Defending the Faith, Engaging the Culture

Bruce A Little, Mark Liederbach, Bruce A Little, Mark Liederbach

L. Russ Bush (1944-2008) was a leading Southern Baptist philosopher, apologist, and professor whose landmark book Baptists and the Bible helped fuel his denomination’s conservative resurgence and decisive emphasis on the inerrancy of Scripture. In Defending the Faith, Engaging the Culture, his colleagues pay tribute by writing about the topics that inspired Bush and excerpting from his published and previously unpublished works to support their message. Themes include Christianity and the Bible (with essays by Tom Nettles and Daniel L. Akin), Christian Apologetics (Gary Habermas, Norman Geisler), Christianity and Science, as well as Faith and Culture.

Editor Bruce A. Little, director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, gives an inspiring testimony to the ongoing legacy of Dr. Bush in the book’s afterword.

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Section One

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Christianity and the Bible

Chapter 1

Inspiration:

The Text or the Men?

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L. Russ Bush

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Many have debated whether the biblical writers were the objects of inspiration by the Holy Spirit, or whether it is the text (not the men) that was and is inspired. Recently a student e-mail reminded me that in class some years ago I had taught that all Scripture is inspired, or God-breathed, and thus is profitable for all the things listed in 2 Tim 3:16. The men, of course, are only available to us today through their writings. I taught that the Scriptures, not the writers, were inspired.

Being a denominational employee, I am required to affirm Southeastern Seminary's confessional documents, one of which is the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BF&M), which clearly states that it was the men (the Scripture-writing prophets and apostles) who were inspired. According to Article I, "The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man." Under that wording, it was the inspired writers who wrote the revealed words, precisely the view I had seemingly questioned in class. The men, I said, were unique in their obedience and sensitivity to the revealed messages from God through the Spirit. They were spiritually guided to write the divine message just as it was given to them, so the resultant text was the infallible Word of God. But the men (the writers) were not personally inspired in such a way that they became holy men who were uniquely infallible in their non-Scripture-writing activities or in their personal lives.

Peter, on the other hand, said that the men (the writers) were being carried along by the Spirit as they gave us the biblical messages (2 Pet 1:20–21). These are similar concepts, but they are not exactly the same. Were these biblical writers great spiritual messengers (like Buddha or Lao Tsu) or mechanically controlled divine messengers or dynamically influenced messengers? Are we reading in the Bible the words of God or those of spiritually minded but fallible men? In a sense, it is both.

A fallible man can write an inerrant word. We do it all the time in nonfiction materials. There is, of course, a difference between inerrant (lacking factual errors in matters affirmed as truthful) and infallible (something that, by definition, not only is not wrong but cannot be wrong). I teach that the authentic text of the Bible is both inerrant and infallible. I do not see any essential conflict between my views as I express them and the more restricted meaning found in the first article of the BF&M. I believe that I express the doctrine of inspiration more clearly than does the BF&M at this point.

In my view, the wording of the original, confirmed, and authenticated text is the original autograph. There are multiple autographs. In other words, Paul may have dictated a letter rather than writing it in his own handwriting (other than perhaps a few words here and there). It is likely that he then read it for editorial revisions. At some point, when his letter read as he intended, he perhaps signed off on that "autographic" copy for additional "autographic" copies to be made and distributed to the churches and the other apostles. Paul's final version is the "original manuscript." Also, every copy or translation that accurately conveys the original meaning is an "original manuscript," no matter who physically put the ink on the paper. Paul authenticated the words, but he was not usually the individual putting the ink on the paper. A professional scribe would do that under Paul's authorization and direction. The letters say what Paul wanted them to say. There is no difference between the "original" and the "copy" if they are verbally identical. If one copy is in Greek and another in French and another in English but the meaning is the same, both translations can be the equivalent of an original Greek autograph. It is not true that only a Greek scholar has access to the true meaning of the New Testament.

It is the text and not the writer that perpetually provides an infallible word from God. When we say the Bible is the Word of God and thus is inerrant in the original manuscripts, we are not pushing infallibility off onto a nonexistent source as liberal Baptists constantly claimed of us in the days of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative resurgence. Every accurate copy is the equivalent of the original wording. It is the original wording of Scripture that is God-breathed. In the case of the New Testament, that original wording was in Greek. Learn Greek if you can. You will discover many nuances that are hard to translate, but the true message of God's Word can be found in accurate translations, especially those translations produced by evangelical scholars who, like Paul, read and reread their documents to get them right. With an extremely high degree of confidence, we can affirm that the Greek New Testaments we use today are virtually identical to the wording of the initially circulated text.

We have thousands of manuscripts to study wherever textual problems appear. Rarely is the issue of biblical inerrancy one of textual or scribal confusion or copyist errors. In fact, scribal problems are almost always resolved by comparing the many copies we have in order to determine the original text. From there, remaining problems are subject to hermeneutical analysis. Virtually everything is resolvable at that level. An accurate translation of Scripture is always found to be truthful in its teachings and affirmations when it is properly interpreted and understood.

The Bible is a human book, written by humans with their human vocabulary and from their human perspectives. But it is also a divine book, the infallible and inerrant Word of God. Jesus taught this approach to the Scriptures, and we follow His teachings. If He is wrong, we will be wrong. But if He is the Lord, the Son of God Himself, then He will not be wrong about the Bible, the Word of God. I choose to follow His pattern and style of teaching in this regard. Doing so yields a consistent, historically truthful message, the truth of God in written form, preserved without change in message and meaning. When our language changes (and it does), our standard original Greek manuscripts allow us to revise our translations and make them conform to the original meaning of the text left to us by the apostles. This is a wonderful and comforting truth. We have the inerrant and infallible Word of God preserved through thousands of years in multiple ways. We have many original Greek language manuscripts and many good translations based on the old Greek copies. Heaven and earth will pass away, but neither one jot nor the least stroke of a pen will pass from God's original Word. It is the text that has this permanent quality, not the men who wrote the words.

As the rest of the first article of the BF&M says, the Bible

is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony of Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Chapter 2

Jesus, Evangelicals, and the Bible

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Daniel L. Akin

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I first met Dr. Russ Bush in the early 1980s as a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was privileged to take him for the class "Christian Philosophy." It was one of the hardest classes I have ever taken in my life on any level. It was also one of the most rewarding as he challenged me and my classmates to think from the perspective of a Christian worldview.

There is one class period in particular that to this day still stands out in my mind. The topic of the day was the Bible's inerrancy, infallibility, and authority. As he carefully and meticulously laid out his argument, something Dr. Bush always did, he made the statement, "The issue of biblical authority is ultimately a question of Christological identity." He went on to clarify, "What you think about Jesus will ultimately influence what you think about the Bible. Your theology of the 'living Word' [Jesus] and the 'written Word' [The Bible] go hand in hand." Even as a young seminarian I intuitively sensed Dr. Bush was saying something of utmost importance. Now after more than 30 years in ministry, I am absolutely convinced he was correct.

On June 14, 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention met in Orlando, Florida, for its annual meeting. The most important issue on the agenda was the consideration of the Baptist Faith and Message (2000). While the 1925 and 1963 confessions had served us well, many believed certain theological currents and trends made it wise to reconsider, and where necessary, to revise the 1963 statement. Article I of the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) addresses the Scriptures. The following statement, rooted both in Scripture and the language of historic Baptist confessions, is what the Convention overwhelmingly adopted:

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.¹

From its initial presentation, however, this statement ignited a firestorm of protests among a segment of Southern Baptists. In particular they decried two points: (1) instead of saying that the Bible "is the record of God's revelation" as did the 1963 BF&M, the 2000 statement affirmed that the Bible "is God's revelation"; and (2) instead of saying that "the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ," as did the 1963 BF&M, the 2000 statement affirms, "All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation." Both revisions were viewed by the Baptist Faith and Mission Committee (chaired by Adrian Rogers) and the wider Convention as a safeguard against neoorthodox manipulation of the 1963 statement, which manifested itself in two ways: (1) in claiming that only portions of the Bible are God's revelation; and (2) in saying that the teachings of Jesus recorded in Scripture at times should, and even must, be set in opposition to other biblical texts and authors.

During debate at the Convention, a pastor from Texas said to the astonishment of thousands "that while the Bible is true and trustworthy . . . the Bible is still just a book."² Later in a telephone interview he told Baptist Press, "As I shared, I believe the Bible is a book that God has given us for guidance. It's a book that points us to the truth. We're not supposed to have a relationship with a book." These comments, confused and misguided as they are, were mild in comparison to what followed. In an editorial in the Baptist Standard, the state paper of Texas, the following was written:

If the Bible alone is our primary guide, then all parts of the Bible receive equal weight. It is a flat Bible. For example, the words of Moses, Jesus and the Apostle Paul are equally authoritative. If, however, Jesus is the guide to interpreting Scripture, then Jesus' words and clear actions take precedence over their apparent discrepancies with other Scripture passages, such as the Old Testament codes and some of Paul's admonitions.

Some Scriptures, especially portions of the Old Testament, clearly stand in paradox to Jesus' life and teachings, also recorded in Scripture. Other passages, such as Paul's writings, seem to be at odds with each other, and Jesus' words and actions clarify and separate the timeless and universal from the culturally specific.

Baptists who place Jesus over the Bible still affirm the full authority of the Bible upon their lives, They do not exalt personal experience over Scripture; rather, they base their decisions upon Scripture. But some p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Section 1
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Section 2
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Section 3
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Section 4
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Scripture Index
• Afterword