No time to blog well here. I'm just going with a laundry-list
Jakes's statement satisfies me that he is a Trinitarian. I read him differentiating his present view from his previous view of the Godhead. He affirmed not only "three persons" but also the concept that the three persons are to be distinguished from one another. The Father is not The Son is not The Holy Spirit, although all three are the One True God. In his first reply to Driscoll, Jakes seems to have affirmed that these attributes are eternal, not just matters of assignment or appearance.
It is certainly possible that I am just not qualified enough to see the nuance that is missing here. I do not claim to be an expert in theology. And yet, I would count what Jakes has affirmed as Trinitarianism.
Jakes's statement makes it perfectly clear that he used to be a modalist. He himself characterizes his embrace of Trinitarianism as a movement away from something else. Driscoll characterized it similarly, with no rebuttal from Jakes. When did the change take place? We don't have data on that, but we do know that Jakes has never clearly articulated Trinitarianism in public before yesterday. This is something for all of us to celebrate. When Jakes became a Trinitarian, he became a Christian. His eternal destiny changed at that moment. Now he needs to be baptized. Again, this is something to celebrate. This is a complete vindication of those who criticized Jakes's earlier theology. As noted above, Jakes himself has now acknowledged that he used to be a modalist (not that that's news to anybody who has paid attention). There will be people who will perform a lot of self-congratulatory chest-thumping over this—people who have been defending Jakes—along the lines of "See, we were right all along, you muck-raking, ruckus-loving, slander-throwing watchbloggers!" If you're somebody who has held Jakes's feet to the fire on this issue in the past, it's really important for you not to pay attention to the minions of atheology on this question and to become defensive. Close their blog and open your Bible to James 5:20. Rejoice. The Trinity is a big, big deal. It's a heaven-or-hell deal. Minimizing the doctrine of God is not helpful. Anyone who has pretended that this is not important is hurting, not helping. Jakes is certainly one of those people. Although he has espoused Trinitarianism, he certainly is minimizing the importance of that, both by trying to avoid specifically Trinitarian language where he can and by calling for unity between Trinitarians and modalists. Unity between us and Oneness folks would be wrong. It would be sinful for us to be one with them. Jakes must be rebutted at this point.
But I would not say that it is the same level of sin to fail to condemn modalism as it is to espouse modalism and reject Trinitarianism. Both are wrongful, but only one is heretical, I think. If a failure to condemn modalism is damnable heresy, then T. D. Jakes isn't the only person we have to worry about. If you say that T. D. Jakes has to have condemned modalism as heresy in order to be a Trinitarian, then we have good grounds to question the Trinitarianism of every other participant in the Elephant Room. From what I've seen in transcripts, none of the people there condemned modalism. Perhaps some of them would, in some other context, but with the topic right up there on the table, nobody said a single word of condemnation against modalism.
This makes them all wrong, and embarrassingly so, not only in my book but also along the lines of everything that historic orthodox Christianity has stood for. But it doesn't make them people who are going to Hell. I think, if you're going to condemn Jakes on the basis of his desire for greater unity between Trinitarians and modalists, you're going to have to condemn every other person on that platform (unless you believe that they all really do condemn modalism and are just cowards).
This is no complete vindication of T. D. Jakes. Yes, there are still massive theological problems with Jakes. He's a prosperity preacher. He's one who still desires ecumenity with modalists, even if he no longer is one. He's a terrible expositor. I wouldn't say that he's qualified to serve as a pastor. I certainly wouldn't support his presence preaching at anything at my church, anything in my denomination, or anything I was at all associated with.
But all of that, serious as it is, can take a back seat for at least a moment. He's not presently being proposed to preach at my church, at anything in my denomination, or at anything I'm associated with. I don't even have to think about that right now, and there's something better to think about in its place. A man who has preached heresy has, on a worldwide stage, recanted from it and has espoused Trinitarianism. He has become a Christian. Surely, whatever other problems are attendant, THAT is something worthy of rejoicing in and of itself.
Or maybe I'm just being naïve.
The New Testament was written in Greek. You've probably read some speculation that one or two New Testament books may have been written first in Aramaic, but it is clear that the preponderance of New Testament books were written originally in Greek and that all of them existed almost exclusively in the Greek language relatively quickly in the history of Christianity. Although it was, at that time, the ROMAN Empire, the apostles did not, as far as I can tell, make any effort to write in Latin. Although Asia Minor was polyglot and the gospel was spreading into Africa and across all of the diversity of the Mediterranean Basin, the apostles were entirely content to evangelize and disciple in Greek.
Greek was the "heart-language" of Thessalonica and Corinth, but apart from them, I'm not sure that it could be considered the "heart-language" of any of the recipients of the other New Testament epistles or books.
I'm presuming that we've all heard sermons and lectures extolling this attribute of the Greco-Roman world—the availability of Greek as a common language throughout the empire—as one attribute of the "fulness of time" that God exploited in revealing the gospel at just the time that He did. And yet, people who affirm that idea and preach that kind of sermon, we will turn right around and say with regard to this day and time that the gospel has not been proclaimed somewhere and the Great Commission has not been obeyed somewhere until we have proclaimed it in the "heart-language" of that people-group. Is it OK for me to wonder aloud whether that insistence is biblical?
Let me make some things clear:
First, I'm not saying that I'm AGAINST the translation of the Bible and the propagation of the gospel into every language known to man. I'm IN FAVOR of that. I'm contributing to make it happen. I'm a fan and a supporter. I'm in favor of a lot of things that are advantageous to the Great Commission. The question is whether translation into "heart-language" is ESSENTIAL to the Great Commission—that until you've done that, you cannot have fulfilled the Great Commission among a people-group.
Second, I'm not denying that there are people in the world who speak and understand no language whatsoever in which the gospel is available. There are people like that. For them, we must provide gospel resources in their languages or we have not obeyed the Great Commission until we do so.
So, what I'm asking is none of those questions, but this: Suppose there is a tribe of people in Central America somewhere, living in a country for which the official language is Spanish. They also have a tribal language that is, compared to Spanish, obscure. The preponderance of people in that tribe speak BOTH their tribal language AND Spanish. One might accurately describe the tribal language as their "heart-language," but they are entirely functional in Spanish, conducting their lives and business in it with regularity. About such a people-group, I ask:
- If Spanish Bibles are available for this people-group, is it accurate to say that they have no Christian literature available to reach them?
- If a Spanish-speaking evangelical congregation is in their vicinity, is it accurate to say that they have no Christian churches?
- If Christians have carried the gospel to these people in Spanish, has the Great Commission been carried out and has the gospel been proclaimed to them?
- How are they different from, for example, the Galatians, whom the apostles were content to evangelize and disciple in Greek?
- How are they different from, for example, a tribe of Sioux in North Dakota who might have received English Bibles, may have professed faith in Christ in English, and might attend English-speaking churches?
I'm not shooting at ANYBODY with this post. It's just that, our church having embarked upon this Embrace initiative, I as a pastor am in a position to need to have thought more carefully and to greater depth about my own understandings of Biblical missiology. I'm trying to work that out, and I'd appreciate constructive dialogue.
In the "Magazine of Evangelical…" um…something (Christianity Today), David Neff has taken Paul & Nancy Pressler and around 150 other evangelical leaders to task for holding a meeting last Saturday at the Pressler ranch in an effort to unite behind a single conservative GOP candidate in this year's primary elections. The title of Neff's essay was "Why Last Saturday's Political Conclave of Evangelical Leaders Was Dangerous."
Neff's piece represents well a rising sentiment among a new generation of those who attend Evangelical churches. Popularity, however, does not always correlate well with sound thinking.
Here are, as best as I can discern them, the major points of Neff's attack:
- The meeting somehow went beyond "political action" to address "the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society" (which Neff affirms as something he would support) and transgressed instead into "playing kingmaker and powerbroker." The people at the meeting apparently did this by "conspiring to throw their weight behind a single evangelical-friendly candidate."
- This is a bad thing, according to Neff, because it feeds "the widespread perception that evangelicalism's main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality."
- Please note a key facet of Neff's argument: It isn't that these brothers and sisters went about doing these things wrongly (selecting the wrong candidate, following the wrong procedure, inviting the wrong people, etc.), but that they did it at all.
I submit to you that Neff's essay represents a nonsensical halfway covenant of sorts, the main appeal of which is its vague feeling of protest, essentially against the personalities involved.
Before engaging in point-by-point analysis, we ought to take a moment to ask ourselves what really happened at the ranch in Brenham (and I was not in attendance). A group of Christians (not a church) gathered. They share a common viewpoint about what are "the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society." They believe that the outcome of this year's presidential election will be relevant to those concerns. Having that belief, they found themselves motivated toward "political action." Strategically, they determined that the wisest political action to address their concerns would be to select a candidate whom they could support in the primary elections. Their process for deciding which candidate to support was to conduct a ballot vote. Everyone who came to the meeting came voluntarily. No one in the meeting is in any position to coerce anyone else at the meeting to abide by the decision.
OK, so somewhere in that preceding paragraph, we have to find something that makes it all "dangerous" in the manner that Neff has alleged.
Neff's first allegation is that the meeting went beyond "political action" and transgressed into the realm of "playing kingmaker and powerbroker." How, I wonder? The substance and procedure of the meeting was no different—not one iota different—from what happened at the Iowa Caucuses or the New Hampshire Primaries. A group of likeminded people (in the case of Iowa or New Hampshire, Republicans), believing that they should, for strategic reasons, consolidate their support behind a single candidate for an upcoming election (in this case, the general election in November), hold a vote (or a series of votes, in the case of Iowa) to decide which candidate will be the one for which they will campaign and vote in the days leading up to the general election.
I suppose there is a way in which the Iowa caucuses are, indeed, instances of kingmaking and powerbrokering. The only political processes that would not run afoul of this characterization would be, I guess, political processes that never result in decisions.
Neff must LOVE Congress.
Is this process something beneath Christian individuals? Does it soil them to engage in it? If so, then we need to disavow politics altogether, and certainly we need to refrain from going to our individual polling places and casting our ballots whenever the primary elections take place in our respective states. The substance of what happened in Iowa and what happened in Brenham is absolutely indistinguishable, except for size. And if such strategic politicking is out-of-bounds for Christians, what "political action" is left over for Neff to use in his "urgent" endeavors to address the "threats" that bother him?
There's nothing out of the ordinary about the process of this political meeting, or even about the role it plays in the larger process. Neff's argument against this particular political process can hardly be anything other than an attack on political strategy in general. Neff's argument is an Anabaptist one. He should go the whole way, for the sake of consistency, and abandon secular politics altogether. I admire the Anabaptists. Although I am not convinced of their position, it is internally coherent, makes a good argument, can make some biblical case for itself, and has a certain winsome appeal to this sometimes-idealist. Neff's position is remarkable for having none of those things. His halfway covenant—that Christians should join the rest of the nation in the political process, but must do so in a more foolish, less organized fashion than everybody else—is untenable.
Or, perhaps Neff isn't opposed to such political strategy and organization, per se (and I suspect that this is the case), but is simply reacting negatively toward the particular people involved in this meeting. If so, then he should have made it clear that he was writing a personal attack rather than an attempt at a reasonable philosophy of Christian political involvement. I think we're all at the place where we have to ask ourselves, if Rick Warren had hosted this meeting at his home in California to consolidate evangelical support behind a candidate promising to wipe out AIDS, would Neff have written a demeaning attack piece or would he have asked for time off to attend?
The second grievance in the article is that such meetings (or the existence of such people?) feed what is, in Neff's estimation, a bad perception of evangelicalism: "that evangelicalism's main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality." We don't have any reliable indication that abortion and homosexuality were the only items on the agenda in Brenham. Indeed, another critique from a more widely respected press organ flatly asserted the opposite today: That the reason for this meeting was explicitly to go beyond abortion and homosexuality and to meddle in economics and foreign policy and the like.
French's analysis has to be accurate. If the question were simply about abortion and homosexuality, then there would be no need for a Brenham meeting. The people who went to Brenham are all in agreement already about abortion and homosexuality. They had no need to confer about that. This was a meeting to choose WHICH pro-life, pro-marriage candidate (among several) would be the better candidate based upon their differences in OTHER areas.
So, Neff is attacking a meeting that was about neither abortion nor homosexuality, claiming that the mere existence of such a meeting reinforces a perception that evangelicals are concerned, above all else, about abortion and homosexuality. Let's ask ourselves, is this "perception" something that we might categorize as a reasoned observation or an unthinking prejudice? The question matters a great deal. If it is the former, then the fault lies with evangelicals. If it is the latter, then the fault lies with those who hold the prejudice.
I submit to you that it is the latter. By any reasonable measure (where evangelical money goes, where evangelical time goes, what evangelical children wind up doing with their lives, etc.), political engagement is far from the main identifying feature of evangelicalism. The idea that this is the primary feature of evangelicalism is nothing more than a prejudice. The funny thing about prejudices is that they require very little in the way of evidence in order to survive. Neff's speculation that evangelicals would not suffer from such humiliations if Paul Pressler would discontinue such meetings is simply that—speculation. I think it is naïve speculation at that.
In point of fact, the grave embarrassment for evangelicalism these days is Rob Bell and Mike Licona, not Paul Pressler. It is the fact that the word "evangelical" has come to mean nothing substantive. It is the fact that so many rank-and-file evangelicals have very little idea what the Bible says, have only the vaguest notions of what they believe, and have very little firm intention of living according to any of it should it become uncomfortable to them. It is the fact that most evangelicals, if they encountered the rich young ruler today, would commission a self-study immediately after the encounter to try to determine why they weren't reaching the leaders of the next generation. To suggest that evangelicalism's public-relations ills are the fault of Paul Pressler et al is wishful thinking.
Christians need not apologize for being involved in the political process. Christians need not apologize for trying to do so wisely, so long as they are doing so honestly. Churches shouldn't be endorsing particular candidates in this primary election, in my opinion, but individual Christians citizens will be, for a few seconds on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the sovereign rulers of this nation. As such, they are responsible before the Lord for everything the Bible teaches us about being good, godly rulers, so far as their influence reaches. I'm thankful that there are people who take that responsibility seriously. If a Christian can honorably vote, there's nothing wrong with campaigning. If you're going to campaign, there's nothing wrong with campaigning in an organized fashion. To pretend otherwise is to demand that Christians participate in the electoral process, but always in a passive fashion. David Neff's opinion notwithstanding, I think THAT is a dangerous outcome.
One of the erroneous assertions made about biblical prescriptions for gender roles, workplace roles, and age-related roles is the appeal to grace and the gospel as the rationale for abandoning these distinctions. The line of argumentation begins with the presumption, without scriptural foundation, that role differences are inherently enslaving and negative (rather than merely that sinful people often work sinful things through roles). It then proceeds to evaluate the gospel as entailing the obliteration of these negative roles and the liberation of those enslaved by them. And so, whether the roles be attributed to the ancient culture in which God chose to bring forth the Bible or to the prior domain of the Old Testament, gender roles, age roles, and occupational roles become "the Rules" that Grace has set aside.
And then there's Titus 2. It's a remarkably pristine piece of text, with no textual difficulties appearing at all in the apparatus. There's really no question what this chapter says, and there's no question that this entire chapter fits together as a unified pericope.
An inclusio marks the boundaries of the pericope here, bracketed by injunctions to Titus to speak clearly and forcefully in the churches, transmitting these Pauline directives:
Σὺ δὲ λάλει ἃ πρέπει τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ διδασκαλίᾳ….
….Ταῦτα λάλει καὶ παρακάλει καὶ ἕλεγχε μετὰ πάσης ἐπιταγῆς· μηδείς σου περιφρονείτω.
In English (NASB)
But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine….
….These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
Besides the inclusio, another indication that all of chapter 2 belongs together rhetorically is the presence of the particle γὰρ ("for") in the first sentence of the second paragraph (2:11). The word γὰρ is generally one of the earlier particles that students of the Greek language learn. It occurs regularly throughout the New Testament. It is rhetorically important. According to the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon, this particle simply "[introduces] the reason or cause for what precedes." Thus, in persuasive texts that frequently present lines of reasoning for things (like New Testament epistles), the word γὰρ was a handy tool for the authors and is an important key marker for the task of interpretation.
The function of this word in Titus 2 is no mystery: The second paragraph (2:11-15) provides the "reason or cause for" the first paragraph (2:1-10).
And so, we're thankful that, in this case, Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton (c1150-1228), when assigning the New Testament into chapters, listened carefully to the Holy Spirit and got Titus 2 precisely right. These two paragraphs clearly belong together in this pericope.
So, these paragraphs say something together. But what do they say?
The first paragraph consists entirely of what many must regard as a set of stern, inflexible prescriptions of biblical roles according to gender, age, and economic condition. Older men must put aside any youthful problems they had with alcoholic beverages, undignified behavior, foolishness, or fickleness and instead become temperate, dignified, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and perseverance. Older women, similarly, are to put aside their problems with alcoholic beverages, gossip, and irreverence, positioning themselves as the teachers of younger women. Those younger women, by the way, are assigned to the love of husband and children, work at home, and subjection to their husbands, among other things. Younger men simply receive the command to be sensible. Slaves are to be subject to their masters. It says something about the spread of Christianity mostly among the poor that there was no need in Crete for instructions to masters.
Along the way, several reasons appear in the first paragraph to justify the need for believers to adhere closely to these roles. Younger women must remain within these biblical boundaries of behavior "so that the word of God will not be dishonored." (2:5) Titus receives a set of instructions for his own behavior (and he, I presume, was one who belonged in the category of "younger men" although he was, by office and calling, an "elder" in the church), "so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us." (2:8) In both of these cases, some argument can be made that there is room for these behavioral norms to have been conditioned by culture, although neither one really makes a good case for that as the only way to understand the passage.
The statement to Titus in 2:8 clearly has in mind the church's reputation among outside opponents. Opponents would be able to revile the church and the gospel if Titus, as the church's key missionary-leader, were, say, an example of bad deeds rather than an example of good deeds, as Paul instructed. The opinion of opponents was definitely in mind, and yet so was the matter of biblical truth. The important fact here is that the opponents, if they were to criticize Titus for bad deeds that he had wrought, would have been right! If the cultural-conditioning of this passage were the dominant factor in interpretation, one would have to conclude that, in some hypothetical culture in which the opponents valued bad deeds and criticized good deeds, Titus would have been commanded to be an example in bad deeds in order to protect the reputation of the church. Of course, that would be preposterous. The intent here is not to chase the culture wherever it goes, but to deny the culture any VALID reason to demean Christians and dishonor Christ's church.
The statement about younger women in 2:5 dishonoring the word of God when they are not workers at home who love their children and love and subject themselves to their husbands and are sensible, pure, and kind, actually uses the word "blaspheme." It is a passive construction (βλασφημῆται) that does not clearly state whether Christian women who do not live in this way are themselves, by their own behavior, blaspheming the word of God, or whether they are simply causing other people (Those who see their behavior and are scandalized by it? Their children and husbands who suffer on account of their refusal to abide by these biblical roles?) to blaspheme the word of God. And so, if this verse is considered all alone without the benefit of context, it might be equally possible that the key concern of this passage is that contrary behavior by Christian women is inherently wrong, or that there is simply a fear that other people will react wrongly to contrary behavior. In simpler words, one can, if he ignores the context, legitimately ask whether it is God or other people who are offended by young women who don't act according to these role expectations.
There is also in this first paragraph a promise to slaves that their honesty and fidelity in service will "adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect."
So, just in the first paragraph, we see that adhering to these roles prevents blasphemy against the word of God, denies opponents any legitimate criticisms to hurl against churches, and attractively accessorizes (in the fashion sense) good Christian doctrine. All of these reasons appear as asides in this first paragraph spelling out the role expectations of these early Christians, and that before we even reach the paragraph written to give the major reason for the prescription of these roles for Christian believers!
When we get to verse 11 and reach that second paragraph, we discover that the major reason for adhering to these role expectations is neither the culture nor the Law, but grace and the gospel. As we saw above, the particle γὰρ clearly, indisputably, establishes the role of this second paragraph as a delineation of the major reason for the teachings of the preceding paragraph. Indeed, it functions as the thematic rationale for the majority of the third chapter of this letter as well, which resumes the theme of submission to authority and adherence to biblical role expectations, expanding it to discuss some aspects of the role of members in the congregation.
And what does this second paragraph say? What is the reason for older men, older women, younger women, younger men, slaves and (in other places in the New Testament) masters to adhere strictly to expectations bound up to their respective roles?
Ἐπεφάνη φὰρ ἡ χάρις τοῦ θεοῦ σωτήριος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις παιδεύσα ἡμας, ἵνα ἀρνησἀμενοι τὴν ἀσέβειαν καὶ τὰς κοσμικὰς ἐπιθυμἰας σωφρὀνως καὶ δικαίως καὶ εὐσεβῶς ζήσωμεν ἐν τῷ νῦν αἰῶνι, προσδεχὀμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,…
In English (NASB)
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,…
So, there you go. According to the New Testament in Titus 2, why should older men, older women, younger women, and younger men live according to these role expectations? Because of the appearing of the grace of God and because of the gospel of salvation that it brings.
Titus 2 is really a remarkable passage to teach us about what the New Testament means when it speaks of the grace of God. We hear a lot about grace these days. It's awfully easy to reduce the New Testament doctrine of grace down to one's own political or anthropological theory or theological presuppositions. But here are a few of the things that God teaches us about His grace in Titus 2:
- God's salvation-bringing grace has appeared and has come to all men.
- Grace has very much to do with prescribing rules of behavior for people and for empowering them to live according to those standards. Indeed, to preach instructing people to deny ungodliness in their behavior, to deny worldly desires in their behavior, and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in their behavior is, according to Titus 2, at least a part of what it means to preach the salvation-bringing grace of God.
- Christ's purpose of grace on the cross was not only to redeem me from Hell or from Satan, but to redeem us from every lawless deed in our behavior.
- Additionally, Christ's purpose was our purification, not merely ceremonially, but in the reform of our behavior.
- Christ purposed through grace to own us…to possess us, and to make us people whose internal nature and outward behavior were fitting for those who would be possessed by Christ.
- It is the purpose of Christ in grace and the consequence of grace that we should possess a zeal about good deeds in our behavior.
And so, to live within these roles is an example, in Titus 2, of the good behavior that was the very design of the grace of God envisioned by Christ in His giving of Himself on the cross.
Of course, all of this will pose very little obstacle for a great many of the egalitarians in the world, for a great many of them do not believe that Paul wrote Titus (and wouldn't even feel all that constrained by it if he did). And yet, for inerrantists, the complementarian implications of Titus 2 would seem difficult to escape. Certainly, even if one were to argue that times have changed and the church ought to change with them, it would be absurd to deduce that the New Testament teaches that the gospel abolishes role expectations according to gender, age, or station in life when, in Titus 2, the New Testament clearly and forcefully required at least one group of people to toe the line of gender and age distinctions explicitly because of grace and the gospel.
In discussions of gender roles, 1 Timothy 2:11-15 gets a lot of attention, and rightfully so. Nevertheless, we ought to save some attention for Titus 2:11-15 in the discussion, as well.
Aaron Weaver. James M. Dunn and Soul Freedom. Macon, GA: Smythe & Helwys, 2011. List price is $18.00, but you can get a better deal than that at Amazon.com…just over $14.00 at the time of this post.
Weaver's seminal work has received strong reviews already from a diverse group. Here is a brief bibliography of online reviews:
Lumpkins gives the best classical review of the book, providing a good chapter-by-chapter summary of the book's content, critically assessing the most important aspects of the publication, and then concluding with his recommendation. Knox's treatment is terse. Moore's piece is more of a reflective essay upon having read the book than a detailed review.
My post today is, stylistically, more like Moore's than any of the others. I will pay Weaver's book the highest compliment: It has made me think and has prompted me to write. Before settling in on the main theme of my article, I'd like to pose a key question to my readership: How will you account for James M. Dunn in your own Christian history? I'm speaking primarily to Southern Baptists here (or erstwhile Southern Baptists, as the case may be). For those on the left in Southern Baptist life like Weaver, Dunn must be placed (ranked?) within a cadre of those ousted by the Conservative Resurgence…consequently, the Founding Fathers (er…Initial Guidance Personages?) of a new Baptist Left. Among Dilday, Valentine, Parks, Sherman, and Vestal—and a whole host of others from the Gatlinburg Gang and beyond—where does Dunn rank? For Southern Baptists on the right like myself, will we make some caricature of Dunn a stock-character bogeyman for our history, or has enough time passed for us to undertake a more objective assessment of men like Dunn as a part of our history, too. Moore's essay, by the way, represents in my view a good step toward the latter, superior, alternative.
Aaron Weaver and I have a lot in common. We're both Baptists who care about our Baptist identity. We're both alumni of Baylor University (although his Baylor athletic experience has been a great deal more enjoyable than was mine in the late 1980s). We're both staunchly committed to religious liberty. We both have a keen interest in politics, both secular and denominational. We're both academics, both focusing upon Baptist History. We're both bloggers. We both know where we fall on the ideological spectrum, and we both appear to be comfortable with that.
What fascinates me is the strange juxtaposition of these commonalities and our significant differences. I haven't voted for a Democrat since I left the party of my grandfathers in college. I'd be willing to bet that elephants are less endangered in the urban Northeast than they are on Aaron Weaver's marked ballots. He voted for Barack Obama; I voted for the candidate who was not Barack Obama. He attends the CBF, the BGCT, and the New Baptist Covenant (while supplies last); I attend the SBC, the SBTC, and the occasional BMAT meeting. He spends quality time with James Dunn; I furtively slip the occasional bite of food under the table to Paige Patterson's dogs.
We're both passionate proponents of Baptist identity, but we each understand what it means to be a Baptist with a slightly different nuance. Upon the occasion of Aaron's excellent book, I'd like to identify what I perceive as three approaches to Baptist identity, interacting significantly with the life of James Dunn as represented in the scholarship of Aaron Weaver, particularly in this book.
Soul Freedom as the Core of Baptist Identity
This is James Dunn's position. It clearly appears to be Aaron Weaver's position. Weaver accurately identifies E. Y. Mullins as the source of this emphasis in Dunn's theology. I'm content to call this the Mullins/Dunn/Weaver viewpoint. Both Mullins and Dunn explicitly identified Soul Freedom (for Mullins, "Soul Competency") not just as a plank in the Baptist platform, but as THE doctrinal conviction defining what it means to be Baptist. According to this viewpoint, all other Baptist concepts flow out of the idea of Soul Freedom.
To put it another way, this approach essentially makes anthropology (the nature of man…that he is free) the core doctrine of Baptist Christianity
One can easily see how local church autonomy and religious liberty might arise out of a conviction about the freedom of the soul. The scope of this theory, however, reaches beyond these ideas. Baptist conversionism, from this vantage-point, arises from an emphasis upon the individual choices of free souls either for or against the gospel. Baptist church membership in this tradition emphasizes individual voluntarism in the gathered church. The primary emphasis of congregationalism in such an approach is upon the "democratic processes" mentioned in the BF&M. Although I admire Weaver for his fair and consistent use of the more biblical phrase "priesthood of all believers," this is a tradition of thinking that has at times emphasized explicitly the idea of the "priesthood of THE believer."
The Mullins/Dunn/Weaver approach of elevating Soul Freedom has had a distinguished history in Southern Baptist life. It harmonized well with previous similar, if not exactly identical, Baptist emphases upon religious liberty. It held utter hegemony in Southern Baptist theological thinking for most of a century. It established a platform upon which widely disparate Baptists were able to unite through organizations like the Baptist World Alliance.
Nevertheless, this approach faces challenges today. The most important challenge that it faces is the fact that Soul Freedom, in the sense that Mullins, Dunn, and Weaver seem to employ the word, is difficult enough to support as a biblical doctrine at all, much less as a doctrine that ought to serve as the central, defining conviction of any group of Christians. Dunn considered the concept of Soul Freedom to be "axiomatic" (and Mullins's approach to theology involved identifying such axioms). Dunn did volunteer the imago dei in Genesis 1 as the unnecessary biblical justification for the doctrine of Soul Freedom, but this is hardly satisfactory—how, precisely, people exist in the "image of God" is a topic with a wide variety of interpretations and with very little guidance from the text. No strongly persuasive reason exists to conclude that this doctrine relatively absent from the remainder of the Bible is, in fact, the real meaning of the imago dei.
The waxing influence of Calvinism among young American Christians also poses a threat to this philosophy. Although the Mullins concept of Soul Freedom seems to entail something more than a mere psychological freedom—a sense that the freedom of the soul is, if not the highest good, at least one of the great goods of creation and is an umbrella doctrine in the Bible—Soul Freedom does depend upon an idea of human freedom and an emphasis upon human freedom that seems to be at odds with most understandings of Calvinistic determinism.
Even if a concept of the freedom of the human soul were retained as a theological conclusion drawn from other premises, I do not see a robust future among Baptist biblicists for Soul Freedom as an axiomatic postulate from which to draw all other conclusions.
The Gospel as the Core of Baptist Identity
If Baptist biblicists cannot enthusiastically embrace Soul Freedom as the core doctrine of their common faith, whither shall they turn? One answer that is presently increasing in popularity is to emphasize the gospel as the bedrock concept of Baptist identity. Perhaps the clearest articulation of this point of view has come from Nathan Finn, who, although he was never a Baylor Bear, shares every other commonality with Aaron and me that I listed earlier in this post. Finn authored a nine-post series developing a framework in which the gospel is the core doctrine of Baptist identity. The best starting-point for the series is here.
Like Soul Freedom, the gospel as the core of Baptist identity depends heavily upon the individual experience of conversion. The concept of Soul Freedom approaches this experience explicitly from the human side of the equation, emphasizing human autonomy and choice. Finn's theory, in contrast, emphasizes the transformation of the individual by divine initiative and power. God's transforming action in the gospel, rightly understood and fully realized, adapts people to be members of Baptist churches. Baptist baptism best illustrates the gospel. Finn's series suggests that religious liberty can only claim biblical support by means of (presumably eisegetical) proof-texting, but affirms it nonetheless on other-than-biblical grounds. Religious liberty is not the highest good, but is instead a mere adaptation to sinfulness, destined to perish along with the rest of the curse at the final restoration. Religious liberty is good in a utilitarian sense—because we have discovered through the lessons of history that the best opportunity to spread the gospel occurs in contexts of religious liberty.
Soteriology, not anthropology, becomes the core doctrine of Baptist Christianity in this approach.
I predict that Finn's approach will increase in popularity. The major challenge that it faces is that many people who want to emphasize the gospel are also people who view Baptist distinctives as threats to the form of evangelical ecumenism that they desire (as Finn himself acknowledged in the series). Also, the clear implication of making the gospel the core doctrine of Baptist identity is that those who are not Baptists are defective, not merely in their ecclesiology, but in their soteriology, in at the very least some secondary way.
The Lordship of Christ as the Core of Baptist Identity
Malcolm Yarnell shares many of the same commonalities that link Barber, Weaver, and Finn. He has argued for the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the central doctrine of Baptist identity (for example, see his essay here). According to this theory of Baptist identity, the experience of regeneration in the gospel is coupled with a surrender to the lordship of Christ. Church polity is an exercise in following Christ's lordship. Local church autonomy is a refusal to put in lordship over the church any office other than those instituted by Christ. Religious liberty, in the style of Roger Williams, arises out of the question of the boundaries of authority given by Christ respectively to the state and to the churches. Because Christ is Lord over all and over everything, those to whom He has delegated authority (the state, the churches) must not overstep the boundaries of authority that He has set for them.
This is my own view, although I appreciate the strengths of the other approaches. I must confess that some elements of the preceding paragraph arise as much out of my own thinking as out of Dr. Yarnell's writing. The effect of this approach is to make Christology, and specifically the intersection of Christology and ecclesiology, the central doctrine of Baptist Christianity.
I believe that this approach has the strength of allowing for a strong biblical defense of religious liberty, rooted in Jesus' own statements about the extent and location of His kingdom, as well as in passages like the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Because Jesus has made statements about His authority and the manner in which He has delegated it in matters of faith and politics, we can derive from those statements a doctrine of religious liberty.
I will leave it to others to identify the weaknesses of this approach.
Conclusion
In many cases, I believe that those who follow any of these three approaches might arrive at precisely the same conclusions on various questions with approximately the same fervor. Should the United States of America have an official established church? Should the proclamation of the gospel and conversion to Christianity be considered capital offenses in Afghanistan? Should churches be required to follow all federal anti-discrimination practices in hiring pastors? Dunn, Weaver, Finn, Yarnell, and Barber would all arrive at the same conclusions on all of those questions.
A few more difficult cases would probably put on display the nuanced differences among the three approaches.
This much is important to me: Conservative Southern Baptists must be no less vigilant in embracing and defending religious liberty than are our more liberal brethren. Aaron Weaver's excellent homage to James Dunn challenges us who support the Conservative Resurgence and who remain in the vital core of the post-1979 SBC: Who are our zealots for religious liberty? Names certainly come to mind, for Richard Land is committed to religious liberty and Paige Patterson refers to it as the First Freedom. Nevertheless, the historic Baptist commitment is vulnerable on both the left and the right flanks, and Southern Baptists must take care that the move away from the thought of E.Y. Mullins does not result in any erosion of our historic defense of the liberty of all people to practice their faith, even if they do so wrongly, or not at all.
I had an interesting conversation recently with a brother who had been reading my blog and had gone out of his way to make telephone contact with me. Knowing that I am an inerrantist, as he is, he wanted to discuss our common convictions and to lead me to consider his opinion that the Textus Receptus is the One True Bible. One implication of this point of view would be to suggest that the King James Version and its derivatives (like the NKJV) are the acceptable translations of the Bible into English.
His line of reasoning was easy to follow: God's Word cannot pass away, so it cannot have needed restoration. The Bible speaks as clearly about the preservation of scripture as it does the inspiration of scripture. Isaiah 40:8 reads "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever" (perhaps a bit ironic that I'm doing this out of the NASB). Peter does not hesitate at all to apply this promise to the New Testament as well as the Old (1 Peter 1:22-25).
Recent translations of the Bible mostly take advantage of textual criticism (the "lower criticism" in juxtaposition against "higher criticism" that was all the vogue in nineteenth-century continental Europe). Prior to the advent of textual criticism, not many translations of the Bible had been attempted subsequent to Jerome, but the brief history of modern translations used the "Received Text" (in Latin, Textus Receptus, which I'll abbreviate as TR), a Greek text assembled by Desiderius Erasmus relying principally upon the favored manuscripts of the Byzantine church.
The controversy over the TR is at least 304 years old. In 1707 John Mill published a Greek New Testament that documented the many other Greek manuscripts that read differently from the wording of the TR. Daniel Whitby replied by claiming that the TR is identical to the wording of the autographs (the original piece of paper on which, for example, Paul's Letter to the Romans was penned). The central question of the debate hasn't changed much since Mill-Whitby: Is the Textus Receptus, or is it not, a 100% perfect clone of the original manuscripts of the New Testament?
Now, back to the brother with whom I was conversing. His position is that the promise of the endurance (or preservation) of the Word of God necessarily requires that the Textus Receptus be the perfect representation of the original manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Here is his line of thinking: The Textus Receptus is older than the critical editions produced by Mill or by Hort & Westcott. If Mill's work or Westcott & Hort's work are the perfect preservation of the Word of God, then they represent a restoration of something lost, for we know that they represent new beginnings in eclectic texts. The Byzantine text type (which he equates with the TR), having a mysteriously long history prior to Erasmus's use of it, and having been used mightily by God during the Reformation years, can be the perfect, sequentially unbroken preservation of the Word of God in a way that these other texts cannot possibly be. Therefore, since such a thing as a 100% perfectly preserved text is promised by the Bible, and since only the TR can possibly be what the Bible has promised, the "Received Text" must be the One True Bible. This summary does not encapsulate all of his rationale, but I believe that it responsibly represents at least one of the primary planks of his rationale.
So, what are we to make of this? A number of ideas.
The King-James-Only position does not have a monopoly on belief in the preservation of the Bible. The manuscript problem of the New Testament does not suggest a failure of preservation, but an undesirable multiplication of it. God's word has been preserved. Unfortunately, a number of corruptions of God's word have also been preserved. These preservations—all of them—have alike been made by Christians in churches, of a sort.
Certainly, those who advocate the TR as the True Word of God will universally be people who believe in the preservation of the scriptures. Certainly, those who deny the preservation of the scriptures will be people open to textual criticism. And yet, these two positions, to speak in terms of logical fallacies, do not rightfully exclude the middle. There are people (including the author of this blog) who believe that the Word of God has been preserved but do not identify the Textus Receptus as being that preserved Word of God.
Some of the literature advocating for the KJV on the basis of the doctrine of the preservation of scripture does not accurately and adequately acknowledge this middle position. Belief in the preservation of scripture neither proves nor requires the acceptance of the TR as the perfectly preserved New Testament.
The biblical promises about the preservation of scripture do not require that the Bible be preserved in English, or in any other secondary language. A great many languages do not yet, even today, have ANY translation of the Bible. God has not obligated Himself to provide that any English translation of the Bible should be the perfectly preserved transmission of the scriptures.
Preservation is not necessarily popularity. So many of the defenses of the Textus Receptus depend basically upon the popularity of this textual family within the Eastern Church prior to the life of Erasmus. Conceding that the Byzantine texts were the most popular Greek manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages, one wonders how much weight this evidence deserves? What if the perfectly preserved autographs of the New Testament are lying buried in the sands of the Egyptian desert somewhere? What if, like the Qumran scrolls, the perfect autographs of the New Testament have eluded detection for centuries and are not in our collections at all today. Is that possible? Would the preservation of the scriptures allow for such a thing?
Of course it can happen. The Bible says so.
Although the Word of God will not pass away, we know that the Word of God can certainly pass out of favor and can even pass out of use…entirely. We know that this is true, because in 2 Kings 22, a portion of the Bible was found in the temple after having been lost entirely. God's preservation of the Bible did not fail at that time. People wandered about without the preserved Book of the Law, but the book itself remained preserved, and then God used Hilkiah to bring it back before the people.
There is nothing in the Bible to deny that this could happen again. I do not necessarily believe that it has, but the fact that this is possible at all demonstrates the problem with the presumption that the preserved Word of God must not only be preserved but must also be in use—must be the manuscripts most popular for use over the longest period of time.
Maybe, just as God preserved dissenting churches as a minority remnant down through the ages, God also preserved the Bible in dissenting readings as a minority textual family down through the ages. It would not be contrary to the character of God as revealed in the Bible and in church history for Him to have done this.
God has used flawed people to preserve His inerrant Bible. Both sides must acknowledge that this is true. If the TR is the perfectly preserved New Testament, then it was preserved perfectly by people who venerated and worshipped the statues of saints. The KJV-only theory depends heavily upon Eastern Christianity as the conservators of the Bible.
Those of us who engage in textual criticism, on the other hand, are indebted to liberal continental scholars who did not share my view of the inerrant nature of the Bible. We depend heavily upon Westcott & Hort.
Neither side is likely to be entirely comfortable with the arrangement. And yet, neither side can escape it. Both sides stand in the position of having received the Bible at least to some degree from the hands of people who could have benefitted from reading it a bit more carefully and submissively.
And so, as I do with my Landmark brethren regarding ecclesiology, with my KJV-only brothers on the subject of the Bible I find myself agreeing that God has preserved something throughout the corridors of time, and yet disagreeing with them as to HOW God has accomplished that preservation and as to what are the implications of that preservation for identifying God's hand at work today. In doing so, I see our close kinship and I welcome our fellowship in the gospel with one another, hoping that they will see the same.
The New Testament, in its every good translation, teaches us that we ought to do so.
I've yet to hear any good reason articulated in support of changing the name of the Southern Baptist Convention. The data do not support the idea that changing our name will make us any more effective, and the present process is transpiring in direct and willful defiance of a prior, yet-unrescinded vote of the messengers of the SBC.
Nevertheless, I can think of a circumstance in which I would entirely support—even advocate on behalf of—a name change for the Southern Baptist Convention.
There are a number of smaller Baptist groups around the nation that are biblically conservative and convictionally Baptist. Some of them might not regard the Southern Baptist Convention as conservative enough (even now!) for a partnership, but some of them would. Some of these organizations historically came into being as splits from the SBC, and others of them are refugees from the unabated leftward decay of the ABC.
What would happen if the SBC made active overtures toward these fellow Baptists in the interests of mutual cooperation and merger? Would some of them say no? Probably. Would all of them move slowly and have concerns? Likely. But could such an effort lead to a greater synergy of Baptist effort in the United States of America? I think it could.
Consider, for example, the recent rapprochement between the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and the Baptist Missionary Association of Texas. This is a bold, exciting new detente between the two parties of what was a virulent debate in our grandfathers' days. It took place without any movement whatsoever beyond the bounds of the Baptist Faith & Message.
Why is this happening only in Texas? Why is this happening only with the BMAT? There are similar groups of Baptists throughout our land! Our Executive Committee should place a high priority upon this kind of outreach to other inerrantist Baptist groups in the USA.
If we were to accomplish something substantive like such an alliance, I'd be delighted for us to adopt a new name for our expanded fellowship (so long as we honored the will of the messengers and worked honorably through our polity to do so). A name change would be highly appropriate in such a circumstance, and would be something higher and more inspirational than the empty Madison Avenue posturing that plagues our fellowship on occasion.
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