Purpose Driven or Scripture Driven? - Way of Life Literature

simple decision, since the Bible commands that God’s peoplemark, avoid, and reject doctrinal heresy (Rom. 16:17; Titus3:10-11), but by a vote of three to one the Northern BaptistConvention refused to exercise discipline. In 1945, Fosdickwrote the following to an individual who inquired about hisbeliefs: “Of course I do not believe in the virgin birth or inthat old-fashioned substitutionary doctrine of the atonement,and I know of no intelligent person who does.”In the first half of the 20th century, Dr. Robert H. Beaven,president of the Chicago Baptist Missionary Training School(Northern Baptist), denied that Jesus Christ is God, saying:“Christ’s uniqueness lay not in his divine substance butin the relationship which existed between him and God.God chose Jesus, the human Galilean carpenter, nurturedin the cradle of Jewish religion, to whom he came withhis living fellowship, and through whom he introducedsuch to men. Jesus was divine because God ‘raised’ himto a new level of life. But this was not a oneness ofsubstance. Christ’s life is an example, revealing the kindof life God wills for, and from, man; it is not asupernatural act set before us as a miraculous means ofsalvation” (Beaven, In Him Is Life).This was the man chiefly responsible for the education ofNorthern Baptist missionaries in those days.In 1924, missionary M.R. Hartley of India represented theviews of many Northern Baptist preachers when he stated:“We have no assurance that we have a trustworthy recordof anything that Jesus Christ either said or did. ... Ibelieve that Jesus Christ is the son of God but I mustinterpret that in my own way. I can conceive of myselfcoming to a position where I could sincerely say that Ibelieve in the deity of Jesus. I could almost say it now,but it would mean something different from orthodoxy,but orthodoxy seems like an impossible view. I do notsee the necessity of the death of Christ. I do not believein the second coming.”71