Al Mohler is right and you are wrong. I say that kindly but it must be said. The Baptist Faith and Message has always been a minimal statement of Southern Baptist Theology. It was first adopted in 1925 at the Convention in Memphis. It was presented by a Committee composed of E.Y. Mullins, L.R. Scarborough, C.P. Stealey, W.G. McGlothlin, S.M. Brown, E.C. Dargan, and R.H. Pitt. The statement represented an enlargement of the Statement of Principles of 1919 and based largely on the the New Hampshire Confession with 10 additions, 2 deletions (articles 12 & 16) and 3 redactions. The Committee made it clear that it was a general expression of the faith of Southern Baptists and that it was not authoritative nor binding on local churches. When the statement was re-issued in 1963 by a Committee of State Convention Presidents chaired by Southern Baptist Convention President Herschel Hobbs, they made it clear that the statement constituted a consensus of opinion and that they were not to add anything to the simple conditions of salvation revealed in the new Testament. They also made it clear that the statement did not represent a complete statement of our faith nor did they have any quality of finality or infallibility. They also expressed the belief that "Baptists should hold themselves free to revise their statements of faith as seemed to them wise and expedient at any time". They asserted that the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is the Scriptures of the Old and new Testament and that confessions are only guides and interpretation. It has been said over and over again that the Baptist Faith and Message is not a creed that is binding upon the churches. We wonder how many times that has to be said before everyone gets it. Indeed, there were slight revisions and additions to the statement in the year 2000. Every Southern Baptist Church, being autonomous, can either accept the statement or reject it. They may issue their own statement or do nothing about it. The Convention has instructed all Southern Baptist entities to teach and carry out their program assignments "in accordance with and not contrary to" that statement. But, that statement does not hold the Baptist Faith and Message to be an exhaustive statement. Realizing that, Southern Baptist entities have always gone beyond that statement in carrying out their various program assignments. Some seminaries operate according to a statement that they refer to as "Abstract of Principles" but those statements are not contrary to the Baptist Faith and Message. For instance, there have been times when persons employed by Southern Baptist entities have had to be dismissed for reasons of moral turpitude. Sometimes there have been dismissals for lack of performance but there are also times when there have been dismissals because employees of agencies or institutions of the Southern Baptist Convention have taught contrary to the Baptist Faith and Message which is a clear violation of the instructions given by the Convention itself.
AUTONOMY
The liberals are making much of the term "autonomy of the local church". The thing that must be honestly remembered, however, is that Associations, State Conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention are all autonomous each of the other. That is the reason we send Messengers instead of Delegates to the Convention. That is because the churches cannot tell the rest of the Convention what they must do and the actions of the Convention cannot be forced on any local church.
Accordingly, some Associations have found it necessary to withdraw from churches as will be discussed later. That action was taken by the Tarrant Baptist Association of Ft. Worth, Texas when J. Frank Norris was Pastor of the First Baptist Church of that city. He and his Church were excluded. A large church in a Southern City was denied membership in an Association because a Minister of Music on the Committee decided that they "didn't sing Southern Baptist music" even though their hymn books were published by the Baptist Sunday School Board. There have been churches that were excluded because they didn't send in an Associational Letter or didn't contribute to the Association. Some have been excluded because they recognized Homosexual Marriages. I have known of churches who were excluded because they had "independent leanings". We may agree or disagree with the Association's reason for excluding them but what cannot be contested is the right of the Association to do so. State Conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention have done the same thing. If autonomy is important to us (and it is) then let's respect it at all levels.
TRUSTEE SYSTEM
Technically the Southern Baptist Convention owns and operates its various entities through Boards of Trustees. The Boards of Trustees, in fact, own those various entities and they are responsible to the Convention. When the Sunday School Board was sued, the suit was not filed against the President but the Trustees. The Trustees can never take away any agency or institution of the Convention because of the "sole membership" amendment recently adopted by the various entities which was a very intelligent move on the part of the Convention.
GLOSSOLALIA
This controversy is being fueled by the issues of glossolalia and Calvinism at the present time. These issues are the occasion of the controversy but not the cause. The cause is something else. Read on!! Glossolalia is a heresy that dates back to the Corinthian Church. Through the centuries there have been efforts to reproduce Pentecost. Today there are denominations that are referred to as "Pentecostal" denominations. Dr. Criswell was right, there will never be another Pentecost just as there will never be another Calvary. The Church was born on the day of Pentecost and it will never be unborn. The Gates of Hell will never prevail against it. God doesn't have to redo Pentecost. Moreover, Baptists need to understand that God isn't sitting on His throne saying, "You can talk to me if you can figure out this prayer language". The instruction of Jesus concerning Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount still stands and it doesn't include any kind of glossolalia. Not only did He teach us to pray in Matthew 6 but He went over it again in the 7th chapter when He said, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you". His help is ours for the asking! Jesus comes across it again in Luke 11: 9-10. In the great passage of John 14 Jesus makes it clear again when He said, "Whatsoever ye ask in my name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the son". How many times does Jesus have to say it before we accept it?
The Corinthian Church was carrying on a kind of unintelligible gibberish in their Worship Services. Paul's concern was their witness to unbelievers. His question was, "Will they not say that you are mad?". Glossolalia is such a terrible heresy because it tends to erect a barrier between man and God - a barrier that is not there and we should not try to erect one. We can go to God any time and speak to God in the simplest of language and He will hear us. That is His promise and we can tie to it.
CALVINISM
For a Calvinist to say that he is evangelistic is an oxymoron. Calvin said some good and correct things but his soteriology was a confused mess. It is indisputable that he wrote in The Institutes that "We assert that by an eternal and immutable council God hath once for all determined both whom He would admit to salvation and whom He would admit to destruction. We confirm that this council, as concerns the elect, is founded on His gratuitous merit totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom He devotes to condemnation the Gate of Life is closed by a just an irreprehensible judgment". When once a person embraces this kind of limited atonement he might as well strike out the "whosoever" form those great passages like John 3:16, Romans 10:13 and Revelation 22:17. I have known a few preachers who thought they were Calvinists until they compared his teachings to the Scriptures and then they decided they were not Calvinists. All Baptists need to get back to the Scriptures and quit exalting a 16th Century theologian as though his writings were equal to or above the Scripture. The soteriology of the Bible is clear. No one is excluded from Salvation except as he rejects God's provision for salvation. The false idea of limited atonement (one of the five points from the Synod of Dort - 1619) always hinders evangelism because it is contrary to the clear teachings of the Scriptures.
Calvin condemned and fought against the ana-Baptists who insisted on the right of private interpretation of Scripture and denied ecclesiastical authority. Calvin wrote, "There is no other means of entering life unless she (the church) conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourishes us at the heart, and watch over us with her protection and guidance ... outside her bosom no forgiveness of sins, no salvation can be hoped for" (an idea absolutely foreign to Baptists). Calvin became the defacto ruler of Geneva. Calvin obviously believed in establishing authority through the church because he did not believe that Scripture was devoid of error. He makes a strange bedfellow for Southern Baptists who believe in the Baptist Faith and Message. His doctrine of predestination was the most unpalatable of all his teachings because it represented such a misunderstanding of the clear teaching of Scripture. He believed that Salvation was controlled by the Church. He didn't believe that the Bible was free of error and some want Baptists to swallow his teaching???
The proof texts that Calvinists use for the teaching of predestination is Romans 8:29 and Ephesians 1:5. While other texts are often used these are the primary texts that Calvinists cling to. The Romans passage says: "For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the first born among many brethren". So, who did God foreknow? The answer to that is everyone. If God foreknew everyone then everyone was predestined, or would have the opportunity of being conformed to the image of His Son. Thus, the thing that was predestined was the Plan of Salvation proffered to us through Jesus Christ, the Divine Son of god. It does not mean that God has decreed that some would be eternally lost and others would be saved unto eternal life. This is confirmed in II Peter 3:9 where he said, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish but that ALL should come to repentance." As Dr. Huber Drumwright once said: "Predestination applies only to Christians."
The same Paul who penned Ephesians 1:5 also penned Ephesians 2:8 under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit where he tells us: "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God". What is the gift of God? The subject of that sentence is salvation (ye are saved). It is by our faith that we appropriate the Gift of God. By His grace God has extended salvation to us through Jesus Christ and any man who is willing to subject his will to Jesus Christ by faith will receive that salvation. That is the reason that the Revelation says, "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely". When we do that, we not only appropriate God's salvation so graciously proffered through the shed blood of Jesus Christ at Calvary, but we come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ for eternity.
Some Calvinists seem to believe that predestination elevates the omniscience of God. That is not true. Man never has the power to elevate the omniscience of God because that cannot be done; neither can man diminish the omniscience of God because he doesn't have that power either no matter who he may be. God knows all He chooses to know and He can forget what He chooses to forget. In fact, it is Jeremiah who reminds us that when men know God He will "forgive their iniquity", and "will remember their sin no more". Old time preachers often used an interpolation based on Psalm 103:12, Micah 7:19 and Jeremiah 31:34 to say that God places our sins in "the sea of forgetfulness and remembers them against us no more".
CALVIN'S MORALITY
This Southern Baptist has a lot of problems with John Calvin. To be sure, I am not his judge but he was ruthless and relentless in dealing with all who disagreed with him. Castellio, a school master in Geneva was banished because he disagreed with Calvin's interpretation of the Apostles' Creed. Bolsec was imprisoned and later banished because he opposed Calvin's ideas on predestination. Things came to a head when Michael Servetus disagreed with Calvin about the Trinity. He was arrested and brought to trial on a charge of heresy which was later changed to one accusing him of subverting religion and society. Calvin was the accuser and prosecutor. Servetus was sentenced to a particularly agonizing death on October 27, 1553. This illustrates the unholy amalgamation of Church and State in Calvin's Geneva.
In Calvin's Geneva, there were very strict moral standards. Adultery was punished by drowning (of women) and by beheading (of men). Calvinists adopted an austere attitude toward immoderate extravagance in dress and entertainment. It was fanatical Calvinists in Massachusetts who supported Samuel Parris and Cotton Mather in the execution of 19 people who were accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem. Being a Harvard graduate, Mather had his defenders but he was in it up to his neck and his Father, Increase Mather, was President of Harvard. Defenders of Calvin contended that strict and often inhumane treatment of those who were determined to be sinners was necessary to improve the morals of a society that was steeped in debauchery coming out of the Renaissance. Certainly, we would not defend adultery but Jesus dealt with a woman taken in adultery and His command to her was, "go and sin no more". He didn't put her to death. Thank God for the Scriptures! As a lifetime Southern Baptist, I find a lot in Calvinism that troubles me but I find nothing in the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles that troubles me. We Baptists need to get back to where we belong. We are a people of the Book. If anyone wants to know what Calvinism will do, take a look at the Primitive Baptists. No one can "out Calvin" those people. The handbook of Denominations estimates that there are only 72,000 of them left. They are concentrated mostly in Western North Carolina, West Virginia, East Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky.
AGENDA
It is time for Southern Baptists to ask the piercing question, "What is fueling this debate among the Bloggers who seem to find something wrong with the Southern Baptist Convention?" Why do we see them using such derogatory language about our leaders? This Southern Baptist is persuaded that many of those who are pushing the envelope on glossolalia do not believe in it nor practice it. Calvinism is attractive to some Pastors because it takes away the urgency of evangelism. They simply become caretakers of the churches where they serve. Their baptisms are usually very few. It is much more important to be Johanine, Pauline, Petrine or Lucan than to be a Calvinist.
Again, I am noticing the term "Fundamentalist" being tossed about on some Blogs. In Southern Baptist life, that is a pejorative term. Fundamentalism didn't start among Baptists. It started among the Presbyterians at Princeton University in 1910 when certain faculty members led the General Conference of the Presbyterian Church to adopt the Five Fundamentals. Southern Baptists had no quarrel with them, but we disagreed with them on other matters not relating to the Five Fundamentals. Southern Baptists did not accept their ideas relating to church government or baptism among other things. Many Southern Baptists saw the Five Fundamentals as a very inadequate statement of faith or confession. That led to the Baptist Faith and Message in 1925 which was much more comprehensive. Only a very, very small handful of Southern Baptists joined the movement. The most notable was J. Frank Norris of Fort Worth. Norris was expelled from the Tarrant Association in 1922 and again in 1924. He was expelled from the Texas Convention in 1923 and 1924. While Norris continued to criticize the Southern Baptist Convention until his death in 1952, he was never able to gain much traction because the Southern Baptist people were so conservative at that time. The term "Fundamentalist" is often used by Liberals among us today as a way of insulting us.
The conclusion seems inescapable that some in the Blogosphere, who are liberals, are trying to push the parameters of Southern Baptist tehology to the point that we can accept all kinds of heresies and, perhaps, allow Liberals to worm their way back into our Seminary Classrooms where they can spew their Wellhausen poison into the stream of Southern Baptist theology. A Liberal is one who has embraced the Documentary Hypothesis in any of its forms. Southern Baptists need to make no mistake about it, Liberalism is not dead. They are still among us. When they were not longer able to control our Convention machinery and our Seminaries, they pulled away and formed their own denomination. They have established little dinky divinity schools that do a very poor job of preparing young men for the pastorate but their aim is not so much the pulpits of our churches as it is the classrooms where our young people study. That is the reason their point of attack at present is our Seminary Presidents. Our Seminaries are under good leadership. The scholars teaching in our seminary classrooms are as good as or better than we have ever had. They are well prepared. None have claimed to be living in sinless perfection but they are good people and fully committed to the mission of Southern Baptists. They all have feet of clay and they know it. I note, however, that the critics of our Seminaries never raise a question about the little dinky divinity schools that the Liberals have established. That speaks volumes!! Does that give no one pause? It is time for Southern Baptists to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. A lot of good things are happening in the Convention. There are no deep dark secrets that we need to be concerned about but there are millions of lost souls that we need to reach. It is time to quit looking for a "Fundamentalist" under every rock and look unto the fields that are white unto harvest.
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