christian traditions can enrich my own and are valid in their contexts; that the Bible has truth yet to be revealed whilst theological and biblical knowledge is open to revision in the light of historical, literary and scientific scholarship. OK. So maybe I am a woolly liberal then?! Confusing! Perhaps after all we need these publications to help us locate ourselves in the postmodern, post-evangelical world. A respect for our tradition need not involve the kind of rigidity which fundamentalists regard as the only sure guarantee of fidelity.

Hughes approaches the subject from a fascinating angle - that of a translator. Like Osborne in the Hermeneutical Spiral, he uses the acid test of cross-cultural missionaries bringing the Scriptures to other cultures. Such workers must express Christian centralities in the language and metaphor of foreign cultures whilst allowing the Scripture to present the challenge of the Gospel, but without importing Western cultural accretions. Translation, then, involves serious hermeneutics. It requires comparing literal rendering with dynamic equivalents or paraphrases and finding what best conveys the meaning of the original text/author. Having set out this stall, Hughes shows how the same processes must be at work as we engage with our own traditions, other cultures and traditions and with the secular society which surrounds us. Christianity has to be ‘translated’.

His conclusion is that it is the Spirit which brings life. A film adaptation of a novel should not necessarily be rejected because it does not stick rigidly to the book. In fact, a good adaptation captures the spirit of the novel. Different expressions of Christianity are frequently right for different times and places. Christians in different places must understand the stages by which their traditions were formed, express those stages in their own contemporary idiom, and be aware that situations can arise which were not forseen by the founders of the tradition, but which cannot just be swept under the carpet.

Hughes finishes with a warning. He says that ‘we know it all and we’re not changing’ fundamentalists are in danger of losing the mystery of God, that numinous sense of One who is bigger than our formulations and our mediations, thereby not preserving the faith, but corroding it. A thought-provoking book.