What is Primary?

Thanks Matt, it makes sense & I agree. I was not so much seeking a concrete answer as hoping to stimulate Brandon’s thinking about his parameters, especially with regard to things outside his first tier. You say, “Therefore, I wasnt a heretic, but I certainly had an incomplete theology.” My question to Brandon would be, “Because Matt failed to affirm first tier issues, did that make him a heretic?”

John

Mr. Fox: Give W.A. C. the benefit of the doubt, the privilege of changing his mind on racism cause all of us in the South have had ancestors, friends, and relatives who were no better than their neighbors on the issue of race. Some of the saddest words I ever heard were uttered by my Uncle whom I won to Christ and sought to lead into a better view on African Americans. He said, “Jimmie Don, I’m sorry. I’m just a poor ignorant white man.” I could have cried. Indeed, even now I can’t help tear up at the thought of a beloved Uncle caught in the throes of ignorance and darkness.. Even General Lee could not see his way out of racism, though he knelt at communion rail with a Black man in a church in Richmond less than a month after he surrendered the Confederate Army at Appomattox. He thought Blacks were inferior, but even when he thought that there were two black men in South Carolina who had the equivalent of Oxford U. degrees. A school in Orangeburg, SC (a back to back campus with South Carolina State College where I taught American History from 9/70-5/72 and one course in Philosphy in the Spring of 1971) was named after one of those men, Claflin University. If a man of Lee’s character could labor under such constrictions, then you ought to allow for W.A. Criswell to make some boners as well. To tell the truth, I am more bothered by the fact that while walking on the streets of Rome, he received an invite to visit the Pope in the Vatican. I am even more bothered by the fact that Dorothy Patterson was received into the private quarters with the Pope and that she also had a meal with Yassar Arafat. There are some things I have read about how those in positions of leadership really are that bothers me more than words can tell. As to the theological issues, Steve, you need to wake up to the fact that most people in the SBC wanted a more respectful approach to the Bible than was being presented by the negativism of Higher Criticism. Pressler and Patterson never meant much to me (why should they when my predecessors and in some case ancestors, were Bible believing Southern Baptists who had long ago stood against Higher Criticism before it was called that). I refer to what a ancestral relative of a friend of mine who held what was then called FRENCH INFIDELITY (views of the Philosophes – that’s the thinkers of the the Enlightenment in France, like Voltaire) who was converted to a more biblical view under the preaching of George Whitefield.

Baptist History and Heritage Society has an Invitation for Tom Nettles and his Inerrant Bible:

http://www.brucegourley.com/writings/inresponseto/tomnettlesinerrancy.htm

Christiane,
You say of Baptists, “And the Lord’s Supper is tied into an ‘inerrant’ view of the Bible, but in this case, Christ’s Words are not all taken literally.”

Jesus said of the unleavened bread of the Lord’s Supper, “This is My body.” No, we do not take those words literally, but symbolically. Why? Well, we use the same kind of language every day. A man points at a photo in his wallet and says, “This is my wife.” Do you take his words literally? Of course not. He is saying this is a representation of my wife. It is not difficult to understand that.

Christiane, do you believe Jesus is a literal door that swings on hinges? Do you believe He is a literal loaf of bread? Do you believe Jesus is a literal grape vine and you are a literal grape vine branch?

If you don’t, why don’t you? After all, Jesus said, I am the bread, I am the door, I am the vine and you are the branches.

We don’t believe the above because the symbolic meaning is obvious.

Jesus made the once for all perfect sacrifice for the sins of humanity when he died for sinners like you and me 2,000 years ago. Jesus has already died for our sins and rose again. We don’t need to sacrifice Him all over again every Sunday. The Lord’s Supper is a Memorial Service, not a sacrifice.

Believing the elements of the Lord’s Supper literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus present other difficulties. Would a scientific analysis confirm the cup and bread have literally transformed into the blood and flesh of Jesus? What does one do with the extra fruit of the vine and bread, after the observance? What if some is spilled on the floor? Why not allow every believer to drink of the cup in the Lord’s Supper like they did in the Bible?

You are welcome to your beliefs. Baptists, more than most, have stood up for religious liberty. The above, however, are some reasons why Baptists believe as we do about the Supper of our Lord.
David R. Brumbelow

Stephen Fox,
You replied to me above, “No, what we have decided is you are full of horse manure…”

This comment and others of yours speak for themselves. I’ll let others judge the Christ-likeness and reasonableness of my comments, and yours.
David R. Brumbelow

Hi DAVID,

I am saying that there is a complexity to arranging topics on a tier when they are related to topics located on another tier.
I mean no disrespect to the honoring of the Lord’s Supper in the Baptist tradition. I think it is still practiced among Baptists at times.

Are Southern Baptists Inerrantists?
Quoting from the Text since Brandon and Brumbelow refuse to engage and reference my link provided for them above:
From the takeover Link, Chapter 13:

Are Southern Baptists Inerrantists? Fundamentalists say that most Southern Baptists are inerrantists, but that certain professors are at odds with the people in the pew. Dr. Clark Pinnock, a conservative Baptist who now teaches theology in Canada , makes a convincing argument that moderate Baptist scholars were never far removed from the Biblical theology of the rank-and-file church members.

Pinnock taught at New Orleans Seminary from 1965 until 1969 and was one of Paige Patterson’s favorite seminary professors. He was a fiery advocate of roughly the position now held by SBC Fundamentalists. Although Pinnock shifted his position on inerrancy in the 1970s,[53] leaders of the nondenominational inerrancy movement still claim him as one of their own.

At the 1987 inerrancy conference, Pinnock said he believed Southern Baptists’ typical approach to the Bible is not inerrancy in the strictest sense. Rather, it is what he called “simple Biblicism.” Simple biblicism, he said, is a view that “most evangelicals and Baptists hold, whether scholars or not, because the Spirit teaches it to them.” This approach “views the Scriptures as the only place to go if you want to find the words of everlasting life.”[54]

At the inerrancy conference, Mark Noll, a distinguished historian at Wheaton College,[55] agreed and explained that in the “Baptist” approach, as he called it, the Bible’s truth and authority are known by inward experience, not by rationalistic arguments about the nature of the Bible.”[56] This attitude toward the Bible could be called “inerrantist” in a loose, popular sense of the term.[57] But as Pinnock and Noll suggest, moderate Baptist scholars and many lay persons affirmed a “simple Biblicism” that was always sufficient to unify Baptist churches for missions and evangelism. The “inerrancy controversy” was invented to serve as a political weapon.

In any case, it is not difficult to state what unifies Southern Baptists in their approach to the Bible. As Russell Dilday, former president of Southwestern Seminary, the largest SBC seminary, states it, among Southern Baptists “there is practically total unanimity concerning their commitment to the Bible as the divinely inspired, sufficient, certain, and authori­tative guide for faith and practice.”[58]

“Undoubtedly, history will record that the controversy was not really about the Bible,” stated Leon McBeth.[59] However, in order to divide the denomination and mobilize one group for conquest over another, inerrancy has been made an issue. For that reason, “the Bible issue” looms large in the perception of many people. But if one wishes to say where differences lie that are crucial for Southern Baptist denominational life — and that is what inerrantists claim to be talking about — the inerrancy issue is fraudulent.

Stephen:

I just realized something that I thought you might find interesting.

Did you know that in the last mayoral election in Houston that Judge Pressler endorsed an African American candidate?

If Judge Pressler had a white only goal for the SBC and the US, isn’t this inconsistent?

Maybe too much is being made by some of the authors you cite of some political affiliation that Judge Pressler’s grandfather may have had back in 1940 with Judge Pressler’s own views. Judge Pressler’s endorsement of a black candidate for mayor in this last year is inconsistent with the theories advanced by some of the authors you cited. Who knows what else Judge Pressler may have done over the decades that were not consistent with your cited authors’ theories. They may not know that much about Judge Pressler’s real life (vs. their theories), or maybe they do know, and they just choose to ignore things like this.

Now: what about the Chicago Statement?

John

The approximation for Pi I use personally is 355/113 which I think I remember being accurate to six or seven digits.

Fox,

Are you a real person, or are you one of those pre recorded messages for blogs…kind of like the ones you get on the phone?

David

Actually, Volfan I’m just a figment of some infidel’s imagination…..(LOL)

Chapter 13 if the Takeover; I’m praying you’ll read it.

Even if the explanation is right in measuring a slightly longer diameter to get the right length for the circumference, there is still inaccuracy somewhere. Either the circumference, the diameter, or the width of the edge that is used in the explanation, will not be able to be measured precisely because Pi is a universal mathematical truth and these measurements exist in relation to it. Sorry for laboring this point into the ground, but it is important to my next question.

I have to ask, David, are you going to close your mind to mathematical truth? Scriptural truth and mathematical truth are not ultimately in conflict here, since the same God that created the one also created the other. Respectfully, I agree with John Fariss, who said your view implies “an indefensible literalness that requires a 1st Century Middle Eastern document to meet 16th-21st Century European and scientific standards along with a criteria for interpretation that is arbitrary and utterly foreign to the Scriptures.” You can wipe your feet of us, but you cannot dismiss truth so easily. And I am not rejecting you, or trying to be insulting, or condescending, or anything like that.

Your view is ultimately untenable, sorry.

David: All your links prove is that Christians disagree on the age of the earth. Correction: Conservative Christians with a high view of scripture disagree on the age of the earth. I know you don’t believe it can be true, but it undoubtedly is. Do you not recall Paige Patterson and David Allen defending William Dembski’s status as a biblical inerrantist AND one who does not interpret Genesis 1 literally? They also go on to specify that Dembski’s view easily falls within the parameters of the BFM.

Southern Baptists are not serious about the BFM 2000 or they would issue an edict that says from here on out they will not accept any money from a congregation in which any member has a child who attends a college other than Bob Jones or Liberty cause every other university in the United States is suspected of agreeing with Bill Underwood in this matter:
I mean is the Bible inerrant or isn’t it; and if it is then why let your children think any further than what Pressler wants them taught in Junior Sunday School class?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2005/12/professing-faith

And or why did Billy Graham sign the Lausanne Covenant and Francis Schaeffer did not?

If as Criswell said, God didn’t write enigmas; how come Richard Land can get on the same page about the Manhattan Declaration with Timothy George, but Mohler and Land lose George to the Baptist World Alliance; if the inerrant Bible is clear about all these matters how come these mysteries of Timothy George and Carey Newman and the 94 Covenant at SBTS and George educating women who become ordained ministers and senior pastors.
Somebody in the current SBC erred somewhere as Wade Burleson has proclaimed; so why can’t yall admit it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZa7hU6tP_s