A Southwesterner's Appreciation for Russell Dilday

The President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, Russell Hooper Dilday, died today, June 21, at the age of 92. Under his leadership, Southwestern reached heights of enrollment and impact seen neither before nor after by a Southern Baptist seminary. Dilday was preceded in death by his wife, Betty, and by his son, Robert. Please allow me to tell you a little about Russell Dilday from the perspective of one student, professor, and pastor.

In 1991, after I spent almost four years of preparing intellectually and spiritually for full-time vocational Christian ministry, Russell Dilday acknowledged my completion of the Master of Divinity with Biblical Languages. During my student years at Southwestern Seminary, I had arrived at a different political position than Dr. Dilday regarding the controversy disrupting the Southern Baptist Convention. However, that difference in outlook never kept the President who handed me the degree from displaying his exemplary civility in Christian conduct.

In 1994, I watched from afar as Dr. Dilday was locked out of his own office and shown the exit to his beloved seminary. Like other Southern Baptists, I was shocked by this rough treatment yet impressed by his graceful dignity. Over the next decade, while researching the experiential theology of Edgar Young Mullins, I also discovered his thorough research into the theology of that previous denominational statesman. Dr. Dilday not only wrote about the apologetic legacy of Mullins; he continued his legacy as a statesman. While I remain less individualistic than either Dilday or Mullins, I have come to appreciate the deep wisdom in their conservative religious personalism and their fervent advocacy of Baptist identity.

In 2005, I received a telephone call from the front desk of the Baptist college at Oxford University. It was Russell Dilday asking if I would mind being a host for him and several Texas Baptist dignitaries attending the centennial celebration of the Baptist World Alliance. Feeling quite honored, I rearranged my day then gave Dr. Dilday's group an overview of Baptist history in Great Britain. During our long conversation, I showed them several portraits of Baptist dignitaries and the death couch of William Carey, the founder of the Modern Missions Movement. It was unusually hot in England that summer, and we Texans were suffering slightly from the British lack of air conditioning, yet these true Baptists were elated to learn more about their own heritage.

The group sought to present me an honorarium. I refused, noting my pleasure at deepening my fellowship with Dr. Dilday and coming to know each of them. However, the former President of Southwestern gently forced the honorarium into my hand, winked at me, and said, "Malcolm, you forget that I know how little you faculty earn. Receive this as a gift from the Lord and from me as a token of our appreciation for your continuing service to all Southern Baptists." He then smiled, gripped my hand firmly, and walked away before I could raise an objection. Again, I was struck by his exemplary graciousness. 

Through the following years, I came to realize the import of his parting words for me as one of the few theologians who continued the Southwestern tradition of theology at Southwestern Seminary. While we might have differed by degrees over anthropology and bibliology, we both swam in the same great tradition of Baptist life in Texas, in the Southern Baptist Convention, and in the Baptist World Alliance. Moreover, I came to lament with him certain "low points in the SBC odyssey." Dilday summarized these low points as "forced uniformity, political coercion, and egotistic self-interest."

In 2020, at the funeral service of James Leo Garrett Jr., I reflected publicly on my theological mentor's legacy with both former teachers and current colleagues. Before the proceedings, the visibly declining Dr. Dilday again addressed me personally, shook my hand, and thanked me for my faculty service. For those who are not quite aware of how significant that is, please understand that he engaged me graciously before and after momentous events in his life, in our seminary's life, and in our denomination's life. Through each encounter, he showed Christian civility: during a controversy, after he was summarily dismissed, and after many years of watching me actively advocate my own theology. Russell Dilday affirmed the calling of Baptist students, professors, and pastors, no matter which side of the aisle they occupied.

As a lifelong advocate of biblical inerrancy, as a current pastor in a Texas Baptist church, and as a current faculty member of his former seminary, I am convinced that the way forward for all Southern Baptists must be to heed Dr. Dilday's final challenge. In Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility, the sixth president of Southwestern Seminary wrote, "So the best way forward from this quarter century of strife is to let the past convict us and work to restore a gentler, kinder tone in our discourse and deliberations—in short—a return to Christian civility. That’s the road to higher ground." 

Russell Dilday was in his personal character what he advocated in his public proclamations. Rest In Peace, dear brother in Christ and father in Christian ministry. You have reminded Southern Baptists and Baptists in Texas what it means to be like Jesus. May our Lord speak to you even now the words you longed to hear throughout your meaningful life of often painful service: "Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy!"

Theology Is for God’s People

I am happy to announce that the good people at B&H Publishing Group and I have contracted for a major 3-volume popular-level systematic theology.

The Lord has long impressed me with the truth that theology is the responsibility of his people in the local churches.

This conviction began under the preaching of pastor Wayne DuBose, now of Minden, Louisiana.

It was then reinforced by the teaching of James Leo Garrett of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Research on the biblical and historical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers with the ThM at Duke Divinity (on the continental Reformation) and the DPhil at University of Oxford (on the English Reformation) cemented this conviction. (The latter was published by Oxford University Press).

Significant pastorates in Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina showed in practice the truth that our people in our local churches want to know how to think properly about God, his work in the world, and his Word. These pastorates above all developed a deep love to teach God’s Word.

When Lakeside Baptist Church Granbury called me to be their Teaching Pastor, I was overwhelmed with joy to ground academic theology in church theology. The combination of the roles of Teaching Pastor and Research Professor have proved beneficial for both classroom and pulpit.

In important ways, the ongoing Baptist struggle with theological modernism has been exacerbated by a divorce between church and academy. The churches rightly claim theology is for their use in worship, mission, teaching. The academies serve best when we support the churches.

The theological construction undergirding this conviction was written up for academic theological audiences in “The Formation of Christian Doctrine,” a detailed methodology published by B&H Academic in 2007. Theologians in the academy may consult that work for more detail.

Now, in my writing ministry, I plan to turn in the direction that, as my wife Karen Searcy Yarnell recently reminded me, Leo Garrett long hoped I would do: popular theology.

The American Evangelical and Southern Baptist academy is maturing theologically by leaps. Let us now build on that.

Stay tuned for more details from B&H Publishers in the next few years. For now, however, you know where my focus will be dedicated.

Theology is for God’s People.

Honor to Whom Honor Is Due: A World Premier Scholar

The Apostle Paul reminded the Roman Christians, "Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor" (Romans 13:7, Christian Standard Bible). While Paul focused upon how Christians must respect government in particular, there is little doubt we must also give respect and honor to all who hold positions of authority. Some retain authority by reason of their office, while others possess authority due to their intrinsic character and their extrinsic work.

In 2016, Michael A.G. Haykin, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, approached me about presenting a paper to honor a significant Baptist historian as part of the Baptist Studies Group of the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in November 2017. While he first mentioned a prominent deceased Anabaptist Historian, Dr. Haykin shifted a few months later to ask me to focus upon a recently deceased and very prominent Baptist Historian.

It was an honor to present an essay on Barrington Raymond White. White exercised an unparalleled influence among Baptist historians after his The English Separatist Tradition was published by Oxford University Press in 1971. Indeed, at the Evangelical Theological Society, I made the bold claim that White should be deemed "the world’s premier scholar during the late twentieth century in the field of English Separatist and Early Baptist history."

Many scholars approached me afterwards to affirm this judgment. They agreed that he was due this honor from his students and colleagues. Now, you can read that essay, since it was recently published in the 2018 volume of The Journal of Baptist Studies. JBS is sponsored by the California Baptist University and edited by Anthony Chute and Matthew Y. Emerson.

Allow me a few words before I provide you the link to that essay. B.R. White should be honored for his critical historical work, because he demonstrated that Baptists derived from the English Separatist movement that arose during the late sixteenth century. For once and for all, in my opinion, White put to rest the claim that the Baptists can be demonstrated to have descended from the Anabaptists.

However, White should also be honored for two further reasons. The second reason that White should be memorialized is that he demonstrated how a good historian should conduct himself or herself with regard to primary subjects and secondary claims about the primary subjects. The essay spends a good bit of time describing White's historiographical method, a method worthy of emulation.

The third and final reason to honor Barrie White is because his personal character continues to shape not only scholarship but also soul. As I stated in the essay, "His sharpness of mind in historical thought, his wry humor, and his gentle demeanor will always stick in my mind and heart as part of what it takes to be a good scholar." White, formerly Principal of Regent's Park College at Oxford University, took time with me when I was a young student in Oxford and reveled in the early English Baptists with me. This venerable man did so, not because he had an agenda to use them for some other reason, but because he appreciated these precious human beings for who they actually were.

Professor White deserves honor because he was an honorable man. His work was received well because it proceeded from his virtuous soul. His legacy is secure because his character as a Christian shaped the way he conducted the tenor of his life. Barrie White is honored because, in the end, honor is due him. Personally, I pray God will grant me at least a modicum of his character. (I hope to honor other scholars and leaders in similar ways in the future, if the Lord so wills it.) 

You may read more about Barrie White in the essay, "The Reformation and Baptist Origins: The Unrefuted Conclusion of B.R. White," which is in volume 9 of The Journal of Baptist Studies. Along with a number of other good articles, also take a moment to read the piece on Walter Rauschenbusch by a recent co-author of mine, William H. Brackney. In this journal, both Brackney and I discuss the Anabaptists and the Baptists in relation to one another, always an interesting subject, as White, his predecessors, and his successors understood.