The Kindnesses of My Lord Jesus

Twenty-five years ago, I walked into an examination room at the Theology Faculty of University of Oxford to defend my dissertation. I shook, fearing Oxford’s Professor of Reformation History and the Archbishop of Wales would return this boy from the swamps of Louisiana to his home without honor.

They stood in their full regalia. As I visibly trembled, Rowan Williams nodded to Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch and broke the news to me: “Please sit, and do not be anxious. If this viva goes as we expect, we will propose this be one of the few dissertations published by Oxford University Press.”

That was one of the kindest things that had ever been done to me in an academic setting, exceeded only by the call I received earlier from Bill Tolar of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, announcing that my beloved alma mater elected me to return and teach theology with my own mentor, James Leo Garrett Jr.

On that day in 2000, I learned how to pastor younger theologians in an academic context from the future Archbishop of Canterbury. Yes, he helped ensure my work was of the highest academic quality, but he also helped ensure I was treated with dignity as one made in God’s image.

Yesterday, it was a joy to reunite with Rowan Williams for a moment as we stood on the stage by the pulpit of B. H. Carroll at the First Baptist Church of Waco, Texas. I presented him a copy of my latest book, God, the first volume of “Theology for Every Person”.

I also presented Todd Still, the Dean of George W. Truett Theological Seminary, with a copy of Special Revelation and Scripture. Dr. Still and Baylor University kindly granted me the use of their rooms at Regent’s Park College in 2022 so I could write my portion of that book co-authored with David Dockery.

I was also delighted to renew friendships with Steve Bezner and Preben Vang, professors at the university which spawned my Seminary 120 years ago. Dr. Vang once prompted Baylor to award Garrett a rare third doctorate before he passed. Dr. Bezner and I have often encouraged each other.

While I missed the celebration of David Dockery’s birthday, I was elated to renew some important relationships in my own life. It was also good to hear the first two of Rowan’s three Parchman lectures on the Trinity. The second lecture in particular will help orthodox Christians.

I also want to thank Matt Snowden, the Pastor of First Waco, for his kindnesses to my Teaching Assistant and me. Finally, Derrick Bledsoe, who plans to write on the Trinity, traveled with me to hear these lectures on Nicaea. Derrick was, as always, a personal blessing to me.

Our God has been so good to me. I feel as if every moment of my life has been one act of divine kindness stacked upon another. While I sometimes worried I might not make the grade or wondered how I would provide food for my children, Jesus my Lord has guided my life every moment.

"Identifying the Crisis in Evangelical Theology" and "Baptists Who Confess the Nicene Faith"

Concluding a good week of reports from the Administration and the Trustees of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, we held a successful Preview Day. To help with Preview Day, the Dean of our School of Theology asked me to provide an "exciting, engaging" lecture to our prospective students. I am happy to report there were more prospective students than we have seen in quite some time.

For the subject matter, I could think of nothing more important than to identify the most critical problem facing contemporary evangelical theology. I then proceeded to explain how our Seminary has long embraced the creeds as both necessary and beneficial. The lecture garnered a great deal of interest and affirmation as seen in the extended and positive Q&A period that concluded the lecture and the number of private consultations I fielded after the lecture. 

The first and more popular essay, "Identifying the Crisis in Evangelical Theology," will be published by another institution in a few weeks. I will post the link when that publication appears.

The second and longer essay used in the lecture was just published in The Southwestern Journal of Theology. You may read "Baptists Who Confess the Nicene Faith" on our Seminary's ETC website at this link. 

The PowerPoint for the entire presentation is available at this link. 

A Major Shift in the Southern Baptist Understanding of Confessions and Creeds

Arguably, for the Southern Baptist Convention, confessions and creeds are functionally coterminous. But how should they be perceived and used? There appears to be a shift occurring in our understanding of the purpose and utility of our acts of confession.

The official Preamble of the Baptist Faith and Message, from its first version in 1925 until 2000, said Southern Baptists approach their confessions as 1) consensual, 2) incomplete, 3) variable, 4) subordinate to Scripture, and 5) for freedom. Twentieth-century Southern Baptists, who adopted and thus authorized the confession, even prompted the last full revision committee to recall important aspects of our freedom legacy in the final days leading up to the 2000 convention meeting. The memory of Baptist origins in religious nonconformity was still alive and well at that time.

During the Conservative Resurgence of the late twentieth century, Southern Baptists thus typically understood their confession was binding upon the owned entities, but not upon the free churches who comprise the constituency of the Convention. Baptists long deemed the church alone to be responsible for its corporate confession, a confession arrived at directly under the rule of its only Lord, Jesus Christ. Southern Baptists were jealous for the sole mediation of the Lord over each church. 

However, the Convention began to be led by prominent voices to be more concerned with credal precision in the service of their culture war than with our previous priority on Christological faithfulness and missionary fervor. As a result, they have increasingly forgotten the foundational truths of their Baptist identity. In a hurried rush to achieve uniformity, a twenty-first century bylaw change required churches “closely identify” with the Baptist Faith and Message. This began pushing the SBC toward a bordering confessional model.

The questions facing the SBC now include:

1) Will the churches follow the entities? The frequency of denominational employees addressing controversial church matters and planning to approach the microphones increased visibly this year. One entity president even spoke publicly against a local church leader. A movement founded in rejection of centralized authority must take note of this extraordinary entity-led transition toward denominational centralization.

2) Will the entire confession finally constitute a strict border for the churches? This is a definite shift from previous thought and practice in the Southern Baptist Convention. Entire Baptist confessions typically have not served as enforceable border documents, except in the especially egregious case of anti-Trinitarian heresy after the events surrounding Salters’ Hall in 1719. The need to protect the basic doctrines of the Christian faith is coordinate with Baptist history. Centralizing efforts to enforce secondary and tertiary uniformity upon the local churches should certainly be questioned if not roundly resisted.

3) Will a shift toward doctrinal uniformity change the SBC’s mission, enhance its mission, or hinder its mission? I have argued elsewhere that doctrine drives mission. The move toward centralizing doctrine will doubtless transform our mission in significant ways.

4) Will the SBC use the filter of the plural-elder model of church oversight or the single-elder model of church oversight? The latter sees the senior pastor as the final dogmatic authority in the local church and allows diversity under him, while the former requires uniform offices. The single-elder model has been the dominant understanding, but the enthusiastic advocacy of multiple eldership by certain affinity groups who hold their own meetings around the convention meeting has begun to shape the conversation significantly.

5) Will the centering model taught by the traditional five freedom statements of the Preamble be increasingly replaced by the restrictive confessional assumptions typical of the Reformed churches, ultimately ending in a form perhaps of what W. W. Barnes of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary referred to as “presbygationalism”? Southern Baptists must face the fact that they are becoming more Presbyterian by the year.