Editorial for March 30, 2006
By Jim White
Altarego: Pewboy! What's the matter? You look as confused as the ape I heard about who sat in his cage with the Bible in one hand and Darwin's Origin of the Species in the other. He didn't know whether he was his brother's keeper or his keeper's brother. What's going on?
Pewboy: I am confused. Tell me again about why all the conservative-moderate fuss began in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Altarego: Well, as with most controversies, it depends on with whom you talk. The conservatives said it was because the others didn't believe the Bible, and the moderates said the issue was control of the convention.
Pewboy: OK, as far as the Bible goes, what were the key differences?
Altarego: At its heart, the differences were not whether the Bible is the inspired word of God-both groups believe that-but how it was inspired. Moderates believe God caused the message to spring up within the writers and they wrote according to their own intellect and experiences using their own words. This is often called the Dynamic Theory of interpretation.
Conservatives believe in the Verbal Dictation theory. That is, they believe that God caused the authors to write every word as he gave it to them.
Pewboy: Where do words like infallible and inerrant fit in? Conservatives believe the Bible I carry to church with me is without error while moderates believe it contains errors, is that it?
Altarego: Actually, conservatives and moderates agree that the Bible, as we have it today, contains errors of various kinds. Conservatives would say they crept in as they were hand copied through the centuries, but that the original pages written by the biblical authors were without error. Moderates would say that copyist errors cannot account for some discrepancies and that the authors may have not gotten some of the details exact; but the Bible infallibly leads the reader to faith in Christ as the Son of God. Both conservatives and moderates agree that no original pages, called autographs, exist because they simply wore out with use.
Pewboy: So all the controversy was over whether God inspired the Bible by dictating it to the writers or whether he gave the authors the message and let them write it themselves; and whether the original autographs, which we have none of, were without any kind of error, is that right?
Altarego: In a nutshell, that's about the size of it as far as the Bible goes.
Pewboy: So here's what my confusion is about. I hold here a copy of a book published by Broadman and Holman, a division of LifeWay owned by the Southern Baptist Convention. It's a book by Philip Comfort called Encountering the Manuscripts. It says on page 6, “In other words, the autograph would be similar to what we call a first draft. If we saw the first draft of an autograph, there might be editorial corrections written between the lines or in the margins, either by the author or an amanuensis, or both. In fact, the best way to spot an autograph (in its first draft) is the presence of substantive corrections written in the same hand as the main body of the text …. Presumably, authors such as Luke and the writer of the book of Hebrews would have corrected their own texts prior to publication.”
He goes on to say that among other New Testament writers, Paul and John left their manuscripts uncorrected.
I assumed this book must have been published before the conservatives took over, but I looked and it was published in 2005. How can conservatives claim the original autographs were dictated without error and also publish a book that says the autographs were like first drafts of a document that needed editing?
Altarego: Hmm. It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Pewboy: Not only that, but I hold in my other hand something called “Trustee Responsibilities” which I got off the International Mission Board's website. It was just adopted by the IMB trustees with three members voting against it. Basically, it says that if the trustees take action that a minority of trustees disagree with, the minority can't get together to talk about it and they can't tell other Southern Baptists about their concerns. It also prohibits corresponding with outside Southern Baptists by using blogs and such things.
Whatever happened to trust? These seem like Gestapo tactics. What about the freedom of expression and openness that used to be a hallmark of the SBC? To me, it seems like the only time you would need to tell people they can't tell anybody else is when you are planning a surprise birthday party or doing something you know they would be upset about if they knew. This seems like control to me. What do you think?
Altarego: Uh, I think discernment is a spiritual gift that is underutilized.