June 5, 2000
Committee defends proposed changes
___NASHVILLE--The doctrines of soul competency and priesthood of all believers are not diminished because reference to them has been removed from the preamble to the Baptist Faith & Message, according to the committee that proposed changes to the statement of faith.
___"We believe that the concepts of soul competency and the priesthood of all believers are cherished Baptist principles," the committee said in a statement released through Baptist Press. "We also believe that these are included in and defined by the sixth article of our report, 'The Church,' where we state that 'each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord.'
___"We are following the example of the 1925 committee and its chairman, E.Y. Mullins, who developed the concept of soul competency and was its first advocate. That committee's report, like our own, lets the article speak for itself and does not insert such language into the preamble.
"We are following the example of the 1925 committee and its chairman, E.Y. Mullins, who developed the concept of soul competency and was its first advocate. That committee's report, like our own, lets the article speak for itself and does not insert such language into the preamble."
The committee proposing changes to the Baptist Faith & Message in a statement released through Baptist Press
___"We affirm soul competency, and with Mullins define that this principle 'means a competency under God, not a competency in the sense of human self-sufficiency.'"
___The proposed changes have been criticized in Texas and elsewhere because explicit references to soul competency and the priesthood of all believers are not carried forward in the document's preamble. The revised document nowhere uses the words "soul competency" or "priesthood of believers."
___Criticism of this omission has been fueled, in part, by a Founders' Day address given by President Al Mohler at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary just weeks before the revisions were released. Mohler served on the committee drafting the revisions and is considered to have been a powerful voice within the committee.
___In the Founders' Day address, Mohler sharply criticized Mullins and the doctrine of soul competency. He asserted that through Mullins' influence an "autonomous individualism" has "infected" the SBC.
___Though the committee stopped short of using the word "inerrant" in its revisions to the Baptist Faith & Message article on Scripture, it freely used that term in its defense of the document.
___"The Bible is inerrant, infallible and is our sole authority for faith and practice in the church," the committee said. "As Herschel Hobbs repeatedly declared to the convention, this was all implied in the 1963 statement. We made these affirmations clear in our proposal."
___The committee further defended its removal of what previously was the closing line in the article on Scripture, that "the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ."
___This statement was "controversial," the committee said, because some have used it "to drive a wedge between the incarnate word and the written word and to deny the truthfulness of certain passages."
___On the issue of asserting that women should not be allowed to serve as pastors, the committee said it acted "because we were driven by biblical authority, a sense of urgency and the near unanimous verdict of our churches."
___"The Bible is clear in presenting the office of pastor as restricted to men," the statement said. "There is no biblical precedent for a woman in the pastorate, and the Bible teaches that women should not teach in authority over men."
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