Crawford Toy a "heretic" not a hero - Mohler

[Greg Wills]

As to the other quotes, you follow Woodbridge in conflating inspiration with inerrancy. The traditional historical position concerning scripture is that the scripture is inspired, but not textually inerrant.

Inerrantists do not conflate inspiration and inerrancy. They believe that if the Bible is inspired by God, then one result is that it is true. Inerrancy is a result of inspiration. Toy and most liberals held that inspiration secured the truth of the spiritual meaning of the text but did not result in the reliability of the historical level of meaning. So a text could be both spiritually true and historically false. So many liberals held for example that Jesus did not literally and historically walk on water or curse the fig tree, but that these texts nevertheless had spiritual value. They are historically false but spiritually true.

[Stephen Fox]

Not Criswell, Paige and Pressler and Adrian Rogers

Greg Willis, the SBC fundy inerrantists architects, their whole definition from Day one was 1st 11 chapters of Genesis are History and SCIENCE.
Check Criswell.
Now they shapeshifted the message to a whoe lot of things Atwater and Rovelike as needed; but out of the gate they were clear about the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

Enjoying your exchange with Gourley; hope yall get to Schleiermacher in the timeline matrix.

But One thing you cannot say, not to my satisfaction in this lifetime, is the fundamentalist architects in the SBC were transparent and ethical in the IMPLEMENTATION OF their Inerrancy wedge issue.

I'm not saying you have said that; just wanted to explore you on that key aspect of this whole Toy/Lottie penumbra

[Bruce Gourley]

As to the other quotes, you follow Woodbridge in conflating inspiration with inerrancy. The traditional historical position concerning scripture is that the scripture is inspired, but not textually inerrant.

Inerrantists do not conflate inspiration and inerrancy. They believe that if the Bible is inspired by God, then one result is that it is true. Inerrancy is a result of inspiration. Toy and most liberals held that inspiration secured the truth of the spiritual meaning of the text but did not result in the reliability of the historical level of meaning. So a text could be both spiritually true and historically false. So many liberals held for example that Jesus did not literally and historically walk on water or curse the fig tree, but that these texts nevertheless had spiritual value. They are historically false but spiritually true.

The historical record does not support the view that textual "inerrancy is a result of inspiration" (I assume by this statement that you mean that inerrancy is necessarily, not optionally, a result of inspiration). Woodbridge tried to force the early church fathers to make this claim, but failed.

Nor does scripture teach that inerrancy is a result of inspiration.

In fact, only inerrantists accept the claim that inerrancy is a result of inspiration.

[Stephen Fox]

Bruce:

Do you believe Jesus actually walked on Water; or have you come to accept that most likely he did not, but it is a true story anyway.

What do you understand Buddy Shurden to believe about the walking on the water account.

And if the both of you can explain it away, should Georgia Baptists trust you with their children and for what reason?

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8164

I find these concluding thought very powerful

Critical literary-historical study of the Gospels can indeed be a valuable help and corrective to faith and theology. It can shake up entrenched and complacent orthodoxies. It can remind the church of the full humanity of the incarnate Lord. It can expand the church's awareness of the richly diverse testimony to Jesus in the church's foundational documents. But one thing is clear to both Allison and this reviewer: the picture of Jesus constructed by historians who seek to go behind the Gospel witnesses can never substitute for the Jesus attested to by those witnesses and confessed by Christians in all times and places as Emmanuel, Savior, and crucified and risen Lord. It need be no insult to the labors of Gospel historians to affirm, as Allison rightly does, that "the Gospels should be preached as they stand, as canonical literature."

Refusing to replace the Jesus of the canonical Gospel witness with any of the pictures offered by the Jesus historians has nothing to do with an anxiety to protect fossilized dogmas. On the contrary, it is only when the Jesus attested to in scripture is recognized as embodying both our true humanity and the sovereign grace of God that faith and theology are deeply and permanently radicalized, far beyond the purported radicalism of every quest for the historical Jesus.

Something tells me the above discussion has become quite appropo for Lottie/Toy discussion as it has developed.
Still would like to know whether Jesus walking on the Water was Historical fact in the eyes of Gourley and Mercer Center for Baptist Studies.

[Stephen Fox]

Lead picture on the Home Page of www.alabamacbf.org tells the story.

Pagie Patterson and Al Mohler's nightmare.

There in one photo with the Pastor of Mtn Brook Baptist church are Lottie Moon's biographer Cat Allen, NevilleCallam, President of the Baptist World Alliance, and our friend Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee.

With yall I'm looking for Ms. Allen's letter in the March issue of Baps Today.

[Stephen Fox]

March Baptists today has arrived.

Kat Allen takes Paige to the cleaners