Postmodern deconstruction is an atmosphere we all breathe whether knowingly or through its usual subversive attacks. The distinctives you mention are both ones I personally cherish and attempt to practice. It’s also an example of how one can affirm the BF&M 2000 and see it as a minimum statement. I completely concur with your concept of the Lord’s Day, and I believe the BF&M does not go far enough in attaching value to this concept. I asked an innovative church planter one time about church on Saturday night and the practice of Sabbath in individual lives. His response was I’ve never even thought about it. It’s this pragmatic and unthoughtful adoption of current practices that devalues our biblical heritage. I’m not saying I’m agin it – I’m just wondering how it ought to be fleshed out.

I also agree with your view on congregational government and am set to abide by the view of the convention. I also don’t think caterwauling is an adequate description of the response. I think the statement adopted was too vague and nonspecific to really mean much of anything.

Certitude is not always the vice others consider it to be. Why study to show ourselves approved if we are not going to arrive at some place of solid terra firma? How can we dig down and build our lives on the rock if we think the concepts are all tertiary and shifting sand? I’m not advocating an arrogant triumphalism that dismisses hermeneutical principles, and I do propose a humble orthodoxy. It’s just that it seems the whole gamut of what Baptists seem to consider as distinctives now seem to blow away with what is considered gracious tolerance.

Blessings,
Joe

Good work in expressing your perspective. My issues are not necessarily in your perspective – as a Baptist I agree with 99% of your expressed views. I guess my issues arises in your beliefs as expressed as absolutes.

As a statement of perspective, I do not hold to a Kierkegaardian existentialism. Truth is not stated by the individual perspective, it is revealed in a person who said “I am the Way, The Truth, and the Life.” This same God instructed His people to write down His truth in a Word that is true for it is God who said it. There is no “private interpretation” of Scripture, for the Holy Spirit inspires all of us. The problem does not rest in God – the problem rests in us, depraved humanity attempting to read and interpret the Word and then applying it to our our daily lives. Even within our own churches there is diversity of thought surrounding various extraneous doctrines and have been for hundreds of years. Even within those people labeled “Baptist” there are a mixture of interpretations that center around the same book yet different views such as Missionary, Free Will, Independent, Southern, American, etc., etc.

The infallibility of God is such that someone is right, and someone is wrong. Someone is practicing something “spot on” before God, while another is not. No problem with me so far. Witness I am not talking about those doctrines that are absolutely required to receive God’s forgiveness, His grace and mercy: Christ came, lived, died, and rose again. He is unique in that by only He can forgive sins, and grant mercy to sinners and no other – He is exclusive. Post-modernism would deny the exclusivity of Christ, holding in a god of one’s own imagination. My issue arises in the absolute certitude in terms of those doctrines you emphasize, and those you do not.

In example, the Baptist distinctive of congregational polity is a distinctive which seems to be disappearing. It has certainly disappeared in larger to mega-size churches, and is only recognized in a miniscule way by our conventions. In example, when a vote arises before the body of the Convention to describe/define the status of the BF&M arises at the convention, the establishment guys go apoplectic. Are not Baptist distinctives such that would allow a convention of messengers to give a non-binding “mind of the convened” direction to the entities without caterwauling? Could it be that we are losing this distinctive to post-modern tendancies or the desire to “protect” the masses from something?

What about Sunday? It seems that the BF&M (in a well-documented change) weakened our historical Baptist understanding of Sunday being a Christian holy day devoted to worship and rest. And yet I dare say that most of us preachers slip out of Sunday meeting, and drive like crazy men to beat someone to our favorite Sunday feast place. We curse the places that would take away our flocks so that can do mundane work, all the while they are taking our order from us so we don’t have to cook or do dishes on Sunday. What would our Baptist forbears say about that?

Now here is the crux. You cannot say that any one of these historical distinctives are unscriptural – our Baptist forbears believed in them all. Yet I submit to you that perhaps you pick and choose which one which one you will follow, and which one you reject by your actions and words. And by that then you are indeed in error.

Anyone of us can be in sin at any time. We need each other to “spur us toward good works.” While I believe strongly in those things that are Baptist distinctives, I am not a post-modern because I may come at a distinctive in a another way. In all ways let us glorify God in all that we do.

Sorry for the long post.

Rob

A good word….

I know you have some ties to farming , so this root thing is a great picture….seems like our Lord liked this approach as well.

Makes me proud (in the best of ways, of course) to be a fellow West Texan.

Go Horns!
-Chris

also, a couple of distinctives that are not being left out are that baptists love fellowships over meals.

and, sb pastors love fried chicken.

david

you’re smart.

david