The Times Online reports that Vatican archaeologists have discovered the earliest known portrait of Paul, a 4th-century portrait lodged in the catacombs of St Thecla.
James P. Boyce, the greatest of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s founding fathers, was one of the greatest Baptist minds on theology and church government. This interview from 1887 originally printed in Broadway Baptist Magazine, reveals his very blunt viewpoint regarding a proper New Testament service:
Question: “What is your opinion as to the character of the wine used at the Lord’s Supper?”
Boyce: “The scholarship of the world is in favor of fermented wine on that occasion, though it may have been greatly diluted. If others prefer to use unfermented wine, there is no objection to it, unless their attempt in so doing be to bind the consciences of their brethren who believe otherwise. The main thing is to have the juice of the grape.”
Q: “What do you believe as to the unleavened bread?”
Boyce: “The bread used by Christ was unleavened simply because there was no other obtainable at that time. Unleavened bread was rather an accident than an essential of the Lord’s Supper. Christ said bread, and he does not restrict us to leavened or unleavened.”
Q: “Do you think the Lord’s Supper ought to be administered at night necessarily?”
Boyce: “No. It was not the custom in the time of Christ to have any meal which corresponds to our midday dinner. What we call supper was really their dinner taken later in the day, as many do theri six o’clock dinner in these days.”
Q: “What do you think of the benediction pronounced by the preacher as closing of our usual services?”
Boyce: “It is thoroughly pre-latical and is the outgrowth of popery. It seems to imply that one man has the right of conferring a blessing upon an assembly, a right which is claimed only by the papacy.”
Boyce’s views obviously cannot be considered normative of nineteenth century Baptists, but they are remarkably fascinating. Boyce seems to reverse the argument of the “weaker conscience” regarding using wine in the Supper. According to Boyce, those who prefer to use unfermented wine should not prohibit their brothers whose conscience require them to use fully fermented wine in the Supper out of a sense of obedience to Christ. In modern times, the use of wine in the Lord’s Supper has become a source of division among Christian brethren. Also, whereas many Baptists today argue that the wine of the New Testament was likely unfermented, Boyce freely acknowledges it most likely would have been fermented, though greatly diluted. Boyce’s insight that the main thing is to use the juice of the grape is a refreshing word of insight that avoids unedifying squabbling over the exact nature of the elements. His comments about the problem of using leavened or unleavened bread are likewise level-headed.
Regarding the use of the benediction, Boyce’s comments are exceptionally provocative. One can only imagine his view on this matter would have been greatly out of step with most of his fellow Baptists. It is unknown to me whether he was influenced by other thinkers or traditions on this question or whether he simply arrived at this conviction independently.
This interview, entitled “Questions and Answers”, was originally published in The Broadway Baptist Magazine, Novemember-December, 1887, page 30. It has recently been included in Thomas J. Nettles, Stray Recollections, Short Articles and Public Orations of James P. Boyce (Founders Press, 2009), page 118.
The grand title that I gave to this post probably offers a bit too much. Rather than an extended treatise on the topic, I just wanted to post a short note on something I came across recently. At the Council of Elvira in Spain around 310 A.D., the assembled church leaders passed a canon that excommunicated those Christians who did not attend worship for three consecutive Sundays. Those Baptists arguing today for regenerate church membership and cleaned-up membership rolls often point to the example of Baptist from a previous age who faithfully practiced church discipline. It is sometimes helpful to see that such concerns didn’t start with 19th-century Baptists, but have roots that go far far back in church history.
- See Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society (Oxford, 2003), 181-182.
Southern Baptist History, Influences, and Advice for Young Pastors: Interview with Dr. Gregory A. Wills (Part 2)
Dr. Gregory A. Wills
Click here to read part one of our interview with Dr. Gregory A. Wills, Professor of Church History at Southern Seminary.
JG: Obviously a lot of the sources which you used in writing the history of Southern Seminary aren’t accessible to pastors and church members. What books would you recommend which would help people understand not only the history of the seminary, but also the history of the SBC in general?
GW: Unfortunately, there is not a satisfactory history of the SBC. In fact, I don’t think there is one in print right now at all. But there are books that give insight into various parts of it. There is a biography of E. Y. Mullins by William Ellis [A Man of Books and a Man of the People, Mercer Press, 1985] which is helpful for understanding not only Mullins and the seminary, but also what the SBC was experiencing at that time.
James Thompson’s Tried as by Fire [Mercer Press, 1982], deals with the same period, the 1920s, and how the SBC experienced that period.
Nancy Ammerman’s Baptist Battles [Rutgers University Press, 1990] is a very helpful window on Southern Baptists from the late-70s through the mid-80s, a time of intense denominational controversy.
As far as related to the seminary, the new biography of William Whitsitt by James Slatton [W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the Controversy, Mercer Press, 2009] reveals the sealed diaries of Whitsitt, which have never seen the light of day except for a few excerpts which have gotten out a couple of times. Slatton quotes extensively from those diaries, so it’s important for that reason alone.
There is still a lot which needs to be done.
JG: You’ve written on First Baptist Columbia, S.C., Baptists in Georgia, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; it seems the next logical book to write is a comprehensive history of the Southern Baptist Convention. When should we expect this book?
GW: In about 5 years. I don’t have a contract and I haven’t written anything yet, but I have an outline. I’ve had it as an ambition to do for some time, and I think, finally, I can make room to do it.
JG: What books have most influenced you personally and professionally?
GW: Personally, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity would have to be number one. This is the book which the Holy Spirit used it to open my eyes to my sinful estate and the truth of the Gospel and to the Savior.
Professionally, George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture. This book was important in deepening my interest in history, especially to the history of American Christianity.
At about the same time I also read Mark Noll’s Between Faith and Criticism, a very well done history of the American church’s engagement with historical criticism.
JG: You are associated with American and Baptist history; outside of these areas, which era of church history most interests you?
GW: My ambition would be to spend ten or twenty years working on Baptist, American, modern European, Reformation, Medieval, Patristics . . . . I love every era and find each one compelling and interesting in different ways. While there are common themes and questions, each era frames the issues in different ways.
JG: What reason can you give pastors and seminarians to study Southern Baptist history and remain within the SBC?
GW: Well, first of all, we do start from somewhere. We start with a heritage, and we do not know what that heritage is in many cases. Also, sometimes we do not even realize that we are assuming certain truths, practices, and expectations because we grow up wearing them and do not realize that we are wearing them until someone questions them.
When you read history and realize that people interpreted and applied Scripture in a different way, it forces you to stop and ask, “Why did they do that?” and “Why don’t I do it that way?” Then you begin to expose those assumptions and presuppositions that are a part of your heritage and now you can question them, asking, “Is that a biblically justified presupposition that I have?” This helps you conform your beliefs, practices, and expectations more and more to the Scriptures.
I hope that in studying Baptist history that Baptist pastors will come to a deeper appreciation of their heritage. There is much to appreciate.
I also hope that by studying Baptist history we can develop a more precise habit in evaluating the merits and demerits of ideas and practices. If you study history enough, and in enough depth, you recognize that there are no untempered goods, no unmixed evils, no perfect heroes, and no perfect villains. And that helps us to make more precise evaluations. . . . It also prepares us to appreciate the good in those with whom we profoundly disagree and helps us to be unsurprised when our heroes teach or practice something which we disagree with or perceive to be sinful and foolish. So the study of Baptist history helps pastors to be more faithful stewards and ministers of the truth which is committed to us as shepherds of the flock.
JG: Is there a particular weakness that you see with young pastors and/or aspiring pastors?
GW: First, there is an indifference to the flock that masquerades as courage sometimes. Sometimes we take a stand for principle, which we believe demonstrates our courage to suffer for truth, but sometimes what it actually reveals is a lack of that love for the flock which would suffer patiently with the flock’s weakness while we seek to strengthen the sheep.
Second, and conversely, there is at times an accommodation to the weaknesses of the flock which, generally speaking, masquerades as love and patience for the flock that may in fact be a failure of courage. We need the spiritual wisdom required to discern the difference between a patient love and a cowardly accommodation, between courage and embarrassment.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009: Interview with Dr. Gregory A. Wills (Part 1)
Dr. Gregory A. Wills
The following is part one of an interview with Dr. Gregory A. Wills, Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. At Southern Seminary, Dr. Wills is Associate Dean (Theology and Tradition) in the School of Theology and Director of the Center for the Study of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Wills is the author of numerous books and articles, including the recently released Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (Oxford, 2009).
Joseph Gould (JG): Would you characterize your book as a “prescriptive” or “descriptive” approach of telling the history of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?
Dr. Gregory A. Wills (GW): Definitely descriptive. I seek to tell the story [of Southern] by understanding and explaining the story on its own terms. As I see it, that’s the first job of doing history.
Description involves both analysis and synthesis. You figure out what are the most important and most compelling aspects of that history and then you let that come together as the main storyline, or storylines, which drive the history. History has meaning, and what I’m trying to do is describe it in such a way that its meaning becomes apparent.
JG: In a nutshell, what is the thesis, or central argument, of your book?
GW: I don’t think it has one thesis that can carry the whole thing through, but there are two themes that recur through most of it and carry most of the story.
The first theme is the importance, or centrality, of Boyce’s vision of a seminary committed to sustaining orthodoxy, to sustaining a true and faithful teaching of the word of God. In God’s providence, the Lord raised up a man with such a vision that as Boyce led the seminary his vision became the vision not only of the seminary, but also of the entire Southern Baptist Convention. As such, Boyce succeeded, with God’s blessing, in tying the seminary and the Convention to traditional Christian orthodoxy and understanding of the scriptures. An important part of that was the adoption of the Abstract of Principles, which secured the orthodoxy of the professors. They had to agree to teach in accordance with the Abstract and not contrary to it. Also, the fundamental documents adopted for the seminary stated that any departure from those Principles would constitute grounds for dismissal.
Boyce led the seminary to dismiss Crawford Toy when Toy departed from an orthodox view of inspiration, specifically the plenary verbal theory of inspiration with its conclusion of inerrancy. Though not something explicitly delineated from the Abstract of Principles, it is clearly implied in the first article [on Scripture]. Then Boyce led the controversy over inspiration which followed Toy’s dismissal from about 1880-1885, when the denomination experienced significant controversy over inspiration. In many ways, Boyce and the faculty led the orthodox side during the controversy.
I would say also that one of the things that gave [Boyce’s] vision of orthodoxy credibility was the way that Boyce and his colleagues suffered for the seminary. Their personal sufferings and sacrifices in establishing the seminary amid remarkably difficult times made them heroes in the eyes of Southern Baptists of that day and subsequent generations. This gave them credibility in their stand for orthodoxy that they wouldn’t quite have had otherwise. That commitment to orthodoxy carries through to the faculty; no matter how liberal they might have become, they could stray only so far because of the Abstract applying certain constraints and because the constituency expected Southern Seminary to be orthodox due to Boyce and the founding faculty. This put constraints on the seminary; while the seminary was able to develop in some liberal directions, there were limits on that. They could only go so far and maintain their viability in the Southern Baptist Convention.
The second recurring theme in the book is the relationship which developed between a progressive faculty and a conservative denomination, what I call a realistic denominational diplomacy. The seminary faculty had to develop a realistic approach to its relationship with the denomination in which they could realistically expose their more progressive views only in limited ways and to mostly trusted audiences. This tension between the more progressive views of the faculty and the more traditional views of Southern Baptists dominated the experience of the seminary throughout much of the 20th century until the 1990s, when the seminary thoroughly reorganized on a more conservative basis.
JG: What structure do you take in telling the story of the seminary?
GW: The story is told largely by administration, though each administration has experiences, controversies, challenges, and developments that mark them. The founding of the seminary required a little more attention; there are basically four chapters for the founding generation and they bring the story of the seminary up to the death of Broadus.
There is a chapter on William Whitsitt; although his administration was brief. The controversy that he precipitated, or as some would say his Landmark opponents precipitated, influenced the seminary, faculty, and its future in such a way that his administration merits an entire chapter.
There are two chapters for E. Y. Mullins, two for Duke McCall, and two for Roy Honeycutt. Although Honeycutt’s administration was shorter than either Mullins’s or McCall’s, it was, like Whittsitt’s administration, one in which there was intense controversy. Furthermore, and even more than in Whitsitt’s day, there was profound change that came about because of that controversy.
JG: Which presidential administration do you believe is the most significant to the Seminary’s history, and why?
GW: Boyce’s administration, in founding the seminary, is without doubt the most important. Beyond Boyce’s, this is a tough question because each one of them contributed in very significant ways. Certainly the administration of Mullins was very important in negotiating the new environment of having the rise of this progressive religion among educated Southern Baptists, largely at the seminaries and colleges, and the conservative denomination. So Mullins is important in establishing how that relationship is going to work.
McCall is terribly important in negotiating that very same relationship, but after World War II in a very different environment. The faculty is growing more progressive, but the denomination, for the most part, is not growing more progressive.
Honeycutt led at a critical time of denominational conflict, over primarily the seminaries. And, of course, Dr. Mohler led the seminary to a renewed embrace of the mission of the seminary’s founders.
JG: After conducting your research, did you find that one administration was more significant than you had previously thought?
GW: Yes, Ellis Fuller’s administration. The presidency of Ellis Fuller was important for a lot of reasons. It was much richer and more complex than I expected.
JG: What figure in the history of the Seminary do you find the most interesting?
GW: I have to say James P. Boyce. The more I’ve read and researched and written, the more I appreciate Boyce. I feel he is the one person I would like to know personally above all the others.
There are others who contributed much and who were interesting and godly people. I would love to have met Ellis Fuller. He was deeply gifted in ways that were terribly important for the seminary’s success, or at least that were different than most of the other presidents.
It’s hard because I feel like I have a love and appreciation for each one of the presidents and find them all attractive in their own ways, with only two exceptions. While I have differing assessments of how effective they were in widening the seminary’s mission, they were all gifted men in various ways.
JG: Do you believe that Southern Seminary has been able to successfully fulfill Boyce’s vision for Baptist theological education?
GW: I would say, mostly, yes. In certain periods profoundly so, at other periods less profoundly so, but even when the faculty was the most progressive there were still a significant number, such as many of the students, who were committed to Boyce’s vision. So Boyce always cast a long shadow, even when many on faculty had either abandoned or profoundly changed his vision.
David S. Dockery
One of the most influential individuals in the realm of Christian higher education is David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, TN. In one of his recent books, Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society through Christian Higher Education (Nashville: B&H, 2007), Dockery shows how the integration of faith and learning was once considered the essence of Christian higher education and how this integration was, at one point, the goal of American colleges.
Dockery writes:
I believe that the integration of faith and learning is the essence of authentic Christian education and should be wholeheartedly implemented across the campus and across the curriculum. This was once the goal of almost every college in America. This is no longer the case. Before the nineteenth century every college started in this country, with the exception of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, was a Christian-based institution committed to revealed truth. All of that changed with the rise of secularization and specialization, creating dualisms of every kind – a separation of head knowledge from heart knowledge, faith from learning, revealed truth from observed truth, and careers from vocation.
What happened was a loss of an integrated worldview in the academy. There was a failure to see that every discipline and every specialization could be and should be approached from the vantage point of faith, the foundational building block for a Christian worldview. The separation of faith from learning and teaching was the first step toward creating a confused and disconnected approach to higher education, even in church-related institutions (Renewing Minds, 5-6, emphasis mine).
May God bless the labor of those who seek to reverse this trend and recover an integrated Christian worldview in higher education.
The Didache (short for “The Teaching”) is an anonymous document of the early church and generally dated during the late first or second century AD. One of the major sections of the work (6.3-15.4) deals with issues of local church government and practices. Chapter 7 of the document pertains to baptism:
Now concerning baptism, baptize as follows: after you have reviewed all these things, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in running water. But if you have no running water, then baptize in some other water; and if you are not able to baptize in cold water, then do so in warm. But if you have neither, then pour water on the head three times in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. And before the baptism let the one baptizing and the one who is to be baptized fast, as well as any others who are able. Also, you must instruct the one who is to be baptized to fast for one or two days beforehand. [7.1-4]
[The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd edition, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007]
I don’t have much to say about this passage, other than to say that it is much more consistent with credobaptism as opposed to paedobaptism. Do you know what happens when you don’t feed an infant? Intolerable screaming.
The first recorded time this kind of designation was used was by Melito of Sardis in the late second century (recorded in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 4.26.14; available online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.ix.xxvi.html [accessed on 5/29/09]). In his listing of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, the first such list among the extant Christian writings, he called the group of writings the “Old Covenant” (Greek: palaia diatheke). The Greek word for “covenant” (diatheke) was translated by Jerome in the fifth century into the Latin Vulgate as testamentum. Since the Latin Vulgate was widely used throughout the Middle Ages, it greatly influenced later translations into vernacular languages. Thus, for example, one of the first English translations of the Bible, made by John Wyclif in the fourteenth century (1382), translated diatheke as “testament,” following the Latin testamentum. William Tyndale’s sixteenth-century English translation followed suit (1524), along with the Geneva Bible (1557), as did the translators of the 1611 King James Bible. Thus, today the two divisions of the English Bible are known as the Old and New Testaments, although in the English text diatheke is usually translated as “covenant.” The two words are therefore regarded as basically synonymous.
Now a question about these designations . . . Recently I had a conversation with a theologically-minded friend who objected to calling the Hebrew Scriptures the “Old Testament.” His concern seemed to be that using that appellation implicitly conveys a sense that the Hebrew Scriptures were not relevant to the Christian Church. Issues of nomenclature are by no means irrelevant, but instead communicate our most basic assumptions about a given reality. Thus, calling the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures the “Old Testament” has vast theological import. What do you think? Should we not call that body of writings the “Old Testament”? If not, then what is a better description?
Here’s a quote from Peter Martyr Vermigli that illustrates well my desire to be more than simply a historian, but to be a theologian:
“Let us apply ourselves with supreme diligence to the word of God. We are called theologians and that is how we want to be known. Let us live up to our name and profession unless we should prefer being patrologists instead of theologians. Our profession absolutely requires us to deal with the words of God.”
Today, the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. She is welcomed with approbation by the left and suspicion on the right. And rightly so.
In his chapter, “Judicial Aggression and the Litigational Society,” historian Paul Johnson traces how judicial activists in the late 1900s overturned the Founding Father’s interpretation of law based on the writings of British jurish, William Blackstone (1723-1780):
It is vital to grasp that the judicial tradition of the United States, as understood by the Founding Fathers, was based upon the English common law and statutory tradition, whereby judges interpreted common law and administered statute law. The English judges had interpreted law in the light of the principle of equity, or fairness, which is a synonym for natural justice. But they had done so heeding the warning by Grotius (1583-1645), the Dutch founder of modern legal science, that equity should be no more than ‘the correction of that, wherein the law is deficient.’ This warning was amplified in the most solemn fashion by Sir William Blackstone, the greatest of all English 18th-century jurists, whose teachings were very much present in the minds of the Founding Fathers when they drew up the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution of the United States.
Blackstone said that judges must bear justice in mind as well as the law, but “The liberty of considering all cases in an equitable light must not be indulged too far, lest thereby we destroy all law, and leave the decision of every question entirely in the breast of the judge. And law, without equity, though hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good, than equity without law; which would make every judge a legislator, and introduce most infinite confusion.”
The controversies surrounding Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation validate Blackstone’s judgment from so long ago. First, there’s the video of her comment that appeal’s court makes policy (she does joke about her comment, however).
Second, her ideas of equality, as Blackstone would have regretted and George Will points out, are nothing more than identity politics. Will writes,
“Before Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin, the Supreme Court probably will overturn a ruling she supported on the 2nd Circuit — the propriety of New Haven, Conn., canceling fire department promotions because there were no African-Americans (although there was a Hispanic) among the 18 firemen the selection test made eligible for promotion. A three-judge panel of 2nd Circuit judges, including Sotomayor, affirmed a district court’s dismissal of the firemen’s complaint, doing so in a perfunctory and unpublished order that acknowledged none of the large constitutional questions involved.”
Sonia Sotomayor’s most telling comment revealing her proclivity to identity politics came at a speech to a Hispanic group, where she said,
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion (as a judge) than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Fairness without law; equality without justice. Who knew Blackstone’s words would come true? By understanding Sonia Sotomayor’s comments on identity politics & policy making, along with her actions involving the New Haven fire department, we now know the meaning behind the President’s words when he said he wanted a nominee who had “empathy.”
Sotomayor’s empathy, however, isn’t equal for all. And this is the nonsense that Johnson traced out after quoting Blackstone on equality and law. Johnson went on to write on how the 1971 decision, Griggs v. Duke Power Company, intepreted the 1964 Civil Rights Act to give minorities “an automatic presumption of discrimination, and so gave them standing to sue in court without having to prove they had suffered any discriminatory acts. . . .
. . . Thus the principle of ‘equality before the law,’ which in the Anglo-American tradition went back to the Magna Carta in 1215, was breached. . . .
. . . Victims of reverse discrimination were disadvantaged in laws, as was painfully demonstrated by the Randy Pech case in January 1991, when the US Attorney-General argued that Pech, being white, had no standing in court.”
Johnson continued tracing out the effects of judicial activism and how the pursuit for racial equality turned into anything but that in the courts. My concern, however, isn’t necessarily the appointment of Sotomayor, who doesn’t appear to be different than Sutter.
As a Christian and a pastor, my concern is that Christians shouldn’t look at other people or classify them in terms of their skin color or identity politics. At one time, I was guilty of this. But as Thabiti Anyabwile, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman (Cayman Islands), preached at the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference, there is no such thing as “race” if we are all descendents of Adam. All humans have one common ancestor. There might be social differences and ethnic distinctions among people, but Christians need to look at others, not based on the color of their skin (because we’re descendents of one common ancestor – Adam), but on whether or not they have experienced the saving power of Christ. For this reason, the Apostle Paul can write that the Gospel actually erased ethnic boundaries that would divide God’s people. In Ephesians 2.14-17, he writes,
“For Jesus is our peace, who has made Jew and Gentile one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividng wall of hostility. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”
So unlike the way our modern judiciary system and popular culture understand “race” and equality, the church alone can embrace the ethnic diversity that unites others because of Christ. Though this has not always been reality (Civil War, case in point), I pray that as the media debates begin to rage on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, Christians will have a different – a biblical – understanding of “race” and ethnicity. The Christian should realize that in this life those who don’t follow Christ will argue endlessly and destructively about discrimination and equality, but the vision of the future for the believer is that one day God’s people will stand together and worship Christ, who redeemed men and women for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Revelation 5.9).
