|
Note: This essay first appeared in the
July 2008 Baptist Studies Bulletin.
Each year
Baptist Press,
the public relations arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, sends a
fair-haired and intrepid young pastor to the Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship general assembly with orders to craft a negative article or
two about the meeting. For whatever reason, the SBC still considers
CBF a threat and spends time and money trying to make the moderate
Baptist group look bad.
The annual CBF general assembly took place last month, and
this time around the young pastor-posing-as-reporter seized on a
breakout session led by Presbyterian pastor and theologian John
Killinger in which Killinger made statements casting doubt as to the
divinity of Jesus. Killinger's comments, according to the young
Southern Baptist pastor, reflect the
heresy lurking within Cooperative Baptist Fellowship ranks.
James Smith, executive editor of the Florida Baptist Witness,
followed up from afar by
declaring that CBF is neither Baptist nor Christian. CBF
Coordinator Daniel Vestal recently responded to the charges by stating
that Killinger
does not
speak on behalf of CBF, and that CBF Baptists do embrace
the divinity of Christ. And has been noted in the past, Vestal
reiterated that what is said in general assembly breakout sessions
does not necessarily reflect the views of CBF. He also further noted
that, now aware of Killinger's Christological views, he wished the
invitation to speak had not been extended to the Presbyterian
minister.
In light of this theological dustup, the first and most
obvious observation is that it is silly and deceitful for anyone to
equate a lone Presbyterian's personal opinions to any group of
Baptists.
Secondly, Daniel Vestal is correct that Christology is
important. The Christian faith hinges on the person of Jesus Christ.
For two thousand years Christians have struggled to fully grasp the
nature of Christ, and countless believers in the course of history
have been branded as heretics because the fine points of their
particular Christology did not square with the prevailing view of
their era.
The discussion of Christology is far from over. Indeed, the
leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention has been promoting weak
Christology for years. SBC responses to Killinger continue a pattern
of positing Christ's divinity as the sole effective foundation of
orthodoxy. Such a singular-focused Christology is inadequate, for no
discussion of the nature of Christ is complete without giving equal
weight to the other dimension of Christ: his humanity. The 2000
Baptist Faith and Message statement, for example, speaks of Jesus as
merely adopting "human nature" and "identifying" with humankind,
failing to affirm Jesus as fully human as he was fully God. Recently,
Al Mohler, one of the authors of the BF&M 2000, after paying passing
lip service to Jesus as "fully human and fully divine," immediately
turned around and forcefully argued that
focusing on Jesus' humanity is detrimental to his divinity.
While an aversion to (perhaps fear of?) Jesus' humanity is
readily found in SBC life, Southern Baptist pastors and editors should
be especially concerned that even greater Christological heresy lurks
openly within their own denomination: leaders of the SBC are on
record, in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, as
rejecting the Lordship of Christ over scripture and
demoting Jesus from the actual embodiment of God's revelation to
humankind to the mere "focus of divine revelation."
It is odd indeed, not to mention hypocritical, for
fundamentalist Baptists to display indignant anger over a
Presbyterian's questioning of the divinity of Christ, even as they
express reservations about Jesus' humanity while proclaiming a limited
Christ who is less important than the biblical text and something less
than the fullness of divine revelation. Such a peculiar combination of
Christological positions results in a Jesus who is neither fully human
nor fully divine.
Surely Baptist Press and the Florida Baptist Witness
will swiftly expose this denominational heresy and pronounce the
apostasy of the SBC.
|
