“I would hope that we have learned that the SBC’s true treasure is not our ‘intelligensia’ or our bureaucrats who keep the SBC running. Rather, our true treasure is our ‘grassroots’ people. Trust the ‘grassroots’?they are not as ignorant as some have tended to think.

“We academics are prone to elitism. We are susceptible to intellectual snobbery. Those of us who are conservative are no less open to such a sinful attitude. Knowledge puffs up. The Elliott controversy reminds the scholars/academicians among us to add humility to our knowledge, and to submit our knowledge to the scrutiny of our Lord and His Word. I think it is very interesting that when the chips were down, the elite at the top tended to try to protect each other instead of protecting the truth.

“We learned that we cannot trust the elite always to maintain vigilance over our doctrinal integrity interests. The 2000 statement of faith and its use indicate that we are learning much in this area. I think some of the unwillingness to sign the 2000 statement or to request ‘oral’ support for truth instead, is in part a throwback to the era when we tended to trust folks who were entrusted with the stewardship of the truth and to take them at their word when they assured us they were orthodox and historic Baptists. We have learned that our primary trust must be in the truth itself and that we must be willing to acknowledge our allegiance to that truth as encapsulated in a confession of faith.”

-Ron Rogers

Midwestern Baptist Theological

Seminary missions professor

“Higher critical methodologies such as source, form, and redaction criticism (which Ralph Elliot used) were not products of Protestant Liberalism as such, but were particularly attractive to liberals and “progressivist” evangelicals because of their attempts to go “behind” the texts of Scripture to some supposedly more pure or more original religion underlying extant writings. Such procedures opened to door to the demythologizing of Rudolph Bultmann in which he, like other liberals, claimed to recover the nut of the pure gospel from the husk of mythology. The nut however ended up looking too often like the results of man’s own projection of his highest hopes, dreams, and fantasies into the metaphysical realm as Ludwig Feuerbach had charged and Barth had warned.

“The point is that the higher critical methodologies which held themselves out as objective, scientific, dispassionate quests for the historical truth soon displayed their subjective captivation to the proclivities, idiosyncrasies and blind spots of the particular scholar employing them.”

-Mark DeVine

Midwestern Baptist Theological

Seminary theology professor

Forty years ago Southern Baptist Convention President Herschel Hobbs looked over the capacity crowd of messengers gathered in Kansas City for the denomination’s annual meeting, unable to finish reading the proposed revision to the Baptist Faith and Message. It appeared to him as though the crowd had begun swaying back and forth.

Noticing that her husband appeared dizzy, Hobbs’ wife feared he was having a heart attack and pled with him to return to their hotel and consult a doctor. He refused and years later recalled saying, “Hon, I must stay here for any debate which may come. I feel that it is so important that this report be approved. I am willing to die on this platform, if necessary, in order to see to its adoption.”

Hobbs was battling a persistent bronchial infection and sat down as the committee’s vice chairman finished reading the first revision ever made to the Baptist Faith and Message. “Naturally, it was a matter of great interest to the messengers,” Hobbs recalled. With only a few failed attempts to modify the language, the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message was approved with only scattered dissent.

The Oklahoma pastor had spent most of his tenure as SBC president looking for a way out of the theological crisis that consumed the denomination. Behind the scenes he had met and corresponded with SBC Executive Committee President Porter Routh, Sunday School Board President James Sullivan and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Millard Berquist find a way out of the firestorm that was brewing.

“For several years the feeling had been growing that certain elements among Southern Baptists were drifting toward liberalism,” Hobbs told a 1978 Historical Commission gathering. “The matter threatened to come to an explosive head at the Convention in San Francisco” in 1962, he said. “Some even predicted that the Convention might divide.”

Hobbs felt that a call for a new confession of faith would curtail criticism over Broadman Press printing Midwestern Seminary professor Ralph Elliott’s critical treatment of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. “This book was not the cause but the occasion for a strong protest by many,” Hobbs remarked.

“If, in 1962, Midwestern’s administration and trustees, and the Sunday School board’s editors had concluded that Ralph H. Elliott’s writings were incompatible with Southern Baptists’ doctrinal confession, the crisis might have been headed off,” wrote Baptist historian Jerry Sutton in his book The Baptist Reformation. Those acknowledgements, along with conservative parameters for the Broadman Bible Commentary and the admission of some problems by seminary presidents, might have stopped the emerging movement in its tracks, Sutton concluded.

Instead, Midwestern President Millard Berquist backed Elliott during trustee inquiries into the substance of Elliott’s Message of Genesis. Only a few years into his administration of the SBC’s youngest seminary, Berquist found himself caught in the middle?defending a professor considered by many to be teaching outside the bounds of Southern Baptist doctrinal beliefs?while opposing a call for a special meeting of trustees to “get the dirty work done” to fire Elliott.

Berquist regarded Elliott’s manuscript as “one of the finest pieces of biblical scholarship produced by Southern Baptists since the days of Dr. A. T. Robertson and Dr. H. E. Dana,” according to a letter he sent to Broadman editors. He and Elliott appealed to professors at other Southern Baptist seminaries and colleges for support, soliciting 40 such letters that they shared with trustees. (See related article demonstrating widespread support. These and other letters in which Southern Baptist leaders express their concerns are a part of Midwestern Seminary’s library archives.)

The Midwestern president wrote Routh to say he feared “the loss to Southern Baptists of one of the most able and devout scholars in Southern Baptist ranks,” asking the Executive Committee leader for advice in fighting “the intensive campaign” to “crucify Elliott.”

By January of 1962, even Sullivan expressed reservations about reprinting the book, making it clear to Elliott that it wasn’t a done deal. He questioned whether the book would be used beyond Midwestern’s classrooms, a point that infuriated Elliott who saw his work as having broader appeal.

“No one regrets any more than do I the horrible furor which has been created with reference to The Message of Genesis,” he responded to Sullivan. He defended his “honest effort to understand its [the Bible’s] message as dynamic and relevant for our age.”

Elliott told Sullivan, “Few of our seminary professors have ever held to the mechanical dictation view as desired by the critics,” blaming an organized campaign by a few men for causing the uproar. A few days later Berquist wrote Sullivan as well, expre

“The influence of confessions of faith has been largely dependent upon the use which has been made of them,” stated James E. Carter in his review of confessions of faith for the Baptist History and Heritage series. Three years after messengers overwhelmingly approved the 2000 revision to the Baptist Faith and Message, nearly two-thirds of state conventions have affirmed the revised doctrinal statement and all Southern Baptist entities are operating with those guidelines in mind.

The first two Southern Baptist doctrinal statements were written to deal with controversies arising out of the seminaries. The 1925 statement failed to satisfy the anti-evolution sentiment voiced by a strong segment of the Convention much like the 1963 statement failed to satisfy Southern Baptists concerned that many seminary professors were teaching outside the mainstream of Southern Baptist life.

1963 statement keeps profs under the radar

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Charles S. Kelley observed that in the days surrounding the 1963 statement professors and publishers were introducing a new perspective intentionally in a very subtle way to keep it under the radar of most Southern Baptists. In his convocation address in the fall of 2000, Kelley said, “Language was being given one meaning in many SBC classrooms, but a different meaning in the churches.”

He quoted from former Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Ralph Elliott’s reflection of the earliest years of controversy in a book titled The Genesis Controversy. Elliott wrote that “professors and students learned to couch their beliefs in acceptable terminology and in holy jargon so that although thinking one thing, the speaker calculated so as to cause the hearer to affirm something else.”

Kelley asked, “How could the advocates of the new theology affirm the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message statement which, quoting directly from the 1925 statement, said the Bible has ‘God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter?'”

He concluded, “Obviously something must have been added to this historic language in 1963 that opened the door for a dramatically different theology to enter Southern Baptist life. It became apparent over the years that rather than serving as the expected course correction for the inroads of neo-orthodox theology in SBC educational institutions, two phrases added to the Baptist Faith and Message in 1963 were instead used to justify a radical departure from what most Baptists had always believed about the Bible.”

Kelley cited the addition of the description of the Bible as being “the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man.” He said, “To professional theologians this is a classic statement of neo-orthodox theology.” He explained that the phrase on the Bible having “truth without any mixture of error for its matter” is interpreted as referring only to those portions of the Bible that are revelation, a dramatic departure from what 2 Tim. 3:16 teaches, he added.

“The problem this perspective creates is in how to know which parts of the Bible are revelation and which are merely the background record. Interestingly enough, not even neo-orthodox theologians could agree on what in the Bible is revelation and what is not.”

Kelley also cited the addition of the phrase “the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ” as having provided “another neo-orthodox statement that would take Southern Baptists in a significantly different theological direction.” He explained that many “professional theologians” could affirm the statement but “use Jesus as the spotter for separating divine revelation in the Bible from the human record.”

“This new theology says my answer to the question ‘What would Jesus do?’ carries more weight than the clear teaching of the Bible. The Christ of my experience becomes the final authority for theology rather than the Bible.”

Midwestern missions professor Ron Rogers who also has taught theology as well as observing the influence of neo-orthodoxy while a Southern Baptist missionary to Brazil, asked, “Did the architects of the 1963 BF&M know what they were doing?that is, did they purposely insert the language about Christ being the ‘criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted’ to satisfy the so-called ‘ignorant’ critics and to ‘umbrella’ the seminary elite?

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President L. Paige Patterson who in 1999 formed a committee to propose a revised BF&M, seems to find that the case. “The 1963 Baptist Faith and Message contained ambiguous language which was readily seized by neo-orthodox theologians and employed as loopholes to dismiss biblical materials which they believed to be intellectually unpalatable or politically incorrect.”

Criterion language

“You are closer to the center of the struggle, though it is not unknown to us here. I cannot believe that Southern Baptists are ready to abandon our principles of unity in diversity, freedom under God, and responsible management of our institutions for the sake of these few critics.

“?the majority would not be in favor of throttling scholarship or of turning back the calendar or of reducing our seminaries to the status of centers where students memorize the truths and errors held by our fathers.”

-John E. Steely

Southeastern Seminary theology professor

“It marks a theological milestone for Southern Baptists. I think that it should be known that all of the faculties of all our seminaries take essentially the same approach to Genesis which you take in your book. Individual professors may differ with you in specific exegesis and interpretations of particular passages, but there is no major disagreement with your approach and basic understanding of the Book of Genesis.

“You have written the book, you have received the publicity, and you have also received the abuse; but you have spoken for the faculties of all our seminaries.

“The men who take the extreme fundamentalist and literal approach to Genesis are not true defenders of the faith in our day. Nothing could be more devastating to my faith than to be forced to accept the literalists’ interpretation of the Bible.”

– Marvin E. Tate

Southern Seminary Old Testament professor

“Many of us realized that all of the seminaries are in this thing together and that there is no essential difference in what we are teaching. We are hardly worthy of the maturity that ought to be ours at the seminary level if we do not stick together. We are paying for our refusal to face problems. We have been turning out fundamentalist preachers without realizing that the day of reckoning would come. We have ourselves to blame.”

– Boyd Hunt

Southwestern Theology Professor

“I think you have leaned dangerously to the left, and unnecessarily so. I am ready to defend you as a conscientious Christian and no heretic, but I think you have gone too far. As you know, this type of emphasis is destroying our schools as training grounds for preachers in order to produce scholars.

“You are too useful to Southern Baptists to be lost by heresy trials or immature judgments.”

Clyde Francisco

Southern Old Testament Interpretation

professor

“?if I took a hand in defense of Elliott and Midwestern I would at the same time have drawn criticism on Southeastern which has so graciously opened the door for me to continue teaching. In a few (hard) years we shall begin to see the positive fruits of what is now happening. All advance has to face resistance which, after conflict, subsides and permits the advance to stand and become the basis for further progress. This was true in the Whitsitt Controversy, ?the evolution controversy about science and the Bible, and I think will be true about the present (belated) turmoil about biblical literature and theology. I have tried to help a little quietly and on the side-lines, but not as much as I wanted to help.

– J.B. Weatherspoon

Southeastern Preaching professor

additional support for Ralph Elliott and Midwestern Seminary came from Carson-Newman College, Cumberland College, Furman University, George Peabody College, Mercer University, Ouachita Baptist College, St. Paul School of Theology, Stetson University, Wake Forest College,

From seminary quarters came letters of praise from Southeastern professors Pope A. Duncan and Stewart A. Newman, Southern professors Henlee H. Barnette, Page H. Kelley, Dale Moody, Marvin Tate and Jerry Vardaman, New Orleans New Testament Professor V. Wayne Barton and Ruschlikon Old Te

DALLAS?The Criswell College is expanding its bachelor’s degree program to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies combined with tracks in either humanities, youth ministry, women’s ministry or worship leadership. At the same time, a significant tuition discount is being offered to the children of all Southern Baptist ministers.

Founded in 1971 by W. A. Criswell, the Dallas-based campus equips students preparing on the diploma, associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree levels. The school moved from the facilities of First Baptist Church to its present location on Gaston Avenue, east of the downtown area in 1991. The Vision 2010 capital campaign will provide funding to renovate a recently acquired seven-story building located across the street from the college, adding much needed dormitory space.

Since its affiliation with Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, TCC has offered half-price tuition to children of SBTC ministers. That offer is being extended to all Southern Baptist Convention ministers with children seeking a college education. With the variety of course offerings, students will receive a thorough grounding in the Bible with the opportunity to follow tracks in counseling, pastoral ministry, evangelism and missions, women’s ministry, worship leadership, youth ministry or humanities.

The newly approved tracks in youth ministry and worship leadership are designed to meet the needs of Southern Baptist churches, explained Douglas Wood, associate professor of Christian education and worship leadership. “We recognize that churches are looking for youth ministers who are much more than just activity directors. They want a person with a strong biblical background to be able to work with youth in local churches in a much deeper, biblically-based ministry,” he added. “This degree will blend an excellent biblical studies program with cutting-edge youth ministry courses.”

Wood received the first Ph.D. in youth ministries offered by any Southern Baptist seminary and served at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston, developing the largest youth ministry in the country at that time.

With 95 percent of all people who ever accept Jesus Christ as Savior making that decision by the time they are 21 years of age, Wood said churches should be pouring their resources into children and youth. “Statistically, if we don’t reach them for Christ by the time they are 21, we probably won’t reach them at all.”

Having researched what other Christian colleges and seminaries are offering in the area of youth ministry, Wood developed a program that addresses the unique needs of teenagers, parents and those who lead them. A required internship places students in a mentoring-type relationship with a dedicated youth minister so that the student will have a successful and strong “on-the-job” experience before graduating and taking his own position.

Another new program offering is the B.A. degree in Biblical Studies/Worship Leadership. “Many, many churches are looking for a minister to lead in worship who is much more than just a song leader,” Wood said. “They want someone with a strong biblical background who can effectively lead the church’s ministry of worship.”

Students who will receive the greatest benefit from this degree are those with some musical training either in junior college or beyond who want to add a biblical studies program and courses designed for local church worship ministry, Wood said. TCC is including courses that will help the minister address the challenges of worship styles, while understanding and leading churches in worship that is found in the Word of God. The hands-on approach will include Technology for Worship Leadership and Worship Leadership Practice in which the history and theology of worship are explored.

Students will have opportunities to assist in developing and leading various worship services at the college, as well as completing courses in voice, conducting and applied piano/instruments. Current thoughts in contemporary worship as well as understanding and appreciating the rich heritage of hymns will be featured.

“We find pastors are looking for the best in worship for their people and want worship ministers who have the ability to lead, learn, grow and provide a strong biblically-based ministry to the entire church body. This goes way beyond the music minister of the past,” he added. A required internship will team the student with an area minister of worship/music for further application of skills and knowledge.

Churches interested in providing internship opportunities for students preparing for youth or worship ministry are encouraged to contact Wood at 214-818-1330.

The newly launched humanities track will prepare men and women to serve the church within the marketplace of ideas by better understanding past achievements. “The classics are a critical part of a larger dialog that gives unity to the questions we ask and the answers we find,” the catalog listing states.