The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950–2015: Volume Two: Baptists, Part II

By James Leo Garrett, Jr. and Dongsun Cho

James Leo Garrett Jr., has been called "the last of the gentlemen theologians" and "the dean of Southern Baptist theologians." In The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950-2015, the reader will find a truly dazzling collection of works that clearly evince the meticulous scholarship, the even-handed treatment, the biblical fidelity, the wide historical breadth, and the honest sincerity that have made the work and person of James Leo Garrett Jr., so esteemed and revered among so many. The first two volumes of the series explore Dr. Garrett's writings on the experience, history, and lives of Baptist Christians, and this inaugural volume specifically considers Baptists, Baptist views of the Bible, and Anabaptists. Spanning sixty-five years and touching on topics from Baptist history, theology, ecclesiology, church history and biography, religious liberty, Roman Catholicism, and the Christian life, The Collected Writings of James Leo Garret Jr., 1950-2015 will inform and inspire readers regardless of their religious or denominational affiliations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532607332

James Leo Garrett, Jr.

James Leo Garrett Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Theology, Emeritus, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of a major two-volume work, Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical (Wipf & Stock, 2014), the monumental Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (2009), and numerous other books and articles. He currently lives in Nacogdoches, Texas.

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The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950–2015

Volume 2: Baptists, Part II

James Leo Garrett Jr.

Edited by Wyman Lewis Richardson

Foreword by Dongsun Cho

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The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950-2015: Volume Two

Baptists, Part II

Copyright © 2018 James Leo Garrett Jr.. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0732-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0734-9

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0733-2

Manufactured in the U.S.A. January 25, 2019

Appendix A: An Interview with Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr. in Fullerism as Opposed to Calvinism: A Historical and Theological Comparison of the Missiology of Andrew Fuller and John Calvin by A. Chadwick Mauldin used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com

Are Southern Baptists ‘Evangelicals’? A Further Reflection by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Broadman Press. Copyright 1993.

Baptists and Calvinism: An Informational Examination by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of The Alabama Baptist. Copyright 2007.

Baptist Identity and Christian Unity: Reflections on a Theological Pilgrimage by James Leo Garrett Jr. reprinted from the American Baptist Quarterly, 24 (2005) 53–66, with permission of the American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA, 30341.

The Distinctive Identity of Southern Baptists vis-a-vis Other Baptists by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by Permission of The Baptist History and Heritage Society. Copyright 1996.


Honor Baptists’ Calvinist Roots by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Baptist Standard. Copyright 2008.

Problems, Issues, and Challenges in Christian Unity by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Broadman Press. Copyright 1976.


Should Southern Baptists Adopt the Synod of Dort? by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Baptists Today. Copyright 1997.

Southern Baptists as Evangelicals by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of The Baptist History and Heritage Society. Copyright 1983.

Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, and Southwestern by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Southwestern News. Copyright 2002.

Theology Professor Examines Background to Statement’s Changes by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Baptist Standard. Copyright 2000.

Vital Issues for Southern Baptists by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Southwestern News. Copyright 1954.

Who Are Southern Baptists in 1989? by James Leo Garrett Jr. used by permission of Baptist Standard. Copyright 1989.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Editor’s Introduction

Acknowledgments

I. Southern Baptists

Chapter 1: Vital Issues for Southern Baptists (1954/1960)

Chapter 2: A Relevant Word From Dr. Schaff (1962)

Chapter 3: Ought Southern Baptists to Divide? (1962)

Chapter 4: Crisis in Theological Education (1967)

Chapter 5: Vital Issues for Southern Baptists (1968)

Chapter 6: Southwestern and Broadway: An Anniversary Report (1983)

Chapter 7: Waco Baptist Association, 1860–1985: A Worthy Model for Texas and Southern Baptists (1986)

Chapter 8: Who Are Southern Baptists in 1989? (1989)

Chapter 9: The Distinctive Identity of Southern Baptists vis-à-vis Other Baptists (1996)

Chapter 10: Missions and Baptist Systematic Theologies (2000)

Chapter 11: Theology Professor Examines Background to Statement’s Changes (2000)

Chapter 12: The Future of Baptist Theology with a Look at Its Past (2010)

II. Southern Baptists and Evangelicals

Chapter 13: Who Are the Evangelicals? (1983)

Chapter 14: What Evangelicals Believe and Practice (1983)

Chapter 15: Are Southern Baptists ‘Evangelicals’? (1983)

Chapter 16: Southern Baptists as Evangelicals (1983)

Chapter 17: Are Southern Baptists ‘Evangelicals’? A Further Reflection (1993)

Chapter 18: Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, and Southwestern (2002)

III. Baptists and Calvinism

Chapter 19: Should Southern Baptists Adopt the Synod of Dort? (1997)

Chapter 20: Baptists and Calvinism: An Informational Examination (2007)

Chapter 21: Honor Baptists’ Calvinist Roots (2008)

Chapter 22: An Interview with Dr. James Leo Garrett, Jr.

IV. Baptists and Ecumenism

Chapter 23: Epilogue: Baptist Relations with Other Christians (1974)

Chapter 24: Problems, Issues, and Challenges in Christian Unity (1976)

Chapter 25: Baptists and the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements: A Response to Robert C. Campbell (1995)

Chapter 26: Baptist Identity and Christian Unity: Reflections on a Theological Pilgrimage (2005)

Bibliography

In loving memory of

Myrta Ann Latimer Garrett

(1924–2015)

my beloved wife of sixty–seven years,

life companion, great encourager, and co-participant

in the quest for Baptist identity

amidst the wider Christian world

Foreword

When I was researching my Master of Divinity thesis on the doctrine of grace in Augustine’s writings at the Korea Baptist Theological Seminary in 1996 , I picked up Garrett’s Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical from the seminary library. Until then, I had never heard about James Leo Garrett Jr. However, his work opened a new chapter in my theological pilgrimage by showing a theological methodology which bases every doctrine on biblical theology and examines its historical development from the patristic era until today, and systematizes it within evangelical and even Baptist convictions. Garrett’s methodology was a Copernican Revolution to me. In 1 997 I came to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Under him I studied the catholic tradition as well as Baptist theologians. During my doctoral period, Garrett graciously nurtured me as a graduate assistant for his Systematic Theology classes. He also extended his grace to me so that I could contribute a glossary to his Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study , which became the primary textbook for my Baptist Heritage class.

Writing a foreword to the second volume of The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1950–2015 is another special privilege and honor for me. This volume focuses on the identity of Southern Baptists and their relations with non-Baptist Evangelicals and also non-Protestants, the subjects that Garrett has taught and contemplated for more than a half century. With regard to the identity of Southern Baptists, Garrett argues that they are denominational Evangelicals with Baptist distinctives. Southern Baptists have confessed and promoted the supreme authority of Scripture, the necessity of personal faith in Christ for salvation, and the urgency of evangelism and world missions. The elements that distinguish Southern Baptists from nondenominational Evangelicals are believer’s baptism, congregational polity, denominational cooperation, religious freedom, and church-state separation. For Garrett, more recent denominational demarcations for Southern Baptists would be found in the issues of biblical inerrancy, abortion, women in ministry, and eschatological issue. Garrett’s efforts to preserve Baptist distinctives are due to his uncompromised loyalty to the authority of Scripture, not merely to his denomination. Therefore, he urges his fellow Southern Baptists to be united with one another, other Baptists, and other non-Baptist Christians as our Lord Jesus Christ prayed for his disciples in John 17.

This volume will enable Garrett’s readers to have an authoritative interpretation of the history and theology of Southern Baptists primarily, and secondarily, to review their relations with other traditions. Garrett’s academic achievements as a Baptist theologian and his leadership in the BWA and various interfaith dialogues with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches surely make him a rarely qualified scholar and churchman who could provide a reliable definition of the identity of Southern Baptists and challenge them with sincerity and love.

Garrett’s writings on Southern Baptists and Calvinism in this volume will help Southern Baptists to judge the validity of the neo-Calvinism argument in the SBC that Southern Baptists should return to the Dortian Calvinism. Garrett rightly pointed out that neither the representative Baptist confessions of faith nor the representative Baptist theologians have always been Dortian Calvinists. Garrett insists that the Southern Baptist pendulum of the divine sovereignty and human responsibility be always swung to a more biblical direction. God’s unconditional election in Scripture is coupled with and modified by other biblical emphases on human responsibility and free agency. Therefore, repentance and faith are to be seen as both the gifts of God and the duties of all sinners. Garrett also challenges the Calvinists among Southern Baptists to see that the biblical data is indeed in support of unlimited atonement. Garrett’s understanding of the divine sovereignty of God and human responsibility resulted from his deep conviction that a Baptist should be obedient to a clear Scriptural testimony rather than on theological coherence or philosophical logic.

This volume is not only for Southern Baptists but also for non-Southern Baptists. Garrett’s warnings about ruling eldership and open membership are prophetic. Ruling [lay]-eldership has become more acceptable among the neo-Calvinists of the SBC. However, ruling eldership could compromise congregational rights and authority in the church’s life. We also need to recognize that ruling eldership has been a historical demarcation between Baptists and Presbyterians. Open membership, which allows one to be a member of a Baptist church without baptism by immersion, does undermine our Baptist confession that immersion is the New Testament mode of baptism and a prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper. Unfortunately, many of the Korean Baptist churches in Korea adopted ruling eldership and open membership and, as a result, seriously compromised the integrity of our confession. I hope that Baptists in England, America, and other countries will heed Garrett’s prophetic voice.

Any Baptist who is willing to submit herself or himself to the authority of Scripture will greatly appreciate Garrett’s emphasis on the mission of the church. His Systematic Theology contains a chapter on missions, a very unique chapter that one hardly finds among not only Baptists’ systematic theology textbooks but also other conservative Evangelical ones. Garrett’s emphasis on mission did not lead him to be an ecumenist or non-Southern Baptist. Rather, he became a more biblical Southern Baptist with his encouragement for his fellow Baptists to maintain union with one another and other Christians without losing Baptist convictions. The gospel and the Lordship of Christ are universal. Becoming a Southern Baptist does not mean becoming a sectarian or being excluded from cooperation with other Christians in the spread of the gospel.

Dongsun Cho

Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Fort Worth, Texas

October 27, 2017

Preface

In more than five decades of teaching and six decades of writing I have sought to maintain a bifocal approach. I can illustrate this in three ways. First, I have tried to write both for the broad readership of Southern Baptist church members and for pastors and teachers who pursue questions intensively. My earliest writing was for Baptist state papers, wherein I tried to communicate with the rank-and-file of Southern Baptists. My professors Drs. W. T. Conner and T. B. Maston excelled in such communication, and I sought to learn from them. At the same time I knew that academic theology called for precision and thoroughness. Second, I have sought to focus both on the Southern Baptists (USA) and upon the entire worldwide Baptist community. That bifocal vantage point was, I think, reflected in my Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study ( 2009 ). Third, I have sought to focus both on the people called Baptists and upon the multiplicity of expressions of the Christian faith, whether taken temporally in terms of centuries or denominationally in terms of distinct communions. With this bifocal approach I have sought to keep ever in mind our Lord’s prayer for the unity of His disciples (John 17 : 21 – 22 ) and our failure to attain its fulfilment.

It is not fitting that one should presume to determine if he or she has made any significant contribution to the field or fields in which he or she has labored. Although I would be risking such presumption, I would nevertheless suggest that if I have made any singular contribution to theology or church history or their ancillary disciplines, it may have been in advocating and offering detailed evidence that Southern Baptists are Evangelicals. My literary debate with my onetime colleague, Dr. E. Glenn Hinson, provided the occasion for the intensive debating of that issue, though the discussion has indeed continued.

In completing the second volume of my Systematic Theology during 1990–1994, I failed to anticipate the rise of the important neo-Calvinist movement among Southern Baptists with the advent of the twenty-first century. I should have given more attention to the somewhat modified Calvinist theology held by most Baptists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This I would later do in Baptist Theology. I should have identified and clarified the differences between Baptists and the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition on such issues as the equality of the Old and the New Testaments and double predestination, although I did in various writings clarify the differences on baptism (pedobaptism vs. credobaptism), on church polity (presbyterial vs. congregational), and on the tenets of the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). Moreover, if I were rewriting my treatment of the saving work of Christ, I would emphasize even more the foundational and central role of penal substitution and would treat imputation in detail. Furthermore I would stress the properly differentiated usage of terminology. By this I mean the three distinct usages of Calvinism today: (1) the specific teachings of John Calvin (1509–1564) as found in his writings; (2) the five tenets of the Synod of Dort in distinction from the tenets of the Remonstrants or Arminians; and (3) the doctrines of grace, or those present-day soteriological beliefs shared by most Presbyterians and Reformed, some Baptists, and others. Historically it is necessary to differentiate Hyper-Calvinism.

I write these lines on the eve of the 500th anniversary of the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, 31 October 2017. In the weeks preceding I have had a unique privilege. My pastor, Noel Dear, has preached a five-sermon series on the five solas of the Protestant Reformation: sola Scriptura, sola gratia, solus Christus, sola fide, and soli Deo gloria. On the Mondays after each of these I have joined him on Facebook Live in which we have discussed in greater depth the sola preached about the day before. Not only have we probed the Luther story and his differences and those of other Reformers with the sixteenth-century Church of Rome but also we have acknowledged that the magisterial Reformation did not go far enough. There was no sola for a gathered church consisting only of professed believers!

With deep gratitude I would acknowledge that I have been the recipient of not a few honors. Former students and faculty colleagues have presented me with two Festschriften: The first, a 25–chapter book, The People of God (1991), edited by Paul A. Basden and David S. Dockery, was ecclesiological in nature. The second, an eight-article issue of the journal, Perspectives in Religious Studies, Spring 2006, edited by William H. Brackney, was a miscellany of subjects related to my ministry. Baylor University conferred on me the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity and the H. H. Reynolds Award, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary conferred on Myrta and me the L. R. Scarborough Award and on me a Distinguished Alumnus Award. But there has been no greater honor than that which Dr. Wyman Lewis Richardson has bestowed in conceiving and executing this eight-volume series with all its labor and complexities. This I gratefully acknowledge.

James Leo Garrett Jr.

Distinguished Professor of Theology, Emeritus

Southwestern Baptist Theolgical Seminary

Nacogdoches, Texas

28 October 2017

Editor’s Introduction

Volume 2 of The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr., 1 950 – 2015 contains writings from Dr. Garrett that appear strangely prescient in light of conversations across the ecclesial landscape near the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The question of Baptist identity, the many and multifaceted questions surrounding Calvinist theology and how that system fits within Baptist experience or how Baptist experience fits within that system, the question of what exactly the word evangelical means and, again, what it means in light of Baptist experience, and the question of ecumenism and Baptists’ relationships with other Christians are as pertinent today as they were when Dr. Garrett originally wrote these pieces.

Southern Baptists will find the numerous offerings concerning Southern Baptist identity and life in this volume particularly helpful. Yes, some do reflect, at points, concerns of an earlier time, but I daresay there is not a single insight in, say, Dr. Garrett’s 1954 list of vital issues facing Southern Baptists of that time that will not sound equally vital in our own day. The issues then elucidated by Dr. Garrett were:

1. How to distinguish between New Testament essentials and Baptist customs and traditions.

2. How to magnify the Baptist distinctives that make imperative a distinct Baptist witness without isolation from all fellowship with other Christians.

3. How to distinguish clearly between the Baptist heritage of religious freedom and non-creedalism and the encroachment of radical theological liberalism.

4. How to keep a strong biblical faith and message without succumbing to the tendency to make the pet interpretations of some the test of fellowship for all.

5. How to keep worship meaningful and evangelism fruitful without the sacrifice of either.

6. How to magnify both personal regeneration and the Christian life with its moral and social obligations.

7. How to maintain both effective evangelism and the reality of a regenerate church membership.

8. How to tap the material resources of Baptists for Christ without adopting an unbiblical doctrine of stewardship.

9. How to expand as a denomination without being undemocratic in polity.

10. How to keep the home base Christian and to engage in a vigorous world mission advance.

One need only peruse the Twitter feeds of Southern Baptists pastors, seminary students, professors, and laypeople to see that these concerns are as relevant today as when first penned sixty-four years ago. Only the names have changed.

Concerning Evangelicalism, the reader will find in these volumes Dr. Garrett’s substantial writings seeking to answer the question, Are Southern Baptists Evangelicals? These writings, along with those of Dr. E. Glenn Hinson, were brought together in book form by Mercer University Press in 1983. The volume you hold in your hand includes Dr. Garrett’s contributions to that 1983 publication along with other of Dr. Garrett’s writings on the subject not included in that volume.

The Garrett/Hinson debate was an interesting occurrence in the 1980s and one that also remains profoundly relevant to this day. I was happy to be able to correspond with Dr. Hinson about this exchange. Hinson offered his recollection of how the exchange took place:

I will be happy to talk to you about the debate. Actually no live exchanges took place. I gave the four essays as addresses in different places and published them in Baptist History and Heritage or some other journals. Leo, I think wrote a book.¹ Someone at Mercer U Press put the two sets of essays together and asked James Tull to write a commentary about the exchange. So Leo and I didn’t really carry on a debate except for the one worked out by an editor.

Concerning his current beliefs on the question there considered, Hinson writes:

Regarding my position today, I still stand by what I wrote. I didn’t formulate the question: Are Southern Baptists Evangelicals? I was quick to admit that they are, but I doubt whether much of the Baptist tradition remains in the SBC. The question I focused on is the title of one essay: Baptists and Evangelicals: What Is the Difference? In my view the Baptist tradition is hard to reconcile with evangelicalism, for which there are varied definitions. But evangelical in the popular mind is a euphemism for fundamentalist . . . You can see my effort to define the varied usages in one of the chapters.

One quickly sees that the question, Are Southern Baptists Evangelicals? is still relevant and still disputed today. Dr. Garrett’s writings on the question, included in the second section of this volume, therefore warrant close and careful study today as much as they did over thirty years ago, as does the entire 1983 Mercer University Press volume by that name.

Perhaps no section of this volume will be as engaging to the modern Southern Baptist reader as section III, Baptists and Calvinism. While Dr. Garrett, in his Preface to this volume, writes that he failed to anticipate the rise of the important neo-Calvinist movement among Southern Baptists with the advent of the twenty-first century, the issue of Calvinism is one with which he has engaged or referenced or commented upon a number of times throughout many of the writings encompassing what will eventually comprise this eight-volume series. This volume contains, however, his most sustained treatments of that topic.

The interested reader will find much that is commendable in Dr. Garrett’s handling of the question of Baptists and Calvinism. He carefully delineates and defines the views of key leaders, recognizes the primary biblical passages involved, and is perhaps strongest in his chronicling of the story of Baptists and Calvinism as it has unfolded over the last four centuries.

I suspect that the reader will also appreciate Dr. Garrett’s even-handedness and desire to be fair. I was struck, for instance, by Dr. Garrett’s desire to make sure he represented Andrew Fuller’s views correctly in this volume’s reprinting of articles that he wrote on Baptists and Calvinism a decade ago for The Alabama Baptist. To that end, and after consulting with Dr. Tom Ascol of Founder’s Ministries, Dr. Garrett accepted that his original summation of Fuller’s views in those 2007 articles were, in part, mistaken. He acknowledges this, makes the needed correction, and thanks Dr. Ascol in a footnote. He speaks further to his evolving views on Fuller’s theology in his 2011 interview with A. Chadwick Mauldin, included in this volume. It would be difficult for me to overstate the example that this has set for me in editing this work. I trust that the significance and humility of the occurrence will not be lost on the reader.

Furthermore, Dr. Garrett’s methodology and sense of balance is reflected in his 2008 letter to the editor, Honor Baptists’ Calvinist Roots. A year prior, some in the Reformed camp of Southern Baptist life had taken issue with some aspects of Dr. Garrett’s Alabama Baptist articles. Yet, in his 2008 letter to the editor, Dr. Garrett offers gentle but clear pushback against Fisher Humphrey and Paul Robertson’s defining of traditional Baptists as non-Calvinistic. Garrett asserted that there are indeed legitimate critiques one can make of Calvinism, but concluded nonetheless that only by disregarding the total evidence of Baptist history can we affirm that the majority of past Baptists in Britain and North America have not been Calvinists in some sense of that term. The balance reflected in this is as truly commendable as it is unfortunately rare.

Finally, Dr. Garrett’s ecumenical reflections, offered out of his own personal involvement in the ecumenical task, are welcome guides on a question that remains both pertinent and complex in our own day. The entire ecumenical spectrum is present in Baptist life today and the balance, care, and clear thinking evidenced in Dr. Garrett’s writings offer us a helpful model in that important work. Dr. Garrett holds to both catholicity, rightly understood, and Baptist distinctives, again, rightly understood, in a way that is refreshing and worthy of emulation. It can be a difficult balance to maintain. It is our hope that these writings will help the modern reader in doing so.

It is with great enthusiasm that we offer this volume to the public. May it strengthen, enlighten, encourage, challenge, and sharpen the people of God across the denominational landscape.

Wyman Lewis Richardson

Pastor, Central Baptist Church

North Little Rock, Arkansas

Christmas 2017

1. Dr. Garrett did not actually write a separate book on Baptists and Evangelicals. His contributions to the Mercer University Press volume included material (with some additions) that was originally delivered as the

1979

Carver-Barnes Lectures at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Acknowledgments

The editor wishes to acknowledge the special efforts of three ladies in particular. The first is Heather Powell of North Little Rock, Arkansas. Heather, in the midst of a number of truly daunting physical challenges, typed the three major articles on Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, as well as other pieces. The reader will quickly surmise, upon reading these important pieces, that this was no small task. To say that Heather Powell is an inspiration is to risk absurd understatement. She has shown and continues to show unbelievable courage and resolve in the face of very real obstacles. This book would not have appeared when it has without the work of Heather Powell. Thank you Heather!

Audra Murray and Lisa Kelley have, once again, placed me forever in their debt. These ladies, along with Heather Powell, constitute in my mind the Great North Little Rock Triumvirate of typists! This project is truly a massive undertaking that simply demands the input and assistance of a large group of people. Among all of the wonderful people who have helped in immeasurable ways, Audra, Lisa, and Heather deserve special recognition. The editor thanks these tremendous ladies.

Others have likewise done truly indispensable work and I find myself likewise in their debt. Again, I thank the wonderful staff at Central Baptist Church for their encouragement and assistance: Billy Davis, Laurie Milholland, Thomas Sewell, Luci Stephens, Terry Wright, Becky Bird, Rebekah Byrd, Shelley Burris, and Dana McCall. My sincere thanks as well to Eric Lancaster, Tara Geelhood, Alex Pritchett, Mandy Warford, James Paul, Rebecca Townsend, and Gerry Allebach for their tremendous help.

Dr. Malcolm Yarnell continues to be a great source of encouragement and assistance and I am grateful for his help. I am likewise grateful for help offered me by Jill Botticelli, Charles Huckaby, and Elizabeth Sieberhagen of Roberts Library at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I would like to say a further word about Jill Botticelli. Her assistance has always been timely, thorough, and conducted with infectious optimism, and this in spite of the fact that I often throw last minute needs her way or requests that involve her and her team digging through Dr. Garrett’s numerous boxes of copious papers housed at Roberts Library at Southwestern Seminary. Thank you Jill!

My parents, Wade and Diane Richardson, of Sumter, South Carolina, and my brothers, David and Condy Richardson, have encouraged me along the way. I wish to acknowledge them and thank them here.

Once again, my wife, Roni Richardson, and our daughter, Hannah, have listened to me talk about this project and talk through the journey of this project with grace and patience. They have been a constant source of encouragement and joy! For this, I offer them my sincere thanks and gratitude. They both already have my love.

Lastly, my sincerest thanks to Dr. James Leo Garrett Jr. I am grateful for his friendship, for his encouragement, for his patience, and for the amazing body of scholarship that is reflected in these volumes. Dr. Garrett’s legacy is already secure. Nonetheless, it is my hope that this volume and this series as a whole will serve as a model for the Church at large for many years to come of what Christian scholarship should look like.

I.

Southern Baptists

1

Vital Issues for Southern Baptists (1954/1960)

¹

1. How to distinguish between New Testament essentials and Baptist customs and traditions.

2. How to magnify the Baptist distinctives that make imperative a distinct Baptist witness without isolation from all fellowship with other Christians.

3. How to distinguish clearly between the Baptist heritage of religious freedom and non-creedalism and the encroachment of radical theological liberalism.

4. How to keep a strong biblical faith and message without succumbing to the tendency to make the pet interpretations of some the test of fellowship for all.

5. How to keep worship meaningful and evangelism fruitful without the sacrifice of either.

6. How to magnify both personal regeneration and the Christian life with its moral and social obligations.

7. How to maintain both effective evangelism and the reality of a regenerate church membership.

8. How to tap the material resources of Baptists for Christ without adopting an unbiblical doctrine of stewardship.

9. How to expand as a denomination without being undemocratic in polity.

10. How to keep the home base Christian and to engage in a vigorous world mission advance.

1

.

This article appeared first in Southwestern News (May

1954

)

2

and again in The Baptist World (February

1960

)

2

.

2

A Relevant Word From Dr. Schaff (1962)

²

One July day in 1844 a twenty-five year old Swiss-born, German-educated privat-dozent landed in New York. He had turned aside from almost certain appointment to a university chair in Europe to accept the invitation of the German Reformed Church in the United States to become one of the two professors in its struggling theological seminary at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. A decade was to pass before this immigrant was again to visit on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Philip Schaff was to experience the greatest crisis in his academic career and to be well on his way to becoming America’s greatest church historian of the nineteenth century.

Schaff in a few months delivered his inaugural address as professor at Mercersburg. It was later published under the title, The Principle of Protestantism.³ He not only dealt with such basic Protestant affirmations as the authority of Scripture and justification through faith but also with a panoramic perspective of church history proceeded to predict a new reformation which would go beyond Protestantism and beyond Catholicism. He anticipated new forms and structures in Christianity, and these he saw as preparatory for the second advent of Christ. The young professor had no idea that he was saying anything out of the ordinary.

But Philip Schaff’s inaugural was like a bombshell! The American scene of the 1840s was strongly anti-Roman Catholic. Immigrants, especially the Irish, were coming by the thousands into American ports. Most of them were very poor and jobless. American Protestants were writing of alleged involuntary confinements and immoralities in convents, of an unbridgeable gulf between the Bible and the dogmas of Rome, of a threat to the liberties of the American Republic from increasing Catholic immigration! Many were quite sure that the Church of Rome was the beast and Babylon the Great, mother of harlots spoken of in the Apocalypse (chs. 13, 18) and that the Pope was the Antichrist (1 John 2:22) and the man of sin (2 Thess 2:3–12). School controversy had begun, and riots had broken out in Philadelphia and New York. To many American Protestants, including many German Reformed, Philip Schaff’s words sounded like heresy. Crypto-Romanism was the cry! And this in spite of the fact that Schaff had told the Germans at his ordination that he was going to America partly because Romanism was a threat to the German churches in America!

A heresy trial did come, and, after the accusers of Schaff had made their charges, the German Reformed Synod acquitted him by a vote of 37 to 3. In the years that followed, Philip Schaff, with the encouragement of his colleague, John W. Nevin, laid the foundation for his great historical writing and became acquainted with his adopted land and its churches.

In 1854 Schaff returned for the first time to Germany and in the city of Berlin was asked to lecture informally to a gathering of the academic community on America. He might have chosen to spell out in great detail the circumstances of his heresy trial. Instead he made a concise and notable statement:

The supervision of theology by the church is a valuable remnant of discipline, and ought, I think, to be preferred to too broad and latitudinarian a freedom of doctrine; though, I grant, and that from bitter personal experience, that it is often associated with shallowness, bigotry, and the spirit of persecution; and thus in many ways hinders the free development of theology.⁴

Philip Schaff was saying that in the theological task of Christianity both freedom and discipline are necessary. Freedom apart from the corporate responsibility of the Christian community of faith may result in unanchored drifting, individualistic arrogance, or departure from the core of Christian truth. On the other hand, discipline without freedom may produce a politico-ecclesiastical tyranny or stifle the re-creative breadth that the Spirit of God would quicken to open new vistas of Christian truth and duty. The Christian theologian is to be neither an irresponsible libertine nor a cringing coward. He needs to live and work in that paradoxical unity of liberty and responsibility which belongs to the very nature of being a Christian and a churchman.

We Southern Baptists need to learn in 1963 this truth which Philip Schaff, the adopted American, classically expressed in Berlin more than a century ago. But this truth did not originate with Schaff. If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31, 32).

2

.

This article appeared in Capital Baptist (

25

April

1962

)

7

–

8

.

3. Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism as Related to the Present Status of the Church.

4. Schaff, America,

93

.

3

Ought Southern Baptists to Divide? (1962)

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Talk of denominational division among Southern Baptists has again become frequent. This is not the first time in 1 17 years of distinctly Southern Baptist history that division has been a live option. From the advent of Landmarkism in the 1850 s to the eschatological rumblings of the early 1950 s Southern Baptists have encountered divisive issues. Except for the exodus of Negro members after the Civil War, that of many Landmark Baptists at the beginning of this century, and that of certain Fundamentalist Baptists after World War I, such issues have not proved permanently to be divisive or separative.

I

How shall Southern Baptists consider the contemporary possibility of internal rupture? Some would deny that such a possibility exists or would choose to ignore such if it should exist. Others would view such division as a virtually inevitable occurrence which must eventually be accepted. Still others reckon a theological division among Southern Baptists the more desirable of two undesirable alternatives, namely, continued division within the denomination or division with resultant theological and procedural homogeneity within two newly formed denominational structures. Yet others would regard denominational schism for the sake of any of the currently espoused reasons as a tragedy to be averted. The writer in approaching this question inclines to the last mentioned attitude.

II

If such a denominational rupture would be a tragedy, one may properly inquire about the actual nature of