Liberal & Conservative Views of Truth

                                                                                                              Vol. VIII, No. 6, June/July 1995

This month we have a quote from “The Faculty's Response to Fundamentalist Control," a chapter written by Dr. Richard L. Hester who was professor of Pastoral Care and Psychology of Religion at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary 1975-1991. The chapter appears in the book Servant Songs: Reflections on the History and Mission of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Thomas A. Bland, ed., Smyth & Helwys, Macon, GA. 1994. The following is from pp. 106-107.

"Second, at issue between the fundamentalists and our faculty was an understanding of how truth claims are made. Our view was that if we take the reality of sin seriously, we then must assume that even the most informed and well-intended efforts to discern the truth are blurred by it. All our knowing is provisional and is in need of continual revision, inevitably distorted by sin. In the academic arena our truth claims, therefore, must always be open to testing by differing views. To hold to our beliefs in such a provisional way is an act of faith in which we trust not ourselves..."

Dr. Hester s cautious and conditional approach to truth would be eminently reasonable were truth only dependent upon men's mental abilities. Indeed, that is the assumption which underlies his position: men must discern truth for themselves; God has not provided verbal revelation, but at best only general revelation. Dr. Hester is also correct that “fundamentalists" (i.e., those who believe the Bible is fully inspired – as Jesus said, to every 'jot and tittle' or as He might phrase it if He were speaking today in English ‘the tiniest curlicue on any letter') differ with his man-centered rather than God-centered understanding of biblical authority. His assumption is that God could not, or at least did not precisely inspire the Book of books. But fundamentalists maintain that what God has revealed is absolute is dependable, and is not, to use Hester's terms, “provisional and in need of continual revision." A God who can create the universe and all that is within it: (1) cares for His creation and His creatures, ( 2) is able to speak exactly what He wishes, and (3`) is quite capable of preserving His Word through both time and translation. He has not cast us adrift on a stormy ocean of uncertainty, but rather has provided a safe harbor and secure anchor in His perfect, unchanging, ever-reliable Word.

Note: The current battle at Southeastern Seminary has been won, and praise God that under the guidance of its president, Paige Patterson, and its many other soundly biblical faculty and administrative staff Southeastern is beginning to impact the eastern seaboard in a positive rather than negative way. But Satan never rests. We must be ever alert to the tendency of institutions to turn by easy stages to reliance upon men and our speculations rather than upon God and His revelation.