Responding to Eric Hankins’s Southern Baptist “Traditionalism” | SBC Voices.
“A Statement of Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation” | SBC Voices.
Praisegod Barebones: Calvinism Conference Questions, Part 3.
Malcolm Yarnell: The Grace of Unity: A Prayer for the Southern Baptist Convention.
Treasures Old and New: Malcolm Yarnell's Private Hell Of Not Knowing The Truth Which Brings Unity.
According to Widipedia’s classical definition
The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means “Jealous” “play-acting”, “acting out”, “coward” or “dissembling”.[3] The word hypocrite is from the Greek word ὑποκρίτης (hypokrites), the agentive noun associated with υποκρίνομαι (hypokrinomai κρίση, “judgment” »κριτική (kritiki), “critics”) presumably because the performance of a dramatic text by an actor was to involve a degree of interpretation, or assessment.
Alternatively, the word is an amalgam of the Greek prefix hypo-, meaning “under”, and the verb krinein, meaning “to sift or decide”. Thus the original meaning implied a deficiency in the ability to sift or decide. This deficiency, as it pertains to one’s own beliefs and feelings, informs the word’s contemporary meaning.
To be a Southern Baptist one must take this on as a necessary mode of appearance. The SBC cannot decide on what it believes. Each side claims that soteriological matters are of utmost importance, they at the same time admit that it isn’t. Each side says that the Bible teaches their side, but at the same time allows that the other side may also be right.
At the end of the long fight over inerrancy, what was washed under the bridge during the flood of the conservative resurgence was the authority of Scripture which ground inerrancy. You see, it does not matter if it could be proved that the Bible is without error as historically transmitted if the things that it claims cannot be established as truth within its own context. Never mind the history of transmission, the message, that is the doctrines it contains, if left to matters of opinion, undermine the very reliability for authority begged by the arguments for inerrancy.
Questions need to be asked. If both sides are claiming their soteriology is the doctrine of Scripture, both cannot be right. That leaves one in the camp of false teaching, which is a quaint, mealy-mouthed way in today’s environment of can’t we all get along tolerance-speak, heresy. Just so as to not be accused of bandying about terminology too loosely, here is what I am getting at. The Scripture makes no allowance for false teaching. To say that opinions are doctrine is at the same time to say they are not. At least not in the Biblical mandate to not go beyond what is written. Anyone can hold opinion, but no one can teach it as doctrine. To draw the lines a little tighter, in the matter of the Calvinist/Arminian debate (yes, that is what is at issue no matter the denials from the anti-Calvinist side) within the SBC, each claims their soteriology as the correct one as a matter of truth derived from Scripture. As Hankins claims, this is not a matter of secondary importance, doctrines which make little to do, but the very foundation of the traditions and the faith once and for all delivered to the saints:
The following is a suggested statement of what Southern Baptists believe about the doctrine of salvation… Every generation of Southern Baptists has the duty to articulate the truths of its faith with particular attention to the issues that are impacting contemporary mission and ministry… We believe it is time to move beyond Calvinism as a reference point for Baptist soteriology… We believe that most Southern Baptists, regardless of how they have described their personal understanding of the doctrine of salvation, will find the following statement consistent with what the Bible teaches and what Southern Baptists have generally believed about the nature of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
There is no escaping the conclusion, Hankins believes, and rightly so, there is only one biblical soteriology. All others are false. And if the doctrines of salvation are not primary, what are? If defection from them is not heresy, then what is? Though someone might be tolerated for believing in error, teaching error is quite a different animal, prowling about seeking whom it might destroy. If Paul admonished Timothy saying:
Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”
that teaching falsely leads to iniquity by destoying the hearer. If even eschatological matters were the subject of such condemnation, what more attention should be paid to matters soteriological? If Paul could condemn the circumcision party practice as being anathema, in Galatians, adding to Christ’s finished work, isn’t it then paramount to secure other soteriological doctrine which could cause error destrucive to the faith? Paul condemned vain arguing as sinful and as marking out those who were and were not Christ’s. But if the doctrines espoused by Hankins are no more right than those he opposes, they are vain babble and just as destructive as any other heresy.
Paul didn’t exclude arguing by the way, in fact he instructed Timothy to contend for the faith and to silence those who oppose the doctrines and traditions handed down to him. So, contrary to Hankins, it is only right to advance one doctrine as exclusive and opposed to another. Which is in fact what he is doing even though he denies it.
The real question for the SBC, one which has haunted it since it opened the door to the Arminians more than a century, is does it believe what it says it does, or not? If it can accept as doctrine equilateral opinions of men, it really fits the definition of hypocrisy, a system ever halting between two opinions never coming to the truth and unstable in all it dealings.
I agree with you that there can be only one Truth. And the time may be approaching when we need to begin to start thinking about a bigger name change than we have going now. We may need to have “The Calvinist or Reformed Baptist Convention” and “The Non-Calvinist Regular Traditional Baptist Convention” I think both sides would be alot more supportive and involved if their leadership believed the same way they did and their money was going towards people and programs that also taught what they believed the bible to teach. Not knowing where people and especially our leadership stand on Doctrines causes people to not want to be involved or give of their hard earned money.
In Christ
pam knight
Agreed.
I have a question with reference to your statement, “If it can accept as doctrine equilateral opinions of men, it really fits the definition of hypocrisy, a system ever halting between two opinions never coming to the truth and unstable in all it dealings.”
How would this apply to the calvinist in the SBC? Are they too not guilty of the same charge you cast at the non-calvinist? Or are you suggesting calvinists will not “halt between two opinions in their dealings with non-calvinists?”
Interesting comment indeed!
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I didn’t discriminate. The fact that the SBC, anti-Calvinist and Calvinists alike, allows the oppositional doctrines to stand as equals undermines the very credibility of either claim, and the SBC itself. Scripture does not allow for such wavering. No organization which calls itself Christian should. If a doctrinal claim is made it is made as being the only truth which Scripture reveals about such a claim. Without such a stance the SBC has no right to deny any alternatives. Ergo, when the the conservative resurgence held sway, it did so in contradiction to SBC principles of liberty of conscience (not to beconfused with the classical meaning). That contradiction is the same one plaguing this controversy. If no one can say what is right, no one is wrong. What is is is the question still begging an answer. The liberals left the SBC, not because they were wrong on SBC principles, but because they were right. The doctrine of inerrancy might be appropriate for some, but for those who do not hold it, liberty of conscience SBC style, allows for any and all competing opinions. Regardless of SBC claims that it holds to those beliefs which are surely Christian, the skepticism inherent in the right to believe what one thinks is right, rather than what is right, undermines the very protestant reformation that gave rise to it. Roman Catholicism has one pope, the SBC, tens of thousands.
I do not agree with those Calvinists who agree that the mutually exclusive claims of soteriology can stand together. In that, I happen to agree with the more agressive anti-Calvinists who would like to errect doctrinal barriers which would disallow Calvinistic soteriology as central to SBC teaching. I also agree with those who would like the opposite to be true. At least then the world would know just where the SBC stands- in or out of protestant orthodoxy. Or, as an alternative, make either clearly only opinion and something not to be taught as foundational, and surely not traditional, unless what is meant my tradition is mere opinion, and really only the subject for bible studies and not the pulpit which is supposed to be a beacon of expository truth. I like those with backbone. If one can stand and say that “this” is the teaching of Scripture and all others are false teaching, that is a man who is a leader. Who wants to follow a person who says “follow me, but that fellow over there going another way, he might be right, too.” If the blind lead the blind they fall in the pit together and the confused are just as likely to follow. Encouraging people by saying the pit is the only real avenue of unity is ludicrous.
As I said, everyone is free to hold his opinions, but only for himself. Doctrine is not “a” teaching, but “the” teaching of Scripture. To claim it is but it isn’t eliminates the authority of Scripture and by that destroys any claim to inerrancy by making it moot.
By the way, enable your link. It is nice to know if you’re a real person or not.