Anti-Heritage: T. C. Smith and the Authority of the Bible

by Keith Ninomiya                                                                                           Vol. XIV, No. 5,   May 2001

T. C. Smith has taught at Southern Seminary and Furman University and has served as a member of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond Development Council. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-funded Smyth & Helwys is the moderate publishing counterpart to our Southern Baptist LifeWay. The first book released by Smyth & Helwys was Studies in Acts by T. C. Smith, who used to be a frequent contributor to Baptist Sunday School Board literature.

In an article entitled "The Canon and Authority of the Bible" in the Spring 1974 issue of Perspectives in Religious Studies, T. C. Smith writes on page 50:

"Looked at from its contents, the Bible is a record of experience and thoughts of men who reached out for God and responded negatively and positively to God's self-disclosure to them. It was written by men, most of whom were unaware of any use of their documents outside the community addressed. Some of the ethical standards, crude religious ideals, and behavior of the characters portrayed in its pages are strictly out of place in a civilized society. Judged by the teachings of Jesus much of its poetry dishonors the character of God. We can make such judgments about portions of the Bible because we possess the central fact of the record. This is the revelation of God in Christ. Through his disclosure of God's character we have a criterion by which we evaluate the trustworthiness of what was reported in the past and the claims of truth in the present. The meaning of the whole is clear because of him ...

"It all boils down to this. If we should ask questions about the authority of the Bible, it is not God's authority that we are questioning. It is the reliableness of the authors who wrote the various books. The letters of Paul to the churches at Corinth carry 'as much weight as we are prepared to allow to Paul as a religious teacher, but how far God speaks through Paul is another matter.' [1] Only in the sense that it is not incompatible with its human imperfections can we appropriately speak about the authority of the Bible."

[1] James R. Branton, "The Authority of the Bible," Foundations, V (April, 1962), 104.

[Editorial Comment: These quotes clearly set forth the basic assumption of the liberal approach to the Bible: that the biblical authors were writing down their own thoughts, feelings, and understandings of God, the words they wrote were not "God-breathed", and therefore Scripture contains numerous errors ("human imperfections"). Implicit in their position is the belief that there is revelation of Christ outside the Bible, and that can only be through personal experience. Yet there is no way you or I can know whether a personal experience is legitimately from God or is sent from Satan in masquerade. No, God ensured that His Book was written exactly as He wished. He has preserved it through the centuries, most importantly to make available to all men His genuine revelation, and simultaneously to preserve us from spiritually fatal dependence on personal experience as our only guide ... which is exactly what Smith and Branton advocate. TCP]