Quotes from B. H. Carroll

                                                                                                                                                                      Vol. VI, No. 8, October 1993

This is another brief presentation of statements from our Baptist forebears setting forth their views of Scripture and other vital questions facing Southern Baptists today. The quotations today are from B. H. Carroll, first president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (1908-1914). Southwestern is now the largest seminary of any denomination in the world.

On the so-called "higher criticism”: "...these modern devotees of higher criticism must wait each week for the mail from Germany to know what to believe or preach, to find out how much, if any, of their Bible remains." [Higher criticism proceeds from the presumption that the Bible is a human book inspired only like other human books and that God never interrupts natural laws. Thus miracles by definition could not have happened.]

Deathbed commission to his successor, L.R. Scarborough: "Lee, keep the seminary lashed to the Cross. If heresy ever comes in the teaching, take it to the faculty. If they will not hear you and take prompt action, take it to the trustees of the seminary. If they will not hear you, take it to the Convention that appoints the Board of Trustees, and if they will not hear you, take it to the great common people of our churches. You will not fail to get a hearing then."

From his book, An Interpretation of the English Bible: "The modem cry, ‘Less creed and more liberty,' is a degeneration from the vertebrate to the jellyfish, and means less unity and less morality, and it means more heresy..., It is a positive and very hurtful sin to magnify liberty at the expense of doctrine."