THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE

                                                                                                                                        Vol. XII, No. 10, Nov/Dec 1999

[An excerpt from the convention sermon by SBC President Paige Patterson, June 1999.]

For the last twenty years, Southern Baptists have struggled through an exercise in self-definition. Some believed that the encounter was unnecessary and harmful. Everyone wishes it had not been necessary. Many believe, however, that whatever the collateral damage may have been, to determine that Southern Baptists stood for the inerrancy of the Scriptures was better than to initiate the rapid decline and precipitous missionary and evangelistic collapse characteristic of most national denominations as a result of their loss of confidence in the trustworthiness of God's Word. Some churches that formerly insisted that there was no theological impasse are now leaving Southern Baptists, while finally admitting what they knew all along was the case — namely, that there are enormous theological differences that divide us. While there undeniably remain pockets of resistance, for most Baptists it is settled forever — we believe every syllable of the Word of God to be absolutely true.

But a few months ago, Missionary Jim Sibley said to me, “I fear that we have won the battle for the inerrancy of the Bible while we have foundered on the issue of the sufficiency of the Bible.” Brothers and sisters, if we reach the cities of our country, it will take more than an affirmation of belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. Confidence in the absolute authority and sufficiency of this Holy Book will have to be ingested into Southern Baptist life until the bloodstream of the Convention runs Bibline, pumped to every extremity by the power of the Holy Spirit. ...

First, the Bible must be sufficient for preaching. The clear persuasive exposition and application of the Word of God must not be sacrificed for a bowl of narrative pottage. Some among us counsel that we should abandon the careful explanation and application of the biblical text, alleging that contemporary audiences are no longer charmed by such tunes. Twelve-minute sermonettes generated by the "felt needs" of an assembled cast of post-modem listeners, augmented by drama and multiple repetitions of touchy-touchy, feelly-feelly music is the call of the hour.

To those of you flirting with such an approach, may I acknowledge that you are not entirely incorrect. Drama, for example, is a method, and any method may be employed to ferry the gospel to the barren hearts of lost men as long as that method is one of integrity and as long as it is not a substitute for preaching. And after objecting for years to the hegemony of high church music, I, for one, never want to return to the Thirty-four fold Amen as the centerpiece of worship in our churches. Neither, however, do I wish to endorse a musical approach that enthrones the ethos of the world, nor do I wish to labor in the dry shafts of wells long since emptied of significant theological content!

So, let me appeal to your discrimination. What you choose to reject in preaching is not exposition; it is boring exposition. And you ought to reject boring preaching, whether topical textual, narrative, or expository. But before you agree to substitute some other form of preaching for the exposition of God's Word, please consider that to do so is an inadvertent challenge to the sufficiency of Scripture. This rejection is to substitute the perceived needs of people for their real and eternal needs. It is to suggest that human wisdom surpasses God's expression of His will and purpose as recorded in His Holy Word, and it is further to deny the ability of the Holy Spirit to make the Word of God as proclaimed from Scripture come alive in the hearts of the listeners. Let the rest of Christendom chart its own course, but may Baptists remain forever a people of the Book, not merely by confession but by the method of their preaching as well.

And to those of you who remain committed to the exposition of the Word of God, will you accept the challenge to labor in the text until you have distilled its most profound meanings in your own hearts. Then you must wait upon God, marinating the text in the power and presence of God until like Jeremiah there is a fire in your bones and you cannot keep silent. Then may you flow like the thrice heated magma of an erupting volcano with the white-hot gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, vibrantly explained, cogently illustrated, and lucidly applied until your preaching can no more be ignored than the eruptions of Krakatoa.

Second, the Bible must be sufficient for counseling. There was an era when the church viewed the modern invention psychology, based as it is in the theories of unbelievers and atheists such as Sigmund Freud, as the enemy of biblical Christianity. But that which was once recognized as quite of contrary to the teachings of our Lord has now been scrubbed up a bit and baptized into the faith, and in its new manifestation it has become so accepted that we Christians sometimes speak the language of psychotherapy more often than we speak the language of Zion. For example, we now all seem to come from "dysfunctional" families or backgrounds. Most of us are suffering from some sort of "co-dependency," from which we need to be liberated. This co-dependency and dysfunctional social history creates "anxiety " and has in turn created a social order of "victims," who need a "village" to help them bring "closure'' to their "repressed hostilities" from childhood.

But the tragic truth is that most of those who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, and violence will say to the most confident psychotherapy, "Been there, done that, and I am still the same inside." As psychologist Tana Dineen says in her devastating expose of psychology and psychiatry,

At the beginning of the century, the discipline of psychology held all the hopes, aspirations, and promise of a new-born science. Now, at the end of the century, it is evident that psychology has failed to live up to these. Rather it epitomizes the self-serving, boastful nature of an adolescent; an entrepreneurial pseudoscience. Despite its popularity, it has not produced the society, free of crime and problems, that it had claimed it would. Psychology has neither provided a better understanding of the psyche, nor created a healthier way of living. In fact, as the number of psychologists has increased in the past three decades so has crime, poverty, homelessness and anxiety increased; in other words, "the world is getting worse." It is clear that the Psychology Industry, put to the test, has failed to prove itself.1

If we reach the great cities of our land, we must make the biblical mandate of the new birth and the biblical message of God's principles for a happy home in a useful society the warp and woof of all that we say. Enough of our unsuccessful marriage to psychology. The Sermon on the Mount and the Psalms and the Proverbs exceed the commiserations of modern psychotherapy as the heavens as a whole overshadow a minor moon of Jupiter. To adopt the language and methods of contemporary psychotherapy is like suggesting to God that He save Jonah with a minnow. It is for Jesus to offer Lazarus a tourniquet when what Lazarus needed was for the Lord of life to cry, "Lazarus, come forth!" If the Bible is sufficient, it is sufficient not only for salvation and eternity but also for biblical guidance and for happiness in living in the present world. My plea here is not intended as an effort to suppress the psychological industry with its entrepreneurial instincts. Let that be evaluated in the universities and hospitals, though hopefully in the future adjudicated by the same rigorous scientific standards applied to all other medicine and therapy. My appeal rather is to the church. This appeal is to find in Scripture the information we need to assess the nature and problems of humanity and especially spiritual and emotional guidance for triumphant living.

Third, the Bible must be sufficient for doctrine. Early church history records the rise of Montanism, the earliest of the Charismatic movements. Though most rejected this novelty, some, like the North African lawyer-theologian Tertullian, became unlikely advocates. Periodically through church history such movements have risen and subsided. In his fascinating new trilogy on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, Dr. Jerry Vines in Spirit Works documents the genesis of the contemporary expression of the Neo-Charismatic movement in what very well may be the most important publication by any Southern Baptist standing at the gateway to the new century. Currently widespread Charismatic practices have visited the churches, indiscriminate of denomination or doctrine. These practices range from the relatively controlled and accountable practices of

Charismatic evangelicals to the extremes of phenomena clearly novel to the Scriptures, such as experiences of being "slain in the Spirit" or barking like dogs or erupting into convulsive laughter ostensibly under the influence of the Holy Spirit, or most recently the instantaneous changing of amalgam fillings in teeth into gold fillings. For one, if God is going to practice this holy alchemy, I think I had rather Him heal my teeth completely and give the gold to Lottie Moon.

But my purpose here is not to sit in judgment or jest upon any Charismatic brother or sister. Many, perhaps most, are sincere believers, and Baptists in any event must always protect the religious liberty of all. My purpose, rather, like that of Jerry Vines, is to remind Southern Baptists that our focus across the years has been the conversion of men and women to faith in Christ. We have devoted our energies to the proclamation of the miraculous incarnation, the atoning death, the vivifying resurrection, and the certain return of the Lord. We have steadfastly evaluated all other emphases as unworthy of our mission and as unintentional detours to divert us from our focus on the greatest miracles just enumerated along with the astounding miracle of the new birth.

Hear this please as a criticism of none, but rather as a call for integrity among those adopting Charismatic practices other than those that are clearly sanctioned and regulated on the pages of the New Testament. Hear this as a plea for Bible-centered Southern Baptists to maintain doctrinal integrity on this and all issues holding resolutely to the doctrines of the faith that God has blessed and favored across the years. Hear this as a plea that Southern Baptist churches find the Scriptures sufficient for doctrine and practice, refusing, as we have through the centuries, to allow minor emphases to take the place of the major emphases of Scripture. Hear this as a plea that Southern Baptists find the Scriptures sufficient so that we not build our systems of understanding on texts that yet lack hermeneutical certainty but rather construct our doctrine on texts about which there is no doubt.

In recent years there has been a growing emphasis on the part of some Southern Baptists on what is variously referred to as "Calvinism" or the "Reformed Faith" or "the doctrines of grace." Some wring their hands in apparent terror over these discussions. I welcome them. In fact, seminary cafeterias are constructed for the sole purpose of discussing Calvinism. If you have ever imbibed institutional cuisine, you are aware that there must be some other purpose for the existence of seminary food service than satisfying appetites. So young theologues sip mocha and test their arguments on Calvinism, eschatology, and the dichotomous or trichotomous nature of man.

Discussions of Calvinism will not injure our corpus or hinder our future so long as we remember that two distinct tributaries feed our Southern Baptist river. From the Charleston tributary we receive a strong infusion of the sovereignty of God, while the Sandy Creek tributary runs deep with the freedom and responsibility of man. Sandy Creek inspires us to persuade men to come to Christ, while Charleston reminds us that salvation is the work of God alone. As long as we can, with Christian charity and brotherly compassion, discuss these verities whose mysteries clearly transcend even our brightest minds like the blazing noon-day sun transcends a flickering candle, we shall not squander our heritage.

I plead only two considerations. First, let Southern Baptists forever steer a course between the Scylla of unbridled experientialism and the Charybdis of stultifying propositionalism. Our orbit must always be one that insists on the experience of the new birth and spirit-filled worship but always regulated by the clearly rehearsed propositions of God's Word.

Second, may we always remember that any and every doctrinal formulation that either purposefully or inadvertently dilutes our passion for the lost or our soul-winning vigor is at odds with the biblical message and mandate. There can be few more profound acts of worship than to introduce a wayfarer to the Savior who bled and died for him.

1 Dr. Tana Dineen, Manufacturing Victims (Montreal: Robert Davies Multimedia Publishing, 19981.175.