Week-End Wrapup

I've written two open-ended posts this week. Now that the week is up, I'll wrap up loose ends.

What If?...

I'm fine with the effects of both IMB policies. I think that the baptism policy is very poorly written. Speaking of baptism as a "testimony of identification with the system of belief held by Southern Baptist churches" is, in my opinion, defective theology. This particular language ought to go away. I think I would rather the whole regulation go away than to have such theology persisted in official IMB documents. But I don't know that scrapping the whole article is necessary—maybe just a really good rewrite. Landmarkism, in my opinion, would provide a lot better theology than this.

Nevertheless, it appears to me that even a scrapping of this article would provide very little resolution of current Southern Baptist tensions.

Differences of Scriptural Interpretation

We divide over differences of scriptural interpretation. We ought to divide over differences of scriptural interpretation.

Nevertheless, we ought not to divide over just any old differences of scriptural interpretation. In our polity, the people of the SBC get to decide which items merit division and which ones do not. The discussion to have now is how to tell the difference between division-worthy interpretations and all of the others.