What do you understand a FUNDAMENTALIST to be?

[Gofer Blue]

Thanks Gofer for your heartfelt and personal thoughts which are interesting to read as you've taken some time to consider your relationship to your chosen religion after much reading.

I don't see that as definition though, it reads more like your individual feelings on the matter.

Thanks for your response. OK, so, I'll try to define it in just two sentences – difficult to condense it any further:

A Christian fundamentalist is someone who puts his faith and trust in Jesus Christ and believes that he is God in human form. He/she follows the example set by Jesus by which God expects they should live, whilst accepting that they are human and will never be fully Christ-like, but by his grace they are justified.

Earlier in this thread TBG has defined fundamentalists as: Religious fundamentalists are usually considered to be those who believe that stories in their religious tomes are literal and not metaphorical. I have come across this definition of course but this is only a part of the picture for Christians.

In response to this I would say that for the vast majority of times it is clear when a Bible story is a literal one or metaphorical one but I hold my hands up and admit that there are occasions when that is not clear cut. If I could travel back in time and be a frontline witness I would know for sure but that is not going to happen. All I can say is that if God is indeed the creator of everything, then the seemingly impossible (to 21st century eyes) must be possible?

Again, can I stress that my faith is in Jesus himself. Although he made references to the Old Testament, he rarely mentions much outside the OT books of Isaiah or the Psalms (I found this useful reference about this here: https://biblecentral.info/library/ch...-jesus-christ/ ) In fact, on reading this, I was surprised how little he did quote from the OT.

If some of the more controversial events were that important to Jesus/God he would surely have emphasised them I think, hence I don't worry about them. In fact I think they can be a useful deflection tool for non-believers who would secretly rather that Jesus/God didn't exist, or to demonstrate their supposed intellectual superiority over those who are believers.

Finally, I would be interested to see how you would define “a fundamentalist”.

[Taunton Blue Genie]

I didn't 'define' anything. I stated what is widely understood by as being the definition of the word.