Honeycutt's holy war

[Tim Bonney]

Jon, the dicotemy of "innerrant" and "errant" are false choices. It was never the discussion within the Church before the modern era and our scientific mindset of what defines "true."

There isn't much point in you and I going back and forth on this as we are both well convinced of our positions. But calling people "liberals" who held to the historic faith of Baptists because they'd not adopt a new theory of inspiration is just backwards. Frankly it is inerrancy, fundamentalism, dispensationalism, and other recent Christian "isms" that are seeking to change Christianity from what it was historically for centuries among Protestant Christians. It is a false conservatism that is conserving ideas not from the first century but from the 19th.

I'll move onto another topic with you if you would like. But Sandy and I have already gone around the mountain multiple times on inerrancy. So I don't want ot waste your time.

[William Thornton]

[William Thornton]

[Tim Bonney]

Thanks for the honest assesment William. I much prefer your pros and cons to Sandy singing the praises of the takeover as if it is the best thing this side of heaven. Nothing is a good as he makes out the SBC to be now post takeover.

On another note, while I support the CBF in spirit (Best I can do without being a Baptist) I think the CBF has made a mistake sticking to the fellowship model over becoming a new denomination.

[William Thornton]

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy, I assume you've read the Chicago statement on inerrancy and are familiar with all of the qualifications that exist in the document? Can I also assume that you mean that the Bible is inerrant in its original documents? If both those are true, what did you expect the moderate leadership to say?

Unfortunately the inerrancy debate wasn't about truth or accuracy it was about sound bites. So you'd have wanted the leadership to say "No errors!" Well, no errors in what? Are you going to suggest there are no errors in any of our modern translations? Are you going to suggest that there are no errors in the KJV? Or would you have wanted the moderate leadersihp to say "no errors" even knowing all the qualifications on inerrancy that are an accepted part of the theory?

What I'd rather see is honesty than sound bites. But in the inerrancy debate I see rallying cries, sound bites, logical contradictions, and angels dancing all on the head of a pin to say the Bible is perfect taking our attending off the God who actually is perfect.

[Sandy]

In the aftermath of all of that, many of the moderate Baptist leaders indicated beliefs and teachings that were more along the lines of "classical" liberalism, and textual criticism than they claimed to have held during the controversy. Granted, not all of them did, but they gave their support to individuals who held leadership, and views that they knew would cause an explosion of reaction if it ever got out "to the people in the pews." That's what it was all about, and individuals like Honeycutt enabled liberalism to "creep in" exactly as the conservatives claimed it was.

[Tim Bonney]

Well Sandy, as I said to Jon, we are in very different places on this. I don't believe and have never believed the theory of inerrancy. It never made sense to me as having any practical use since it is about documents we don't have. Also the denomination I serve in does not teach inerrency so I'll just bow out of going around this one for now.

[Jon Estes]

[Jon Estes]

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

There's a broader subject of "Textual criticism" that compares manuscript evidence. Actually, what I got at an SBC seminary, prior to the resurgence, was a distinction between things that establish the existing manuscripts and make comparisons (and compared to other ancient literature, the New Testament in particular has very few variants), and various theories such as redactionism, the Documentary Hypothesis, and other theories related to existing manuscripts that tend to dismiss existing historical evidence,but get applied anyway.

For example the criticism that the Pentateuch was a product of a much later date than the time of Moses, based on the claim that the literary level of the work is too high for Moses' day. The idea that the gospel accounts were "redacted" and that a divine Jesus was created out of the written work of his original disciples, who saw him as a great teacher, and rabbi, but not as messiah. Or you can go down the road of the Jesus Seminary, and individuals such as Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, and others, who say that if part of the narrative of Jesus in the gospels is authentic, then literary criticism can prove other parts of it were added later.

[Tim Bonney]

You don't need textual criticism to realize that Moses didn't write all of the Penteteuch since it describes his death.

[Jon Estes]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

[Dave Roberts]

The un-nuanced description of convention statements and battle polemics relates well for people who have never spent much time in Bible study (without a book or other resource telling them how to eliminate all the issues of passages). It sounds good in debates on the floors of conventions. Theological study is meant to start with scripture and learn from it how to develop an understanding. Even scholarly efforts to describe inerrancy fall into the death of a thousand qualifications as found in the Chicago Statement. To suddenly expect seminary presidents to have yes and no answers is to say that there is no real reason for education to study scripture, since all the conclusions have already been drawn. There should be studies that go beyond where the rank-and-file in any denomination are. Without that, the prophetic voice of the church lies dead. How many Old Testament prophets could have won a majority vote? By SBC procedures, they would have been considered heretical. Could Jesus, with his non-mainstream ideas, have won approval of the First Century Grand Synagogue Assembly? Why then can we assume theology is best when adopted by majority vote. It seems, in my reading of scripture, that God has always been more embodied in minority movements. The number of votes is not the test of right thinking, from a biblical perspective. My example--Micaiah and the court prophets.

[Stephen Fox]

My friend Dr. Thornton has almost made any invocation of Ms Worthen's insight a profanity on this board but I strongly contend her thoughts on page 198 and 199 in Chapter 9 --Evangelicals Great Matter-- of her Apostles of Reason could add a lot of substance to this conversation. I hope some of you will find a Barnes and Noble or good interlibrary loan system near you soon and give this exchange more credibility.

[Stephen Fox]

[Tim Bonney]

[Stephen Fox]

I have quoted Bill Firday often in these periodical revisits to the takeover; Friday as told to me by Cecil Sherman about what the fundy takeover of SEBTS meant for North Carolina. And even now the US Senate race between thillis and Kay Hagan bears it out.

The core leaership of the fundy takeover were hard core right wingers from Pressler, Patterson connections to the Hunts Bros at FBC Dallas and Criswell's nudging there, to Ed McAteer jerking Adrian Rogers around at Bellevue in Memphis, Harry Dent's influence over Ed Young and Tim La Lahaye permeating the whole mess.

There was no takeover without the singleminded mule headedness of the Birch Society leftovers that circled around Pressler.

Criswell got the wrong ruse. Inerrancy was the ruse and it was proven so for all but the most stubborn as early as the 87 Ridgecrest conference on inerrancy where for all practical purposes Adrian Rogers and Jerry Vines packed up and left the 2nd day!