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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is America's largest Protestant denomination: it has nearly 16 million members and more than 40,000 affiliated congregations. Consequently, the SBC annual meeting often creates waves that splash elsewhere in the evangelical world. The recent annual gathering was just such a meeting. The key issue was the revision of the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), the third major redefining of what it means to be a Southern Baptist.The SBC was organized in 1845, but it was 85 years before a conventionwide confessional statement was adopted, in 1925, during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, providing one basis for denominational expansion while keeping theological liberalism at bay. In response to growing controversy over the Bible, Southern Baptists adopted a new version of BFM in 1963. Approved by an overwhelming majority of the 11,000 messengers (as Southern Baptists call their delegates), BFM 2000 keeps much of the 1963 language intact but makes several changes in an attempt to close ranks and define the SBC more conservatively.We applaud most of the changes as they will discourage the liberal drift experienced by other large denominations. At the same time, we wonder if the SBC has gone too far, both in seeming to eliminate discussion of some beliefs and in alienating opponents.

"The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ," the 1963 statement said. The new language declares that the Scriptures are "a testimony to Christ, who is himself the focus of divine revelation." It also declares that Scripture "is God's revelation," not merely "the record of God's revelation." While it does not use the word inerrant, it declares, "all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy."Removing fuzzy neo-orthodox-sounding language about the Bible clearly aligns the SBC with the kind of conservative evangelical view of Scripture set forth in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. This change also makes it more difficult for scholars to pit the Gospels against the epistles, or Jesus against Paul, in wrestling with controversial issues such as homosexuality and the role of women in the church. (For example, say some exegetes, since Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, it must not be a central issue for Christians.)Still, BFM 2000 is poorer without the rich Christocentric language of the earlier statement. Jesus Christ is surely the center of Scripture as well as its Lord. One can affirm this while also welcoming the clear affirmation of the Bible as God's infallible, revealed word.

Another subtle change in BFM 2000 reflects the growing controversy concerning the omniscience of God. Historically, orthodox Christians—Catholics and Protestants, Arminians and Calvinists—have affirmed God's complete knowledge of all future events. More recently, however, some theologians have advocated an openness-of-God theology that claims God's knowledge of the future is limited. The new SBC confession affirms that God's "perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of his free creatures."This was echoed in a similar statement adopted by another Baptist body, the Baptist General Conference, one week later. Yet shutting down the debate by convention fiat runs a serious risk. Though openness theism clearly runs counter to historic Christian theology, it draws on aspects of the biblical witness that not all mainstream theologians have integrated into their teaching. The ongoing debate gives these teachers a chance to make their theology more fully biblical while remaining true to the tradition.

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August 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 9