Southern Seminary Magazine (Vol 90.2) We Believe: Confessing Old Truths in a New Age

4 Confessional Integrity in A
Time of Theological Crisis
R. ALBERT MOHLER JR.
20 A Confessional People and
Their Confession of Faith
PETER BECK
36 A Confessing
People
JOE HARROD
SOUTHERN
SEMINARY MAGAZINE
v90 n2
We Believe
CONFESSING OLD TRUTHS IN A NEW AGE

The D.Min. is an extension of your current ministry, not a
distraction from it. It’s about helping church leaders improve what
you’re actively doing every day—faithfully ministering in the place
you’ve been called. With professors that are practitioners as well
as scholars, you can be sure that every aspect of your education is
designed to fully equip you for more faithful service.

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SOUTHERN SEMINARY MAGAZINE VOLUME 90, NUMBER 2: WE BELIEVE: CONFESSING OLD TRUTHS IN A NEW AGE SBTS.EDU

President’s Message
r. albert mohler jr.
ALBERTMOHLER.COM
@ALBERTMOHLER
Martin Luther rightly observed that the
church house is to be a “mouth house”
where words, not images or dramatic
acts, stand at the center of the
church’s attention and concern. We live by words,
and we die by words.
Truth, life, and health are found in the right words.
Paul will instruct Timothy that sound words come to
us in a revealed pattern. “Follow the pattern of sound
words that you have heard from me, in the faith and
love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who
dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to
you” (2 Tim. 1:13–14).
Theological education is a deadly serious business.
The stakes are so high. A theological seminary that
serves faithfully will be a source of health and life for
the church, but an unfaithful seminary will set loose a
torrent of trouble, untruth, and sickness upon Christ’s
people. Inevitably, the seminaries are the incubators
of the church’s future. The teaching imparted to seminarians
will shortly be inflicted upon congregations,
where the result will be either fruitfulness or barrenness,
vitality or lethargy, advance or decline, spiritual
life or spiritual death.
Sadly, the landscape is littered with theological
institutions that have poorly taught and have been
poorly led. Theological liberalism has destroyed scores
of seminaries, divinity schools, and other institutions
for the education of the ministry. Many of these
schools are now extinct, even as the churches they
served have been evacuated. Others linger on, committed
to the mission of revising the Christian faith to
make peace with the spirit of the age.
How does this happen? Rarely does an institution
decide, in one comprehensive moment of decision, to
abandon the faith and seek after another. The process
is far more dangerous and subtle. A direct institutional
evasion would be instantly recognized and corrected,
if announced honestly at the onset. Instead, theological
disaster usually comes by means of drift and evasion,
shading and equivocation. Eventually, the drift
accumulates into momentum, and the school abandons
doctrine after doctrine, truth claim after truth
claim, until the pattern of sound words, and often the
sound words themselves, are mocked, denied, and cast
aside in the spirit of theological embarrassment.
As James Petigru Boyce, founder of The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, argued, “It is with a
single man that error usually commences.” When he
wrote those words in 1856, he knew that pattern by
observation of church history. All too soon, he would
know this sad truth by personal observation.
By the time Southern Baptists were ready to establish
a theological seminary, many schools for the
training of ministers had already been lost to theological
liberalism. Drawing upon the lessons of the
past, Southern Baptists were determined to establish
schools bound by covenant and constitution to a confession
of faith—to the pattern of sound words.
Confessional seminaries require professors to
sign a statement of faith, designed to safeguard by
explicit theological summary. The sad experience of
fallen and troubled schools led Southern Baptists to
require that faculty members must teach in accordance
with the confession of faith and not contrary to
anything therein.
We are living in an anti-confessional age. Our society
and its reigning academic culture are committed
to individual autonomy and expression as well
as to an increasingly relativistic conception of truth.
The language of higher education is overwhelmingly
dominated by claims of academic freedom rather than
academic responsibility. But, among us, a confession of
faith must be seen as a gift and covenant. It is a sacred
trust that guards revealed truths. A confession of faith
never stands above the Bible, but the Bible itself mandates
concern for the pattern of sound words.
fall 2022
1

from the editor
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
JEFF ROBINSON
Fall 2022. vol. 90, no. 2.
Copyright ©2022
The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary
A little over 25 years ago, I embraced
confessional evangelical Christianity
after attending a church that was rather
proud of the fact that it had no confession
of faith. The church adopted a
slogan in place of a confession, a slogan
attributed to various well-known figures
from church history: “In essentials,
unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all
things, charity.”
To modern ears, that cliché has a
ring of wisdom, but here’s the problem:
the essentials and non-essentials were
intentionally left undefined.
The consequences of the church’s
theological murkiness emerged in a
conversation I had with a man in the
final few months I attended this church.
One Sunday morning I greeted a
man who’d been visiting for several
weeks and for the past two weeks sat in
the back of Sunday school class I taught.
I asked him where he had been attending
church, and he answered: “I’ve
been going to the Mormon church for
many years now.” I was stunned. Aware
of the monumental distance between
Mormon doctrine and what the people
in our church believed, I asked him
what made him comfortable attending
an evangelical church. “You don’t seem
to make anyone believe any particular
doctrines, and I find that attractive.”
Almost instantly, I was transformed
into a budding confessional Christian.
I realized that if a church stands for everything,
then it stands for nothing. A
church or evangelical institution needs
to communicate its theological and ethical
convictions to a watching world
for numerous reasons, not the least of
which being so it can establish precisely
what it believes about God and man and
Scripture and salvation and much more.
As you will learn or be reminded in
this issue of the Southern Seminary Magazine,
we believe that a healthy church
or a healthy seminary is one that clearly
confesses what it believes and then
commits to teach in accord with and
not contrary to that statement of faith.
The Bible teaches a very certain body
of truth that is able to make one “wise
unto salvation,” and a strong confession
of faith will make those things clear.
In an age that denies the very possibility
of absolute truth, an age that
prefers a sentimental form of love to
doctrinal precision, there is no place for
ambiguity on such vital matters.
Vice President
of Communications:
Dustin W. Benge
Managing Editor:
Jeff Robinson
Copy Editor:
C. Rebecca Rine
Creative Director: Stuart Hunt
Production Manager: Evan Sams
Graphic Designers: Dustin Benge,
Stuart Hunt, Benjamin Aho
Photographer: Trevor Wheeker
Contributing Writers: R. Albert
Mohler Jr., Peter Beck, Eric C.
Smith, Joe Harrod, Stephen Presley,
Raymond Johnson, Jarvis Williams,
Jeff Robinson, Travis Hearne
Subscription Information:
Southern Seminary Magazine is published
by the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, 2825 Lexington
Road, Louisville, KY 40280. The
magazine is distributed digitally at
equip.sbts.edu/magazine. If you
would like to request a hard copy,
please reach out by emailing
communications@sbts.edu
Mail:
The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, 2825 Lexington Road,
Louisville, KY 40280
Online: www.sbts.edu
Email: communications@sbts.edu
Telephone:
800-626-5526, ext. 4000
@TheSBTS
@SBTS
@SouthernSeminary
About the Cover:
The original Professors’
Subscription Book to the
Abstract of Principles, Southern
Seminary’s confession of faith. Every
professor on the SBTS’ faculty
agrees to “teach in accord with
and not contrary to” the
Abstract. It was written and
adopted in 1858 as part of the
seminary’s original charter.
2 the southern baptist theological seminary

contents
v90 n2
WE BELIEVE • CONFESSING OLD TRUTHS IN A NEW AGE
1
president’s
message
2
from the
editor
48
how narrow
should a
confession be?
by Jeff Robinson
32
six ways
confessions
promote church
health
by Jeff Robinson
36
a confessing
people:
a brief history
of baptist
confessions
of faith
by Joe Harrod
42
how did
the fathers
use creeds?
by Stephen Presley
45
how do you cast
a confessional
vision in a nonconfessional
church?
by Raymond Johnson
4
Confessional Integrity in a
Time of Theological Crisis
THE ABSTRACT OF PRINCIPLES THEN AND NOW
by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
10
Don’t Just Do Something; Stand There!
SOUTHERN SEMINARY AND THE ABSTRACT OF PRINCIPLES
by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
20
“I am Southern Baptist”:
A CONFESSIONAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CONFESSION OF FAITH
by Peter Beck
26
1922: Northern Baptists
Lose Their Confession
by Eric C. Smith
52
seminary wives
institute: 25
years of
god’s
faithfulness
by Jeff Robinson
57
news &
features
62
faculty
books
64
gospel light
shines on my
old eastern
kentucky
home
by Jarvis J. Williams
fall 2022
3

edeeming the time with r. albert mohler jr.

Confessional
Integrity in a Time of
Theological Crisis: The
Abstract of Principles
Then and Now
r. albert mohler jr.
From the very beginning, The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary has
been a confessional institution. Every
professor must sign our confession
of faith, the Abstract of Principles,
agreeing to teach “in accordance
with and not contrary to all that
is contained therein.” This pledge has remained
unchanged since 1859, but the history of Southern
Seminary is a history with many twists and turns.
The men who founded Southern Seminary
understood themselves as confessional Protestants
standing in a line of theological orthodoxy that
found its quintessential shape in the Reformation
of the 16th century and the Princeton Theology of
the 19 th century. They were also unapologetically
Baptist, and they perceived the need for a Baptist
seminary in the South that would serve as
the great central theological institution for the
expanding Southern Baptist Convention. Though
the convention was established in 1845, the dream
of a seminary would be deferred until 1859.
Basil Manly Sr., long pastor of First Baptist
Church in Charleston, South Carolina, had urged
Southern Baptists to establish a seminary, but
it was a young man from his own congregation,
James Petigru Boyce, who would become the
driving force in Southern Seminary’s founding
and, for many years, its very existence. On July 31,
1856, Boyce, then a new professor of theology at
Furman University, would deliver the address that
became the Magna Carta of Southern Seminary,
fall 2022
5

confessional integrity in a time of theological crisis
“Three Changes in Theological Institutions.”
Boyce called for a central theological institution that
would serve the entire denomination and beyond. He
drew upon his experience at Princeton Theological Seminary,
but he went beyond the Princeton model in calling
for one school that would offer all ministers some level
of theological education and would also offer the highest
level of academic achievement available anywhere in the
world. Such an institution would require, Boyce advised,
an excellent faculty and adequate support, including a
great theological library.
But Boyce’s third major point in his address was a
warning that theological education must be guarded by a
clear confession of faith, required of all faculty. Already, a
host of theological schools had been lost to various heresies
and the influence of theological liberalism—starting
with Harvard Divinity School, founded in orthodoxy but
largely lost to Unitarianism by the end of the 18th century.
Basil Manly Jr., another of the founding faculty, had
been urged by his father to leave the Newton Theological
Institute, a Baptist school in Massachusetts, and to enroll
at Princeton, a Presbyterian school, because Princeton
was more orthodox and held to a higher view of the
Bible. Boyce saw a theological crisis on the horizon:
A crisis in Baptist doctrine is evidently approaching,
and those of us who still cling to the doctrines
which formerly distinguished us, have the important
duty to perform of earnestly contending for
the faith once delivered to the saints. Gentlemen,
God will call us to judgment if we neglect it. 1
Boyce called for a confession of faith, clear and explicit,
that would define the theological commitments of the
school and its faculty. Every faculty member would be
required not only to sign the statement but to believe all
that it contained, without reservation. In his words:
But of him who is to teach the ministry, who is
to be the medium through which the fountain of
Scripture truth is to flow to them—whose opinions
more than those of any living man, are to
mold their conceptions of the doctrines of the
Bible, it is manifest that much more is requisite.
No difference, however slight, no peculiar sentiment,
however speculative, is here allowable. His
agreement with the standard should be exact. His
declaration of it should be based on no mental
reservation, upon no private understanding with
those who immediately invest him into office;
but the articles to be taught having been fully
and distinctly laid down, he should be able to say
from his knowledge of the Word of God, that he
knows these articles to be an exact summary of
the truth therein contained. If the summary of
truth established be incorrect, it is the duty of the
Board to change it, if such change be within their
power; if not, let an appeal be made to those who
have the power, and if there be none such, then far
better is it that the whole endowment be thrown
aside than that the principle be adopted that the
Professor sign any abstract of doctrine with which
he does not agree, and in accordance with which
he does not intend to teach. No Professor should
be allowed to enter upon such duties as are there
undertaken with the understanding that he is at
liberty to modify the truth, which he has been
placed there to inculcate. 2
Boyce had learned that pattern of confessional subscription
at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he
was influenced by the example set by that institution and
the arguments taught by Professor Samuel Miller. Miller
warned especially against the right of a professor to sign
the confession with reservations or by a private understanding
with those who assign him to teach. 3 Princeton
Theological Seminary’s own historic charter and bylaws
required the professors to “solemnly promise to engage
not to inculcate, teach, or insinuate anything which shall
appear to me to contradict or contravene, either directly
or indirectly, any thing taught in the said confession of
faith or catechism … while I shall continue a Professor
in this Seminary.” 4
All this should indicate beyond question that confessional
subscription was to be without any “hesitation or
mental reservation,” in Boyce’s words, and without any
private understanding between a faculty member and the
president or Board of Trustees.
And yet, by the time I arrived at Southern Seminary
as a student in 1980, that understanding of confessional
commitment was absent from the majority of the faculty.
Indeed, some professors openly expressed their disagreement
with the Abstract of Principles. In my second year
I took Systematic Theology with Professor Dale Moody,
a titanic figure, who passed out his own revision of the
Abstract early in the term. 5 Moody considered himself a
biblicist who would not defer to any human confession
of faith over his own interpretation of the Scriptures. He
also claimed to have entered the faculty in the 1940s by
a private understanding with President John R. Sampey
over Article XIII, “Perseverance of the Saints.”
As a student, I was surprised by Professor Moody’s
candor, to say the least. At the same time, I was also
aware that many other faculty members contradicted the
6 the southern baptist theological seminary

. albert mohler jr.
confession without Moody’s candor.
By the early 1970s open theological warfare broke
out within the Southern Baptist Convention, and by the
time I arrived as a seminary student, Southern Seminary
was a prime battlefield. The Abstract of Principles was
once again the focus of controversy, as Dale Moody was
terminated from his teaching contract by President Roy
L. Honeycutt due to Moody’s open contradiction of the
Abstract of Principles. Nevertheless, the majority of the
faculty expressed opposition to the Abstract as a regulative
confession, and many argued in public that the statement
of faith was open to individual interpretation. In
essence, the argument was that the only way a professor
could be found in conflict with the confession of faith is
for the professor to declare that conflict.
That argument was made repeatedly in a book by
retired Southern Seminary professors published in
1993 by Review & Expositor, then the Seminary’s faculty
journal. Professor Dale Moody directly addressed the
Abstract of Principles yet again. He recited the controversy
that led to his termination and claimed that three
successive presidents of Southern Seminary (John R.
Sampey, Ellis Fuller, and Duke K. McCall) had allowed
him to offer revisions or footnotes to the Abstract when
signing it. Professor Willis Bennett, who had also served
as provost of the seminary, looked back to his interview
with the Academic Personnel Committee of the Board
of Trustees: “In 1959, when I was interviewed by a
trustee committee before my election to the faculty, I
was questioned about the confessional statement of the
seminary, the Abstract of Principles. I provided my own
interpretation and my comments satisfied the trustees.
They viewed the Abstract, as did I, as a broad statement
which provided room for differences of opinion while
still accepting the parameters.” 6 The problem is that
while differences of opinion were certainly allowed, open
conflict with the clear language of the Abstract was also
allowed, and sometimes celebrated.
The issues of biblical inerrancy, inspiration, and
authority were central to the controversy that so reshaped
the Southern Baptist Convention in the last decades of
the 20 th century and into the 21st, but the controversy
also ranged across the full spectrum of theological issues.
When the search committee looking for a new president
came to me in 1993, a conservative majority on the
Board of Trustees was looking to elect a conservative
president. By that point, a majority of trustees had come
to understand and affirm the necessity of reforming the
seminary and of recovering theological orthodoxy. Many
did not yet understand the centrality of the Abstract of
Principles to that process.
Early in 1993, the search committee identified four
“I understood that one of my most
significant responsibilities as the new
president was to make the confessional
nature of the seminary unmistakably clear.
I also understood that the convocation
message traditionally presented by the
president for the opening of the new
academic year was the right moment for
such a public declaration.”
fall 2022
7

candidates to be interviewed. I was one of the four. In
preparation for the interview, we were each asked for a
statement on the Abstract of Principles. In response, I
submitted a 42-page commentary covering each article
of the confession. In the many hours of interview, I made
clear that orthodoxy would require confessional correction,
as understood by James P. Boyce and the other
founders. The search committee eventually invited me to
accept their nomination, and I made the same presentation
over many hours with the full Board of Trustees. I
was elected president on March 26, 1993.
I understood that one of my most significant responsibilities
as the new president was to make the confessional
nature of the seminary unmistakably clear. I also
understood that the convocation message traditionally
presented by the president for the opening of the
new academic year was the right moment for such a
public declaration.
There was more to the story. I also perceived that
many of the seminary’s faculty and the vast majority of
the students had virtually no idea of the founders’ vision
of the Abstract of Principles and no real understanding
of the school’s confessional history—much less an awareness
of the confessional subscription and fidelity that was
so central to the seminary’s founding and still required
by contract of all faculty.
Boyce had actually added to the precedent of Princeton
by requiring that the Abstract of Principles be signed
by every professor, and not merely affirmed verbally. So
every single member of the faculty in 1993 had signed
that very statement, agreeing to teach “in accordance
with and not contrary to” all that it contained. At the
very least, I was going to remind them of that commitment
to which they had affixed their name by their own
hand. Beyond that, I wanted to make very clear the path
I would take as president, bringing the school into consistency
with the confession of faith.
I entitled my address, “Don’t Just Do Something;
Stand There,” using an expression I remembered from
reading a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. That
address was my manifesto of Southern Seminary’s identity,
taking us back to the crisis in Baptist doctrine that
James P. Boyce saw on the horizon in 1856 and making
the argument that we were then engaged in that very crisis.
That address is included in this issue.
More than 25 years later, I can only thank God for
what has happened at Southern Seminary in this generation.
The theological recovery for which we had longed,
prayed, and worked has come to pass. This very volume
is evidence of that. In this generation, every professor
elected to the faculty gladly signs the Abstract of Principles
in full public view during a convocation and gladly
teaches all that it contains. Confessional fidelity is made
clear at every stage in the hiring process and is a living
and public commitment held in trust by the president,
the faculty, and the Board of Trustees.
8 the southern baptist theological seminary

Every faculty member makes the sacred commitment
to teach in accordance with and not contrary to the
Abstract of Principles and the Baptist Faith and Message
as adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000.
We elect to this faculty only professors who are eager to
teach our confessional beliefs, not those who would be
merely willing to do so. Our determination is to maintain
this school for evangelical orthodoxy and Baptist faithfulness
for generations to come.
In 1874, James P. Boyce recalled the establishment of
the seminary and the adoption of the Abstract of Principles,
reminding the Southern Baptist Convention that
the confession of faith had been adopted not only by the
seminary’s Board of Trustees, but by the special action of
the 1858 Education Convention of the Southern Baptist
Convention. He also reminded Baptists that the Abstract
had been adopted as a statement of doctrines held nearly
universally among Southern Baptists at the time. 7
The Abstract of Principles was instrumental in the
recovery of this seminary. We were able to point to the
moral and contractual obligation agreed to by every professor,
and to the very language that the founders used to
frame this sacred commitment. Thus, this commitment
is more than a doctrinal exposition or devotional exercise.
It is the display of public fidelity to a confession of
faith, to the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and
to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary and daily host of The Briefing.
_____
Notes
1. James P. Boyce, Three Changes in Theological Institutions: An
Inaugural Address Delivered to the Board of Trustees of the Furman
University, July 31, 1856 (Greenville: C. J. Elford’s Book and Job
Press, 1856), 34.
2. Boyce, Three Changes, 35.
3. See Samuel Miller, “The Utility and Importance of Creeds and
Confessions: An Address Delivered at Princeton Theological
Seminary,” 1824.
4. “Of the Professors,” Charter and By-Laws, Princeton Theological
Seminary, Article III, Section 3.
5. The fact that Professor Moody passed out this revision to students
in his classes was denied by some seminary authorities at
the time, but copies are contained within the Moody papers in
the James P. Boyce Centennial Library, and Moody provided the
same revision to the Board of Trustees in 1982. Interestingly, it
later became known that President Duke K. McCall had asked at
least some members of the faculty to provide proposed revisions
to the Abstract of Principles in 1979, presumably in a more liberal
direction. Moody responded with a long, multi-page letter, also
found in the Moody papers collection. See also Gregory A. Wills,
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 1859-2009 (New York:
Oxford University Press), 438-44.
6. Willis Bennett in “How I Changed My Mind: Essays by Retired
Professors of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary” (Louisville:
Review & Expositor, 1993), 88.
7. James P. Boyce, “Two Objections to the Seminary,” Western
Recorder, June 20, 1874.
fall 2022
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inaugural convocation address
r. albert mohler jr.
Don’t Just Do
Something; Stand
There! Southern
Seminary and
the Abstract of
Principles
10 the southern baptist theological seminary

A convocation address delivered by R. Albert Mohler Jr.,
president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
August 31, 1993, in Alumni Memorial Chapel
“But we should always give thanks to God
for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord,
because God has chosen you from the
beginning for salvation through sanctification
by the Spirit and faith in the truth. And
it was for this He called you through our
gospel, that you may gain the glory of our
Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand
firm and hold to the traditions which you
were taught, whether by word of mouth or
by letter from us.”
(2 Thess. 2:13–15, NASB)
The seminary convocation, which opens each
academic year, constitutes a unique gathering of
the seminary community, assembled to welcome
new students and new faculty, and to solemnize
the beginning of a new seminary term. The roots
of such an academic convocation are found in
the British universities of Oxford and Durham,
where for centuries the university communities
have assembled to mark the inauguration
of formal studies.
At Southern Seminary, the tradition is as old as
the institution itself, for the very earliest minutes
of the school record formal services at the start of
each academic year. A convocation of the Southern
Seminary family, gathered for worship and commemoration,
is a fitting hallmark of the seminary’s
tradition and is the cause of our gathering this
day.
Today, you have witnessed a ceremony which
has been a central part of this institution’s life and
commitment for 134 years—the signing of the
original Abstract of Principles.
The convergence of this ceremony as the first
convocation of my service as president and as
the occasion of placing my own signature on this
sacred document prompts me to reflect upon the
meaning of this confession, on its role as the seminary’s
charter of fidelity, on the priceless heritage
of faithfulness of those who have preceded us, and
on the responsibility we collectively bear to keep
faith with this body of biblical doctrine.
Russell Reno, professor of moral theology at
Creighton University, recently reflected on the
role of confessions in the church:
The impulse behind confessions of faith is
doxological, the desire to speak the truth
about God, to give voice to the beauty
of holiness in the fullest possible sense.
However, the particular forms that historical
confessions take are shaped by confrontation.
Their purpose is to respond to
the spirit of the age by rearticulating in a
pointed way the specific content of Christianity
so as to face new challenges as well
as new forms of old challenges. As a result,
formal confessions are characterized by
pointed distinctions. They are exercises in
drawing boundaries where the particular
force of traditional Christian claims is
sharpened to heighten the contrast between
orthodoxy and heresy, between true belief
and false belief…. As they shape our beliefs,
confessions structure our identities. 1
My design today—on this day, which will ever
remain sacred in my memory as the occasion of
my own public attestation of this confession—is
for us to consider the central role of the Abstract
of Principles in structuring the identity of The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
The roots of that role are integral to the founding
of this institution in the 1850s. The very idea of
a central Baptist seminary was controversial then,
and so it remained for over half a century. Baptists,
though increasingly convinced of the need for an
educated ministry, were suspicious of centralized
structures and had long established a pattern of
uneven cooperation in educational endeavors.
The decline and loss of Columbian College was
but the most celebrated embarrassment to Baptist
educational efforts.
On the other hand, virtually all of the Baptist
colleges and universities founded in the 19th
century were established for the express purpose
fall 2022
11

don’t just do something; stand there!
of training ministers of the gospel and had developed
theological departments of varying size and impact. Each
had a loyal following, however, and none was ready to
surrender its own institutional identity in order to meld
a larger school. That was true, at least, until the rise of
James Petigru Boyce.
Boyce, the son of a patriarchal South Carolina businessman
and financier, brought together the threads of
seminary aspiration left untied by so many others. As
a 29-year-old theology professor at Furman University,
Boyce delivered his inaugural
address as what became the Magna
Carta of Southern Seminary, “Three
Changes in Theological Institutions.”
Educated at Brown University
and Princeton Seminary, Boyce had
followed a privileged educational
pathway. In presenting his vision
for a uniquely Southern Baptist
theological institution, he drew from
his own experiences at Brown and
Princeton, his tenure as a newspaper
editor, his deep rootage in what
historian Walter Shurden has identified
as the “Charleston Tradition” in
Southern Baptist life, and the wisdom which had been
imparted to him by the influence of others.
Among those who influenced Boyce, surely none
exerted a more powerful moral, theological, and ministerial
impact than Boyce’s former pastor and future trustee
chairman, Basil Manly Sr. Manly, who had been pastor
of First Baptist Church, Charleston, during Boyce’s boyhood,
was one of the towering figures of the South, and
of the Southern Baptist Convention. Manly was also an
ardent confessionalist who believed that a confession of
faith, clearly articulated and endowed with institutional
James P. Boyce (1827–1888)
Southern’s First President
authority, was a necessary precondition to Southern Baptist
support for a theological seminary.
Boyce delivered his weighty address, uncertain that
Southern Baptists would ever respond to his call, but certain
of his rectitude in pointing the denomination toward
a vision for theological education that was open at some
level to all persons, regardless of their educational preparation,
offered the most strenuous programs to persons
of exceptional preparation, and was firmly rooted in a
confession of doctrinal principles binding upon all who
would teach therein.
This last point, the third of
Boyce’s three proposed changes, is
our concern today. Boyce’s call was
answered in the Educational Convention
of 1857 and in the eventual
founding of The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, and Boyce
was himself to be the central stack
pole of the founding faculty.
But Boyce did not dream or serve
alone. The most critical role in bringing
the Abstract of Principles to final
form was served by Basil Manly Jr.,
another of the four founding faculty
members. The younger Manly had also enjoyed a Princeton
Seminary education. Though he began his studies for
the ministry at Newton Theological Institution, a Baptist
school, he was directed to Princeton by his father, at least
in part because Princeton was governed by a regulative
confession of faith.
At Princeton, both Manly and Boyce had studied
under the imposing figure of Samuel Miller, a stalwart
defender of Presbyterian theological and ecclesiastical
standards, who argued that “the necessity and importance
of creeds and confessions appears from the consideration
“Every elected and tenured
faculty member of this
institution has freely and
willfully affixed his or her name
to this historic record and to
this confession of faith.”
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. albert mohler jr.
Nassau Hall, Princeton University, 1836
that one great design of establishing a church in our
world was that she might be, in all ages, a depository, a
guardian, and a witness of the truth.” 2
That same conviction drove Boyce, both Manlys,
John A. Broadus, and those who deliberated with the, to
propose an Abstract of Principles based upon the Second
London Confession, which was itself a Baptist revision
of the Westminster Confession. The Second London
Confession had been adopted in slightly revised form
by the Baptist associations in Philadelphia and Charleston
and had thus greatly influenced Baptists of both the
North and the South.
Writing in 1874, Boyce detailed the principles which
guided the drafting committee:
The Abstract of Principles must be: 1. A complete
exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of grace,
so that in no essential particular should they
speak dubiously; 2. They should speak out clearly
and distinctly as to the practices universally prevalent
among us; 3. Upon no point, upon which the
denomination is divided, should the convention,
and through it, the seminary, take any position. 3
This explanation clarifies the Abstract’s originating
process and underlines the incredible theological unity
of Southern Baptists at the middle of the 19th century.
The members of the drafting committee were certain that
Southern Baptists were undivided on “the fundamental
doctrines of grace” and that the matters which threatened
denominational unity—and were thus avoided by the
confession—dealt with issues related to the Landmark
controversies, in particular to questions of baptism, alien
immersion, and to related issues.
The committee protected the integrity of the confession’s
witness to the doctrines of grace and, as Boyce
indicated, spoke dubiously on no essential particular.
Indeed, the Abstract remains a powerful testimony to a
Baptist theological heritage that is genuinely evangelical,
Reformed, biblical, and orthodox.
When the Committee on the Plan of Organization
brought its report in 1858—just one year before classes
would begin—the fundamental laws of the institution
stipulated that the Abstract of Principles, “selected as
the fundamental principles of the gospel, shall be subscribed
to by every professor elect, as indicative of his
concurrence in its correctness as an epitome of biblical
truth; and it shall be the imperative duty of the board to
remove any professor of whose violation of the pledge
they feel satisfied.” 4
In that spirit, every elected and tenured faculty
member of this institution has freely and willfully
affixed his or her name to this historic record and to this
confession of faith.
In publishing their report, the committee also indicated
that the Abstract “will always be a guarantee as
to the safety of the funds now contributed, against any
perversion from their original intention.” The confession
was designed to be compact, but “without obscurity
or weakness.” Its articles begin with the issue of Holy
Scripture, and there is affirmed the basis of all Christian
knowledge—the knowledge of the true God who has
graciously and freely revealed himself to his creatures—
in Scripture inspired by God which is sufficient, certain,
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don’t just do something; stand there!
“The founders of this institution were
quite ready to speak of orthodoxy and
heterodoxy, of evangelical truth and
heresy. This was a vocabulary used
with individuals certain of the reality
of divine revelation and the necessity
of orthodox teaching. These issues were
taken with deadly seriousness.”
and authoritative. In their certainty they bear witness to
the perfection and unblemished truthfulness of God’s
self-revelation through the written Word.
From there the Abstract is bold to confess that this
God who has spoken is none other than the one sovereign
Lord and creator of the universe, infinite in
all his divine perfections, “the maker, Preserver, and
Ruler of all things.”
Furthermore, God is revealed to be a Trinity of three
divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “without
division of nature, essence, or being.” Those who voice
assaults ancient or modern upon the integrity of the
Trinity will find no comfort here.
This God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
“decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and
perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures
and all events.” No more comprehensive witness to the
reality of divine providence is imaginable. This God is
neither inert nor inactive nor ineffectual. The relationship
between divine sovereignty and human freedom is
beyond our limited understanding, but God is God, and
his sovereignty is unconditioned.
The Abstract testifies to the grace-filled doctrine of
election as “God’s choice of some persons into everlasting
life—not because of unforeseen merit in them, but
of his mere mercy in Christ.” But of his mere mercy in
Christ! Could there be any more eloquent affirmation of
God’s saving purpose in election?
The confession also points directly to the issue of
human sin through the fall, whereby human beings created
in the image of God and thus free from sin “transgressed
the command of God” and fell from perfection
and holiness, such that all now inherit a nature “corrupt
and wholly opposed to God and his law,” and become
actual transgressors when capable of moral action.
Therein is our condemnation.
But Jesus Christ, the “divinely appointed Mediator,”
took on human form, yet without sin, and “suffered and
died upon the cross for the salvation of sinners.” This
same Jesus was buried, rose again the third day, and
ascended to his Father, from whose right hand he “ever
liveth to make intercession for his people.” Beyond all
this, he is “the only Mediator, the Prophet, Priest, and
King of the Church, and Sovereign of the universe.”
God’s salvific purpose is demonstrated in regeneration,
whereby the sinful heart, wholly opposed to God in
itself, is quickened and enlightened “spiritually and savingly,”
as “a work of God’s free and special grace alone.”
Therein is our salvation.
Then the Abstract points to repentance, by which we
are “made sensible of the manifold evil” of our individual
sin and respond by means of this “evangelical grace”
so that, with sorrow, detestation of sin, and self-abhorrence,
we seek to “walk before God so as to please
him in all things.”
Faith is then believing on God’s authority the gospel
concerning Christ, “accepting and resting on him
alone for justification and eternal life.” This too is a
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. albert mohler jr.
divine gift wrought by the Holy Spirit to those who are
unworthy and, on their own part, unable to conjure faith
unaided by the Spirit.
Those who have trusted in Christ by faith are then justified
and acquitted before God through the satisfaction
that Christ has made, “not for anything wrought in them
or done by them; but on account of the obedience and
satisfaction of Christ, they receiving and resting on him.”
Thereafter comes sanctification, by which the
redeemed are granted divine strength so as to press
“after a heavenly life in cordial obedience to all
Christ’s commands.”
Those whom God has redeemed in Christ “will never
totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace but
shall certainly persevere to the end.” Even though they
may fall, they are “kept by the power of God through
faith unto salvation.”
In successive articles the Abstract affirms and confesses
Jesus Christ as the head of the church; the church
as the possessor of all “needful authority for administering
that order, discipline, and worship which he hath
appointed”; baptism by immersion in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit as the sign
of fellowship with the death and resurrection of Christ,
of remission of sin, and of consecration unto God; the
Lord’s Supper as the church’s ordinance of commemoration
of Christ’s death and as “a bond, pledge, and renewal
of their communion with him”; of the Lord’s Day as a
regular observance of worship, both public and private;
of liberty of conscience on issues “which are in anything
contrary to his Word, or not contained in it,” and yet of
subjugation to civil magistrates in all lawful things.
The Abstract also confesses that our bodies return to
dust after death, but our spirits return immediately to
God—“the righteous to rest with him; the wicked, to be
reserved under darkness to the judgment.” At the last day,
the bodies of both the just and the unjust will be raised.
On the appointed Day of Judgment, God will judge the
world by Jesus Christ, and “the wicked shall go into everlasting
punishment; the righteous into everlasting life.”
In this we have inherited a priceless and grace-filled
testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the eternal
truths revealed in Holy Scripture.
Philip Schaff, whose great work The Creeds of Christendom
remains an indispensable classic, defined a creed,
however it is labeled, as “a confession of faith for public
use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain
articles of belief which are regarded by the framers
as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of
the Christian Church.” 5
Schaff well described the purpose of the founders of
Southern Seminary in framing the Abstract of Principles.
It is a testimony to those central doctrines necessary to
salvation, and to other issues essential to the well-being
of the Christian church.
What operative convictions are revealed in
the Abstract and in the testimony of those who
framed the confession?
First, that truth is always confronted with error, and
that the doctrinal depository of the church is ever in danger
of compromise. The founders of this institution were
quite ready to speak of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, of
evangelical truth and heresy. This was a vocabulary used
with individuals certain of the reality of divine revelation
and the necessity of orthodox teaching. These issues were
taken with deadly seriousness.
They offered no apology for stipulating doctrinal
issues, nor for demanding theological fidelity. In fact,
Boyce specifically aimed his critical sights at “that sentiment,
the inevitable precursor, or the accompaniment
of all heresy—that the doctrines of theology are matters
of mere speculation, and that its distinctions only logo
machines and technicalities…” 6 There is no theological
indifference to be found here—no doctrinal minimalism
or lowest common doctrinal denominator is the
focus or sentiment.
This is a robust, full-orbed faith from beginning to
end; a faith which would establish Southern Seminary on
its rightful course.
Southern Seminary was established in the very year
Darwin published his The Origin of Species. Critical
philosophies were already spreading from Europe to the
United States. Harvard had fallen to Unitarianism and
Transcendentalism. Established seminaries in the North,
once considered secure in the faith, were now seen to be
wavering. Boyce and his colleagues saw a “crisis in Baptist
doctrine” approaching, and they were determined
that Southern Seminary be ready. 7
Second, that a confession of faith is a necessary,
proper, and instrumental safeguard against theological
atrophy or error. As Boyce argued, “It is based upon
principles and practices sanctioned by the authority of
Scripture and by the usage of our people.” Further, “you
will receive by this assurance that the truth committed
unto you by the founders is fulfilled in accordance
with their wishes, that the ministry that go forth have
here learned to distinguish truth from error, and to
embrace the former….”
Beyond this, the confession is a safeguard to trustees,
to faculty, to students, and to the denomination:
It seems to me … that you owe this to yourselves,
to your professors, and to the denomination
at large; to yourselves because your position as
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“Let those who would understand
Southern Seminary understand this:
That our faith is not in the Abstract of
Principles, but in the God to whom it
testifies; that the revealed text we seek
rightly to divide is not the Abstract
of Principles, but Holy Scripture, but
that this Abstract is a sacred contract
and confession for those who teach
here—who willingly and willfully affix
their signatures to its text and their
conscience to its intention. They pledge
to teach ‘in accordance with and not
contrary to’ its precepts.”
r. albert mohler jr.
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. albert mohler jr.
trustees makes you responsible for the doctrinal
positions of your professors, and the whole history
of creeds has proved the difficulty without them
of correcting errorists of perversions of the Word
of God—to your professors, that their doctrinal
sentiments may be known and approved by all,
that no charges of heresy be brought against them;
that none shall whisper of peculiar notions which
they hold, but that in refutation of all charges they
may point to this formulary as one which they
hold ex animo, and teach in its true import and
to the denomination at large, that they may know
in what truths the rising ministry are instructed,
may exercise full sympathy with the necessities of
the institution, and may look with confidence and
affection to the pastors who come forth from it. 8
Here is where the institution would stand, before God
and before the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The founders were certain that this was solid
ground, and in this they were surely right.
Third, that a theological institution bears a unique
responsibility to protect the integrity of the gospel, and
that its professors should give their unmixed and public
attestation to the confession of faith. As Boyce commented:
You will infringe the rights of no man, and you
will secure the rights of those who have established
here an instrumentality for the production
of a sound ministry. It is no hardship to those who
teach here to be called upon to sign the declaration
of their principles, for there are fields of usefulness
open elsewhere to every man, and none
need accept your call who cannot conscientiously
sign your formulary.
Fourth, that those who teach the ministry bear the
greatest burden of accountability to the churches and to
the denomination.
Boyce delivered his address as the ghost of Alexander
Campbell still haunted the Baptist mind. Campbell
criticized confessions of faith as assaults upon freedom
of conscience and, as Boyce lamented, “threatened at one
time the total destruction of our faith.” As Boyce feared,
“Had he occupied a chair in one of our theological institutions,
that destruction might have been completed.”
“It is with a single man that error usually commences,”
argued Boyce. “Scarcely a single heresy has ever blighted
the church which has not owed its existence to one man
of power and ability whose name has always been associated
with its doctrines.” Boyce specifically identified
Campbellism and Arminianism.
Those who founded this institution were painfully and
solemnly aware of the history of heresy, which included
Arianism, Nestorianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism—a
parade of doctrinal deviation. And they were determined
to safeguard the institution they would establish, insofar
as human determination would suffice. They knew nothing
of radical revisionist theologies which would follow,
of process philosophy and deconstructionism, of demythologization
and logical positivism. But they knew the
pattern of compromise and deviation which marked the
checkered history of the church and its testimony to the
truth. They had seen the radical Enlightenment and the
French Revolution, and they had seen enough to understand
the challenge.
The faculty of Southern Seminary would be held to
a standard higher than that required of the churches,
higher than that required of students, higher than that
required of those who would teach at many sister institutions.
As Boyce stipulated:
But of him who is to teach the ministry, who is
to be the medium through which the fountain of
Scripture truth is to flow to them—whose opinions
more than those of any living man, are to mold
their conceptions of the doctrines of the Bible, it
is manifest that more is requisite. No difference,
however slight, no peculiar sentiments, however
speculative, is here allowable. His agreement with
the standard should be exact. His declaration of
it should be based upon no mental reservation,
upon no private understanding with those who
immediately invest him into office; but the articles
to be taught being distinctly laid down, he should
be able to say from his knowledge of the Word of
God that he knows these articles to be an exact
summary of the truth therein contained.
Let those who would understand Southern Seminary
understand this: that our faith is not in the Abstract of
Principles, but in the God to whom it testifies; that the
revealed text we seek rightly to divide is not the Abstract
of Principles, but Holy Scripture, but that this Abstract
is a sacred contract and confession for those who teach
here—who willingly and willfully affix their signatures
to its text and their conscience to its intention. They
pledge to teach “in accordance with and not contrary
to” its precepts.
The Abstract is not something foreign which has
been imposed upon this institution—it is the charter
of its existence and its license to teach the ministry. Its
purpose is unity, not disunity; its heart is bent toward
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don’t just do something; stand there!
The Abstract of Principles signed by the founding faculty of Southern Seminary.
common confession.
In some sectors of theological education, confessionalism
is assumed and charged to be dead—a fossil of an
ancient era when the church claimed and proclaimed
objective truth on the basis of divine revelation.
Some would now celebrate what Edward Farley has
identified as the “collapse of the house of authority.” 9
Confessions, creeds, doctrines, truth claims, supernaturalism,
theism, commands—all these are swept away by
the acids of modernity.
It cannot be so here. Not because we are unaware
of the currents of modern knowledge; not because we
do not understand the challenges of a relativistic and
secular age, where all issues of truth and meaning are
automatically privatized and politicized; not because
we are unaware of the hermeneutics of suspicion, but
precisely because we have faith in God, and in his truth
unchanged and unchanging. Our motive is not to seek
false refuge in an antiquarian past absolved of all its faults
and blemishes, but to keep the faith once for all delivered
to the saints. We fear no charges of foundationalism,
positivism, or authoritarianism. We do fear God and
his divine judgment.
The Abstract is our most fundamental centering
covenant with each other as faculty, students, president,
and trustees. For students, it is the framework within
which you should expect to receive instruction and
education. You will not be tested by the Abstract upon
your arrival nor your departure, but it should frame your
expectations and assure the confessional parameters
of your study here. It is a pledge your professors have
made before they enter your classroom to teach, and it
is because they so highly esteem their calling to teach
the ministers of the church that they have come here
and committed their lives to serve the church and the
cause of Christ by investing their lives in you. They do
so gladly, heartily, and with consecration. They deserve
your utmost respect, affection, and dedicated attention.
For faculty, the Abstract is the charter to teach and
the standard of confessional judgment. Southern Seminary
is a confessional institution, a pre-committed
institution. Teachers here should expose students to the
full array of modern variants of thought related to their
courses of study. But these options are not value-neutral.
The standard of judgment is found within the parameters
of the Abstract. In this charter is found the platform for
true academic excellence, where all fields of study are
submitted to the most rigorous and analytical study; but
also found here is the standard for confessional fidelity
to the churches and the denomination, for these fields
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. albert mohler jr.
of study and research are conducted by those who have
established their own confessional commitments and
who make these plain and evident to those who come
here to study and to learn.
But the importance and impact of the Abstract of
Principles and of Southern Seminary reaches much farther.
We have arrived at a critical moment for the Southern
Baptist Convention and its churches. A denomination
once marked by intense theological commitment and a
demonstrable theological consensus has seen that doctrinal
unity pass into a programmatic consciousness. We are
in danger of losing our theological grammar and, more
seriously by far, of forfeiting our theological inheritance.
This crisis far outweighs the controversy which has
marked the Southern Baptist Convention for the last
fourteen years. That controversy is a symptom rather
than the root cause. As Southern Baptists, we are in
danger of becoming God’s most unembarrassed pragmatists—much
more enamored with statistics than invested
in theological substance.
The Abstract is a reminder that we bear a responsibility
to this great denomination, whose name we so proudly
bear as our own. We bear the collective responsibility to
call this denomination back to itself and its doctrinal
inheritance. This is a true reformation and revival only
the sovereign God can accomplish, but we must strive
to be acceptable and usable instruments of that renewal.
The Abstract represents a clarion call to start with
conviction rather than mere action. It cries out “Don’t
just do something; stand there!” This reverses the conventional
wisdom of the world, but it puts the emphasis
rightly. Southern Baptists are now much more feverishly
concerned with doing than with believing—and thus our
denominational soul is in jeopardy. This people of God
must reclaim a theological tradition which understands
all of our denominational activity to be founded upon
prior doctrinal commitments. This is true for the denomination
at every level—and of the local churches as well.
But this message is also critical for the future of theological
education and of Southern Seminary. We can
never measure our life and work in terms of activity and
statistics. In the view of eternity, we will be judged most
closely not on the basis of how many courses were taught,
how many students were trained, how many syllabi were
printed, or how many books were published, but on
whether or not we kept the faith.
The other issues are hardly irrelevant, and they are
valid markers of institutional stewardship and ministry.
But there is a prior question: Does the institution and
those who teach here stand for God’s truth, and do so
without embarrassment? May we answer that question
with the humble confidence of Martin Luther and say,
“Here we stand; we can do no other. God help us.”
R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary and daily host of The Briefing.
_____
Notes
1. Russell Reno, “At the Crossroads of Dogma,” in Reclaiming the
Faith, ed. Ephraim Radner and George R. Sumner (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1993), 105. Inaugural Convocation Address xvii.
2. Samuel Miller, Doctrinal Integrity (Philadelphia, 1824), 11.
3. James P. Boyce, “The Doctrinal Position of the Seminary,” The
Western Recorder, June 20, 1874. Fifth in a series of articles. This
article was reprinted in Review & Expositor, January 1944, 18–24.
4. “Report of the Committee on Organization,” The Southern Baptist,
May 11, 1858, 1.
5. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom: With a History and Critical
Notes, Three volumes (New York: Harper and Row, 1931), I:3.
6. James Petigru Boyce, “Three Changes in Theological Institutions,”
in James Petigru Boyce: Selected Writings, ed. Timothy E George
(Nashville: Broadman Press, 1989), 49.
7. Ibid., 49.
8. Ibid., 52. All further citations from James P. Boyce are from this
address, ad passim, unless otherwise noted.
9. Edward Farley, Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological
Method (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), see esp. 165–70.
10. Phrase borrowed from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Truth Unchanged,
Unchanging (Westchester, IL: Crossway Publishers, 1993.
“The Abstract is a reminder that we bear a
responsibility to this great denomination, whose
name we so proudly bear as our own. We bear the
collective responsibility to call this denomination
back to itself and its doctrinal inheritance.”
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20 the southern baptist theological seminary

“I am Southern Baptist”:
A Confessional People
and Their
Confession of Faith
peter beck
“Who are you?”, the criminal once asked Batman.
“Who are you?”, the Who once asked
their generation.
In one sense, the answer should be obvious.
We ought to be able to answer as Popeye did: “I
am who I am, and that’s all that I am.” But, is it
really? Can your identity be boiled down to one
easy statement? “I’m Peter.” Or, “I’m a pastor.” “I’m
Karis’ father.” “I’m Melanie’s husband.” You get the
idea. Who you are is not one thing or another. It’s
the aggregate of many things.
If that’s true of each of us as individuals, how
much more complex must the answer be when
we answer as a body, as a gathering of diverse yet
somehow like-minded folk who share a common
identity? Now, think of the complexity of the
answer to that question when the answer represents
the collective sentiments of millions of
people in a denomination or even a movement
that spans the globe.
Yet people ask us all the time, “Who are you?
What’s a Baptist? How are you different than any
other church or religious group?”
One would hope that any church-going Southern
Baptist could answer such questions with
aplomb. But can they?
I regularly begin a class on Baptist theology by
asking doctoral students, “What does it mean to
be Baptist?” I get all the expected answers. “We
practice believer’s baptism by immersion.” So? So
do many evangelical groups who aren’t Baptists.
“We believe in congregational polity.” Yeah, so do
some of your charismatic neighbors. “We hold to
regenerate church membership.” And? Around
and around we go.
They eventually get my point just as you did.
Baptists are all those things. And more. Thus, the
answer to the question, “Baptists, who are you?”, is
complex. The answer to that question is found in
our corporate identity and, as Southern Baptists,
in our corporate confession of faith.
Southern Baptists and Their Confession of Faith
The founding president of the Southern Baptist
Convention, William B. Johnson, famously and
erroneously said Baptists have no creed but the
Bible. The irony, of course, is such a statement
is a creedal statement, a summary statement of
belief, personal or otherwise. He said it because he
believed it. Most Baptists didn’t.
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a confessional people and their confession of faith
From the start Baptists have been a confessional people.
This was true of Baptists in Europe. It was true of
Baptists in America. In fact, as Baptists began to form
unions for cooperation, they did so around confessional
statements like the Philadelphia Confession or the
Charleston Confession. For Baptists further north, it was
the New Hampshire Confession of Faith. This was true
for churches, associations, and denominations.
Not even a generation after Johnson’s profession,
Baptists in his own state of South Carolina produced a
confession of faith for the founding of what became the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859. Thus,
the Abstract of Principles became the theological statement
of what it meant to be a Southern Baptist in the
South for generations as pastors and denominational
leaders were taught “in accordance with and not contrary
to” the Abstract of Principles. Virtually from the
outset, Southern Baptists professed a corporate faith that
defined them as a movement and shaped their disciplemaking
endeavors.
In the ensuing years, statements of faith like the
Abstract were also used to protect the denomination from
theological drift. Such was the case with the dismissal of
Lottie Moon’s onetime fiancé, Crawford Howell Toy, in
1879. Toy lost his professorial appointment at Southern
Seminary not simply because he refused to adhere to the
Abstract but because his own faith commitments had
moved beyond it. He was, in essence, no longer a Southern
Baptist, as evidenced by his failure to teach in accordance
with the confession of that people. In due time,
Toy left Baptist life behind altogether for Unitarianism.
Those ideals which informed Toy’s departure from
Southern Baptist life impacted other denominations at
the end of the 19th century as well. Modernism in its
many forms led pastors like Presbyterian David Swing
to reject all confessional statements before leaving his
own denomination. A generation later, the Baptist Harry
Emerson Fosdick could pastor a Presbyterian church,
because the orthodoxy of one generation no longer held
any authority over the next. Many in that day agreed
and saw no problem with the pastoral arrangement.
Some even went so far as to encourage Fosdick to simply
become a Presbyterian to end the turmoil. He refused,
left the church, and founded a nondenominational
church with the backing of John D. Rockefeller.
Rise of the BF&M
Denominational and theological laxity were not the only
challenges confronting Southern Baptists in the opening
decades of the 20th century. Modernism’s dalliance with
Darwinism also struck close to home. As the so-called
Scopes Monkey Trial upheld a Tennessee law enforcing
the teaching of creationism in public schools, public sentiment
was beginning to shift on the matter. Creationists
won in the court of law but lost ground in the court of
public opinion. As these events unfolded, Southern
Baptists were caught positionally unaware. It’s not that
Southern Baptists didn’t have an opinion about Darwinian
evolution. In true Baptist form, they had many, but
they didn’t have any official position.
At the same time, calls for reconciliation with Northern
Baptists 60 years after the Civil War were growing
“Denominational and
theological laxity were not the
only challenges confronting
Southern Baptists in the
opening decades of the
20 th century. Modernism’s
dalliance with Darwinism also
struck close to home.”
22 the southern baptist theological seminary

peter beck
louder from some quarters. Southern Baptists sent representatives
to the Northern Baptist Convention to further
these discussions and explore the idea of reunification.
In light of all this, Edgar Young Mullins, then president
of Southern Seminary and president of the SBC,
called for the formation of a committee to formalize the
denomination’s theological views—in essence to define
what it meant to be Southern Baptist. In 1925, even
as Northern Baptists rejected a similar call to adopt a
denominational confession of faith, one based on the
long-revered New Hampshire Confession, Southern
Baptists adopted their own based on that same confession.
That year they affirmed the Baptist Faith and
Message as a statement of their collective beliefs, a “consensus
of opinions.”
Troubling Revision of the BF&M
Not 40 years later, Southern Baptists would again answer
the call to define and refine their faith in light of theological
controversy. In the 1960s, debate raged within the
convention over how one reconciles the creation narrative
of Genesis with the scientific narrative of evolution.
One might ask: if this was part of the impetus for the
creation of the BF&M in the first place in 1925, why must
it be dealt with again? The answer is easy. While the Preamble
affirmed a supernatural reading of Scripture and
the world around us, an explicit statement regarding evolution
and Scripture was deleted from the initial draft of
the Baptist Faith and Message before it was ratified by the
denomination. Thus, the problem remained unresolved
and had to be addressed again by a later generation.
Under the leadership of Herchel Hobbs, the SBC
formed another committee and issued an updated version
of the BF&M in 1963. A firmer, though still not concrete,
statement on theological commitments about the
controversies of the age emerged. The updated statement
presented a compromise meant to narrow the boundaries
of Southern Baptist theological life in such a way
as to answer the present concern without constraining
the idea of liberty of conscience Baptists hold dear. As
a result, while church members were being discipled
according to the teachings of the BF&M via Hobbs’ own
commentary on the confession, others in the seminaries
and elsewhere were able to claim adherence to the revised
doctrinal statement while also holding views contrary to
the faith of the rank-and-file membership of the SBC,
those things they claimed “with which they have been
and are now closely identified.”
In a very real sense, the Baptist Faith and Message
(1963) failed to unite the denomination in faith. The
controversies that prompted the formation of a committee
to revisit the statement festered for nearly another
decade due to political maneuvering by some involved.
The result was that the denomination’s faith statement
no longer accurately represented the united faith of the
denomination as a whole. Such theological diversity led
to theological division. Within a decade and a half, the
movement that would become the Conservative Resurgence
was birthed, and the battle for the heart of the
convention was on.
This denominational tug-of-war drug on into the
1990s. When it was over, the conservatives reclaimed the
denomination’s entities from the theologically broaderminded
Moderates. More importantly, they saw the
opportunity to reaffirm the Southern Baptist faith they
believed was compromised over the preceding 70 years
and called the convention back to its theological roots.
Y2K and the End of the World As We Know It
The year 2000 was burdened with great theological and
prophetic significance. Such was already the case for
hundreds of years before the coming of the new millennium.
As the historical moment drew closer, it appeared
Nostradamus and others might be right.
Of course, the apocalypse didn’t begin on January 1
any more than did all the computers in the world crash as
predicted. Yet the year 2000 and the years surrounding it
did usher in an era of change for Southern Baptists.
Firmly in the hands of the conservatives, the SBC
experienced significant change in its leadership and its
institutions. New trustees were elected, new presidents
hired. And, in one sense, the old faith was rediscovered.
However, as the millennium was set to begin, Southern
Baptists had yet to address definitively the issue that led
to the donnybrook recently ended: the Baptist Faith and
Message. To prevent yet another round of theological
controversy, something had to change.
An important step was taken in the closing years of
the 1990s to do just that. Then SBC President Tom Elliff
presciently appointed a committee in 1997 to bring a
proposal back to the convention addressing the coming
social storm over the nature of the family as defined by
the Bible. This proposal came in the form of new article
on “The Family” that was to be added to the Baptist Faith
and Message. The convention affirmed this proposal in
1998. While it caused a minor denominational dustup,
its impact would pale in comparison to what was just
over the theological horizon. It proved to be an omen
of things to come.
In 1999, Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary and the Southern Baptist
Convention, appointed a “blue ribbon committee,” a
veritable who’s who of the Conservative Resurgence, to
review the BF&M and present any recommendations to
fall 2022
23

a confessional people and their confession of faith
“Creeds and confessions are meant to be
inclusive. They identify those doctrines or
theological hallmarks that characterize a
particular body of believers. In other words,
creeds and confessions define or identify
those within a religious body by their shared
system of beliefs. If one shares those beliefs,
they are included as part of that body.”
the convention at its annual meeting in 2000. This committee
would return with a revision that would address
many of the perceived flaws that allowed for the divisions
only recently resolved.
As the committee observed in their final report, “Baptists
are a people of deep beliefs and cherished doctrines.
Throughout our history we have been a confessional
people, adopting statements of faith as a witness to our
beliefs and a pledge of our faithfulness to the doctrines
revealed in Holy Scripture.” Moreover, they added, “Our
confessions of faith are rooted in historical precedent, as
the church in every age has been called upon to define
and defend its beliefs.”
Working from the position of historical precedent,
the committee reviewed the BF&M in light of the earlier
versions and “the ‘certain needs’ of our own generation.”
In other words, doing what Baptists have always done,
they revisited the Baptist faith as it had been handed
down to them with a view toward clarifying and amending
it to address the challenges of the present age.
Unlike its predecessors at certain points, the 2000
update of the Baptist Faith and Message addressed the
“certain needs” head on and narrowed the theological
definitions provided. In places, language was clarified.
In others, articles were modified to reflect contemporary
debates earlier writers could not have foreseen. Beyond
that, the current version of the BF&M largely mirrors the
wording of earlier editions.
The most significant changes brought forward for
consideration were arguably found in the introduction to
the confession, the Preamble. There the committee omitted
the language of 1963 which stated, “The sole authority
for faith and practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ
whose will is revealed in the Holy Scriptures.” For many,
such a hermeneutical principle proved too subjective and
allowed for theological variances that might be cloaked
in pious claims of Christlikeness that pitted long-held
views against modern concerns.
Such a possible interpretation is highlighted by
the next statement the new version of the Preamble
also deleted: “A living faith must experience a growing
understanding of truth and must be continually interpreted
and related to the needs of each new generation.”
Whether it was the intent of the 1963 framers or not,
such was the language of those like Toy who abandoned
the ancient faith in the name of modernizing it for their
generation, something many believed to have continued
to happen in the 20th century SBC. Instead, the new Preamble
simply states, “Our living faith is established upon
eternal truths.” Thus, the Baptist Faith and Message as
adopted in 2000 seeks to ground “those articles of the
Christian faith which are most surely held among us” in
unchangeable truth.
While the proposed updates were broadly accepted
within the SBC, some took exception to the latest
revision of the BF&M. A number of individuals and
churches left the denomination over what they perceived
to be violations of other key Baptists ideals such as soul
competency and liberty of conscience. Such people were
no longer convinced that the Baptist Faith and Message
24 the southern baptist theological seminary

peter beck
was no longer truly Baptist. Still others chose to remain
within the Southern Baptist Convention but retained the
use of the Baptist Faith and Message (1963) as their personal
or congregational confession of faith.
At the end of the day, while affirmation of the Baptist
Faith and Message (2000) is not a requirement of
fellowship within the Southern Baptist Convention, it is
the official confessional document of the denomination.
It is theological self-portrait of a people called Southern
Baptists. It is who we think we are.
Baptist Identity Defined and Defended
In the aftermath of 2000 and the ratification of the latest
version of the Baptist Faith and Message, some claimed
the denomination’s confessional statement moved
beyond confession and consensus to creed. Using the
concept of creed as a pejorative, they meant to imply
the BF&M was now being used as a test of orthodoxy,
a litmus test for the purpose of exclusion rather than
inclusion. Such an argument betrays a theological and
political bias that ignores the meaning of the word itself
and the historical use of creeds through the ages.
The term “creed” is drawn from the ancient term
credo which simply means “I believe.” Or, as one modern
dictionary defines it: a set of fundamental beliefs. The
historical and contemporary use of confessions of faith
in Southern Baptist life echoes these definitions.
Likewise, church history is replete with examples of
the twofold use of confessional statements found in 21st
century Southern Baptist life.
First, creeds and confessions are meant to be inclusive.
They identify those doctrines or theological hallmarks
that characterize a particular body of believers. In
other words, creeds and confessions define or identify
those within a religious body by their shared system of
beliefs. If one shares those beliefs, they are included as
part of that body.
Second, creeds and confessions are meant to be exclusive.
They are used to identify those who do not belong to
such bodies, not in a punitive sense but a protective one.
Those who do not identify with the body with their rejection
of that body’s beliefs are prevented from joining or
changing that body. They are excluded from membership
because they refuse to identify with the members.
Thus, as one looks at Southern Baptist history, we
have adopted confessions of faith to define this unique
body of believers by identifying those doctrines that give
us our unique identity within the larger Christian church.
These confessions were then used to train our pastors
and disciple our parishioners as to what we believe the
Bible teaches. In so doing, the Baptist Faith and Messages
does more than provide a summary of what Southern
Baptists believe. It shapes what we believe. It defines who
we are. It defends our convictions and our churches from
external challenge.
Peter Beck serves as lead pastor of Doorway Baptist
Church in North Charleston, SC, and as associate
professor of Christian studies at Charleston Southern University.
Peter is a Ph.D. graduate of Southern Seminary.
fall 2022
25

26 the southern baptist theological seminary

1922: Northern Baptists
Lose Their Confession
eric c. smith
One hundred years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick
preached one of the most controversial sermons
of the 20th century. Delivered on May 21, 1922,
“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” immediately
ignited a national firestorm. Today, historians
remember it as a defining moment in the Fundamentalist-Modernist
controversy of the 1920s.
The occasion of the infamous message, however,
has been largely forgotten.
Fosdick, reared in a conservative Baptist
home, preached with the annual gathering of
the Northern Baptist Convention—meeting just
three weeks later—squarely in his sights. Formed
in 1907, the Northern Baptist Convention was
still a relatively young denomination in 1922. Yet
tensions between the NBC’s fundamentalist and
modernist factions had been escalating since the
end of World War I. The modernists were eager
to update the Christian faith with contemporary
ideas about evolutionary science and the historical-critical
study of the Bible. In the process,
they radically altered or discarded many tenets
of traditional theology, from the complete accuracy
of the Scriptures to the bodily resurrection
of Jesus. The modernist project had begun within
Baptist colleges and seminaries in the late 19th
century; by 1922, it had progressed into many of
the denomination’s leading churches.
Standing in their path were the fundamentalists,
described by their own Curtis Lee Laws
as “aggressive conservatives who feel that it is
their duty to contend for the faith.” Alarmed at
the rapid advance of liberal theology in American
culture and in their denomination (northern
Presbyterians, led by J. Gresham Machen, waged
a simultaneous battle throughout the decade), a
diverse assortment of these “aggressive conservatives”
banded together after the Great War to
recover what they had lost.
Both factions in the Northern Baptist Convention
sensed that their 1922 annual meeting
in Indianapolis, Indiana, would determine the
future of the denomination. The modernists
had clearly been on the ascent for more than a
decade, but many in their number, including
Fosdick, feared a reversal in Indianapolis. To pull
it off, the fundamentalists would need an orthodox
confession of faith.
Decline of Baptist Confessionalism
By this time, Baptists on both sides of the
Atlantic had adopted written summaries of
their beliefs for centuries. In America, the most
popular confessions included the Philadelphia
(1742) and Charleston Confessions (1767), both
restatements of the Second London Confession
(1689). The more moderately Calvinistic New
Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833) had also
gained a wide following in the latter 20th century.
There had always been some American Baptists
who resisted the use of confessions on principle—especially
those who had suffered under a
state-enforced creed at the hands of some established
church. But for many Baptists, written
confessions were a standard feature of church
and associational life, and provided a host of
practical benefits.
Curtis Lee Laws attempted to educate the
readers of the Watchman and Observer on the
Baptist confessional heritage in 1921. “From
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27

northern baptists lose their confession
“Two distinct visions of Baptist identity had clearly
emerged, one rooted in historic orthodoxy, the other in
a highly individualistic doctrine of soul liberty. In the
Northern Baptist Convention, only one could endure.”
time to time our Baptist fathers put forth confessions
of faith, thus declaring and defining their principles,”
Laws explained. In years past, Baptists had used confessions
not as “creeds to which they demanded allegiance,
but standards about which they might rally.” Baptist
confessions were never meant to supplant the Bible,
but to faithfully summarize its contents for instruction,
for evangelism, for a bulwark against error and heresy.
Laws, speaking for his fellow fundamentalists, called
for a confessional renewal in the NBC. The time had
come, he declared, “when Baptists should once again
announce to the world their beliefs, when a standard
should be raised.”
Of course, Laws knew that his proposal was controversial.
Denominational modernists scorned the old
confessions as useless relics. Generally speaking, they
emphasized a universal religious experience over
precise doctrinal formulations. Furthermore, the specific
doctrines which the old creeds asserted were an
embarrassment to modern men and women—either
ridiculous (as with the virgin birth of Christ), or morally
repugnant (as was the case with his penal substitutionary
atonement).
In this progressive age, Baptist modernists gravitated
toward the practical religion of the Social Gospel
(promulgated by northern Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch)
and the ecumenical impulses that gave rise to
the Federal Council of Churches (1908) and the Interchurch
World Movement (1918). Within this milieu,
the dogmatism of the fundamentalists seemed rigid,
mean-spirited, and just plain backward.
Two New Visions of Baptist Identity
Along with these common objections to confessions,
Baptist modernists now frequently raised the issue of
“soul liberty.” Since the days of Thomas Helwys and
Roger Williams, Baptists had championed the sacred
right of the individual to believe and to worship according
to his or her own conscience, without interference
from any coercive religious authority. After all, each man
and woman must stand alone on the day of judgment,
and acts of faith must be voluntary to be genuine. These
deeply held convictions regarding “soul liberty” had
compelled early American Baptists like Isaac Backus
and John Leland to fight against the establishment of
a state church, and for the free exercise of religion, as
basic human rights.
By the 1920s, modernist Baptists were increasingly
enlisting this heritage of soul liberty in their arguments
against confessionalism. To require belief in any
extra-biblical confession of faith, they argued, constituted
the same religious coercion against which their
Baptist fathers had contended.
Historian Barry Hankins recently pointed to Crozer
Seminary president Milton H. Evans as an illustration. In
1921, fundamentalists attempted to oust liberal church
history professor Henry C. Vedder from the Crozer faculty
(Vedder had brazenly declared that “The whole ‘plan
of salvation’ of the orthodox theology seemed a tissue of
intellectual absurdities and ethical impossibilities.”). Yet
Evans scoffed at fundamentalists who attempted to hold
Vedder accountable to a confession of faith. “There can be
no such thing as a heresy trial in the Baptist denomination,”
he declared, for, unlike the Presbyterians, Baptists
“have no authorized or standard confession of faith.” The
rejection of creedalism in the name of individual soul
liberty, he argued, was at the heart of Baptist identity.
Curtis Lee Laws would have none of it. “We desire
here to declare that this matter of soul liberty is being
tremendously overworked by some who reject the very
principles of those who died to make soul liberty the
heritage of our age,” Laws wrote. “Originally this principle
guaranteed to men the right to worship God as
they pleased. It emphasized the fact that in the Christian
economy no man or group of men could exercise authority
over the conscience of the humblest man on earth.”
Pitting soul liberty against orthodox theology betrayed
the Baptist heritage, he argued. “Our Baptist fathers had
28 the southern baptist theological seminary

eric c. smith
a very clearly defined system of truth, and this was put
forth in many noble confessions of faith.They knew of
no soul liberty which guaranteed to members of Baptist
churches the right to believe what they pleased.”
In the hands of the modernists, the cherished Baptist
doctrine of soul liberty had undergone a major redefinition.
Though Laws stood among the “moderate” wing
of Baptist fundamentalists, he readied himself in 1921 to
fight for confessionalism. “To reject fundamental Baptist
principles and practices while remaining a member of a
Baptist Church and to use the doctrine of soul liberty in
extenuation of such a course is to pervert the doctrinaire
and to make it a menace to the Church of Christ.”
Two distinct visions of Baptist identity had clearly
emerged, one rooted in historic orthodoxy, the other in
a highly individualistic doctrine of soul liberty. In the
Northern Baptist Convention, only one could endure.
The Fundamentalist Federation, 1920–1922
In 1920, conservative Northern Baptists
rallied from across the convention
to form what they called a “Fundamentalist
Federation” and strategize against
the denomination’s doctrinal drift. The
coalition included fundamentalists
of both a “moderate” and “militant”
variety. In the former group, leaders
like Laws and J. C. Massee of Boston’s
Tremont Temple Baptist Church
hoped to recover orthodoxy in the
convention and remain in fellowship
with the modernists.
The more militant fundamentalists
included Southern Seminary graduates
John Roach Stratton, pastor of
New York City’s Calvary Baptist Church, and William
Bell Riley of First Baptist Church in Minneapolis; they
wished to drive every modernist from the NBC like the
Canaanites before Joshua. These different approaches
would become glaring in subsequent years. But in 1921,
they all shared the goal of adopting a Northern Baptist
confession of faith.
Gathering before the 1921 Northern Baptist Convention
in Des Moines, the Fundamentalist Federation
produced a seven-point statement of their beliefs, drawing
from the Philadelphia and New Hampshire confessions.
Yet, perhaps for strategic reasons, they chose not
to promote it at the convention meeting. This failure
to act resulted in a clear modernist victory. Afterward,
the fundamentalists vowed to recapture their denomination
at the next year’s meeting. This is when Fosdick
entered the story.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
(1878–1969)
“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”
Harry Emerson Fosdick embodied the progressive journey
of many northern Baptists in the early 20th century.
After a traditional Baptist childhood, Fosdick attended
Colgate College, where he encountered modernism
under the liberal Baptist professor William Newton
Clarke (Clarke recorded his own modernist transformation
in Sixty Years with the Bible).
First under Clarke’s guidance, and then at New York’s
Union Theological Seminary, Fosdick exchanged the
Baptist dogmatism of his youth for the classic liberal
emphasis on personal religious experience. He then
demonstrated his new doctrinal flexibility by accepting
the pastorate of New York City’s First Presbyterian
Church in 1918. From the prominent pulpit of “Old
First,” Fosdick’s modernist message drew massive
crowds. In spring 1922, with the showdown within the
Northern Baptist Convention looming, Fosdick shook
the American Protestant world by preaching “Shall the
Fundamentalists Win?”
Seeking a biblical analogy for the
controversy, Fosdick turned to Acts 5,
where the insurgent Christian movement
had run afoul of the angry Jewish
establishment. Fosdick naturally cast
his own modernist party in the role of
Peter and John, leaving the fundamentalists
to play the Pharisees: cranky,
obstructionist, and obsessed with doctrine.
The fundamentalists “insist that
we must all believe in the historicity of
certain special miracles,” Fosdick complained,
singling out the virgin birth, an
inerrant Bible, Christ’s atonement, and
his literal return at the end of history.
By requiring allegiance to these hidebound ideas,
fundamentalists endeavored “to mark a deadline of
doctrine around the church” and repeated the sins of the
church’s first enemies. Fosdick urged the fundamentalists
to instead heed Gamaliel’s counsel of tolerance, patience,
and an open heart to what could, in fact, be a great
new move of God.
Fosdick claimed that he intended to promote peace
and tolerance with his sermon. Instead, he inspired a
flood of angry rejoinders, including Presbyterian Clarence
E. Macartney’s famous “Shall Unbelief Win?” and
Baptist John Roach Stratton’s “Shall the Funnymonkeyists
Win?” Laws added an editorial of his own, entitled
“Intolerant Liberalism.”
Fosdick’s smug tone and blatant rejection of traditional
Christian theology had poured gas on the
fundamentalist fire headed into the Northern Baptist
fall 2022
29

northern baptists lose their confession
Indianapolis, Indiana, in the 1920s. Site of the 1922 Northern Baptist Convention.
Convention. J. C. Massee declared that “Modernism and
modernists must go,” as they had declared “warfare
against supernaturalism.” Massee announced his intention
to fill the NBC boards with conservative men and
women. “It is my hope that we shall there serve notice on
the denomination that we are no longer tolerant of the
drift from the ancient moorings.” The stage was set for
the 1922 Northern Baptist Convention. 1
The 1922 Northern Baptist Convention
As delegates crowded into the Indianapolis convention
hall on June 14, it did not take long for the confession
issue to take center stage. Presiding over the gathering
this year was Rochester’s Helen Barrett Montgomery. A
Wellesley graduate, social reformer, and Greek scholar
(she would in 1924 translate the whole New Testament,
the first American woman known to do so), Montgomery
was the first female president of any American Protestant
denomination. She acknowledged in her opening
address the tension in the room over a confession of faith
and stressed that the Northern Baptist Convention had
no authority to enforce a confession if it were adopted.
“For us Baptists to have an official confession of faith
would come perilously near to abandoning one of our
fundamental principles,” she declared. Like many modernist
Baptists, Montgomery viewed confessionalism as a
contradiction of Baptist principles.
The fundamentalists did not take long to challenge
Montgomery. Later that day, they offered a resolution
to form a committee comprised of Northern, Canadian,
and Southern Baptists. This committee would produce
a basic statement of Baptist belief, explicitly to stand
against the “notorious instances of false and subversive
teaching in certain of our schools and seminaries.” The
recommendation set off a rowdy discussion in the hall,
which ultimately went nowhere.
The critical turn came two days later, on June 16.
Prominent pastor, evangelist, and conference organizer
William Bell Riley had been frustrated by the previous
year’s failure to bring a confession before the convention
and determined not to repeat the same mistake this year.
Riley moved that the convention adopt the New Hampshire
Confession of Faith (1833) as its official statement.
Unfortunately for Riley, the modernists were ready with
a perfect response.
Amid the tumult Riley’s recommendation provoked,
Cornelius Woelfkin stood to speak. Woelfkin, pastor
of John D. Rockefeller’s opulent Park Avenue Baptist
Church in New York City, was a leading spokesman
for northern Baptist liberalism. He offered a substitute
motion: “That the Northern Baptist Convention affirm
that the New Testament is the all-sufficient ground of
faith and practice, and that we need no other.”
It was immediately clear that Riley had been outmaneuvered,
for Woelfkin had forced Northern Baptists
to choose between the New Hampshire Confession of
Faith and the New Testament. “Baptists have never been
strong on statements,” Woelfkin reminded his audience;
they were Bible people. It was an oversimplification, but
a compelling one, and exceedingly difficult for the fundamentalists
to refute from the floor.
J. C. Massee tried. He reasoned with the delegates.
Massee reminded the hall that Woelfkin and other liberal
Baptists had happily affixed their names to various
interdenominational confessions in the name of ecumenism;
their stance today was inconsistent at best, and
30 the southern baptist theological seminary

eric c. smith
hypocritical at worst. Further, the modernists’ “Biblealone”
message was empty rhetoric, for of course the
Bible must be interpreted, as witnessed in Baptist Sunday
schools, seminaries, and mission efforts. A sound confession
would guard Baptists from wandering into heretical
interpretations. But it was all in vain.
Massee’s logic could not withstand Woelfkin’s charming
stories of learning the New Testament—not the New
Hampshire Confession!—at his mother’s knee. After the
floor called for the question, Montgomery prayed, and
the convention voted to adopt Woelfkin’s resolution 1,264
to 637. Northern Baptists would have no confession.
Turning Point
Though overshadowed by Fosdick’s infamous sermon,
the 1922 Northern Baptist Convention proved to be the
turning point in the denomination’s Fundamentalist–
Modernist controversy. Northern Baptist fundamentalists
could never again muster the same united opposition
against convention liberalism. The ranks of the Fundamentalist
Federation divided, as Massee and other weary
moderate fundamentalists urged a renewed focus on
soul-winning rather than theological disputes.
They began to distance themselves from their more
aggressive brethren, seeking a path forward with the
denomination’s modernist leadership. In subsequent
years, efforts to hold missionaries and other leaders
to the most basic standards of orthodoxy would
be easily defeated.
Any lingering doubts about the modernist control
of the Northern Baptist Convention were laid to rest in
1946. The aged William B. Riley led one final attempt to
raise a confessional standard in the NBC, calling for a
basic test of orthodoxy for all denominational officers.
Instead, Northern Baptists overwhelmingly resolved,
as they had in 1922, to “reaffirm our faith in the New
Testament as a divinely inspired record, and therefore a
trustworthy, authoritative, and all-sufficient rule of our
faith and practice.” This time, even Riley got the message:
Northern Baptists would have no confession. Riley
finally resigned his membership in the NBC 1947 and
died shortly thereafter.
Though Riley never could regain control of the NBC,
his conservative doctrinal Christianity found wide success
outside the denomination. He launched the alternative
Baptist Bible Union in 1923, which later became the
General Association of Regular Baptist Churches.
Popular audiences in the era also flocked to Fundamentalist
Bible conferences, radio preaching ministries,
and periodicals like the Sword of the Lord newspaper.
And while they may have lost Colgate and Rochester
Seminary, fundamentalism would flourish in a host of
independent Bible schools and major academic institutions
like Wheaton College, Dallas Theological Seminary,
and Bob Jones University; Riley himself founded
the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School
in Minneapolis. There, from his deathbed in 1947, Riley
asked a young evangelist named Billy Graham to accept
its presidency, bestowing his imprimatur on the next
great fundamentalist leader. Graham accepted, but then
forged his own path, emerging as the leader of a less separatistic
“neo-evangelicalism” associated with Graham’s
own evangelistic ministry, Christianity Today magazine,
and Fuller Seminary.
Meanwhile, in the SBC…
Southern Baptists followed a different course from their
northern brethren, and the region’s cultural conservatism
helped ensure a more limited audience for modernism.
In the 1920s, Southern Baptists confronted the
challenges of evolutionary science and liberal theology
by adopting a new confession of their faith. Chairing the
committee was E. Y. Mullins, the SBC’s leading theologian
and the fourth president of Southern Seminary.
Mullins, while relatively conservative himself, was also
the person most responsible for elevating the doctrine
of individual soul liberty among Southern Baptists, and
thus was not particularly keen on Southern Baptists
adopting a written confession.
When this could not be avoided, Mullins elected to
lead the effort, steering Southern Baptists toward the
broadest conservative statement possible, thus allowing
for maximal diversity within the convention. Led by
Mullins, Southern Baptists adopted the Baptist Faith and
Message (1925) and avoided the convulsive fundamentalis–-modernist
battles of the 1920s.
Under this wide doctrinal canopy, Southern Baptists
grew into the nation’s largest Protestant denomination
at mid-century. They found their unity in their vast
denominational programs and institutions, even as
fundamentalist and modernist elements within the convention
grew further apart theologically. This continued
for more than half a century past Fosdick’s notorious sermon
and that fateful 1922 NBC meeting until, in 1979,
doctrinal controversy finally descended on Southern
Baptists. Near the heart of the debate was, of course, the
old tension between confessional orthodoxy and individual
soul freedom.
This time, however, the outcome would be different.
Eric C. Smith is associate professor of church history at
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and senior
pastor of Sharon Baptist Church Savannah, TN.
fall 2022
31

y j e f f robinson
six ways confessions
promote church health
Particular Baptist churches planted in the
tumultuous soil of 17th century England
P grew up and bore fruit under a nasty set of
doctrinal and methodological accusations,
including that they subscribed to libertarian free will,
denied original sin, baptized women in the nude, and
were opponents of church and crown.
Perhaps their most virulent and colorful opponent,
Daniel Featley—a separatist persecutor deluxe—derisively
dismissed our Baptist forebears, writing in a
venom-filled pamphlet, “They pollute our rivers with their
filthy washings.” Such was Baptist life under Charles I.
These nefarious charges and numerous others arose
from leaders of the state church and led to decades of
grinding persecution for Baptists. Seven churches
returned fire, but not by brandishing the sword of steel or
by hurling theological invectives. The seven carried out
their war for truth by wielding the sword of the Spirit.
The product was the most comprehensive expression
of orthodox Baptist theology ever written—the Second
32 the southern baptist theological seminary
32 Southern Seminary

“MANY OF THE ENDURING CONFESSIONS IN
CHURCH HISTORY HAVE AFFIRMED BIBLICAL
TRUTHS WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY CONDEMNING
UNBIBLICAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE SAME.”
London Confession of 1689.
The signers of that venerable confession lived and
moved in an age in which most local congregations
wrote confessions of faith for a number of reasons, one
of them to demonstrate their commitment to the historic
Christian faith.
Additionally, they sought to manifest their solidarity
with the prevailing forms of Calvinistic orthodoxy as
well as to expound the basic elements of their ecclesiology.
The Second London Confession also aimed at
refuting popular notions associating Particular Baptists
with the radical wing of the Anabaptist movement
on the continent.
Of primary importance, they saw biblical warrant for
the practice of confessionalism in texts such as 1 Timothy
3:16, where the apostle Paul’s inspired pen produced
a brief but beautiful display of the mystery of godliness:
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by
the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the
nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Fast-forward to the equally tumultuous epoch of
2020, and many Baptist churches continue to have statements
of faith “on the books” as a part of their foundational
documents. Yet I’ve found that many churches
do not know how useful the confession can be beyond
establishing subscription to certain core doctrines.
This raises a fundamental question: How should a
local church use its confession of faith? Here are six ways
a church might use a confession of faith. I owe at least
four of these to my friend Sam Waldron’s fine work, A
Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
(Evangelical Press). Confessions of faith should be used:
1. As an affirmation and defense of the truth. The
church of the living God is called to be the pillar and
buttress of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). It is to “follow the pattern
of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13) and to “earnestly contend
for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude
1:3). Insofar as a confession reflects the Word of God, it
is useful for helping the church discern truth from error.
Many of the enduring confessions in church history
have affirmed biblical truths while simultaneously condemning
unbiblical expressions of the same. Paul called
Timothy to guard the good deposit entrusted to him (2
Tim. 1:14), and likewise, faithful Christians are called to
keep a close watch over it.
A part of this stewardship is clearly articulating the
truth and defending it in the face of error. A more recent
example of this is the Baptist Faith and Message (2000).
Southern Baptists, rightly, revised their confession, adding
article XVIII to address areas where feminism had
begun to encroach on the church and Christian family.
Insofar as a confession reflects the Word of God, it is
useful for helping the church discern truth from error.
2. As a baseline for church discipline. In 1 Timothy
5:16, Paul famously admonished Timothy to “keep a
close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in
this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your
hearers.” As a matter of stewardship, church purity, and
love to neighbor, a faithful pastor, a faithful elder board, a
faithful church member, must keep a close eye on the life
and doctrine of those within their congregation.
Church discipline (Matt. 18:15-18) is a key part
of this. The confession of faith forms the baseline for
determining whether or not a church leader or member
has strayed from orthodox belief or orthodox living. It
provides an objective standard for both accusation and
restoration in church discipline.
Andrew Fuller wrote of the care that must be
taken in church discipline and the role of the confession
in that pursuit:
fall 2022
33

jeff robinson
“A SOLID AND EFFECTIVE LOCAL CHURCH CONFESSION
TAKES AN UNAMBIGUOUS STAND ON DOCTRINES
THAT SHOULD MARK THE GENUINE CHRISTIAN.”
If a religious community agrees to specify some
leading principles which they consider as derived
from the Word of God, and judge the belief of
them to be necessary in order to any person’s
becoming or continuing a member with them,
it does not follow that those principles should
be equally understood, or that all their brethren
must have the same degree of knowledge, nor yet
that they should understand and believe nothing
else. The powers and capacities of different persons
are various; one may comprehend more of
the same truth than another, and have his views
more enlarged by an exceedingly great variety of
kindred ideas; and yet the substance of their belief
may still be the same. The object of the articles is
to keep at a distance, not those who are weak in
the faith, but such as are his avowed enemies.
3. As a means of theological triage and Christian maturity.
Which doctrines must be believed for one to be considered
a genuine follower of Christ? Which doctrines
represent denominational distinctives? Which doctrines
are tertiary and may be relegated to the category of
“good men disagree”?
A solid and effective local church confession takes an
unambiguous stand on doctrines that should mark the
genuine Christian. It also rings clear on denominational
distinctives. But a wise and well-articulated church confession
also avoids unnecessary sectarianism by refusing
to take a hard line on so-called “third-tier” issues
such as the timing of Christ’s return, specific details of
the millennium, preferred English Bible translations,
and those similar.
4. As a concise standard by which to evaluate ministers
of the Word. The apostle Paul told Timothy to entrust
the great truths of God to faithful men (2 Tim. 2:2).
Faithful men are faithful to sound doctrine, faithful to
the Scriptures. When calling a new pastor or a new elder,
the church’s confession provides the doctrinal standard
by which his fitness is to be judged. It also provides a crucial
baseline by which to measure his theological solidarity—or
lack thereof—with the body that is considering
him for ministry.
5. As a doctrinal basis for planting daughter churches.
Churches typically speak of potential offspring as “having
our DNA.” A confession of faith establishes a key
part of the genetic structure that is to be passed on. As
a historical example, the Charleston Association used a
slightly revised version of the Philadelphia Confession
as the doctrinal standard for church plants across the
Southeast. My family remains involved in church in
north Georgia planted by Charleston under the Philadelphia
Confession in 1832.
6. As a means of establishing historical continuity and
unity with other Christians. The framers of the Second
London Confession aimed to show that Particular Baptists
were not given to theological novelties but stood with
two feet firmly planted in the historic Christian tradition.
They subscribed to the Trinitarianism of the early
creeds, the Christology of Chalcedon, the five solas of
the Reformation, and much more that comprises evangelical
orthodoxy. Local churches do the same when
they proclaim where they stand on these core theological
doctrines.
A healthy church is one that knows what it believes,
preaches what it believes, teaches what it believes, sings
what it believes, prays what it believes, confesses what it
believes, and seeks, by God’s enabling grace, to live what
it believes. In other words, a healthy church is a confessional
church.
Jeff Robinson is director of news and information at
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a
Ph.D. graduate from Southern Seminary and senior pastor
of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, Louisville, KY.
34 the southern baptist theological seminary

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y j o e harrod
a confessing
people:
a brief history
of baptist
confessions
of faith
36 the southern baptist theological seminary

Baptists are a diverse people, and universal
statements about Baptist beliefs are bound
B to be frustrated by one group or another,
yet from their beginnings in the 17th century
forward, Baptists have largely defined their beliefs
in statements of faith and used such confessional statements
to mark the boundaries of association, fellowship,
and cooperation. This confessional impulse has marked
General and Particular Baptists, Northern and Southern
Baptists, and Baptist groups globally. Historian Tom Nettles
identifies such confessionalism as one hallmark of
Baptist identity. 1
This article briefly surveys some of the more influential
confessions of faith across the span of Baptist history
to introduce some readers to these documents and
to remind others of their importance. William Lumpkin’s
Baptist Confessions of Faith is the key source for
these documents, though many can be readily found
online as well. 2
England in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Baptists emerged in 17 th century England among Puritan
separatists who favored congregational autonomy over
state control of the church. Many of these early separatist
groups fled England for the Netherlands, where, in various
instances, they became convinced that the ordinance
of baptism was for believers, not infants.
John Smyth, an early separatist pastor whose theology
and practice were ever changing, was a significant
example of this tradition. Members of Smyth’s congregation
eventually returned to England and gave rise to
the “General” Baptist tradition, so named because of
their belief in a general atonement, or the doctrine that
Christ’s atoning death was available for all people.
At the same time, another group of separatists in
London developed a different Baptist tradition. These
“Particular” Baptists held Christ’s death was on behalf
of the elect only; thus, their name emphasizes their belief
in particular redemption. In somewhat simplistic
terms, General Baptists tended toward the theological
system of Arminianism whereas Particular Baptists were
more Calvinistic. 3
Both General and Particular Baptists wrote and
used confessions of faith to define their congregations’
beliefs. John Smyth’s church in Amsterdam adopted
A Short Confession of Faith (1610). This confession acknowledged
God as Trinity and Christ’s divinity, denied
original sin, upheld a congregation’s authority over its
own ministry and affairs, and offered hope in the resurrection
from the dead.
As evidence of Smyth’s fluid theology, he and members
of his congregation also signed A Short Confession
of Faith (1610) before merging with a Mennonite group
known as the Waterlanders. Some members of this congregation
chose to remain independent from the Mennonites
and, under the leadership of Thomas Helwys,
articulated their beliefs in A Declaration of Faith of English
People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611).
Within a year, this remnant returned to England and
were the seed for later General Baptist congregations.
As congregations multiplied, in 1660 came A Brief
Confession or Declaration of Faith that, within a few years,
became known as The Standard Confession (1663). This
confession, compiled by a general assembly of Baptists
from across England, underwent revisions in the following
decades but served as a unified statement of General
Baptist theology during a time of governmental persecution.
Before the century’s close, General Baptist churches
in England’s Midlands region issued An Orthodox Creed
(1678), which included a greater focus on the person of
Christ than previous confessions to counter theological
errors of the day. This confession was the only Baptist
statement that integrated ancient Christian creeds (Apostles’
Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed). 4 Particular
Baptists in England were also busy writing confessions
during the 17th century.
In 1616, Henry Jacob established a separatist congregation
in London that would flourish and multiply
throughout the rest of the century, even as its first two
pastors fled persecution to the American colonies. Between
1640 and 1644, this single congregation had multiplied
(amicably) into seven churches. In 1644, pastors
from these seven Particular Baptist congregations in
London wrote the London Confession, the earliest public
expression of their doctrinal commitments.
This confession was apologetic and irenic as it defended
the churches from false accusations of sedition
and contained a robust presentation of historic Christian
teaching while defending biblically the distinctive
doctrines of a gathered church free from governmental
control (Arts. 33–38), the lawful government of civil authorities
(Arts. 47–53), and believer’s baptism (Arts. 39–
40). The clarity, breadth, and richness of this confession
is remarkable considering that all its signatories were
fall 2022
37

joe harrod
self-taught laymen. Baptists were not the only group
writing confessions of faith in the 17th century. The Presbyterian
theologians and pastors assembled at Westminster
released their monumental Westminster Confession
in 1646, and this confession helped shape subsequent
Particular Baptist statements of faith.
During a time of renewed governmental hostility toward
“Dissenting” groups, Particular Baptists used the
Westminster Confession as the basis for a new confession
of faith. Modifying its articles in several places (such as
the ordinances, ecclesiology, worship, and civil authority),
in 1677, these Baptists published the Second London
Confession of Faith.
In 1689, the first general assembly of Particular Baptists,
consisting of members from over 100 congregations
in England and Wales, revised this confession, which
was now signed by dozens of pastors on behalf of their
churches (the 1677 confession being anonymous). This
confession was widely influential in England and the
American colonies, and it continues to guide many Baptists
today (although I’m confident that “1689” finger tattoos
are a decidedly modern phenomenon).
Thus far, this article has devoted considerable space
to the 17th century because this was the century in which
distinctively Baptist congregations first emerged, and
these congregations, though varied in theological affirmations,
used the form of public confessions of faith to
demonstrate the continuity of their doctrines with Christians
who had come before and to explain and defend
their practices against accusations of heresy or anti-government
sentiments. The remainder of the article will
focus on Baptist confessions in America during the 18th
to 21 st centuries to show that this confessional impulse
remains an important hallmark of Baptist identity.
New England and the Old South
Baptists began emigrating to the New World in the 17 th
century, though the earliest Baptist church in the colonies
was founded by Roger Williams, a separatist, turned
Congregationalist, turned Baptist (briefly), in 1638/39.
Unlike the situation in England, Baptists in the
American colonies generally did not adopt confessions
during the 17 th century. 5 In 1707, five Baptist churches in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey founded the Philadelphia
Baptist Association. In 1742, this association formally
adopted the Second London Confession of 1689 with a
few modifications that reflected the lingering influence
of London father and son ministers Benjamin and Elias
Keach (hymn singing) as well as the influence of Welsh
Baptists (imposition of hands). Known as The Philadelphia
Confession, this Calvinistic confession proved
tremendously influential to Baptist churches and associations,
including the noteworthy Charleston (South
Carolina) Baptist Association, which adopted the confession
in 1767, though without the article on laying on
of hands, which was more of a regional practice among
Middle States Baptists.
The middle of the 18th century was a dramatic period
of growth for Baptists in America but also a time of
intense social and religious change as the series of revivals
now known as the Great Awakening split churches
among Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists,
the latter dividing between pro-awakening “Separate”
Baptists and “Regular” Baptists who had concerns about
the movement. Many Separate Baptist groups were cold
toward confessions, and their theology, while moderately
Calvinistic, placed great emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s
immediate and direct leading of believers.
It might be appropriate to describe Particular Baptists
as holding an ethos more than a distinctive theology,
which is one reason they did not write distinct confessions.
By the end of the century, many Regular Baptist
churches had absorbed Particular Baptist groups, leading
to an interesting situation that sometimes required modifying
Regular Baptist confessions or specifying that such
confessions were nonbinding on every matter. 6
One significant exception proved to be the influential
Sandy Creek Association.
In mid-1740s Connecticut, Shubal (or Shubael)
Stearns was converted under the preaching of the Anglican
revivalist George Whitefield. During the 1750s,
Stearns, Daniel Marshall, and their families moved to
Virginia, and ultimately to North Carolina, where they
established the Separate Baptist Sandy Creek Church.
This congregation was a hub of energy, planting nearly
three dozen churches in under 20 years. These churches
made up the Sandy Creek Association, which had no
formal confession of faith until the early 19th century. In
1816, the association adopted the ten-article Principles of
Faith that was Calvinistic (Art. 4 on election and effectual
calling demonstrates this bent) and upheld local-church
autonomy (Arts. 6–7) and believer’s baptism (Art. 9).
In New England, New Hampshire played an important
role in the development of Baptist confessions
during the 19 th century and beyond. During the time
of the American Revolution, Arminian and Calvinistic
38 the southern baptist theological seminary

“CONFESSIONALISM PLAYED AN IMPORTANT
ROLE IN THE FOUNDING OF THE CONVENTION’S
FIRST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.”
Baptist churches both existed in New Hampshire, when
Benjamin Randall began his preaching ministry. Randall
founded a Free Will Baptist Church in Durham, New
Hampshire, in 1779. Before 1810, there were over 100
like-minded congregations spread across New Hampshire,
Vermont, and Maine. In 1834, these Baptists published
a confession that endured through the mid-20th
century and that other Free Will Baptists in the South
adapted and, with many revisions (most recently in
2016), continue to use today.
The Campbellite Movement of the 19th century challenged
Baptist use of confessions. Alexander Campbell
was a Scots-Irish immigrant and a Presbyterian who
became a Baptist pastor in Pennsylvania. Campbell became
convinced that a strict adherence to the New Testament
required churches to forego the use of creeds
and confessions (among many other changes in worship
and practice).
He saw confessions as post-biblical innovations. A
rallying cry of the movement was “No creed but the Bible.”
Abandoning denominational labels, Campbell and
other like-minded pastors were tremendously influential
in spreading their vision of the primacy of Scripture,
dividing many Baptist churches in the process. This
movement gave rise to the Christian Church, Church of
Christ, and Disciples of Christ movements and caused
some Baptists to have lingering questions about the place
of confessions and creeds.
In 1833, Calvinistic Baptists adopted The New Hampshire
Confession. This statement took a more moderating
tone from the Philadelphia Confession and earlier London
confessions with regard to doctrines like God’s decrees,
predestination, effectual calling, and the ability of
sinners to respond to the gospel. New Hampshire condensed
its statements regarding the nature and marks
of the church, described only as local in the confession,
to one article, among other changes. This statement
had wide influence in New England, the Middle States,
and even in the Southwest in the 19 th and 20 th centuries
and figured prominently in the Landmark Controversy
among Baptists on the question of Baptist origins and the
identity of the true church.
The Second London and Philadelphia confessions had
clear statements on the universality of the church, that is,
that the church was comprised of all elect persons, past,
present, and future. In the mid-19 th century, some Baptists
like J. R. Graves and J. M. Pendleton challenged this
doctrine of a universal church on the grounds that a New
Testament church was a physical, observable, and local
entity. In their view, Baptist churches were the only true
church; thus other denominations were false churches
with which no fellowship was possible.
The absence of any statement about the universal
church in The New Hampshire Confession increased its
usage among Baptists committed to a Landmark position
across the United States. But this confession was
also to have a particular influence upon the largest group
of Baptists in America, the Southern Baptist Convention.
The 20 th Century through Today
Baptists in the American north and south faced a host
of challenges maintaining fellowship and unity during
the 19th century, including competing visions of organization,
missions, distance, identity, and of course, the
challenge of slavery. In 1814, Baptists from the south and
the north formed the Triennial Convention to support
missionary work and ministerial education. By 1845,
Baptists in the south broke from this project and formed
the Southern Baptist Convention.
In the south, confessionalism played an important
role in the founding of the convention’s first theological
seminary, with the Abstract of Principles (1859)
being required as a rule of faith for all faculty members
at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This requirement
led to the dismissal of C. H. Toy for views
on the nature of Scripture that deviated from historic
Christian teaching.
From the convention’s founding in 1845, the denom-
fall 2022
39

joe harrod
ination had no single statement of faith. During larger controversies
of modernism and fundamentalism, messengers
at the 1924 annual meeting approved the formation
of a committee to prepare a formal statement of faith for
the denomination. The committee, under the leadership
of Southern Seminary president E. Y. Mullins (and including
Southern Seminary church historian W. J. McGlothlin)
began with The New Hampshire Confession of 1833,
excluding some articles, editing other articles, and adding
ten new articles to the document. The convention’s messengers
adopted the Baptist Faith and Message in 1925.
By the early 1960s, the convention realized the need
to revisit this confessional document, and a revised version
was approved in 1963. In 1998, Southern Baptists
revised their confession once again. Changes emphasized
the revelatory nature and clarified the Christocentric
focus of Scripture which had been added to the
1963 BF&M—though left open to a wide interpretation.
Messengers approved the revisions at the 2000 annual
meeting, a version that included articles on the family,
the sanctify of life, and clarified biblical gender roles in
the home and church.
African American Baptists have expressed diversity
of opinion regarding confessions of faith. In 1895, three
young African American conventions merged to form
the National Baptist Convention. Debate over the autonomy
of the convention’s publishing house in 1915 led
to a split with two groups claiming the name “National
Baptist Convention,” one being incorporated (the primary
denomination) and one unincorporated (the publishing
house). The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
utilizes a slightly edited version of The New Hampshire
Confession from 1853 as its Articles of Faith. 7 The National
Baptist Convention of America emerged as a separate
convention from the publishing house controversy
and has no statement of faith. The Progressive National
Baptist Convention, Inc. formed in 1961 with an emphasis
on religious freedom without government imposition.
The PNBC has no formal statement of faith.
During the final decade of the 20th century, some
Southern Baptists suggested that confessionalism represented
a shift from historic Baptist principles. Some
left the convention entirely, others formed the Southern
Baptist Alliance (later renamed “Alliance of Baptists”),
and still others formed the Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship (CBF).
The CBF currently uses secular corporate language
of “Core Values,” rather than “Confession,” to advance
four central ideas: soul freedom, Bible freedom, church
freedom, and religious freedom. 8 Grounded in several
“Axioms” of E. Y. Mullins, each of these four values
has linkages with many historic Baptist confessions. The
Fellowship’s explanation for each value demonstrates
a departure from longstanding Baptist faith and practice.
Missing are values related to distinctively Christian
teaching such as the Trinity, salvation, sin, resurrection,
or the eternal state, or even a statement on baptism,
which typifies historic Baptist confessions. Although
internally consistent with the Fellowship’s view of soul
freedom, the statement is distinct from the tradition of
authentically Baptist witness.
Conclusion
Emerging from the Puritan separatists in England, Baptists
in every generation, and from a variety of theological
traditions, have articulated their beliefs in published
confessions to show continuity with orthodox Christianity
and to give witness to their distinctive ecclesiology
and practice. Baptists have insisted that confessions are
helpful summaries of the faith, guides to interpretation,
open to revision, fallible documents, and nonbinding
upon congregational autonomy—yet, despite their imperfections,
confessions have been a vital part of Baptist
life and will likely remain so.
Joe Harrod is associate professor of biblical spirituality
and associate vice president for institutional
effectiveness at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
_____
Notes
1. Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist
Identity, Volume 1: Beginnings in Britain (Ross-shire, Scotland:
Mentor, 2008), 46–48.
2. William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, rev. ed. (Valley
Forge: Judson Press, 1969).
3. “Remonstrance” and “Reformed Orthodox” would be better
terms that emphasize the shared theological commitments of
movements rather than individual theologians, yet these terms
are less well known.
4. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 296.
5. William J. McGlothlin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Philadelphia:
American Baptist Publication Society, 1911), 293. However,
Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 349, n. 3, suggests at least two local
congregations in Pennsylvania had published confessions by 1700.
6. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions, 353.
7. https://www.nationalbaptist.com/about-nbc/what-we-believe,
accessed 12 August 2022.
8. https://cbf.net/who-we-are, accessed 11 August 2022.
40 the southern baptist theological seminary

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y s t e p h e n presley
This tapestry contains a single scene representing an article of the Apostles’ Creed, ca. 1550–1600
how did the
fathers use creeds?
I remember the first time I heard the song
“Creed” by the late great Rich Mullins. I
I was a young Baptist kid attending a Disciple
Now weekend with my youth group.
Rich showed up looking like a vagabond, barefoot and
wearing a ratty white t-shirt. He played a nice set for our
gathering, complete with his regular songs such as “Awesome
God,” “If I stand,” “O God You Are My God,” and
others. At one point, he sang “Creed.” I had very little
experience with the historic Christian creeds, and I remember
thinking how strange and incredible the language
sounded. Every word seemed precise and captured
what I believed in a few succinct phrases.
The lyrics of “Creed” hung with me. I purchased the
album and listened to the lyrics until I had them memorized.
I am embarrassed to say that only later did I realize
that I was actually memorizing the words of the Apostles’
Creed, one of the oldest confessions of faith.
42 the southern baptist theological seminary

“DISCIPLESHIP, WORSHIP, AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
WERE FUSED WITH DOCTRINE AS THE CHURCH
WORKED TO PASS ON THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED
TO THE SAINTS (JUDE 1:3). THUS, WHEN I CONSIDER
THE PERFORMANCE OF CREEDS IN THE EARLY
CHURCH, THEY USED THEM CATECHETICALLY,
LITURGICALLY, AND APOLOGETICALLY.”
But that’s not all.
I also learned that the chorus—which runs, “I did
not make it, no it is making me, this is the very truth of
God, not the invention of any man”—it is not from Rich
either. The lyrics are taken from the opening lines of G.
K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Referring to his own personal
faith, Chesterton writes, “I will not call it my philosophy;
for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it
made me.” For Chesterton, orthodoxy, or a basic confession
of faith, is not something we create, but something
that is recreating us.
These early confessions of faith uniting a popular
1990s CCM musician, a 20th-century British apologist,
and a Baptist youth group exemplify the way confessions
thread the Christian tradition. The church has always
been and will always be a confessional people.
Looking back now, I can also see something else going
on. The way Rich brings the creed into worship and
his application of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy remind me
of the different ways that the early church used creeds
within their liturgical and spiritual lives. From its earliest
days, the church formed a culture of confession. Discipleship,
worship, and the spiritual life were fused with
doctrine as the church worked to pass on the faith once
delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). Thus, when I consider
the performance of creeds in the early church, they used
them catechetically, liturgically, and apologetically.
Confessions and Catechesis
Catechesis, or discipleship, was the early Christian pro-
cess of preparing new members for baptism. Given that
many of the new converts were coming out of paganism,
the church was concerned about syncretism and hoped
to preserve the purity of the church. This meant a longer
period of discipleship for potential members and more
intensive study of the basic doctrines of the faith.
In his catechetical manual On the Apostolic Preaching,
the church father Irenaeus encourages Christians to hold
fast to what he calls the “rule of faith.” Like the borders
of an athletic field, the rule of faith formed the boundary
markers for the church’s confession. The rule of faith typically
follows a threefold structure, under the headings
of Father, Son, and Spirit mentioned in Matthew 28:19.
They added key divine attributes and activities under
each heading that described their doctrine of God and
the work of God throughout the history of salvation. Irenaeus’
account the rule of faith reads:
This then is the order of the rule of our faith, and
the foundation of the building, and the stability
of our conversation: God, the Father, not made,
not material, invisible; one God, the creator of all
things: this is the first point of our faith. The second
point is: The Word of God, Son of God, Christ
Jesus our Lord, who was manifested to the prophets
according to the form of their prophesying and
according to the method of the dispensation of
the Father: through whom all things were made;
who also at the end of the times, to complete and
gather up all things, was made man among men,
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stephen presley
visible and tangible, in order to abolish death
and show forth life and produce a community of
union between God and man. And the third point
is: The Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets
prophesied, and the fathers learned the things of
God, and the righteous were led forth into the way
of righteousness; and who in the end of the times
was poured out in a new way a upon mankind in
all the earth, renewing man unto God.
Other early Christian texts, such as Cyril’s Catechetical
Lectures or Augustine’s Enchiridion, use confessions
like the Apostles’ Creed to explain the basic structure of
the church’s faith. For the early church, there was no true
discipleship without some training in confessions of faith.
Confessions and Liturgy
Alongside the catechetical use of confessions, there is a
liturgical use. The early church’s liturgy, or the patterns
of worship, uses confessions in all kinds of ways. In baptism,
for example, early Christians would affirm a basic
confession of faith. For the early church, baptism was not
a spontaneous, unreflective event, but a time when a new
believer stood before the community to proclaim a beautiful
confession in the one true God.
The early Christian text On the Apostolic Teaching
provides a good example. According to the text, a deacon
would descend into the water and welcome the baptism
candidate. He would then ask them three questions.
First, he would ask, “Do you believe in God the
Father Almighty?”
Then, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and
rose on the third day living from the dead, and ascended
into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father,
the one coming to judge the living and the dead?”
Finally, he asked, “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit
and the Holy Church and the resurrection of the flesh?”
Each time, the baptismal candidate would simply reply,
“I believe.” As they proclaimed each question and answer
together, the rest of the Christian community stood in
agreement and confirmation of the good confession, welcoming
each new believer into the family of God.
There are other ways that confessions were fused with
worship, including prayers, songs, and public readings.
All these liturgical acts unify the worshiping community
around basic doctrinal convictions.
Confessions and Apologetics
Finally, confessions were used apologetically. As the early
church grew and expanded, they always encountered
new issues of heterodoxy. Some of these heretics include:
the Gnostics who rejected the material world, Marcion,
who believed the God of the Old Testament was wicked,
Arius, who denied the deity of Christ, and Apollinaris,
who denied Christ’s humanity. These heretical figures
came in waves. As soon as the church dealt with one, another
one rose to take his place.
In each case, theologians in the early church composed
confessions to address heresy. Irenaeus, for example,
composed a confession of faith that stressed God’s
work of creation and the incarnation to deal with Gnosticism.
Tertullian wrote against Marcion and emphasized
the unity of the work of God throughout both Testaments.
The Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon
rejected the teachings of Arius, Apollinaris, and
other Christological heresies. When the church needed
to defend and clarify the faith, confessions served an
apologetic purpose.
Conclusion
Confessions pervaded the life of the early church. It used
them catechetically, liturgically, and apologetically. The
early church would not know how to disciple new believers,
perform acts of worship, or defend the faith apart
from the use of confessions.
These uses are not all that different from the way
confessions still function today. Rich Mullins, after all,
taught me this. His music was simply carrying on a long
tradition that fused confessions with the life and ministry
of the church. I am grateful for this tradition that
inspired Rich to take the words of an ancient creed and
proclaim them to us. Together with Rich, Chesterton,
and the early church, I affirm that “I believe what I believe
is what makes me what I am, I did not make it, no it
is making me, It is the very truth of God, not the invention
of any man.”
Stephen Presley is associate professor of church history
and director of research doctoral studies at The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary.
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y r ay m o n d johnson
how do you cast a
confessional vision in a
non-confessional church?
“I agree with every word, but only Roman
Catholics read creeds.” I was walking down
I the sidewalk with a member of our congregation,
and we had just finished discussing
why our church reads creeds and confessions during
congregational worship. The issue was at once simple
and decisive—our church should not read creeds during
congregational worship because, according to the person
with whom I was speaking, Baptists do not read creeds.
His sentiment isn’t novel. The purpose of creeds and
confessions in the life of the modern church—in this case,
Baptist churches—is the subject of much debate within
evangelicalism today. Unfortunately, many churches fail
to see the positive impact of creeds and confessions in
the life of the local church and, in so doing, disregard
them altogether. However, creeds and confessions bring
unity to the church in both its orthodoxy and its orthopraxy,
thus protecting the church from heterodoxy.
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aymond johnson
But how does a minister cast a confessional vision of
church for a church that has never been confessional?
The Bible Drives the Change
Confessions did not create the church; the Word of God
created the church. Thus, evangelicals prioritize the
preaching event in the life of the local church. Calvin
would go so far as to say, “The church is built up solely
by outward preaching…. By his word, God alone sanctifies
[churches] to himself for lawful use.” 1 The church
is created and revitalized through the Word of God by
the Spirit of God.
However, an emphasis on the expositional teaching of
the Bible will naturally and organically result in a defined
confessionalism. Biblical preaching guides a congregation
to a defined confessionalism because terms like “Christ”
and “church” carry with them massive theological import
and doctrinal content. Christ’s identity is highly particular;
it communicates something specific about what Jesus
did for us and for our salvation (John 20:31; cf. Matt 1:17;
16:16). In the Apostles’ Creed, “church” appropriately
precedes “the forgiveness of sins” because forgiveness of
sins does not take place apart from the gospel the church
preaches (John 20:19-23; Acts 2:38; cf. Isa. 33:14-24).
Christians must know something particular about
Christ’s identity, about the nature of Christ’s church. Substantial
revitalization in the life of the church best occurs
with a renewed interest in expositional Bible preaching
and a renewal of the church’s confessional life.
(Practical) Liturgy for Baptists
The idea of liturgy brings us back to our original question:
“How does a minister cast a confessional vision of
church for a church that has never been confessional?”
Here is what it has looked like in the life of our church:
Our elders have led our congregation toward a weekly
worship rhythm that integrates biblically reflective statements
of tradition into the corporate worship of our local
church. Each week our congregation has a time where we
read from either our confession of faith 2 or a creed aloud
during corporate worship together.
Since our basic beliefs represent the foundational
beliefs of Christianity, and because we are steadfast in
our commitment to historic Christian orthodoxy, we
consciously see ourselves as guided by widely accepted
historic Christian statements of faith—the Apostles’
Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed, and
the Athanasian Creed.
When we read creeds and confessions and affirm our
faith in this manner, it teaches our congregation that we
join with all faithful believers across time and throughout
the world today in confessing our faith to the glory of
God. As the content of doctrine is repeated and taken in
as what is true, the church is unified in its worship.
In terms of Christian worship, the Bible instructs us
to fill our minds with the knowledge of God:
• “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and
being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the
grace that will be brought to you at the revelation
of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13).
• “Set your minds on things that are above, not on
things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2).
• “For those who live according to the flesh set
their minds on the things of the flesh, but those
who live according to the Spirit set their minds
on the things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5).
The Bible tells us to fill and train our minds. The
knowledge of God controls our minds so that we can think
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“THINKING RIGHTLY ABOUT GOD CAUSES US TO
FEEL RIGHTLY ABOUT GOD AND ACT RIGHTLY
BEFORE GOD. THE USE OF CREEDS AND
CONFESSIONS IN THE CHURCH TEACHES OUR
CONGREGATION TO FILL THEIR MINDS WITH
RIGHT THINKING ABOUT GOD.”
rightly about God. Thinking rightly about God causes us
to feel rightly about God and act rightly before God.
The use of creeds and confessions in the church
teaches our congregation to fill their minds with right
thinking about God. Right thinking creates praise and
adoration for the Creator. So, Carl Trueman states,
We go to church each week in part to be reminded
by that Word which comes from outside of us
who God is, what he has done, and what he will
do. The corporate recitation of a creed forces us to
engage in the positive action of ascribing to him
that which is his: glories of his nature; the marvelous
details of his actions; and the great promise of
the future consummation of the kingdom. That is
worship: giving to God what is his. 3
Affirming sound words of Christian truth from creeds
and confessions together unifies our congregation so that
we can rightly praise the Creator together.
Pastoral Lessons Learned Along the Way
Though creeds and confessions can be read aloud on the
Lord’s Day, reflected upon in small groups, and memorized
by members, a minister must remember that casting
a confessional vision of church for a church that has
never been confessional requires patience. This awareness
creates space for God to work as members learn to
ask good questions of the Bible as well as about the doctrinal
content the church ascribes to and teaches.
So when a member says, “I agree with every word, but
only Roman Catholics read creeds,” or “I agree with every
word, but I have no creed but the Bible,” it is the elders’
opportunity to help them see that it is not just Roman
Catholics who use creeds but the church of Jesus Christ
as she confesses “the faith that was once for all delivered
to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
Or if a member says, “I agree with every word, but
reading creeds is repetitive,” it is the elders’ opportunity
to explain the value of catechizing as well as see this as
an opportunity to avoid monotony by using a multitude
of creeds and confessions that repeat the same truths in
services of corporate worship. And confessing truth is always
an act of worship.
And if some creeds—like the Athanasian Creed—are
too long for any one worship service, the elders can divide
the creed up to be read over the course of consecutive
weeks (perhaps to be used during Advent or Lent).
Unfortunately, as a defined confessionalism emerges,
some may leave. Others, however, will be drawn to the
doctrinal content of Scripture. Therefore, as Wolfgang
Capito urged his church when unsettled about the slow
pace of reform, be calm and “let the Word work on.”
Raymond Johnson serves as senior pastor of Christ
Church West Chester in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He
holds a PhD in New Testament from Southern Seminary.
Raymond and his wife, Meghan, have five children.
_____
Notes
1. John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, IV.1.5.
2. The New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833, adapted).
3. Carl R. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative (Wheaton, IL: Crossway,
2012), 156.
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y j e f f robinson
how narrow
should a
confession be?
I did a double-take when I read the sign in
front of a small, white church beside a twolane
blacktop that snaked through the hills
I
of western North Carolina. I stopped and
backed up my SUV to get a second look. The weathered
12’-by-18’ sign read: “Welcome to Trinity Baptist Church.
We are an Independent, Bible-believing, Trinitarian,
KJV-only, amillennial, evangelistic congregation.”
Two things on the sign captured my attention: “KJVonly”
and “amillennial.” The Bible translation didn’t
surprise me much, but I’m more accustomed to churches
affirming the KJV alongside some form of premillennialism,
so the amill affirmation took me back a little.
But that church’s sign does raise an important
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question for confessional Christians: Which doctrines
should be included in a church’s or evangelical organization’s
confession of faith?
Theological Triage
In Albert Mohler’s helpful scheme of theological triage,
issues such as eschatology or church music are thirdlevel
doctrines on which good Christians may disagree
and (typically) still be considered not only orthodox, but
part of the same denomination or church in good standing.
Mohler led the school back to its confessional roots
in the 1990s after it had fallen into theological liberalism
in the mid-20th century.
While Christians should never approach any doctrine
with anything less than full seriousness, Mohler
establishes three orders of doctrines that are helpful in
establishing confessional non-negotiables.
First-order doctrines represent the most fundamental
truths of the Christian faith, and a denial
of these doctrines represents nothing less than an
eventual denial of Christianity itself…. The set of
second-order doctrines is distinguished from the
first-order set by the fact that believing Christians
may disagree on the second-order issues, though
this disagreement will create significant boundaries
between believers.… Third-order issues are
doctrines over which Christians may disagree and
remain in close fellowship, even within local congregations.
I would put most debates over eschatology,
for example, in this category.
EFCA and Premillennialism
In the summer of 2019, the Evangelical Free Church in
America (EFCA) provided an important illustration as to
how a denomination deals with confessional issues when
79 percent of delegates to biennial meeting of the EFCA
voted in favor of a motion to amend Article 9 of the
denomination’s Statement of Faith. Previously, Article 9
affirmed premillennialism as the exclusive view on the
timing of Christ’s return. Formerly the article read, “We
believe in the personal, bodily, and premillennial return
of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Members voted to replace
“premillennial” with “glorious,” thus avoiding narrow
subscription to a millennial view.
Was this a positive move in favor of healthy confessionalism
or a capitulation?
How should confessional Christians stay out of the
opposite ditches of making either everything or nothing
a first-order issue?
The EFCA first proposed the change during its 2017
meeting. The Board of Directors, composed of leaders
who affirm the Statement of Faith, including premillennialism,
presented the motion to the assembly. EFCA
leaders believed requiring members to subscribe to
premillennialism conflicted with a higher core value of
Christians uniting around the truths of the gospel. The
length of the millennium and the timing of Christ’s return
simply were not theological lines EFCA leaders thought
should be drawn. For this, they should be applauded. I
say this as a confessional Baptist, firmly committed to the
Second London Confession of 1689.
Two Extremes
Two extremes ought to be avoided when discussing theological
triage and confessional statements. Fundamentalism
tends to operate as if every theological issue is of first
importance and, therefore, no second-and third-order
issues exist. Theological liberalism, meanwhile, tends to
operate as if no first-order issues exist. So how should
confessional Christians stay out of the opposite ditches of
making either everything or nothing a first-order issue?
Here are three questions we might ask to determine
whether to include non-fundamental issues in a
confession of faith.
1. Have the major historical confessions addressed it?
The best of the historical statements of faith, particularly
in the Reformed tradition, have not typically included
third-level doctrines such as the millennium and the
timing of Christ’s return. Architects of both the Second
London Confession of 1689 and its Presbyterian cousin,
the venerable Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF),
included articles on the reality of final judgment and
the truthfulness of Christ’s return, but not the timing
or the millennium.
Chapter 32 (“The Last Judgment”) in the Second
London Confession begins: “God hath appointed a day
wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by
Jesus Christ.” The second paragraph reads: “The end of
God’s appointing this day, is for the manifestation of the
glory of his mercy, in the eternal salvation of the elect;
and of his justice, in the eternal damnation of the reprobate,
who are wicked and disobedient.” Chapter 33 of the
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WCF words it the same way.
The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) deals with “Last
Things” in chapter 20: “According to his promise, Jesus
will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth.”
Others such as the Belgic Confession deal with the last
things similarly.
The major confessions among Baptists, Presbyterians,
and Congregationalists (as well as the Anglican
Thirty-Nine Articles) have included mainly first- and
second-order issues: all doctrines germane to orthodox
Christianity and the gospel such as justification by faith,
the person and work of Christ, the full deity of Christ,
the Trinity, and the resurrection of Christ, along with
denominational distinctives such as church government,
baptism, and the sacraments (or ordinances).
Congregationalists in England published the Savoy
Declaration in 1658, and British Calvinistic Baptists
drew up the Second London Confession three decades
later with the specific intent of demonstrating that neither
was a dangerous, heretical sect; both affirmed the
same orthodox, evangelical theology as the Westminster
divines. Baptists and Congregationalists, among others,
were being persecuted as heretics and seditionists by the
state-run church.
Churches and organizations have penned many other
excellent confessions in the centuries following the Reformation;
almost none of them has demanded specific
views on third-level issues such as the millennium or the
timing of Jesus’ return—for good reason.
2. Does demanding subscription to this doctrine needlessly
divide Christians? If nothing else, the EFCA’s
move is commendable because it aimed to avoid dividing
good Christians needlessly. The board made clear that
the EFCA was not pressing for relational unity at the
cost of doctrinal purity. Greg Strand, EFCA executive
director of theology and credentialing, assured members
the revision did not represent a drift toward theological
minimalism:
There are three issues in the question. First, it is
never one over against another. Doctrinal truth
and purity is always foundational to relational
unity. Any true experienced unity is grounded
in doctrinal truth. Second, this is not a matter of
doctrinal minimalism. If it were, many biblical
truths would not be included and necessary to
affirm in our Statement of Faith. The better way
to understand our Statement of Faith is that it is
an essentialist statement, not a minimalist statement.
This is also why it is necessary for all those
credentialed to affirm the Statement of Faith
“without mental reservation.” That means we are
strict subscriptionists. It is required to affirm the
complete Statement of Faith “without mental
reservation.” There is no good-faith subscription
allowed, which would grant certain exceptions
or caveats in belief as long as they are approved.
Finally, in the EFCA we take seriously the one
new community God creates through his Son by
the Spirit. This is experiencing and living out the
truth and reality of the work of Christ…. It is a
unity centered on the truth of the gospel, even if
and when there are differences on secondary and
tertiary matters.
I once spent several months as a candidate for the
office of senior pastor in a church in the Deep South. I
went through three rounds of interviews, including one
for which I traveled for a face-to-face session. I wrote
answers to theological and practical questions that totaled
nearly 40 pages. The committee also interviewed my wife
extensively. Numerous phone calls went back and forth
between the chairman and me. I probably invested well
more than 100 hours in the process, and it became clear
that I was the leading candidate.
Toward the end, the search committee scheduled a
weekend on which my family would meet the congregation,
participate in a battery of meetings, and then I’d
preach on Sunday in view of a call to pastor the church.
Unfortunately, my candidacy ended abruptly when the
committee learned that I didn’t subscribe to the very specific
details of their view of the timing of Jesus’ return,
which was included in a sub-appendix (which I hadn’t
seen) to the church’s confession.
I wasn’t bothered so much by the fact that they didn’t
call me as pastor; obviously, it wasn’t God’s will. I did,
however, believe this confessional item was unwise and
divided brothers needlessly. An evangelical confession
should avoid that mistake. My current elder board
includes men with a variety of views on issues such as
the end times, church music styles, and Bible translations—and
we’ve never experienced division over it.
Consciously reject the Trinity, and you’re not a Christian.
Reject believer’s baptism, and you’ll need to join another
denomination. Reject my view of the millennium, and
50 the southern baptist theological seminary

“THE BETTER WAY TO UNDERSTAND
OUR STATEMENT OF FAITH IS THAT IT
IS AN ESSENTIALIST STATEMENT, NOT A
MINIMALIST STATEMENT.”
we can serve on the elder board together.
A church or denomination’s confession should affirm
all the cardinal doctrines that define orthodox Christianity
and important second-order issues that make up
denominational or church distinctives such as baptism,
the sacraments (or ordinances), issues related to complementarianism/egalitarianism,
and church polity.
3. Is it related to an issue that demands the church
speak prophetically? There are legitimate occasions that
call Christians to speak prophetically by narrowing—
often by adding to or clarifying—their confession of faith.
For example, in the late 1990s, rising feminism and
the broader culture’s attack on marriage prompted the
Southern Baptist Convention to adopt articles on male
headship and the sanctity of biblical marriage and to add
them to the Baptist Faith and Message.
In 2008, the EFCA revised its article on the doctrine
of God to reaffirm God’s exhaustive knowledge and the
reality of God’s wrath—old orthodox truths that were
being challenged by open theism.
The Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530 spoke to
such issues as “Of the Mass,” “Of the Marriage of Priests,”
“Of Confession,” and “Of the Distinction of Meats.”
Similarly, Article 22 of the Thirty-Nine Articles rejects
the doctrine of purgatory. Centuries later, these may
seem like tertiary issues, but they were of massive consequence
and strident debate amid the early decades of
the Reformation. Churches need to declare their colors
on those matters.
Christian organizations often adopt confessions of
faith to directly address burning issues in the culture, as
was the case with the Council on Biblical Manhood and
Womanhood when it published the Danvers Statement
on gender roles in 1987 and, more recently, the Nashville
Statement affirming biblical sexuality.
Historically, the tendency to include premillennialism
in mid-20th-century evangelical confessions came in
response to the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy.
Premillennialism served as a badge of membership for
conservative evangelicals over against amillennialism,
which was perceived at the time as a view that signaled
theological liberalism. Since then this perception, and
thus the level of urgency, has changed.
If a church, denomination, or Christian organization
needs to offer clarity or speak prophetically, then adding
or revising articles is valid, even necessary. There are
times when a non-first-order issue, such as egalitarianism/complementarianism,
rises to a level of importance
that it must be dealt with confessionally. In other words,
our triage chart on second- and third-level issues may
change as circumstances such as cultural pressure and
theological debates demand.
Guardrails
I’m thankful to have been a part of confessional
Reformed Christianity for many years now, and I want
to do everything I can to nurture it. But I don’t want to
define membership by millennial views or Bible translation
preferences.
Confessions of faith should function as guardrails—
as narrow as Scripture is on a given issue—not a straitjacket.
Jeff Robinson is director of news and information at The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a PhD
graduate from Southern Seminary and senior pastor of
Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, Louisville, KY.
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y j e f f robinson
SEMINARY WIVES INSTITUTE
y
25 Years
of
God’s Faithfulness
In February of 1997, Mary Mohler met with a few
wives of Southern Seminary faculty members to
share a burden and a vision that wives of seminary
students needed to be encouraged and trained,
and in the fall of that year, Seminary Wives Institute
(SWI) was born.
Many student wives had requested training to help
them prepare for the important role they play in supporting
their husbands’ ministries in the local church, the
mission field, and in other ministry venues. Mary Mohler
and the group of faculty wives assembled a curriculum
and began classes they hoped would meet the needs.
“We started SWI as a program to equip student wives
here on our campus for preparation alongside their husbands,”
Mohler said. “We believe when God calls a man
to ministry, he also calls his wife to a very important
role, and the time when they are together here at seminary
is the perfect time for her to receive training at the
same time he does.”
Tanya York, a longtime SWI faculty member and wife
of Theology School Dean Hershael York, attended that
initial meeting and has watched SWI grow into one of the
seminary’s most vital and cherished ministries.
“Mary shared with us a passion, a burden, and a vision,”
York said. “Mary’s passion very quickly spilled over to a
willing group of participants from within Southern’s faculty
wives as they joined her in investing in educating and
equipping student wives in the service of the kingdom.
“God has used this incredible and fruitful ministry to
equip, fuel, and inspire hearts, homes, churches, ministries
and lives in general.”
Hershael York, who teaches theology at SWI, said
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53

“Getting to see the professors that my husband was studying under and getting to hear
about the practical ministry experiences of ministry and faculty wives, I saw the value
of it immediately. It has been good for our marriage and has been great for preparing
and equipping us to go out and serve together as a team. It’s a unique opportunity and
an invaluable resource to us here at Southern. It’s a great way to be able to support our
husbands and be a team as we work together to serve the local church.”
LAURA JUVINALL
from Wisconsin.
“I know this is the best investment I can make. I’ve never left the classroom empty,
but I’ve always been motivated to go and tell others what I’ve learned. I’ve always been
challenged by the things the professors said. They’ve taught me how to be a better wife,
a better mom. I was a teacher for 10 years and worked as a volunteer, and I was
worried that I’m not giving anything back, but in SWI I’m learning now how to
serve my husband and my baby—it’s a mission for them first. SWI has helped me
to feel that I am giving, even when I’m at home.”
MARIA ABOU ASSALY
from Lebanon.
“When Hershael was in seminary, there was nothing for wives. There was one
professor’s wife who did one class and met with us for a couple of hours and
encouraged us. When we came to Southern, it was always on my brain that
there was something that was lacking for students’ wives, there’s got to be more.
Thankfully, Mary Mohler had already had this passion, this vision that was already
in place. Through her passion and through her desire and design for student wives,
it caught on with the professors and the professors’ wives. We began loving on these
student wives and teaching them very practical things for ministry.”
TANYA YORK
longtime SWI teacher and leader.

25 years of god’s faithfulness
male students often stop and
extol the incredible impact and
encouragement SWI is having
on their wives.
“Our admiration for Mary is
off the charts,” Hershael York
said. “We owe her so much.
She has had such a profound
impact. It’s a wonderful thing
to see the way her vision has
affected these families and
shaped them forever.”
That first class 25 years ago
numbered 136 students; thousands
of wives have taken classes
in the years since, and many
have received certificates for
completing the program. SWI
has now trained an entire generation
of ministry wives.
“I was the mother of preschoolers then and now I’m
the grandmother of preschoolers, so truly an entire generation
has elapsed,” Mohler said.
“We started this program due to the demand on campus
here from student wives who were in a very friendly
way asking for instruction that was tailored to them as
they prepared for ministry alongside their husbands. The
Lord has blessed it beyond any expectation we ever had,
and he continues to do so.”
Tanya York said Mary Mohler’s ministry through SWI
extends far beyond merely a list of names on class rolls.
For SWI’s founder, each student is a dear sister in the Lord.
“Mary knows these students by name, she knows their
churches, she knows their children, she knows their ministry,
she knows their pets, she knows their favorite beverages,”
Tanya York said. “She truly loves them, and they
are forever stored in her heart and in her mind.”
SWI began with a meeting and a vision and today is one
of the most cherished and vital parts of Southern Seminary’s
ministry to its students. Mary Mohler deflected all
credit; “God alone has built the ministry,” she said. Numerous
faculty members and faculty wives teach in SWI,
with classes ranging from hospitality and public speaking
to evangelism, theology, church history, and much more.
“All I can say is, ‘to God be all the glory,’” she said. “This
not at all a Mary Mohler effort;
this is something the Lord did
put on my heart in 1997. But
then he also sovereignly brought
alongside me a phenomenal
group of faculty wives, such that
a program like this doesn’t exist
anywhere else on the planet.
“The seminary faculty also
gladly gives their time in addition
to full schedules to teach our
student wives, and this is priceless.
I am astounded and truly
grateful for how the Lord has
chosen to use SWI to his glory
for 25 years.”
fall 2022
55

Discover the explosive
power of Jesus’ parables.
AVAILABLE AT BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
news & features
SBTS oresident Albert Mohler in his 30th fall convocation address.
“the bible is the
curriculum,” mohler
says in annual fall
convocation address
—
By Jeff Robinson
The curriculum at The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary and
Boyce College is not about the Bible
or things related to the Bible;
it is the Bible, seminary president
Albert Mohler told students and
faculty Tuesday morning in the
school’s annual fall convocation at
Alumni Memorial Chapel.
Preaching from 2 Peter 1, focusing
on verse 19, where Peter, having
spoken in previous verses of
the transfiguration of Jesus which
he witnessed, said of Scripture,
“we have something more sure to
which you do well to pay attention,”
Mohler said God’s Word must saturate
the curriculum at a faithful
seminary.
“This is a call to attentiveness
to Scripture in all of life,” Mohler
said in his 30 th fall convocation address.
“But let’s face it, as much as
it is about all of life, here we are in
this hour, in this place, asking God’s
blessing upon the task of Christian
higher education and theological
education. We are playing with fire,
brothers and sisters. We are walking
right up to the edge of the precipice
and looking down.”
Mohler said that if the Bible is
the authority of all authorities for
the follower of Christ, if it is, as
Martin Luther put it, “the norm
above norms that can’t be normed,”
then the subject matter that Southern
Seminary and Boyce College
are called to build everything upon
rings clear.
“It’s about Scripture saturating
everything we do and everything
we learn and everything we teach
in such a way that we are doing well
to pay attention to the Word.”
During the service, three SBTS
and Boyce College professors signed
the Abstract of Principles, the seminary’s
historic confession of faith:
Tyler A. Flatt, associate professor of
humanities at Boyce College, Justin
A. Irving, Duke K. McCall Professor
of Christian Leadership, and
Abraham Kuruvilla, Carl E. Bates
Professor of Preaching. Irving and
Kuruvilla were installed into these
respective endowed chairs.
Mohler introduced seven new
faculty members: William R. Bishop,
associate professor of church
Boyce College professor Tyler Flatt signs the Abstract of Principles.
fall 2022
57

news & features
music and worship; Mitchell L.
Chase, associate professor of biblical
studies; J. T. English, associate
professor of Christian Theology;
Kaspars Ozolins, associate professor
of Old Testament interpretation;
Jimmy H. Scroggins, professor
of Christian ministry; Curtis
W. Solomon, assistant professor of
biblical counseling at Boyce College;
and Daniel J. Stevens, assistant
professor of New Testament interpretation
at Boyce College.
The seminary also welcomed six
new members of its trustee board:
Margaret G. Beachy of Crestwood,
Kentucky, Glen W. Braswell of Lancaster,
Kentucky, Tamara J. Buck
of Conway, Arkansas, Stephen
A. Jones of Highland, California,
Mark A. Jordan of Louisville, Kentucky,
and Courtney D. Reissig of
Little Rock, Arkansas.
sbts installs
new bgs dean and
provost in historic
father-son succession
—
By Jeff Robinson
The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary installed new leaders in
two of the school’s most important
offices this week in separate
ceremonies in Alumni Memorial
Chapel, with the provost appointment
making Southern Baptist history.
Jeremy Pierre was installed as
dean of the Billy Graham School
of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry
in a chapel service on August
30, and Paul Akin was installed as
provost and senior vice president
for academic administration of the
seminary on Thursday morning.
Paul Akin’s appointment is historic:
he follows in the footsteps
Paul Akin (left) with his father, Danny Akin (center) praying,
during the installation of his son as provost of Southern Seminary.
of his father, Daniel L. Akin, who
served as provost at Southern
Seminary from 1996 to 2004. They
are the first father-son tandem in
Southern Baptist Convention history
to serve as provost of the same
institution. Today, Daniel L. Akin
is president of Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Wake
Forest, North Carolina, an office for
which he left Southern Seminary in
2004.
Seminary president Albert Mohler
called it a “blessed continuity.
“There is nothing like this in
Southern Baptist history,” Mohler
said. “The only parallel to this I
know is in the 18th and 19th centuries
at Princeton Theological Seminary
where there were fathers and
sons that were serving in such similar
capacities with names like Alexander
and Hodge. This is glorious.
One of the greatest joys of my life
was to work with Dr. Danny Akin
when he was the dean of the School
of Theology and provost, because
it wasn’t just a colleagueship; it was
and is a very deep friendship.”
Daniel Akin preached in SBTS
chapel Thursday during Paul Akin’s
installation service. Exhorting from
Mark 10:35-45, Daniel Akin encouraged
his son to remember that
the call, opportunity, and ability to
serve God are all gifts of grace. He
warned Paul to guard against a sinful
form of ambition that can ruin a
man of God and destroy his calling.
“It’s all of grace that you have a
special call on your life,” Daniel
Akin said. “I want Paul to understand
that the fact that God called
him to this particular position at
this particular moment is all of
grace.
“And yet if you ever begin to
think, ‘That is something I deserve.
That is something I should have,’ let
me tell you, ambition is a killer in
the Christian life. There is such a
thing as a holy ambition where you
are longing with all of your being
to honor and glorify God. I understand
that, but I’ve lived for 45 years
in ministry, and I’ve seen an unholy
ambition grab the heart of those
that at one time wanted to walk
humbly before the Lord but now
want to climb some pseudo-ladder
of success, not to honor his name,
but to build their own.”
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news & features
Both Pierre and Paul Akin had
been serving in their respective
offices since earlier this summer,
prior to the formal installation.
Pierre was named dean early last
month after 20 years of teaching
and serving in various other roles
at Southern Seminary and Boyce
College. Akin was announced as
provost and senior vice president
for academic administration in
mid-June at the annual meeting of
the Southern Baptist Convention in
Anaheim. Previously, he was dean
of the Graham School.
Pierre preached from Philippians
1:9-11 at his installation service, reminding
students and faculty that a
call to any role in ministry, is a call
to become a servant.
“I am honored to assume this
role that bears the name of Billy
Graham,” Pierre said. “I am deeply
grateful for his ministry and the
legacy that is represented by that
name. The school is about missions
and evangelism and ministry and
that is a high privilege.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret
about this role as the dean of the
BGS. It’s the role of a servant; I
serve the faculty, the faculty serves
the students, so that you go out and
serve churches locally and missions
globally. We’re all servants, and I
think we’re in good company in
The annual Heritage Golf Classic hosted by SBTS.
Jeremy Pierre was installed as dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions,
Evangelism, and Ministry during a fall semester chapel ceremony.
claiming this because the apostle
Paul, about his apostleship, said
this same thing.”
annual golf
tournament raises
$232,000 for sbts and
boyce college students
—
By Travis Hearne
More than 110 golfers raised
$232,000 for Southern Seminary
and Boyce students at the 19th Annual
Heritage Golf Classic Tournament
on August 22 at Big Spring
Country Club.
Southern Seminary president
Albert Mohler voiced his gratitude
for the tournament and the excellent
day for it. Temperatures were
mild–in the low 80s–and weather
the entire day was perfect for a golf
tournament.
“What a spectacular day,” he said.
“Golf is something I greatly admire,
and I especially admire the fact that
today you have transformed golf
into a way of helping students at
Southern Seminary prepare for
ministry.”
Edward Heinze, vice president
of Institutional Advancement, was
thrilled with the number of participants—there
were 112 golfers and
numerous sponsors. The tournament
raises money to help offset
tuition for students at the seminary
and Boyce College.
“Every year our donors turn
out with big hearts and generous
hands to help us keep our degree
programs affordable for all of our
students,” Heinze said. “Probably
the most encouraging aspect of this
tournament is the joy that accentuates
the entire day—our donors are
genuinely happy to participate.”
Alongside the money raised,
Trevor Barylske, an MDiv student
at SBTS, received the $5,000 Rick
Bordas Scholarship.
fall 2022
59

news & features
storyline that goes from Genesis to
Revelation and there are stories in
the Old Testament. Jesus perfected
the use of parables in teaching, and
they are particular kinds of stories;
they are stories that sneak up on us,
they are stories that explode and
disclose truth in an unbelievable
way.”
President Mohler signs his new book on the parables of Jesus.
mohler’s new
book unveils the
explosive power
of jesus’ parables
—
By Jeff Robinson
When Jesus’ disciples asked him
why he sometimes taught in pithy
stories known as parables, the
Lord gave them a surprising, if not
slightly shocking, answer: he taught
in parables so that some would
have their spiritual eyes opened to
the truth of God’s kingdom and
that others would have their hearts
and minds blinded to it.
Such is the nature of those stories
Jesus tells, which is, of course
the outcome of engaging all of
Scripture—some hearts are softened
toward the kingdom, others
are hardened.
In his new book Tell Me the Stories
of Jesus: The Explosive Power of
Jesus’ Parables (Thomas Nelson),
Southern Seminary president R.
Albert Mohler Jr. says in this way
the parables “sneak up on Jesus’
hearers” with incredible power that
makes clear truths about the kingdom
of God.
In a little over 200 pages, Mohler
examines many of the parables—
most of which are found in the first
three books of the New Testament,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke—showing
how they announce the arrival
of God’s kingdom in all its glory,
communicating both God’s grace
in salvation to the found and his
wrath in judgment to the lost.
“To be human is to be a storied
creature in a way no other creature
is,” Mohler said. “Dogs don’t know
stories; they don’t tell stories; human
beings tell stories—it’s a part
of understanding who we are. Parents
tell stories to their children
and then those stories get repeated
about the identity of a family.
Churches and other organizations
have stories.
“To be human is to have a story.
To be human is to understand ultimate
truth in terms of a story. The
Bible is much more than a story, but
it’s never less than a story. There is a
“treasure the
old testament,”
betts tells faculty
and students in
annual faculty address
—
By Travis Hearne
While many Christians wonder
how the Old Testament remains
relevant, believers should study,
teach, and preach it because it is
God’s Word and is vital for the
Christian life, professor T. J. Betts
urged in Southern Seminary’s annual
Faculty Address held August
31 in Broadus Chapel.
“My hope is for my students
to see the treasure that is the Old
Testament and experience the joy
of teaching and preaching it,” Betts
said. “There’s one God, one Savior,
one Bible, and one faith. The Old
and New Testament testify to this
truth.”
Betts offered six reasons for
New Testament believers to study,
teach, and preach the Old Testament.
Betts serves as professor of
Old Testament interpretation at
The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary.
1. The Old Testament is the
Word of God. All Scripture is
breathed out by God and carries
divine authority. Betts noted that
Jesus and the New Testament authors
expanded on—rather than
replacing—the inspired message of
60 the southern baptist theological seminary

news & features
the law and prophets.
2. The Old Testament is God’s
revelation of himself. From cover
to cover, the Bible teaches that God
wants us to know him through his
Word, Betts pointed out.
3. The Old Testament speaks
of and anticipates the Lord Jesus
Christ. Jesus is the substance and
center of the whole Old Testament.
The motif of fall, judgment, and
restoration comes to an eschatological
climax when they will be
executed by the Lord Jesus Christ,
Betts said.
4. The Old Testament lays the
foundation for the New Testament.
While the New Testament applies
the Old Testament in a variety of
ways, the authors consistently believed
Jesus is the promised messiah.
They understood their relationship
to the Old Testament as
continued revelation, Betts argued.
5. The Old Testament gives
wisdom for salvation. Believers
often speak as if the gospel is first
revealed in the New Testament. But
Paul would beg to differ, Betts said.
6. The Old Testament provides
instruction for New Testament believers.
The Old Testament remains
relevant for addressing needs in
the church today. Since everything
written in Scripture is for our instruction,
the New Testament authors
never intended to nullify instruction
from the Old Testament,
Betts said.
boyce college
launching
cross-country
team this fall
—
By Travis Hearne
Boyce College is expanding its athletic
offerings this fall to include a
cross-country team.
The addition of men’s and women’s
cross-country will be the
school’s fourth athletic program
and testifies to significant growth
within Boyce College athletics.
“The fielding of a cross-country
program represents the next move
for Boyce athletics,” said Dustin
Bruce, Boyce College dean.
“With the growth of the sport
among traditional high schools,
smaller Christian school, and home
school co-ops, cross-country is a
natural fit for our constituency. Our
current student athletes make a significant
contribution to our student
experience and campus culture,
and I look forward to welcoming a
new team into the Boyce athletics
program.”
The team will have spots for up
to ten men and ten women and
plans to begin competition this fall.
The past year witnessed major
success for Boyce athletics as the
basketball team achieved a top-10
ranking in the NCCAA Division
II, and the Boyce men’s soccer
team made history by winning
the school’s first regional championship.
Adding the cross-country
team is the next step in furthering
Boyce’s success in the classroom
and on the field.
Michael McCarty, athletic director
at Boyce College, is excited for
the new athletic offering that Boyce
students will use to spread the gospel.
“Boyce Athletics is thankful to
the trustees, Dr. Mohler, and Dr.
Bruce for allowing us to add the
men’s and women’s cross-country
team this fall,” said McCarty.
“The cross-country team will
give our students another exciting
way to participate in intercollegiate
sports while at Boyce College.
The cross-country team will continue
our mission of using Boyce
athletics as a platform for ministry
and the advancement of the kingdom
of Christ in the lives of the
student-athletes and those we meet
while running. I am excited to see
all the Boyce runners out competing
this fall.”
Professor T. J. Betts delivered the annual faculty address in Broadus Chapel.
fall 2022
61

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
recent faculty books
40 Questions About Prayer
Joseph C. Harrod
Kregel Academic 2022 | $15.99
Praying is often the most
common yet least understood
practice of Christian
spirituality. In 40 Questions
About Prayer, scholar and
teacher Joseph C. Harrod
shares biblical insight on
the nature and practice of
Christian prayer. Harrod’s
emphasis on searching the
Scriptures results in a trustworthy,
practical guide to
a vital aspect of Christian
belief and behavior, equally
appropriate for seminary
courses, Bible studies, and
personal understanding.
Journey through the New
Testament: Understanding the
Purpose, Themes, and Practical
Implications of Each New
Testament Book of the Bible
William F. Cook III
Tyndale Momentum 2022 | $16.99
Journey through the New
Testament helps you gain a
complete understanding of
the teachings of Jesus and
how the early Christians
thought and lived out their
beliefs. It is a solid foundation
of biblical knowledge
on which you can build
a deeper understanding
of Scripture and God’s
ultimate purposes.
Amidst Us Our
Belovèd Stands:
Recovering Sacrament in
the Baptist Tradition
Michael A.G. Haykin
Lexham Press 2022 | $19.99
In Amidst Us Our Belovèd
Stands, Michael A.G.
Haykin argues that many
Baptists, such as Charles
Spurgeon and other
Particular Baptists, stood
closer to Reformed sacramental
thought than most
Baptists today. More than
mere memorials, baptism
and communion have
spiritual implications that
were celebrated by Baptists
of the past in sermons and
hymnody. Haykin calls
for a renewal of sacramental
life in churches
today—Baptists can and
should be sacramental.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
recent faculty books
Tell Me the Stories of
Jesus: The Explosive Power
of Jesus’ Parables
R. Albert Mohler Jr.
Thomas Nelson 2022 | $18.99
Jesus perfected the art of
telling parables—short stories
with a surprising twist
and an explosive message
that confronted his listeners
with surprising (and often
uncomfortable) truths
about the human heart and
the kingdom of heaven. But
two thousand years later,
modern readers may not
grasp the cultural and historical
context that made
these stories so compelling
for Jesus’ original audience.
Mohler brings Jesus’
stories to life, uncovering
the context and allowing
readers to hear these stories
in all their shocking, paradigm-shifting
power.
Ruth: A Guide to
Reading Biblical Hebrew
Adam J. Howell
Lexham Academic 2022 | $32.99
Too often, a former Hebrew
student is a lapsed Hebrew
student. The paradigms, the
syntactical forms, and even
the alphabet can be hard
to recall. The way to make
Hebrew stick, like any language,
is to continue to put
it to use. In Ruth: A Guide
to Reading Biblical Hebrew,
Adam J. Howell helps
intermediate readers of
Hebrew work through the
text of Ruth with exegetical
and syntactical aids. With
Howell as a guide, students
will be able to mine the
riches of the Hebrew text to
appreciate the literary and
theological significance of
the book of Ruth.
Grace & Truth Study
Bible, NASB Edition
R. Albert Mohler Jr., General Editor
Zondervan 2022 | $48.49
The Grace and Truth Study
Bible is designed to help
you understand and be
formed by Scripture. Rich
passage-by-passage study
notes are theologically
sound, guiding you to a
deep understanding of
each text, while always
keeping in view the transformative
affirmation and
goodness of God’s nature
and redemptive plan.
The NASB Grace and
Truth Study Bible offers
the translation celebrated
for faithfulness to the original
biblical languages in a
portable, easy-to-read
format.
fall 2022
63

y j a r v i s j. williams
gospel light shines
bright on my old
eastern kentucky home
Most people know by now that on July 27, 2022, historic
levels of rain fell on Southeastern Kentucky, taking the
lives, homes, and livelihoods of many.
As an Eastern Kentucky native, born and raised in Red
Fox, Kentucky, my heart continues to ache with much
grief as I witness the magnitude of the loss and trauma
that so many image bearers in the region continue to experience
because of the flood.
Adding to this grief is the fact that some of the hardest
hit areas in the region were in my native Knott County,
where businesses, homes, churches, and entire communities
are badly damaged or destroyed, and where the
loss of life was the highest. Adding insult to injury is the
fact that I personally know people who suffered some
degree of loss. As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of
the flood, the financial, material, physical, and spiritual
needs in Eastern Kentucky are immense.
Firsthand Witness
Since writing that article, I traveled with SBTS colleague
Justin Irving to Knott County and witnessed the devastation
firsthand. We also had the privilege and honor to
take a financial gift from our church, Sojourn Midtown,
as well as gift cards from many colleagues at Boyce College
and Southern Seminary. We also took select items to
help meet some of the material needs in the community.
We were able to partner with my home church, Hindman
First Baptist Church (HFBC), to help restore the
64 the southern baptist theological seminary

flood-damaged home of my mother in the faith, Ms.
Ella Prater. During our short time there, we saw both
the heartbreaking devastation in the community and
the amazing and faithful work HFBC is doing to meet
both the material and the spiritual needs in the community
under the leadership of both Dr. Mike Caudill,
senior pastor of HFBC—affectionately known by his
parishioners and the community as Brother Mike—and
with his wife, Alice Caudill. I was a member of HFBC
from 1996 to 2001.
Brother Mike, an MDiv graduate of SBTS, has faithfully
served HFBC for 34 years. During his ministry there, the
gospel of Jesus Christ has spread like wildfire throughout
many parts of Knott County, across Eastern Kentucky,
and beyond as they have produced many disciples of
Jesus Christ, disciples who have, by God’s grace, reproduced
themselves across the region and across the globe.
In the flood’s immediate aftermath, HFBC—which averages
around 150 to 200 in attendance each Sunday—
served more than 9,000 meals to local residents, many of
whom had lost everything. With the help of generosity
from church members and volunteers across the state,
HFBC served around 1,500 meals a day for several days
following the flood.
In addition to working tirelessly to lead HFBC to meet
the community’s physical needs, Brother Mike and Mrs.
Caudill continue to serve alongside fellow members to
take material goods to community residents who are
unable to come to the church to receive them. Members
of HFBC have also taken the love of Jesus and the light
of the gospel message to specific
communities in the area.
Preaching the gospel, teaching
the gospel, applying the gospel,
obeying the gospel, and serving
the community in practical ways
in the name of Christ because of
a love for the gospel is nothing
new for HFBC—as I have personally
experienced.
17-year-old. Like many family members in my childhood
and early teenage years, Brother Mike, Mrs. Caudill, the
Prater family, and many of the saints at HFBC played a
major role in saving my life.
As I was coming to the end of my senior year of high
school in the spring of 1996, I had no direction, no purpose,
no realistic goals. Worse, I didn’t know Jesus. Our
community experienced a tragedy that changed the direction
of my life forever and changed the lives of many
young people and adults. A dear high school friend, Merri
Kathryn Prater, a fellow senior and fellow athlete, was
involved in a terrible car crash and suffered a severe brain
injury. Merri Kathryn was a Christian, and her mother,
Ella Prater, my senior English teacher, and Merri Kathryn’s
father, Willie Prater (now with the Lord), were also
Christians. The Praters were members at HFBC.
During her stay in the hospital after her accident at
what was then known as the University of Kentucky Medical
Center, several of her classmates and members from
HFBC visited Merri Kathryn and sought to comfort and
support the family. Brother Mike and numerous church
members were a constant presence at the hospital. They
showed their faith by loving, caring for, comforting, and
weeping with the family. They also loved, comforted, and
wept with many of us young people, who ranged in age
from early teens to late teens; we quite simply couldn’t
understand or handle the trauma of seeing a classmate
and dear friend whom we loved and a family whom we
loved going through this pain and potential loss.
Even as a non-Christian, I was amazed by the
Personal Journey:
Grace Germinates
Among the Weeds of Tragedy
Since its inception, fervent gospel
ministry has been the church’s
mission and witness in the community.
I experienced this ministry
firsthand both before and
after I became a Christian as a
Mike Caudill with Southern Seminary professors, Jarvis Williams and Justin Irving.
fall 2022
65

features
consistency with which Brother Mike, his wife, and the
saints at HFBC shared the love of Jesus with the hundreds
of young people at the hospital and with other supporters
from the community who were there. I was taken
by the compassion and love they showed the Prater family
and concerned friends. I was also filled with wonder by
the deep faith they demonstrated as they encouraged us
young people to place our faith in Christ and to pray fervently
for Merri Kathryn. In the foyer of the UK Medical
Center in 1996 I, still an unbeliever, gathered in circles
of intense prayer for my friend, sang hymns, and heard
for the first time the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” as
members of HFBC led in worship there.
Those moments shook me to the core of my being in
deep and meaningful ways, and they changed me forever.
To my dismay, however, Merri Kathryn never gained
consciousness, and she never left the hospital. On April
3, 1996, she went to be with Jesus. The funeral was held at
HFBC. I was a pallbearer. Brother Mike preached a sermon
called “Three Cheers and a Savior”—Merri Kathryn
was both a Christian and a cheerleader.
That sermon and the entire service changed my life direction
in every possible way.
Brother Mike preached the gospel clearly and beautifully
celebrated Merri Kathryn’s life. Many friends, family
members, and teammates spoke of Merri Kathryn with
beauty and grace. Mrs. Prater eulogized her daughter
with profound eloquence, supernatural strength, deep
faith, and with the joy of the Lord in a manner that left us
completely mesmerized.
Merri Kathryn’s funeral was filled with sorrowful
joy and with lament, but not with despair, as the Prater
family and HFBC’s saints grieved with gospel hope.
I encountered the greatness of God for the first time at
that funeral, as I heard Brother Mike preach the gospel
with stunning clarity, and as I heard for the first time
those words of the famous Rich Mullins song, now forever
engraved on my soul as the choir and congregation
sang: “Our God is an awesome God, he reigns in heaven
above, with wisdom, power, and love, our God is an
awesome God.” Merri Kathryn’s life—one so well lived—
her friendship, her church (which eventually became my
church), and her family (which eventually became my
adopted spiritual family) truly saved my life.
The night Merri Kathryn died I received the sad news
along with my baseball teammates after a game. My
teammates and I, many of whom were not Christians,
erupted with loud cries of lament, shock, devastation,
and anger—at God. A teacher at my high school, also a
member of HFBC, had attended the game. She came onto
the field, placed her hand on my shoulder as I groveled
in the dirt near first base with anger, confusion, and uncontrollable
pain, and she exhorted me: “Jarvis, you must
put your hope and your faith in God.” Several of us heard
that HFBC was open. Someone told us Brother Mike and
other church members were willing to talk to us.
I joined a few teammates and some parents for the
short drive from the baseball field to the church. There,
one of my teammates, an underclassman and HFBC
member, sat down beside me in a church pew, opened
John 3:16, and read it aloud; he explained, “Jarvis, this
is what life is all about.” Brother Mike likewise explained
the gospel with great clarity to the young people and parents
who had gathered there.
That night, one of my teammates, Mark Combs, gave
his life to Jesus. He and I were good friends in high
school, eventually became college roommates, and we
attended Southern Seminary together. Pastor Mark is a
two-time Southern Seminary graduate, and he currently
serves as pastor of Summit Church in Hazard, Kentucky,
a congregation he and his wife planted. Pastor Mark and
Summit Church are likewise doing great work to help
flood survivors in the region.
Grace Breaks Through
I didn’t give my life to Christ on the night Merri Kathryn
died. But, on April 22, 1996, during a baseball game, I
asked Brother Mike’s son, Casey, a teammate, if he would
ask his father to give me a call because I wanted to talk
to him about becoming a Christian. After our game
that night, Brother Mike called, explained the gospel
with great power, and led me to personal faith in Jesus
Christ. Approximately two years later, Casey went to
be with the Lord.
Shortly after my conversion, Brother Mike baptized
me, and I became a member of HFBC. In the ensuing
years, the body of HFBC walked with me through Christian
discipleship and helped me discern a call to ministry.
That body licensed me into the ministry, ordained
me into the ministry, supported me financially so that
I would be able to attend college and seminary, encouraged
me spiritually, and walked with me in numerous
joys and trials of life.
Brother Mike and HFBC ministered to and loved my
family well, and multiple family members gave their lives
to Christ because of the direct impact of Merri Kathryn,
her family, Brother Mike, Mrs. Caudill, and the saints
at HFBC. Brother Mike and Mrs. Caudill, the Prater
family, and so many others at HFBC adopted me as
their spiritual son.
66 the southern baptist theological seminary

gospel light shines on my old eastern kentucky home
I say it again: That body truly played a major role
in saving my life!
The Light Still Burns Bright in Eastern Kentucky
So, as I have heard, read in the news, and seen firsthand
how Brother Mike, Mrs. Caudill, and the saints at HFBC
are responding with grace, love, compassion, mercy, and
the hope of the gospel during this time of crisis in the
region, I’m reminded that the gospel’s light continues to
shine bright on my old Eastern Kentucky home through
the ministry of HFBC and through the kindness and
generosity of so many residents there.
It’s deeply gratifying to see the work that the Lord is
doing through HFBC and to see the impact of the generosity
and sacrifices of so many people from different
parts of the country. However, neither they nor other
churches in the area can do this work alone.
The path ahead for Knott County and for the rest of
the Southeastern Kentucky region so devastated by the
flood is long and difficult. Residents there will need
help for many days, months, and years to come. There
are myriad needs in the area because the devastation
is so widespread. There are financial needs, educational
needs, material needs, mental health needs, and a
need for able-bodied people to help with physical labor.
Two of the most important material needs are money
and workers to help with cleanup. There are also many
spiritual needs.
Want to Help?
For members of our SBTS and Boyce College community
who may be interested in helping, there are abundant
opportunities to share the love of Christ as you
show the love of Christ in the communities which the
flood waters ravaged.
I respectfully ask members of our seminary community
to consider prayerfully creative ways you and your
churches can help the region over the long term. We can
partner with trusted pastors in the region and travel to
the area to help these pastors and their churches on the
ground in the work of loving our neighbors as ourselves
and sharing the love of Jesus. We can join with the many
faithful churches there who continue to shine the bright
light of the gospel on my old Eastern Kentucky home.
Jarvis J. Williams is associate professor of New Testament
interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary.
fall 2022
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