Truth: Fluid or Fixed? 

by  T. C. Pinckney                                                                                                                                   Vol. VII, No. 9, November 1994

     In the 1 September [1994] Religious Herald editor Mike Clingenpeel took to task Southern Seminary's trustees and president, Al Mohler, for the decision of Professor Molly Marshall to resign rather than undergo a formal investigation of whether her theology and teaching were in accord with the "Abstract of Principles," Southern's doctrinal statement adopted in 1859.

The purpose of this article is not to analyze the pros and cons of her resignation, but rather to point out the starkly different understandings toward the permanence of truth as expressed by Editor Clingenpeel and Dr. Mohler.

Toward the end of his editorial Clingenpeel includes the following paragraph: "Almost a century ago another Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor, William Heth Whitsitt, was accused of heresy. Just prior to Whitsitt's resignation, a professor at the University of Richmond, Samuel Childes Mitchell, penned an open letter to Southern's board of trustees in defense of Whitsitt. Mitchell wrote: 'The seminary is not set to teach tradition. Tradition is truth's last year's crop of leaves. A school lives and clothes itself with new evidences of life in every springtime of the world. Truth is growth, it is as fluid as life. Better no seminary than a seminary in which truth cannot find a home. Despoil it of that, and you have nothing left."' [Bold print added.]

In a letter to the editor (Religious Herald, 15 September, 1994) Al Mohler commented on this attitude toward truth:

"Your editorial ... sets out clearly the central issue facing Southern Baptists.

"The revealing portion of your editorial comes in the quotation from University of Richmond professor Samuel Childes Mitchell, who stated that 'truth is as fluid as life.' Few statements so eloquently and dangerously express the issue before us. There are some among Southern Baptists who affirm such a view; for them truth varies with each cultural trend or popular movement.

"I prefer to stand with James P. Boyce, John A. Broadus, and the other founders of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who understood that truth is based, not on passing fads but on the solid rock of divine revelation. A notion that truth is 'fluid' is completely foreign to the biblical world view and to the conviction of the vast majority of Southern Baptists who accept the biblical command to 'contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints’... ‘

Now let us search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:11). Psalm 100:5 says, "For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations." Psalm 117:2 reads, "For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord." Psalm 132:11 "The Lord hath sworn in truth to David; he will not turn from it." Psalm 146:6 "Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them: who keepeth truth for ever." John 8:32 "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 14:6 "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the Father, but by me." John 17:17 "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. John 18:3 8 "Pilate saith to him, What is truth?" II John 1:2 "For the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever."

No, truth is not fluid. The speculations and hypotheses of men are fluid and may change from year to year, even month to month. But the truth of God is fixed, immutable as He is immutable. Numbers 23:19 emphasizes the point, "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” Notice in John 18:38 quoted above that it was the unsaved cynic Pilate who questioned truth. But God's holy Word repeatedly proclaims the everlasting, unchanging, immutable nature of God's truth, even to the point that our Savior and King proclaimed, "I am the truth."

God sees the end from the beginning. He is not limited like men and consequently has no occasion to change his mind. Moreover, He is good and merciful, and those qualities would be contradicted were He to capriciously change His truth.

Though there have been repeated efforts by heretics down through the centuries to change God's truth, to revise it according to the popular culture of that day, they have uniformly failed. Orthodox Christianity has always held steadfastly to the solidity, the unchanging nature of God's truth. To propose that truth is fluid is to attempt to redefine God according to man's current preferences; it is for man to try to replace God's sovereign omniscience with his own puny brain.

It is, ladies and gentlemen, to succumb to the earliest of Satan's blandishments, "Yea, hath God said,...? Ye shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods..." Satan always starts by questioning God's Word. Follows by contradicting it. Appeals to the lust of the flesh in one way or another. And entices with the promise that the human shall be as a god.

To hold that truth is fluid is rank heresy.