A Liberal’s Take on Competing Ideas

by    T. C. Pinckney                                                                                                                                        Vol. XVII, No. 4, April 2004

Recently while sorting and filing some long-accumulated papers I ran across a column clipped from the 13 July 1995 issue of Baptists Today, the newspaper of liberal Baptists. The column is by Stan Hastey, executive director of The Alliance of Baptists. I want to quote for you two paragraphs and then comment on them. (Incidentally, I quote the entire paragraphs in order to avoid the charge of taking his words out of context.)

“Nor should American Baptist leaders [of the denomination, not of all North American Baptists. TCP] fall prey to the notion that the hullabaloo they are hearing has to do primarily with sexual orientation. It has to do primarily with inerrancy of Scripture, a particularly insidious and invidious notion which is today and always has been the centerpiece of fundamentalist theology.

...

“Although it may sound strange to hear all this language of denominational battles at an event sponsored by a peace movement, let me say as emphatically as I know how that what we are facing in Baptist life today is spiritual warfare between two competing ideas, ideas incapable of coexistence.”

It may surprise you that, if we ignore Hastey’s pejorative attitude and adjectives (i.e., “insidious and invidious”), I agree with his major points.

First, I agree with him in the first quoted paragraph where he says that inerrancy “is and always has been the centerpiece of fundamentalist theology.” Of course the understanding that the Bible is fully inspired by God, that it is in the original documents precisely as God wanted it recorded, that it does not merely “contain the Word of God” (as liberals are fond of saying) but that it is the Word of God, as conservatives believe ... this belief is and must be the sure foundation of all true Christians. Anyone who claims the biblical writers were only inspired in essentially the same way as Shakespeare or Dante was inspired simultaneously calls the biblical authors liars, destroys the divine authority of the Book, and opens the floodgates of ego, lusts, and rationalization so that we can justify anything.

Would you like proof of that? The Episcopal Church just ordained an admittedly practicing homosexual as archbishop, and a previously Southern Baptist church in North Carolina has recently been disfellowshipped from Cabarrus Baptist Association and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina for accepting into full membership two practicing homosexual men.

Second, Hastey writes, “...what we are facing today is spiritual warfare between two competing ideas, ideas incapable of coexistence.” Amen, Stan. The liberal emphasis upon working together even though we do not agree on what the Bible is or what it says is completely unacceptable to inerrantists.

Liberal theology leads inexorably, inevitably to inclusivism, universalism. Now liberals have some good motives; they want to relieve suffering and minister to the needs of people. And that is good. BUT it is a secondary good.

The primary good is to bring to ever-increasing numbers of the lost the full, unadulterated, inerrant Word of God so that they can accept Christ’s gift and spend eternity in heaven. Inerrantists have an infinitely greater motivation for ministering in this world so that more and more will be able to rejoice in the next.

Yes, Mr. Hastey, you are right. Inerrancy “is today and always has been the centerpiece of fundamentalist theology” and “today in Baptist life we are facing “spiritual warfare between two competing ideas, ideas incapable of coexistence.”