Clarity of Church Identity

[Tim Bonney]

Still not seeing "inerrant", "inerrancy", etc. in the text.

You are making an interpretation that "truth without mixture of error" means inerrant. The committees of those documents never used that term. In 2000 I'm sure that's the way the paragraph was interpreted. In 1963 and 1925 I seriously doubt that. in 1925 I find it very very doubtful as inerrancy is such a new theory of inspiration.

[Tim Bonney]

Oh, and by the way, if you read the differences between the 1925 and the 1963 BFM you get some really interest takes on how Baptist views on the subject of grace and sanctification have change. The 1925 statement on sanctification is almost Wesleyan, and certainly gives a more Arminian slant to the text than the 1963 document.

Growing up in the SBC I'm pretty sure I'd never heard the word "inerrancy" before the early 80s. Nor, I'm willing to bet, would you have found the term in SBC denominational publications. So what was the SBC doing so wrong between 1845 and 1970ish that whole new terminology had to be adopted for Biblical inspiration?

We've been around this argument so many times that there really isn't any point in us doing it again. But I am always honestly surprised that people forget that most of the inerrancy argument wasn't about doctrine, it was about politics and the desire of some folks sitting in a cafe in New Orleans who wanted to takeover the workings of their denomination. Inerrancy wasn't so much doctrine in those days as a campaign slogan.

Of course it is all ancient history now. And it hasn't done the SBC much good. I say with no satisfaction on either account that last stats I saw both the SBC and the UMC were losing membership at about the same rate of 2% per year.

Inerrancy was pitched as the salvation of the SBC. For all the fighting, warfare and losses of good people you all could have saved yourself the time if you were just going to lose membership like the mainliners.

[Sandy]

"Truth, without any mixture of error" is inerrancy. All three statements make that clear in the description. "Without error" or "inerrant," it is clear that Southern Baptists held the view that there were no errors in the Bible at least back to 1925.

Confirmation of this fact can be found in Herschel Hobbs Convention Press book on the 1963 BFM. What he defines is inerrancy.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

Declaring that the Bible is "truth without any mixture of error" is declaring that it is inerrant. I believe Herschel Hobbs was on the 63 committee, and not only did he clarify the meaning in his book, but the 2000 committee, which clearly accepted inerrancy, used much of Hobb's text. Unless the terms "truth" and "without error" have some occluded meaning, it's clear that the Baptists who authored the three BFM statements believed the Bible to be without error. So do, in fact, almost all Baptist denominations, including the predominantly African American denominations and the independents, and at least 40 conservative evangelical denominations, along with hundreds of conservative evangelical non-denominational churches. It's usually pretty easy to find, because most put it as the #2 or #3 point in their statement of faith. Pick up the books of their authors. It's clearly defined, and it is a core belief that separates identity of evangelical conservatives from "mainline" liberals.

[Tim Bonney]

If the 1963 BFM stood for inerrancy, all they had to do was print the word "inerrant" in the document rather than "truth without mixture of error." It would have taken so much less ink.

And besides that, I don't believe the Bible is inerrant. I don't believe that was an historical Baptist teaching. I don't believe it is an early Christian teaching either. And I'm no longer a Baptist...

Believe all the revisionist history you want. It isn't my circus, and they aren't my monkeys.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy, what we had to come to terms with is that the history of our denominational family got re-written to suit the victors. The people in the pew had never heard of inerrancy before fundamentalist Baptist preachers started preaching it from pulpits. Its an academic theory of inspiration that no one would have thought of in the pew, much less concocted.

You've bought the new narrative and you like the new narrative. I get it. But you just keep preaching it to people on BL.com who know it isn't the original history of the denomination. Yes, the SBC was always conservative. Yes the SBC always had a high view of scripture. But few in the pew ever heard of inerrancy before the SBC takeover movement. And I'm guess few in the pew even today could do a credible job of defining inerrancy. I'd bet the greatest majority in the pew would give you a blank stare if you mentioned the Chicago Statement on Biblical inerrancy.

The fix for Lutherans when this kind of thing happened in the Missouri Synod was to participate in the creation of a new denomination. I've often been sorry the CBF didn't go that far. Always having one foot in the fire all the time can't be comfortable and I'm sure that plays into the original thread topic on identity.

The SBC created a new one. I'm an outsider but I think the CBF needs a new identity too.

[Tim Bonney]

On the same topic, it was a big mistake for the SBC to create a statement like the BFM in the first place. The denomination didn't believe in creeds. So why create a statement that can be used as a sledge hammer on you later if you disagree with it? Even worse the BFM could be changed every year at the Convention by a simple majority of the delegates. So all you got to do is get enough delegates and you too can change the theology of the SBC.

Folks in the UMC joke about how very slow it is to change anything in the denomination. But one thing I think they got right was putting an incredibly high bar on changes in doctrinal statements. Our faith statements are found in a restricted section of the Discipline that can only be changed by a super majority of every voting member of every annual conference in the entire world. So far it has never happened. And it isn't likely to happen the bar is so high.

IMO, you want faith statements of a denomination to be very basic only focusing on bedrock Christianity and bedrock denominational beliefs and once adopted very very hard to change. You don't want faith statements that chases after whatever the current theological or social fad is that can be changed at the whim of a small group of people by a simple majority vote who have a political axe to grind. That's what you have with the BFM. Its a hammer that you can reforge whenever you want for the agenda of whomever runs the show in the current generation.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

[Tim Bonney]

It is interesting David that the statements were born out of controversy. It gives a reason to using "truth without any mixture of error" rather than inerrant. It allows Sandy and others with his view to see "inerrant" (and later interpret that this was always the meaning) when at the time of original adoption the phrase allowed wiggle room.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed? Tim would you still be a baptist if the BFM had never been written?

Keep in mind I am in agreement with you, Keith and a host of Bible scholars who say that inerrancy is a misleading term to describe the writings found in the Bible. However I was a bit surprised to see you write that growing up Southern Baptist you had never hear of the term until the 80's, I think Keith is closer to the proper dating . But I would agree that in the 10 SBC Churches in 6 state conventions in which I had participated by 1980, I never observed adherence to the term inerrancy being applied as a litmus test for church membership or for service in the church or missions, until the takeover became public at the 1979 SCB Convention.

And TIm I have just noticed your reply to Dave and rather than wiggle room I prefer the phrase "grand compromise", which went both ways.

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]

Grand Compromise seems like a good term for it Ed.

[Dave Roberts]

[Haruo]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Neil Heath]

Since Dr. Hobbs has been cited in this thread several ways, I'll repeat my experience at the 1983 SBC meeting in Pittsburgh. I was walking in front of Dr. Hobbs as he left the morning session. I don't know what had been discussed in the session because I was not present. He was getting on in years even then, and being assisted by a young man who asked him, "Dr. Hobbs, what do you make of all this?" His reply has stayed with me.

"I don't know what they are, but they certainly aren't Baptists."

Neil

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Ed, to clarify, it wasn't local churches but SBC pastors in southern Illinois and Indiana. I have always agreed with the sentiment that the average SBCer in the pew is a "simple Biblicist." They believe the Bible, don't know much about theories about the origin of the Bible. They believe in their local church and its ministry and only really know what goes on in the SBC when their preacher gets much into it. They know more about their local association and a little bit more about state convention. (Discounting the handful of highly involved lay persons in some congregations.)

IMHO the SBC takeover would have never happened without fundy SBC pastoral takeover organizers and pushers.

During the short time I was in Illinois I remember being at meetings and other pastors trying to feel you out and see if you were on their side of the convention fighting.

[Dave Roberts]

I've never forgotten an event in my life. I went from SBTS to my first pastorate in May of 1972. The associational ministers conference did not meet until September, so I had met few of the pastors. When I arrived at that meeting, a big, blustering guy walked up to me and said, "You must be that new liberal that has come to Parkton Baptist." I was astounded, first because I had never met him, second I knew nothing about him at all except that I had seen his name on the list of pastors. Without so much as one word of conversation, he had pigeonholed me because I was serving a church that had a reputation for a more educated ministry. (There were two PhD's among my predecessors of the previous twenty years, both of whom were teaching in colleges by the time I came.) The judgmental attitudes and efforts to see whose side you were on was foreign to me. That was probably the first time I felt marginalized in the SBC, and knew that what I had grown up experiencing was already leaving me. I had grown up in the "first church" of a predominantly rural association in the Virginia mountains. While there were certainly educational differences and many bivocational pastors in the association, the fellowship had always been appreciative and the "grand compromise" was working. By 1972, following the attacks on the Broadman Commentary Volume 1, the battle was on for the power to control what professors said and taught and who got the prime pulpits across the denomination.