Edward John Carnell

A further element of controversy for Christians at that time arose in the wake of the theory of evolution as propounded in 1859 by Charles Darwin.

The Genesis narratives of the creation and Noah's Flood were brought into doubt, and the science versus religion debates accelerated.

Those in the Liberal camp sought to Reconcile their faith and theology in light of the modern historical consciousness and evolutionary thought.

Edward John Carnell (28 June 1919 – 25 April 1967 ) was a prominent Christian theologian and apologist, was an ordained Baptist pastor, and served as President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

He was the author of nine major books, several of which attempted to develop a fresh outlook in Christian apologetics.

He also wrote essays that were published in several other books, and was a contributor of articles to periodicals such as The Christian Century and Christianity Today.

Carnell was born in Antigo, Wisconsin, on June 28, 1919, and was the third of four children born to Herbert Carnell and Fannie Carstens.

He was married to Shirley Rowe, a school teacher from Wisconsin.

Carnell began his tertiary education at Wheaton College, Illinois, where he majored in philosophy and received his B.A. degree.

His philosophical mentor at Wheaton was the Calvinist apologist Gordon Clark.

Carnell then commenced theological studies at Westminster Theological Seminary where he was awarded the Th.B and Th.M degrees.

John Murray and Cornelius Van Til were two of his lecturers who influenced him greatly.

He then proceeded to doctoral studies in history and the philosophy of religion at Harvard Divinity School.

During his candidacy at Harvard, Carnell also enrolled as a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Boston University under the tutelage of Edgar S. Brightman.

Carnell's theological dissertation at Harvard was on Reinhold Niebuhr, while his philosophical dissertation at Boston was on Søren Kierkegaard.

During the period of his doctoral studies, Carnell composed a work in Christian apologetics that he submitted to William Eerdmans in a competition for the Evangelical Book Award.

Carnell's manuscript won the five thousand dollar prize, which in 1948 was a considerable sum of money.

It was hailed in Evangelical circles as a masterly new work in apologetics, and established a reputation for Carnell as a brilliant young and rising theologian.

The book, which was released as An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, reflected the apologetic influences of his mentors Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til, and also the philosophical influence of Edgar Sheffield Brightman.

In the book he sought to show that Christian faith was systematically logical, factual and rationally satisfying as it best fitted the facts as an explanation for the human condition.

His apologetic gambits dealt with topics such as Biblical criticism, the problem of miracles, evolution, and the existential problem of soul-sorrow in an effort to show that Christianity offers a coherent view of reality.

In many respects his apologetic approach represented an attempt at combining the deductive rationalist and presuppositionalist methods of Clark and Van Til, with a test for truth he called "systematic consistency".

Later analysts of Evangelical apologetics have dubbed his apologetic method as either a "combinationalist" or "verificational" approach.

Irving Hexham has noted in his survey of apologetic responses to New Age spirituality that Carnell's approach had some influence on the way in which Francis Schaeffer developed his apologetic writings.

Hexham states, "Another source for Schaeffer's ideas was the evangelical philosopher E. J. Carnell, although Schaeffer was reluctant to admit this unless directly asked."

Carnell's second apologetic text, A Philosophy of the Christian Religion, explored questions of value that are personally and existentially satisfying.

This study is technically known as axiology.

Two further apologetic works Christian Commitment and The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life delved into subjective issues of introspective meaning.

Both texts reflected his deep study and appreciation of the work of Søren Kierkegaard.

Carnell emphasised the meaning of authentic discipleship and commitment to the way of Christ as grounded in God's love.

After graduating from Harvard, Carnell joined the faculty of the recently founded Fuller Seminary.

Carnell was attracted to this seminary as it was part of an emerging movement of reform within Protestant Fundamentalism.

The background to this new movement of reform lies in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.

In the nineteenth century Evangelicalism had been the major expression of Protestant theology and church life in North America.

Towards the end of that century a major division occurred in Protestant thought in Europe, England, and America that transcended denominational affiliations.

The division comprised two broad camps: Liberal Christianity and Evangelical Christianity.

The tensions between these two camps arose over developments in Enlightenment based philosophy where theistic or supernatural explanations of reality were brought into question.

The questioning of theism was not confined to abstract concerns in philosophy, but also developed as modern historical consciousness dawned.

This new historical consciousness was presaged in the seventeenth century controversies of Deism where Biblical miracles, and especially Christ's resurrection, were called into doubt.

Alongside the debates about miracles came new conjectures about the authorship of the Biblical books, and investigations into possible sub-documents and written sources undergirding the present biblical texts.