May 29, 2000
COMMENTARY:
Baptist Faith & Message revision falls short of conciliatory possibilities
___By Steven R. Harmon
___The committee that has offered a revised version of the Baptist Faith & Message statement deserves commendation for much of its work.
___With the addition of the word "triune" to the last sentence of the opening paragraph of the article on God, the committee has made more explicit the statement's affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity. This addition should help Baptists to appreciate their own roots in the classical Christian theological tradition and to strengthen relationships with Christians of other denominations who share that heritage. In the article on the church, the move of the word "autonomous" from the second paragraph to the initial sentence of the first paragraph highlights an important facet of the Baptist approach to church governance. The committee wisely left untouched the article on religious liberty with its declarations that "church and state should be separate" and that "the church should not resort to the civil power to carry out its work." Many other Baptist distinctives and Christian essentials continue to be affirmed in the proposed revision of the statement.
Notwithstanding my appreciation for these features of the proposed revision, I am disappointed that the committee did not continue the more conciliatory approach to resolving doctrinal conflict that characterized previous revisions of Baptist confessional documents.
___Notwithstanding my appreciation for these features of the proposed revision, I am disappointed that the committee did not continue the more conciliatory approach to resolving doctrinal conflict that characterized previous revisions of Baptist confessional documents.
___Although the media will focus most of its attention on the exclusion of women from the pastoral office in the revised article on the church, that addition is the product of an even more sweeping departure from the tradition of confessional inclusiveness in the proposed article on the Scriptures. Committee Chairman Adrian Rogers claims in a prefatory letter that the revisions "clarify the intentions of both previous editions of the Baptist Faith & Message as reflected in Article I: The Scriptures." However, a comparison of the revision with previous versions of the article and the historical contexts in which they were adopted reveals a serious misunderstanding of these intentions.
Although the media will focus most of its attention on the exclusion of women from the pastoral office in the revised article on the church, that addition is the product of an even more sweeping departure from the tradition of confessional inclusiveness in the proposed article on the Scriptures.
___From the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845 until 1925, Southern Baptists did not have an officially adopted confession of faith. In 1924, the allegations of Texas pastor J. Frank Norris that Baptist educational institutions were teaching evolutionary theory motivated convention messengers to charge a committee with drafting a confession of faith. The committee, chaired by SBC and Southern Seminary President E.Y. Mullins, based the new document on a confession adopted by the Baptist Convention of New Hampshire in 1833.
___The Baptist Faith & Message statement adopted by SBC messengers in 1925 added only one word to the article on the Scriptures in the New Hampshire Confession. Whereas the New Hampshire Confession called the Bible "the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried," the 1925 statement qualified the "opinions" as "religious opinions." This modification subtly limited the scope of biblical authority to matters of faith and practice (not scientific matters) and enabled those who allowed for the possibility that evolution was the means by which God created human beings to affirm the statement. It is significant that the convention declined to adopt a proposed anti-evolution amendment to the document. The messengers took the high road of affirming a high view of Scripture while allowing for diverse approaches to biblical interpretation.
___In 1961, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Old Testament professor Ralph Elliott published "The Message of Genesis." Although the book's application of scholarly methods to the interpretation of Genesis was conservative by the standards of today's biblical scholarship, controversy over the book led messengers to the 1962 SBC in San Francisco to recommend that a committee chaired by SBC President Herschel Hobbs draft a new statement of faith that would provide guidelines for the agencies of the convention.
___The resulting revision of the Baptist Faith & Message, approved by messengers to the 1963 SBC in Kansas City, added a phrase and a sentence to the article on the Scriptures in the 1925 statement. The first addition asserted that the Bible "is the record of God's revelation of himself to man." This addition distinguished between the Bible and the revelation that preceded and resulted in the writing of Scripture, subtly allowing for interpretive approaches that reckoned seriously with the human dimensions of the biblical text. Such a distinction was hardly a novel or radical idea. The highly esteemed Southern Baptist theologian W.T. Conner had written in 1936 that "Revelation preceded the Bible. … The Bible is the product of revelation." The second addition, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ," permitted those who saw some progression in God's revelation from the earliest layers of the Old Testament to God's definitive revelation in Jesus Christ to affirm the statement in good conscience. Ralph Elliott's approach to Genesis fell within the parameters of the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message article on the Scriptures. Once again, a revision of this article combined an affirmation of the trustworthiness of the Bible with openness to the positive contributions of contemporary biblical and theological scholarship.
___Not so with the proposed 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith & Message. The article on the Scriptures would alter the statement that the Bible "is the record of God's revelation of himself to man" to read that the Bible "is God's revelation of himself to man." This direct equation of the Bible with God's revelation has more in common with the role of the Koran in Islam than with the historic Christian understanding of the Bible as a witness to Jesus Christ as the revelation of God.
This direct equation of the Bible with God's revelation has more in common with the role of the Koran in Islam than with the historic Christian understanding of the Bible as a witness to Jesus Christ as the revelation of God.
___The deletion of the sentence, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ," is similarly problematic. Its effect is to place Levitical codes barring persons with physical deformities from priestly service on the same level as John 3:16. Both modifications in the proposed article on the Scriptures are departures from the noble conciliatory tradition of previous revisions of that article. These departures underlie the less-than-conciliatory proposed revisions of other articles, including the exclusion of women from the pastorate.
___The report of the committee on the Baptist Faith & Message is also at odds with the spirit that has been a hallmark of the conciliatory stream of the Baptist tradition for so many years. I urge Baptists to continue this conciliatory tradition by voting against the proposed revisions of the Baptist Faith & Message in Orlando.
Steven R. Harmon is assistant professor of Christian theology at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C. He formerly taught at Howard Payne University in Brownwood.
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