The Southern Baptist Champion of Orthodoxy (Confessional Fidelity, Part 2)

In his day, Benajah Harvey Carroll was the acknowledged moral leader of both the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention. He gained reputation first as a controversialist, by taking on theological liberals and defending Baptist principles. He served as a trustee at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary before becoming the beloved mentor of leading Texas Baptist pastors and presidents like George W. Truett, L. R. Scarborough, and J. Frank Norris. 

Carroll was so well respected for his gospel preaching and defense of Baptist principles that early in his career he was called a “new giant in Israel.” The pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas later hailed Carroll as “the greatest preacher our state [of Texas] has ever known.” In his final years, Carroll became the Founder and First President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Upon reviewing Carroll’s life and career, J. A. Reynolds concluded he was the “champion of orthodoxy” for Baptists in his day. 

This raises the question, “Where is the champion of orthodoxy for Southern Baptists today?”

The Foundations of Our Faith

One of Carroll’s great gifts to Baptists in the twentieth century was his accessible, thoughtful, and orthodox 17-volume series, An Interpretation of the English Bible. A second great gift can be found in the many treatises he wrote to defend and advance Baptist principles. As a theologian and pastor interested in preserving the truth of the Christian faith against the encroachment of false teaching, I have found particularly helpful a third great gift, his Commentary on the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (NHCF). 

Carroll’s commentary on the NHCF was delivered as a series of lectures to the first students of Southwestern Seminary alongside Southwestern’s first systematic theologian, Calvin Goodspeed. These lectures were published under the title, Foundations of Our Faith, by the Southwestern Journal of Theology in 2009, a century after they were originally delivered. The NHCF became the official confession of Southwestern Seminary at its founding. 

A few years later, through the influence of L. R. Scarborough, Carroll’s hand-picked successor at Southwestern and a leading member of the convention's confessional committee, the NHCF also provided both the initial structure and much of the content for the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M). The BF&M was adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1925. The leadership of Southwestern Seminary thus helped ensure orthodox doctrine and Baptist principles formed the dogmatic bedrock for the entities of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through the BF&M, Carroll’s influence for Christian orthodoxy and Baptist principles continues to have an impact to this day.

However, as with every Christian community, Southern Baptists periodically reach a point where we must recall our original commitment to the necessary doctrines of both Christian orthodoxy and, in our case, of Baptist principles. Some have parroted less-than-orthodox views of the Trinity and/or diminished Christ. Others express opinions about religious liberty and the separation of church and state which clearly contradict Article XVI of the BF&M. In other words, we are in dire need of reclaiming the foundations of our faith, both with regard to Christian orthodoxy and Baptist identity. 

Two passages from Carroll’s Foundations of Our Faith address the current crisis facing Southern Baptists. The first passage deals with the problem of confessional fidelity, while the second passage upholds religious liberty and the separation of church from state.

“When You Try a Man for Heresy”

This Texas Baptist leader was not squeamish when it came to the need for Southern Baptists to address false teaching. He was more than willing to conduct a heresy trial when a man erred. In the introduction to Foundations of Our Faith, Carroll affirmed the teachings of the Bible are the supreme standard for making a judgment of fidelity or failure to conform with doctrinal truth. However, the creed or confession also plays a part, for the confession or creed details the church’s dogmatic interpretations of the Bible. 

On the one hand, Carroll highlighted the authority of Scripture, “When you try a man before the church for heresy, you try him by the teachings of the Bible, not by the creed.” On the other hand, Carroll brought in the authority of the church’s confession, “But you use the creed this way: He has substituted his interpretation of the Bible for the interpretations of the church.” The church’s creed cannot be dismissed as irrelevant by a teacher in a Baptist office. Indeed, the creed or confession must form the basis for testing whether his teaching is truthful.

Carroll hereby respected both the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. “While he has a right as an individual to his own interpretation, he has not the right to claim a place among you holding a different view.” This Baptist champion of orthodoxy always honored the liberty of conscience possessed by individuals even as he honored the need for the church community to protect its doctrines from teachers who would undermine the truths held dearly by the people of God. If the community has placed that doctrine in its confession, a teacher in the community may not contradict that doctrine without the consequence of repentance or trial.

Carroll provided an example of such an error in doctrine. “For instance, if a man wants to preach that there ought to be no church, no ordinances, like a Quaker, he is at liberty to do so, but should not do so occupying a Baptist pulpit and claiming to be a Baptist preacher.” Carroll could and often did provide examples of false teaching, whether they were made by Presbyterians, Methodists, or Romanists, among others. He was clear that errant teachers should hold no Baptist position.

The Southern Baptist champion of orthodoxy at the opening of the twentieth century respected the conscience of the individual while requiring the preacher or teacher remain faithful to the community that had called him. For Carroll, it came down to a matter of personal integrity or basic honesty. “Common honesty demands that he shall not take the pulpit of a denomination to undermine the faith of that denomination” (Foundations of Our Faith, 137). 

Adrian Rogers, another Southern Baptist champion of orthodoxy, voiced similar sentiments several decades after Carroll. But Rogers extended the same requirement for confessional honesty to the entities of the Southern Baptist Convention. According to Rogers, three-time President of the Southern Baptist Convention and former Pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, integrity behind the lectern of the seminary matters just as much as integrity behind the pulpit of the church. 

“He Has No Jurisdiction over My Religion”

In Foundations of Our Faith, Carroll also addressed the matter of religious liberty and the separation of church and state under his discussion of Article XVI of the NHCF. That article, on Civil Government, affirms prayer for, honor toward, and obedience to human governments, for they are “of divine appointment, for the interests and good order of human society.”

However, the NHCF also limits Christian obedience to civil government. That confession, which first appeared in 1833, continued, “except only in things opposed to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the only Lord of the conscience, and the Prince of the Kings of the earth.” Carroll, like E. Y. Mullins, the President of Southern Seminary in the early twentieth century, divided civil government and religion into spheres: “all laws with reference to human society have a limited sphere beyond which they cannot extend rightfully.”

Carroll exposited the same biblical passage that his most well-known student, George W. Truett, would highlight in his famous speech defending our Baptist beliefs, in religious liberty and the separation of church and state, on the steps of the United States Congress in 1920. Carroll wrote, “Therefore, when Jesus said, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,’ he showed that while certain things belonged to Caesar, certain other things do not belong to Caesar.”

Citing both the early American Baptist Pastor Isaac Backus and the author of our nation’s Declaration of Independence and advocate of the Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, the President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary left no room whatsoever for anyone who would limit the religious liberty of anyone else by trying to establish any religion whatsoever. “Caesar,” he clarified, “has no right to come into the domain of my parlor and command me to worship him as God. I may obey him as a magistrate, a ruler, but he has no jurisdiction over my religion.”

Carroll called for true Christians to stand “like a rock against the jurisdiction of the state over the conscience.” This revered Southern Baptist leader knew full well that not all Christians historically stood for religious liberty, “but all the best instructed Christian people did.” As an accomplished historian who knew how Baptists had suffered under state religion, he wanted not merely to “separate” the state from the church, but to “sever” them. Carroll identified the primary opponents of Baptists in the battle for the separation of church and state as misled Christians on the one side, and unbelieving pagans on the other. 

“This matter of civil government involves the great struggle through the ages to sever the two ideas of obedience to magistrates and obedience to God. Pagan Rome, in which the state dominated the church, and Papal Rome, in which the church dominated the state, both of them produced iniquitous results, results that are evil and evil only, continually” (Foundations of Our Faith, 246–48).

“Champion of Orthodoxy”

These same teachings, for religious liberty and against religious establishment, were brought into and expanded by our Southern Baptist confession. Article XVI of the BF&M, which has not changed since 1925, says, among other things, “The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work.” It also says, “The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends.” And, “The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind.”

In other words, the ideas with which some Baptists now toy, of having the United States Constitution establish Christianity or of having the government adopt blasphemy laws, are contrary to the doctrine of our Southern Baptist and Texas Baptist founders and to the confession of our denomination which they influenced.

The question we posed near the beginning of this essay now confronts us again, “Where is the Southern Baptist champion of orthodoxy today?” Will he, sooner rather than later, find his voice?