What Baptists Believe....... About the Bible  (click for Part 1 and Part 3)

Rock Falls Baptist Church, Excelsior Springs, MO, Doug Crabb, pastor

Fall of 2003 in preparation for a visit by the Heartland Baptist Association Credentials Committee

A Sunday Evening Study

The chain of Baptist confessions for American Baptists begins with the 1742 Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith, progresses through the New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith, then finds expression in the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention, the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention, and most recently the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention.  What follows is a comparison of these American Baptist confessions of faith concerning their articles on the Bible:

Five basic assumptions upon which the Christian faith rests:  

Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation of God to humanity.

The Bible is God’s primary way of revealing himself to us.  We would have known nothing of Jesus had we not learned it through Holy Scriptures.

“Revelation” here does not mean the book of Revelation in the New Testament, but “revelation” means that God reveals himself to us through the events, words, activities, and actions told to us through Scriptures.

Another of the key words for us as Baptists is the word, “inspiration.”  Literally the world “inspiration” means “to breath.”  When we speak of the Bible as being “inspired” we mean that God has breathed his truth and his spirit into the words of Holy Scripture.   Although written by human beings, God guided those persons rightly to perceive, record, interpret, and transmit the record of God’s revealing of himself.

“All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness….”   II Timothy 3:16  (NIV)

Two prominent theories of “how” God inspired and influenced the writers:

The dictation theory – holds that God took full control of each writer and dictated each word that was to be written.  The writer served as a robotic receiver and wrote word for word as God dictated.  This view is sometimes called the plenary verbal theory of inspiration.

The dynamic theory – God inspired the thoughts that were to be written but did not dictate each exact word.  The writers were left free to express the truth in their own forms and words, but that in the process the writers were guided by the Holy Spirit and guarded by the Holy Spirit from introducing error.

Although the two theories differ as to the method of inspiration, they agree on the outcome that we have a trustworthy and accurate reflection of God’s work and words.

It is the record of God’s revelation of himself to mankind.

The use of this phrase first occurred in 1963 when Southern Baptists revised and updated their 1925 Baptist Faith and Message confession.  Even though recent actions by some Baptists differ about this point, historically Baptists have understood that the Bible is not the ultimate revelation of God.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate revelation!  The scriptures have no power to give us life, they do have the power to point us to Christ through whom we have the promise of eternal life.  To believe that the Bible is the ultimate revelation is to place the Bible higher than Jesus Christ.  This is why the article of the 1963 BFM reminds us ”The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.”

It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.

This phrase was borrowed from English philosopher, John Locke, who used it in a letter to a young minister written on August 25, 1703.  It was used first by Baptists in the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith.

Having already discussed what it means to say “it has God for its author,” we need to acknowledge that the primary purpose of scripture is to lead its readers to experience salvation.  The purpose of the Bible is to point readers to salvation.

Two additional terms often used that need clarification:

Infallible – this word was used in the Second London Confession of Faith  (1677).  However, this word was dropped in the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1742) and the phrase, “truth without mixture of error,” was used in its place.  “Infallible” means ‘dependable, reliable, incapable of error.’  Hershel Hobbs, in his book entitled Baptist Faith and Message defines this word as meaning “incapable of erring.”  He notes that the Bible is “infallible as a book of religion.”  (see page 29)

Inerrancy  -- One word that has divided Baptists the past 25 years more than anything else is the word, “inerrancy.”  However, this word has never appeared in a Baptist Confession of Faith.   Even after 25 years of conflict and controversy among Southern Baptists at the end of the twentieth century, the word was not used in the 2000 Baptist Confession of Faith. 

Does “inerrancy” mean the absence of mistakes in the scriptures, or the absence of deception in the scriptures?

Fundamentalist Baptists insist that this word must be used to describe one’s beliefs about the Bible.  Moderate Baptists resist being instructed to use a particular word about the Bible as a litmus test for fellowship or faith, especially when the Bible does not use that word about itself! 

According to the Oxford Companion to the Bible, the word “inerrancy” does not appear at all in Latin and only appears in English in the mid-19th century.  It is a word first employed by Protestant fundamentalists to denote the quality of errorlessness within the Bible.  While the term is relatively new, Christian history has affirmed the trustworthiness and reliability of the Bible.  “Inerrancy” is a term created by fundamentalist theologians to attempt to describe the high level of technical precision concerning a theory of inspiration of the Bible.

The theory of inerrancy insists that the original autographs of the Bible were inerrant, meaning that they were without errors in all matters including but not limited to history, science, geography, and or mathematics.

The central affirmation of inerrancy is that every word and every statement found in the Bible is true.  This truthfulness is uniform and consistent throughout the entirely of the Bible.

However, those holding to inerrancy must admit and acknowledge that the original autographs do not exist or have not been found.  Modern translations are not considered inerrant although they are very reliable and should be considered trustworthy.  Those holding to inerrancy recognize the possibilities translating from autographs to manuscripts allows for distortions, mistakes, and problems to enter into the translated texts. Those holding to inerrancy usually qualify their understanding of inerrancy with these qualifiers:

Most Baptists hold what Clark Pinnock, a Canadian theologian calls “simple biblicism,” as their view about the Bible:

Elaborate human theories about the veracity of the Bible burden both the Bible and the Baptist in ways that are counterproductive to authentic Christian living.