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.

Trinity and Authority (Part Three of Five)

Theological Strategies for Eternal Relations of Authority

In order to make judgments regarding the eternal relations of authority effort, we suggest a review of their primary strategies for promoting their theological perspective. We discern three primary ways that the ERA theologians are advancing their theology: a scriptural strategy, an historical strategy, and a cultural strategy.

The Scriptural Strategy

Rather than glibly affirm a traditional heresy or neo-orthodoxy, the ERA theologians have recently busied themselves in two other ways. First, they seek to prove that their presentation of God is rooted in Scripture. In our mind, this has been their most successful strategy. They have demonstrated, without sufficiently detailed counter-arguments from their accusers, that Scripture constantly presents divine action—in creation, redemption, and consummation—as originating with the Father and moving toward creation through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. (Alongside this progression is the consequential return of the unitary divine activity from the Son and the Spirit to the Father.)

The most prominent exegetical argument(s) deployed against the ERA theologians are that the submissiveness of Jesus Christ toward God the Father in the New Testament is attached to his humanity rather than to his deity or that the divine economy is opposed to divine ontology. But these traditional arguments do not satisfy the free church desire for exegetical rigor over historical precedence and systematic expedience. On his part, ERA theologian Bruce Ware has repeatedly pointed to submission passages that broach, if not breach, the liminal boundary between time and eternity. 

In a first instance, 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 brings the subjection of all things at the consummation of time unto, if not directly into, the eternal relation between the Son and the Father. In Ware's favor, why should we believe that this passage has to do with Christ's humanity rather than his deity? On what basis is this exegetical division required? And what would the division do to the Son's unitary personhood as the God-man?

In a second instance, Grudem argues it is difficult to dismiss κεφαλή (kephale) in 1 Corinthians 11:3 as merely a reference to "source" rather than "head" (we believe it probably means both). If the correlation between the Father and Christ is merely ascribed to his humanity, how is it that this restriction is exegetically required? Again, what does this division do to the unitary personhood of Christ? Or why must we believe this passage is a reference to the economic Trinity rather than the immanent Trinity? Alternatively, if 1 Corinthians 11:3c is a reference to an economic Trinitarian work, why must we follow Warfield rather than Rahner and disconnect the economic from the immanent Trinity? And if we so follow Warfield rather than Rahner in this choice, are we not in some sense casting doubt on the trustworthiness of divine revelation?

With these judgments and queries, we are not permanently cutting off the ERA opponents and their interpretations of the biblical text, but we are saying the credibility of the ERA theologians' biblical hermeneutics is powerful and their judgments must receive deeper consideration. The scriptural case is far from closed but the weight so far in this particular debate favors the eternal relations of authority proponents, though we will have more to say in this regard later.

The Historical Strategy

The second major strategy of the ERA theologians has been to demonstrate their position is not a historical novelty. As historical theologians, we are not yet convinced by the ERA proponents here, though we believe the situation has not been finally determined. While Malcolm utilized the early church fathers in his own work on the Trinity, he did not read them with a focus on the questions raised by the eternal relations of authority theologians. Malcolm's other historical theological work has centered in the Reformation, while Karen has focused on early twentieth century German theology. We come to the current problem with appreciation for the historical task, though with limited patristic expertise.

But what we can say with certainty is that neither Wayne Grudem, who drafted Malcolm for his argument for eternal functional subordination, nor Mark Jones, who drafted Malcolm against Grudem, were entirely correct or incorrect. As Jones properly recognized, the indisputable fact is that Malcolm follows the classical eternal generation interpretation in his reading of the biblical text, and not the eternal relations of authority interpretation. This is not to say that Grudem was wrong to see a possible correlation with his position; it is to say that Malcolm's careful affirmation of equality with subordination did not distinguish the functional from the ontological in the way Grudem does. (It was perceptive and kind of Grudem to note Malcolm's use of the term, "subordination," is carefully paired with "equality.")

As for Mark Jones, we read his response to Grudem and found much with which to agree. Like Jones, we try to receive historical theology in a contextually sensitive way. In The Formation of Christian Doctrine and Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation, Malcolm argued that we should allow historical figures to speak for themselves according to their sitz im leben. We both remain convinced that meticulous re-presentation of the thoughts of those who have come before us is a necessary virtue.

However, Malcolm also remembers when his former professor and friend, the revered Reformed theologian John Webster, took him to task for dwelling upon historical fidelity. (For the curious, Malcolm was defending an historical reading of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in a seminar at Oxford University, while Webster was advocating a freer appropriation of Calvin.) John Webster responded that historical theology is fine even necessary, but systematic theology ultimately requires the judicious appropriation of history for eternal concerns now.

If Webster's principle is correct, then Wayne Grudem is not entirely wrong to employ previous "subordination" claims in his favor, even if those authors used that language differently. Historical controversies rarely if ever exactly repeat themselves. And the ERA theologian need not necessarily adhere to a perfect correlation in order to infer a modicum of historical support, even if we ourselves prefer meticulous representation. Historical theology pursues truthful representation of the past; systematic theology utilizes historical theology to pursue truth itself. More thought is required in this question of theological method.

The Cultural Strategy

What the ERA theologians have not stressed in this latest round of controversy over Trinity and authority is their premier illustration for the immanent Trinity, the application to gender relations. For Grudem, Ware, and Ovey, gender relations in marriage has been the leading analogy in their presentation of the Trinity. This seems undeniable, though what is its import?

The ERA theologians have been accused of allowing contemporary cultural issues to drive their doctrine of the Trinity, but they have denied such. Similar accusations against their older evangelical opponents, the egalitarians, have also been leveled. Both the ERA complementarians and some egalitarians have found the Trinity helpful in addressing contemporary anthropological concerns, and both have been accused of reading anthropology into theology. The scandalous claim of idolatry has even been bandied about.

Whatever the case regarding currently unverified internal motivations, the marriage analogy is doubtless preferred among the ERA theologians. A preferred analogy is not all that unusual, but it can create problems. For instance, among those reviewing the classical tradition, the Cappadocians have sometimes been represented as leaning toward human community while Augustine has been represented as overextending human psychology. The Cappadocians were thus falsely accused of incipient tritheism and Augustine was thus falsely accused of incipient Unitarianism. The research of Barnes and Ayres has shown the so-called "de Regnon thesis" incorrectly fostered these readings of the fathers. Likewise, because of their preferred analogy, it may be that the ERA theologians have been falsely accused of Arianism.

In light of this, it seems prudent that we should never allow an analogy or illustration of the Trinity to remain unaccompanied. Malcolm encourages his systematic students at the least to use countervailing Trinitarian illustrations. This may help their people see that every analogy of the perfect God proves inadequate at some point. Unfortunately, if analogical variety is not deployed, somebody down the road may drag out a preferred analogy and attempt to hang its misuse against its proponent.

Misunderstanding or misrepresentation of intentions may also be driving some of the accusations against the ERA theologians. Apart from external proof to the contrary, or the omniscience which only one human being possesses, we who lack the divine nature must take the ERA theologians (and, by extension, the egalitarian theologians) at their word.

Malcolm and Karen Yarnell

Fort Worth, Texas

June 2016

Mea Culpa: The Heart Confession of a Systematic Theologian

Norm Miller, the highly capable and effective editor of SBC Today, asked me to share with you the process by which I came to write the piece entitled, “The Evangelistic Seminary” (published here, here, here, and here; mentioned at the Southern Baptist Convention and in Baptist Press here) and some subsequent reflections. Perhaps a rehearsal of my own past, a confession of this particular systematic theologian's heart, will be helpful in delineating the logic behind that essay.

A Responsible Faith

            First, the distant past. I was led to salvation in Christ Jesus through the evangelistic preaching and teaching of a traditional Southern Baptist church in Louisiana. After being born again through faith in Jesus, and a short time in financial services as an adult, the Lord called me into full-time Christian service as a teacher and preacher. I have always understood that the calling to be a preacher of the Word of God was the greater privilege, while that of the teacher was to serve the task of preaching.

            Providentially, God gave me preachers like Wayne L. DuBose to shepherd me. Brother Wayne had and still retains a passion for God's Word and the application of that Word to the human soul. His desire to see the lost won to Christ and the saved grow deeper in commitment to the Lord is matched only by the incredible integrity with which Brother Wayne has always conducted his ministry. Next, God led me, providentially, to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where such teachers as James Leo Garrett, Jr., and Roy J. Fish also filled my heart and mind with God’s Word and a passion for lost souls.

            Part of the faith I received was that God freely gives salvation to sinners through faith in His Son. Another part of the faith I received was that this gift entails a responsibility for a surrendered life to God in Christ as led by the Spirit through His Word. Through the careful reading and preaching of the Bible, it continues to be my conviction that while salvation is a work of divine grace, it compels a human response. And this is what we must expect and encourage of ourselves and others as we preach the gospel.

            Part of our faith response is found in the immediate reception of salvation, but the Spirit also opens our minds to the lifelong vocation that God has placed upon each of our lives. We are called to respond in faith to the preaching of the divine writ, and we are called to respond in faithful living to the particular application of His will to our lives. I have taken the exemplary lives of my mentors and followed them therein to the best of my ability. One of the things I learned through these preachers and teachers is that while the movement of the Spirit through the biblical text is palpable in the instrumental work of biblical proclamation, there are also times when that proclamation may be written, so as to remind future generations of the Spirit's movement in the past and the hope of perhaps similar movements of grace in the future.

A Seminary's Legacy

            Second, the intermediate past. Over the past several years, I have watched and been amazed at the work that God has done and is doing in and through Southwestern Seminary. To join the faculty of my alma mater has been the career highlight of my Christian life. This has afforded opportunity to reflect upon the direction of our beloved seminary both historically and contemporaneously. The parallels that I have sensed between Southwestern past and Southwestern present began to coalesce around the time of our centennial celebrations. Those parallels have been subsequently reinforced in so many ways.

            Conversations with retired faculty such as James Leo Garrett, Jr., Roy J. Fish, Malcolm McDow, and Jack Terry, who retained their love for the seminary; collaborations with scholars such as Thomas White, Jason Duesing, and Madison Grace in researching the history of our fine institution; observations of fellow faculty members such as David Allen, Keith Eitel, and Matt Queen, who have embodied and exemplified the proclamatory, evangelistic, and missionary ethos of our school; and most importantly, the uncanny resemblances between the biblical, evangelistic, and Baptist passions of the first two presidents when placed alongside our current leader, Paige Patterson—these have fed into a growing sense that while the names had changed on the doors at Southwestern Seminary, the nature of the institution remains the same.

A Heresy of the Heart

            Third, our denomination's immediate past. Because of the necessary refocusing of our Southern Baptist seminaries on doctrinal orthodoxy during and after the Conservative Resurgence, we have become a convention concerned with doctrines. This is a good thing, and one that I began to advocate even back when I was a pastor active in local, state, and national Southern Baptist meetings. It is also a focus that I have personally benefitted from as a systematic theologian at one of our leading seminaries. In light of my role as a systematic theologian—a thinker who lives and breathes to engage with Scripture, historical exegesis, and contemporary concerns—what I will say next may seem counterintuitive. However, it must be said, and I hope it is well received.

            Our focus on doctrinal orthodoxy becomes unhealthy the moment it begins to detract from the primary task of actually proclaiming the gospel. While theology is important, even fundamental to the Christian task, it is, nevertheless, a third-order activity. The tertiary activity of theological reflection follows upon the primary Christian activities of worship and witness. Theology functions as a servant to worship and witness, providing a necessary critique of those activities according to the standard of Scripture. And when theology leaves its service role behind to demand primary attention, it has risen above its station and grasped for a glory that it may not possess.

            When Southwestern Seminary was recently queried regarding its overarching concern for evangelizing the lost, I really wanted to ignore it. I was and am very tired after years without a break, capped off with an especially grueling teaching year; the semester was ending and the grades were due; Masters-level students required last minute details and Doctoral-level students required guidance into the summer; preparations for the Oxford program demanded my administrative attention; and, personally, I just wanted to finish all of that and go home and sleep for a few days, then begin to write what I had long delayed. However, the approach of a beloved mentor on a different matter reminded me of the need to wait upon the Lord, submitting my every moment to Him, and so I did.

            But that mentor's request actually needed to be put on the back burner, because something more critical had arisen. The critical issue that came to my mind was not about the presence of one PhD student in our archaeology program, nor was it about the policies of the seminary. The critical issue that came to my mind, and stays there, is that we Southern Baptists have allowed ourselves to be subtly side-tracked from remembering what the main thing is regarding our theological institutions. The main thing for the churches is worship and witness, and the seminaries were founded to serve the churches in fulfilling their Christ-given commission.

            The seminaries' primary mission is not the teaching of archaeology, nor is it philosophy, history, languages, commentary, nor theology, music, educational theory. And yet, each of those things may be and often are helpful in meeting the primary mission. The Southern Baptist seminaries' primary mission is not the formation of academic teachers, nor is it the production of cultural commentators and book editors. And yet, each of those people may be helpful in fulfilling what is primary. Our primary mission is the formation of Christian ministers to serve the churches so that the churches may faithfully proclaim the saving gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

            Our primary mission, moreover, must be driven through our primary passion. When our passion becomes cultural commentary, political activism, or academic excellence, we seminarians have made a major mistake. When the subsidiary, the secondary, the tertiary replace the primary in the place where it really matters, in our hearts, we have a problem. When the cravings for doctrinal definition and cultural conflict supplant the passion for biblical proclamation through preaching, evangelism, and missions, then we have embraced a heresy of the heart.

            Do not misread me—remember, this is a systematic theologian writing this. I am not arguing for the acceptance of heresy or error. I despise heresy and lament error. Remember who this is—Malcolm Yarnell has been, and hopefully will remain throughout his life, a fervent advocate of a Christian orthodoxy that is evangelical and Baptist to the core. Rather, I am arguing about subtle and sometimes deceptive relations between the head and the heart. I am arguing that human doctrine must serve the proclamation of the Word of God and not rule over it. Dogmatics has a necessary role in reflecting upon our proclamation, with Scripture as the norm, in order to aid preachers, evangelists, and missionaries in their primary task of proclamation. But dogmatics is not what preachers, evangelists, and missionaries should be preaching. The gospel of Jesus Christ—the incarnate Son of God who became a man, died on the cross, and arose from the dead, so that whosoever will believe may be saved, and the heartfelt desire for all to hear and believe—yes, that gospel! That is what we should be preaching!

            When preachers, evangelists, and missionaries lose the imagination of the people and systematic theologians, philosophers, and culture warriors rise up to become their exemplars instead, we may have a heart problem. When a seminary president is questioned, even attacked, regarding his overarching passion to win people to Christ, we have a heart problem. And when a systematic theologian like this author, who knows better and whose entire life has been providentially guided to remind him that the ministry of the Word is primary—when that systematic theologian has allowed secondary reflection on proclamation to replace the primacy of proclamation through public sermon and private counsel, we have a heart problem. Southern Baptists, we have a heart problem.

            As a result of this concern for our mission and our passion about it, one evening I brought some essays by Southwestern’s heroes home and read them carefully. As I read their powerful thoughts, my heart was lifted up to remember who we are as teachers of preachers, and my heart was brought low by the realization that too many of us, including me, have been forgetting who we are. The next morning, I was led in conscience to the office very early, and I stayed incommunicado therein for eight hours without even the basics of life. The flesh cried out for sustenance, but there was a palpable sense of God-given direction that this cannot be delayed—here are the books you need and there is the idea that needs to be elucidated. By 3:00 that afternoon, the work was done. I daresay that I have never written anything that required so few self-corrections.

            What I rediscovered for myself that evening and day was that most of us theologians, especially among the academics but also among the pastoral theologians, have walked away from the older Southern Baptist view of the seminary's purpose. We have forgotten how our fathers treated and even spoke of the seminary as a military bunker for training soldiers to engage in spiritual warfare through biblical proclamation. We have forgotten our fathers' purpose for the seminaries and have convinced ourselves that the seminary is an ivory tower intended primarily to defend orthodox Christianity against the encroachment of a depraved culture.

            We have traded a view of the seminary as an offensive organization for a defensive view of the purpose of the seminary. In our hearts, we have made our educational institutions, both colleges and seminaries, an increasingly remote fortified tower on a hill rather than a light set on a hill that is constantly finding ways to help the churches shine light into the culture. We have transitioned the seminaries, in our attitudes regarding their purpose, from being exemplars of evangelistic outreach to being havens from the harrowing of heresy. Yes, the exposure of heresy and error in home, church, and culture is part of our role, but it is not the purpose of our existence.

            Again, theology serves proclamation. There is a reason that W.T. Conner, the systematic theologian, receives third place in any proper historiography of Southwestern Seminary. The systematic theologian rightly has a place of honor alongside the preacher and the evangelist, but problems arise when the philosophical commentator upon God and culture overtakes and supplants the place of the pastor and the missionary. The theologian Conner is third; the preacher Carroll and the evangelist Scarborough are first.

            It apparently takes the example of a president like Paige Patterson, who is as adept as any sophisticated systematic theologian yet who has the heart of a country evangelist and the legacy of a preaching pastor, to remind us that the Great Commission ought to remain our passion. Why are Patterson's moves in this regard controversial? Not because he is wrong in wanting the seminary to be a shining city set on a hill, but because most of the rest of us have forgotten what Patterson has, by divine grace, remembered.

A Confession

            Fourth, the present. When I was a pastor responsible to proclaim the divine writ, there were moments in the life of a church that prompted a real spiritual struggle. Those moments have continued into my ministry as a theologian in the employ of the churches through Southwestern Seminary. On the one hand, I am speaking of the spiritual struggles that occur within a preacher or teacher. These internal conflicts of the heart are very real and very necessary. I have been intimating to you my own struggles. On the other hand, the greater vocational purpose for the preacher concerns his utility as a divine instrument of spiritual growth, which ought to grow out of his own experience as the object of divine grace.

            I am speaking, latterly, of that sense that God has led you to see that this moment in the life of the congregation demands this sermon from His Word be directed gently but unfailingly to address that crisis. These are typically not immediate crises, but long-term communal crises that have reached a watershed and now demand the preacher to surrender His every thought, every word, every desire to the direction of the Holy Spirit as He illumines the Word through this preacher, who remains His unworthy instrument. Such events in my own experience include the peaceful understanding of being compelled by the Spirit, along with the knowledge that there is a God-given rebuke of the adversary, and the draining of every last vestige of strength from the preacher’s personal being. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, there are times that the preacher or teacher must simply hold on to God and be thrown about like a rag doll, learning to surrender to the divine will, learning to respond faithfully to the God who is living, loving, guiding, and using the unworthy instrument before Him. And God provides a message from His Word through His servant. After such an event, there is elation (God has deigned to speak to me and through me!), awe (I have survived an encounter with the almighty and holy God!), and pain (What He has shown me demands change not only in our people but in me!). There is also the interesting phenomenon that such an encounter can lead me to be exhausted physically.

            But the greatest sense of exhaustion is not physical—it is spiritual. It is the knowledge that, while you know that this is the ideal for the preacher and teacher of God's Word, you have not always met that ideal. And this is where Norm's request is really bothersome to me, personally, for now I must confess. Mea culpa: this is my problem. Yes, I am a systematic theologian in my passion, which is not bad, but I ought to be even more passionate about going with the Lord Jesus Christ (and L. Rutland Scarborough and L. Paige Patterson) after the lost. Being a systematic theologian is a good and necessary thing, but being a preacher, evangelist, and missionary is the better part. Sitting at the feet of Jesus, repeating His words to the lost around me—this is the better part.

            Oh, Lord, forgive me! I am a systematic theologian with misdirected passion, and in this way an unclean heart, and I live amongst a group of seminaries with professors and administrators with unclean hearts. Send your messenger with your coal to cleanse our lips and make us worthy to speak your Word to the lost and dying sinners of this world. Grant us not the idea that proclamation is our secondary role but grant us an eager knowledge that proclamation is our primary role. Lord, help our seminaries and colleges not only to be intentionally biblical and Baptist, and evangelical, all of which we claim, but help us to be evangelistic, too. Perhaps, then, when our hearts are right, we theologians may help the churches and their beloved pastors, our beloved pastors, properly see that all of us need to be more committed to sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.

(Originally published at SBC Today, 12 June 2014)

Reflections on Teaching On-Line: "The Christological Content of the Christian Faith"

At Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, it is a privilege to be part of an innovative faculty that has taken upon itself the responsibility for instructing a large and growing set of courses through an on-line format. Many people, students here and at other institutions as well as faculty members at other institutions alongside a number of interested laypeople, have often asked for, and continue to request, access to my lecture notes as well as any video or audio recordings of my class lectures. Perhaps now their requests may be answered more fully.

Our seminary students have always had access to the lecture notes and to many of my other writings, but now they also have a growing body of video/audio records of the lectures. However, it is always a struggle to know exactly how much of these lectures to make public and how much of the primary content should be reserved exclusively for our matriculated students. Here, I will make at least one of those lectures publicly available. (If you would like access to more such videos and are absolutely unable to attend seminary, please do consider enrolling in one of our on-line courses.)

This semester, I am teaching Systematic Theology II in both on-campus and on-line venues. In an interesting shift toward the on-line format, last semester I taught 85 students on-campus and 70 students on-line, while this semester the numbers are 75 students on-campus and 85 students on-line.

Now, for some reflections about how we try to make the best of teaching on-line courses, thereby helping bring theological education that much closer to the local churches. In the on-line format, we follow a similar format to the on-campus course, but with modifications to pull the students into required interaction with the professor and with one another. Here is how one session of an on-line Systematic Theology course might appear:

First, we require the student to read carefully a chapter or an article on the subject matter for that session and often to write a critical reflection. For instance, before the first session on Christology, the students are required to read Daniel Akin's chapter on the Person of Jesus Christ in A Theology for the Church.

Second, we require the students to view the videos of the on-campus lectures. Here is a link to the lecture that the students were required to view. It is entitled, "The Christological Content of the Christian Faith." (The lecture's purpose is to help the students see that Christianity has both a propositional content and personal encounter at its center--Jesus Christ the Lord, the second person of the divine Trinity. This is the first of a number of detailed Christology lectures. You will notice that my teaching style borders between preaching from the pulpit and teaching from the lectern.)

Third, subsequent to the lecture, we ask the students to interact with a thought-provoking discussion question. For instance, "How would you summarize the content of the Christian faith in a summary format? And how would you validate that summary from Scripture?" The student must write 3 paragraphs answering that question and then respond to at least one other student's answer to the question with at least a further full paragraph. The discussion format is helpful in bringing the student to interact with the material.

Finally, the students in the on-line course take written tests and submit in writing some combination of critical book reviews and papers in almost exactly the same format as our on-campus students.

As you can see, in the on-line course, I have tried to mitigate the lack of an incarnational presence as much as possible through electronic means--reading, video, written discussions, and full testing and writing responsibilities. It will take time and feedback to see how well on-line courses do in comparison to on-campus courses, but some of the concerns that I myself had about electronic pedagogy have been somewhat allayed as I have actually taught courses on-line.

If you are called to Christian ministry, please consider enrolling on-campus at Southwestern Seminary. There is really nothing better than living in a community dedicated to academic and applied theological preparation. If you cannot possibly move here, but you are still interested in taking an on-line course, I hope you will also consider Southwestern Seminary. We have an excellent faculty and a vibrant student body. We are committed to raising up witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ. Come, listen, then go, witness.

A Word-Honoring Debate on Calvinism

The debates between the New Calvinists and Traditionalists within the Southern Baptist Convention have often generated more heat than light in recent years. (Traditionalists are also known as non-Calvinists or even Biblicists.) However, there are positive dialogues that have taken place, too. 

Recently, Dr. John Mark Caton, Senior Pastor of Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, moderated a dialogue on Calvinism between Dr. Matthew McKellar and yours truly. Dr. McKellar, a longtime pastor and expository preacher and also a former trustee, is now Associate Professor of Preaching here at Southwestern Seminary. It is a privilege to have this avowed Calvinist on our faculty working alongside this avowed Biblicist/Traditionalist/non-Calvinist.

If you are interested in this hotly debated topic, please take a moment to hear the hearts of academic theologians and a pastor-theologian, who each seek to deal with the issue from a biblical-theological foundation even as they arrive at different responses to the Calvinist system of interpretation.

Top Ten Theological Truths Every Young Christian Should Know

(The following summary of doctrine was created at the request of the leadership for the Youth Ministry Lab at its 2011 meeting. YML recently drew a great number of young people and their ministers together for worship and instruction in Fort Worth, Texas, where numerous decisions were made to follow Christ into salvation and service. It is offered for general readership here.)

The Trinity: The one true God who created all things, who redeems believers, and whom believers worship is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; God the Trinity is eternally one God in three persons.

The Bible: God reveals all the truth we need in order to know of Him, to be reconciled to Him, and to live for Him in the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, which comprise Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture is the perfect Word of God with full authority over mankind, because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, who kept the original autographs free from error, who preserves the text through history, and who testifies its full trustworthiness while illumining its meaning to us.

Creation and Providence: On the basis of His love, the triune God created all things, visible and invisible, out of nothing, sustains all things providentially, and will bring all things to their proper end for His glory.

Humanity and Sin: The triune God created humanity, male and female, in His image. He gave mankind dominion over the earth and commanded him to be fruitful and multiply. God intended the man and his wife for a faithful lifelong marriage exclusively with one another, the man at the head of his family. However, Adam with all of his descendents rebelled against the Creator. Thus, human beings come under a sentence of condemnation to eternal death through their own sin. Humanity was driven from the holy presence of God because of sin.

Jesus Christ: In order to restore mankind and bring him to eternal life, God the Father sent His only begotten Son, the eternal Word of God and second person of the Trinity, to unite Himself forever with humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ was conceived of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, lived a sinless life, taught us the words of God, died a propitiatory death on the cross as a once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, arose from the dead on the third day for our justification, ascended to reign enthroned at the right hand of the Father, and will one day return to render judgment on all creation.

The Holy Spirit: God sends the eternal Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, into the world to accompany the proclamation of the Word of God and convict men of the sin of unbelief, of the coming judgment on the ruler of this world and those in the world, and of the righteousness that is available freely to all sinners through faith in the Son of God. The Holy Spirit comes to reside in new believers, providing them with the seal of promise that God will complete His work of salvation, with spiritual fruit to characterize their lives, and with spiritual gifts for the edification of the church, especially the gift of proclamation.

The Beginning of Salvation: In salvation, when a person hears the Word of God proclaimed and truly believes by grace, the external righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to the believer as justification, thus saving him from condemnation; at the same moment, the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerates or transforms the believer with faith and repentance so that this person now begins to follow Jesus Christ in salvation.

The Christian Life and the End: As salvation continues, a believer is assured of perserverance unto eternal life, but must consistently seek to grow in holiness through hearing, reading, and knowing God's Word and the Holy Spirit's work of sanctification. Salvation will one day be completed in God's work of glorification, when believers shall receive transformed bodies in the first resurrection as Jesus returns to reign. At the end of the millennium, Christ shall judge all with the eternal consequence of heaven or hell. By grace, believers are united with God and one another, entering the eternal presence of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

The Church: All believers must regularly and faithfully worship God with the church, the gathered congregation of true believers, hearing the Word of God proclaimed and observing the Lord's ordinances, beginning with believers-only baptism by immersion as a sign of faith and continuing with regular celebration of the meaningful memorial of the Lord's Supper, submitting to redemptive congregational discipline.

The Great Commission: The church, inclusive of all believers as a royal priesthood in Christ, was commissioned by the Lord, beginning in Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, to go to the entire world until the end, to proclaim the Word of God so that whosoever will believe should become disciples of Jesus Christ, to baptize new disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to teach them all things contained in the Word of the Lord, of which this is a mere summary.

The Danger Facing Systematic Theology

As you contemplate the task of moving from Scripture into systematic theology, please consider the following warning from Irenaeus about how the heretics known as the Valentinians distort Scripture to support their ideas. Note that Irenaeus is not against systematic theology; rather, he is against imposing an unbiblical system upon Scripture; he prefers to allow the “order” or “proper connection” of Scripture to assert itself. As we know, this is a perilous but necessary task, and this is why we should be constantly reading Scripture and hearing it, letting its order and proper connections form our theology. (Taken from Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 1, chapter 7, in ANF, volume 1):

Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures; and, to use a common proverb, they strive to weave ropes of sand, while they endeavour to adapt with an air of probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support. In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions.

Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should re-arrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions.

B.B. Warfield, "The Idea of Systematic Theology"

In spite of a genuine appreciation for his important contributions to pneumatology and bibliology, one ought not care for Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield's definition of systematic theology as a discipline shaped by human philosophy, nor may one agree with his rejection of theology as a Christocentric enterprise. Like many theologians and preachers today, Warfield was never able to comprehend fully the diversions from biblical theology that often result from Reformed commitments. However, one must laud the final paragraph of his essay, "The Idea of Systematic Theology." While downplaying such ideas earlier, Warfield in the end indicates how theology must inculcate a living faith through biblical preaching in order to be truly orthodox, thus demonstrating why the free churches have some limited communion with the evangelicals. It is repeated here in its full Victorian structure:

"If such be the value and use of doctrine, the systematic theologian is preeminently a preacher of the gospel; and the end of his work is obviously not merely the logical arrangement of the truths which come under his hand, but the moving of men, through their power, to love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves; to choose their portion with the Saviour of their souls; to find and hold Him precious; and to recognize and yield to the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit whom He has sent. With such truth as this he will not dare to deal in a cold and merely scientific spirit, but will justly and necessarily permit its preciousness and its practical destination to determine the spirit in which he handles it, and to awaken the reverential love with which alone he should investigate its reciprocal relations. For this he needs to be suffused at all times with a sense of the unspeakable worth of the revelation which lies before him as the source of his material, and with the personal bearings of its separate truths on his own heart and life; he needs to have had and to be having a full, rich, and deep religious experience of the great doctrines with which he deals; he needs to be living close to his God, to be resting always on the bosom of his Redeemer, to be filled at all times with the manifest influences of the Holy Spirit. The student of systematic theology needs a very sensitive religious nature, a most thoroughly consecrated heart, and an outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon him, such as will fill him with that spiritual discernment, without which all native intellect is in vain. He needs to be not merely a student, not merely a thinker, not merely a systematizer, not merely a teacher--he needs to be like the beloved disciple himself in the highest, truest, and holiest sense, a divine."