Anti-Heritage:  Sherman on the Bible

by Keith Ninomiya                                                                                              Vol. XIII, No. 4, April 2000
 

Cecil Sherman was the first coordinator of the CBF, served on the board of directors for the Alliance of Baptists, and currently teaches as a professor at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (BTSR), which is funded by the CBF and the Alliance of Baptists.

In an address entitled "What I Believe About the Bible," delivered at Burkemont Baptist Church in Morganton, NC, on February 9, 1981, Sherman said the following:

"Thus, Abraham was powerfully influenced by the Canaanites. Abraham truly thought that God wanted him to kill Isaac as a sacrifice to God. But, at no place in the Bible is such an act consistent with the character of God.

Samuel was living in a cruel time; he read God to be cruel. The problem is Samuel's vision of God (in I Samuel 15:1-3) rather than the character of God."

[Comment: Note that Sherman does not accept what the Bible says. He limits God by his own reasoning. He fails to acknowledge that God was testing Abraham's obedience and did not require Abraham to kill Isaac but provide His own sacrifice, a type of Jesus. Then in his remarks about Samuel, Dr. Sherman seems to me to be clearly judging God's revealed Word by merely human standards. He fails to recognize the seriousness of sins against God of idolatrous people such as the Amalekites. Sherman, who considers the Bible a human book written about God, feels free to attribute mistakes to the Book.

The importance of the above is not simply one man's views but rather that he has headed the "Cooperative Baptist Fellowship", has been one of the directors of the Alliance of Baptists, and now teaches at the extremely liberal seminary in Richmond. Does your church send funds to the CBF and/or BTSR through the BGAV's world Missions 2 or 3 budget tracks? If so, get it changed. TCP]