Who Was E. J. Carnell and Why Does He Matter?
My guess is that most readers of the Riddlebog will not know the name of Edward John Carnell. Carnell was one of the most innovative apologists of his time but dared to walk the razor’s edge between a scholarly defense of the Christian faith and the fundamentalism of his youth which he felt compelled to defend. He possessed a brilliant mind, was an excellent lecturer, as well as a prolific writer–with a significant number of books published by his early thirties.
But in the end, Carnell found that the razor’s edge he walked was exceedingly sharp and he was unable to keep his balance–feeling the deep cuts which the razor inflicted. His efforts pleased neither the evangelicals nor the fundamentalists. His attempt to gain intellectual credence for evangelicalism among progressive theologians and critical scholars failed to impress either group, and his efforts only brought harsh criticism from several of his friends who felt he conceded too much to modernism.
Carnell was a troubled soul, and the damage done by years of herculean effort without seeing any positive results, all the while coming under constant criticism from allies during the tail-end of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, eventually brought about a severe emotional crisis which led to his early death at the age of 47 under questionable circumstances. Carnell found himself caught between his desire to see a more intellectually defensible form of Christianity and the feud between fundamentalism and those theological progressives who were too willing to give up the essentials of the faith in exchange for social relevance. The conflict eventually broke him.
This essay will focus upon Carnell’s efforts to formulate an apologetic which builds upon Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositionalism, but which is tweaked for application to the controversies facing the new evangelicalism. Carnell’s work in this regard is still worth our consideration. In part one, we will consider Carnell’s life and work, and how this set the stage for the formulation of his unique apologetic methodology.
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