Short Bio Requested by Publishers

Recently, editors for different publishers asked me to send them a short biography for various marketing purposes. For those of you interested in what I have recently been doing, see the following. For those not interested, have a good day as you navigate to more interesting climes!

Malcolm B. Yarnell III was born in upstate New York, grew up in numerous North and Central American subcultures, and became a Southern Baptist minister, holding church pastorates in Texas, Louisiana, and North Carolina. After receiving degrees from Louisiana State University (BS-Finance), Southwestern Seminary (MDivBL), Duke University (ThM), and the University of Oxford (DPhil), he served as a faculty member at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and academic dean at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. A prolific contributor of essays to academic journals and books published in America, England, France, and Nigeria, as well as in more popular venues, he was the longest-serving editor of the nearly century-old Southwestern Journal of Theology, has edited four academic books, and authored the widely reviewed 2007 volume on historical and theological method, The Formation of Christian Doctrine. Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, is scheduled to be released by Oxford University Press in the UK in November 2013 and in the US in January 2014. He is contracted for and currently writing a volume on the Trinity for publication by B&H Academic. While traveling to lecture in universities worldwide (including in recent years, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Kenya, Russia, Scotland, and the Ukraine), Yarnell is a fellow in research institutes in Nashville, Oxford, and Bonn, and serves as a trustee for the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Wroclaw, Poland. He preaches the gospel regularly in churches and conferences throughout the United States, and has recently led church conferences in the Cayman Islands, England, France, and Germany. He currently resides with his family of seven in Fort Worth, Texas, where he is Director of the Center for Theological Research and Professor of Systematic Theology at Southwestern Seminary and leads the weekly Men's Bible Study at Birchman Baptist Church.

Roy J. Fish: A Mighty Oak at Southwestern Seminary

During a memorial service for Roy J. Fish at Southwestern Seminary today, we heard about a "mighty oak" and "mighty warrior." His impact on thousands of seminary students was recounted in the moving eulogy of Dr. Steve Gaines. Like so many, Dr. Gaines was stricken during his first class with Dr. Fish with this thought: "Who in the world can have that kind of heart and mind?!" Dr. Gaines came to Southwestern Seminary because of Dr. Fish and he completed several degrees, including the Ph.D., because of this "mighty oak." "In many ways, he was Southwestern Seminary to us." Another speaker described him as "Perhaps the most beloved seminary professor in the history of the convention."

            Indeed, Southwestern's legacy is found in professors like Roy Fish, and it is that legacy that ought to define our future. Just as his son, Steve Fish, prayed, "Let the fire that burned in this man burn in us!" Thanks are owed to Jean Fish and the Fish family and to Dr. Paige Patterson for allowing his memorial to be held in Truett Auditorium, for as Dr. Gaines said, "Southwestern was his home." Please allow me a moment to share some words from a surprising source that also describe who Roy Fish was, followed by a personal reflection.

A Surprising Testimony

            From his early days, "God found in [him] the kind of moldable clay he could shape into one of the great Christian leaders of his generation." His character and "passion"—this word often appears in the references of those he touched—marked him out as special. He possessed "intellectual ability," but, most importantly, he had an "obvious gift and passion for evangelism." While certainly capable of leading a great church, he became a professor of evangelism, filling the "Chair of Fire" at Southwestern Seminary. He had a special calling from God to become part of Southwestern Seminary. And he stayed with the school he helped make great, because he believed that through his students he could "be preaching in a thousand pulpits after I am dead and gone."

            From a theological perspective, he believed with B.H. Carroll, the founder of Southwestern Seminary, that the school should be "kept lashed to the Redeemer." He also believed in the "traditional" understanding of evangelism, that it is "the sharing of the good news of Jesus with a view to winning people to Him as Savior and Lord." His personal beliefs may be encapsulated thus: "One cannot understand [him] without seeing him primarily as a person of great passion for people who are lost. He not only preached it but he lived it." Finally, he was also "a denominational statesman," who enthused state evangelism conferences and filled countless pulpits. He first retired from his seminary office only a few years prior to going "to his eternal reward."

            These words appropriately describe Roy Fish's service to His Lord on this earth while at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. However, Roy Fish himself wrote these words, not about himself, but about another great Southwesterner: Lee Rutland Scarborough (See The Legacy of Southwestern: Writings that Shaped a Tradition, ed. James Leo Garrett, Jr.) The correlation between these two lives tells us much about the legacy of Southwestern Seminary: we are passionate to preach the good news to every human being, believing that Christ died for all.

A Personal Word

           Those who were not here for the service today are invited to celebrate with us the legacy of Roy Fish. I was also a student of Dr. Fish, and it was a profound privilege to become his colleague. He is one of the gentlest man I have ever met in my life, similar to the giant of a theologian whom I escorted to Dr. Fish's memorial service: James Leo Garrett, Jr. Roy and his wife, Jean, joined me in Oxford, England one summer a few years ago. There, I learned that this man is the genuine article. I detected no guile in him whatsoever. I have known many Christian leaders and seen them struggle with their coarser natures, but I found nothing but brokenness before God in Roy Fish. He is one of the few heroes in my life to remain a hero even after I came to know him for who he really is.

            My heart will always thrill at the private moments he took to encourage me. I will miss Roy Fish. I will miss his encouragement to remain traditional in theology—to remember that God's nature of love, expressed in his sending His Son to die on the cross for a lost world, is foundational to the theological and evangelistic tasks. I will miss his encouragement to pursue both theological and administrative roles—to use the gifts God has given me to their fullest for His glory. But, most of all, I will miss his gentle and consistent reminder that we must sow the Word of God and reap the results by inviting people respectfully and kindly to believe in Christ Jesus. We will miss him, but we will not forget him.

Semi-Pelagianism? A Plea for Clarity and Charity

Recently, the charge of semi-Pelagianism was leveled against the signatories of the statement on the traditional Southern Baptist view of salvation. Please allow me to respond with a clear denial of the charge and an appeal for anybody entering this conversation to, first, clearly substantiate any inferences and claims, primarily appealing to Scripture, and, second, rise above inflammatory rhetoric.

            First, regarding “semi-Pelagianism.” What is it? It is a postbiblical issue. According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2^nd edn), the semi-Pelagianism of the 4^th and 5^th centuries “maintained that the first steps toward the Christian life were ordinarily taken by the human will and that Grace supervened only later.” It is worth taking a minute to reread that definition. (Did you read it again? Okay, let’s continue.) Semi-Pelagianism was condemned at the second Council of Orange in 529. While such a council does not carry ecclesial or theological authority whatsoever for Baptists, I believe most Baptists, including the Statement’s signatories, would agree with that council’s condemnation, which is later called “semi-Pelagianism.” Moreover, it is very instructive that the same council also condemned the doctrine that God predestined men for evil. I would agree with the council’s condemnations on both of these counts and invite all Baptist theologians to join me in agreement. (By the way, all Baptists are theologians.)

            Note here that we doubt the comments of Herman Bavinck, who has been cited as an authority on semi-Pelagianism by a group known as “The Gospel Coalition,” are particularly helpful in this free church conversation. Bavinck scorned Anabaptists, Pietists, Methodists, and, yes, Baptists for being too pious and for, inter alia, taking such biblical passages as the Sermon on the Mount literally. Bavinck, moreover, said Baptists erred in shifting the focus “from baptism itself to the believer’s acceptance.” (Guilty! See chapter two of my The Formation of Christian Doctrine for more interaction with Bavinck.) Finally, Bavinck argued that the Baptist idea that original sin does not entail original guilt is part of semi-Pelagianism. The Baptist Faith & Message itself in article three then would likely be classified a “semi-Pelagian” document under such a partisan definition. Our confession states clearly that Adam’s “posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation.” If our common Southern Baptist confession is “semi-Pelagian,” then we are all “semi-Pelagian,” whether we are Calvinist or something else, at least according to Bavinck, the Dutch Reformed self-professing opponent of Baptists.

            Second, the authors and signatories of the statement have made it clear that they affirm the priority of divine grace in nearly every article of the statement, including article two. Indeed, article two itself states, “While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, we deny that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel.” Moreover, article four, on “The Grace of God,” states, “We affirm that grace is God’s generous decision to provide salvation for any person by taking all of the initiative in providing atonement, in freely offering the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in uniting the believer to Christ through the Holy Spirit by faith.” A careful reading of the document thus indicates that the signatories believe that faith comes to human beings as an act of divine grace, just as the cross and the proclamation of the gospel are acts of divine grace. Personally, I have always taught my students that divine grace has the priority in salvation, from beginning to end, and I will continue to do so.

            We do not claim to know all the details of how divine sovereignty relates to human responsibility, because we do not believe Scripture reveals all those details. We do claim, however, that God is sovereign and gracious and that man is simultaneously responsible to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, because these things are revealed in Scripture. We approach theology this way because we are satisfied that the Word of God is the sufficient and unique authority for Christian theological reflection. Church history is helpful as a laboratory for the exposition of Scripture, which is our authority, but the Christian tradition with its condemnatory councils and burnings of human beings does not carry any authority for us “traditionalist” Baptists. (Honestly, for this reason, I don’t really care for the term “traditionalist,” and prefer “Biblicist” or “Baptist,” but others object to our use of those terms.) Systematic theology is also helpful, but it is a human response to divine revelation, and not authoritative in and of itself, as I recently discussed elsewhere.

            Now, the appeal for clarity: Please, as you enter this conversation, whatever position you take, clearly substantiate your claims. Substantiation helps with clarity in definition and discussion. Feel free to use tradition as part of your substantiation, if you must, but please join it primarily with direct appeals to Scripture. The statement cites plenty of Scripture and we are ready to engage those texts and any biblical text from a Christ-centered perspective. I would covet your engagement with me in the holy writ. I am more comfortable and happier there than anywhere, for the Bible is God’s Word and He talks to me there deeply in my heart (Romans 10). Please also clearly state where you stand on an issue. I have stated my position, and I would like to hear what you believe Scripture says. We can learn from each other that way.

            Alongside this appeal for clarity, I ask you to join me in a commitment to charity. Paul says that we should be at peace with all men, “as much as is in you” (Romans 12:18). I know that my sinful flesh is at war with the spirit in me, and I hope you will join me in committing to letting the Holy Spirit, who brings joy and peace within, reign within. As part of this commitment, it would be helpful if all of us refrain even from the appearance of speaking evil of our brothers, including the use of inflammatory words like “heretic,” “hyper-Calvinist,” and “semi-Pelagian.” This will only be possible as a work of grace, but I still hope we will respond responsibly to His grace. Peace to you, my brothers in Christ, Calvinist or otherwise.