A Far Green Country

As I do reading for my class this summer on the Southern Baptist Convention and its history, I've seen some theological issues from the liberal days leading up to the slow transformation that started in 79 & still continues (& still hasn't happened in some churches), that just so happen to, in my opinion, parallel Emergent theology. I'll just post some of these things & not comment.

In 1977, Professor E. Glenn Hinson of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary published Jesus Christ. In this book Hinson challenged and questioned many biblical declarations and assumptions. He wrote: "[Gospel] sources, however objective they may claim to be, have biases. They reflect the slanted viewpoints of their authors. At the same time, most possess, in varying degrees, some element of fact. The fact that none of these is factual, however, does not take away all of their value. What it takes away is the dogmatic certainty of Gospels, one can safely conclude that a kernel of historical fact underlies the early church's handling of the material."

In 1983, Professor Temp Sparkman of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary published a book entitled The Salvation and Nurture of the Child of God: The Story of Emma. This bookwas a study of how a person is saved. Using Emma as his paradigm, Sparkman explained: "Emma, much later in her nurture, will learn of significant doctrines and will repeat confessions and creeds, but will not add one measure to the basic giveness of her status. If she should become the most committed person on earth, while that would delight her Maker, she could not by such dedication gain any edge on others who refuse to consider or follow God's will for their lives." Sparkman concluded that the gift is from God and is not only to Emma but is also to all children in the world. Sparkman appeared to argue that all people are children of God, and nowhere in his book did he try to explain the necessity of salvation.

In 1985, Clayton Sullivan, a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, published his autobiography entitled Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive. The book revealed how his studies at SBTS essentially caused him to lose faith. "As a seminarian, still in my mid-twenties, I found myself baffled. I was more certain of what I didn't believe than I was of what I did believe. Southern Seminary had destroyed my biblical fundamentalism but it had not given me anything viable to take its place. That's the weakness of the historical critical method: its power to destroy exceeds its power to construct. The historical critical method can give you facts and hypotheses but it cannot give you a vision.

I wanted to write more, but these quotes went a little long. I do want to comment on the bold statement in the final quote. THat is a striking problem with emergents. They cherish questions over truth because it is a culture that is destroying, not constructing or building up the church. It is self-centered justification of sin and just a recycling of the old liberalism. Thankfully, God is the one who builds His church, and the gates of hell, or a world embracing, post-modern generation, shall not prevail against it.