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MAINSTREAM MESSENGER Vol. 3, No. 3 July 2000 Editor: Bruce Prescott2000 BFM Tries to Bury Truthby Dr. Bruce Prescott
One of the major differences between the 1963 BFM and the 2000 BFM is in their divergent understandings of the nature and meaning of truth. The 1963 BFM reflects the belief that truth is personal. The 2000 BFM reflects the belief that truth is rational. Mainstream Baptists believe that truth is personal. Ultimately, truth cannot be identified with the cold, lifeless abstractions of reason and logic — even if the logic begins with precepts from the Bible. “Living faith” is not mental assent to “eternal truths.” Living faith, “is rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ.” (this definition from the prologue to the 1963 BFM was deleted from the 2000 BFM). “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) We abide in a personal relationship of love and trust with the “Eternal Truth.” For Mainstream Baptists, Jesus embodies Eternal Truth and real faith can only be established in a personal relationship with Him. For us “living faith” is a process of spiritual growth and maturation. The real depths of spiritual truth can only be learned by personally experiencing the guiding presence of “the Spirit of truth.” (John 16:12-13) That is why the 1963 BFM emphasized that we “must experience a growing understanding of truth.” Fundamentalists are uncomfortable with processes of spiritual growth and discovery. Truth that is learned by experience — even by experience with God — is too subjective for them. For Fundamentalists, truth must be objective and rational. That is why the 2000 BFM says “faith is established on eternal truths.” Fundamentalists believe that truth is embodied in the cold, dead logic of timeless precepts and rational propositions. The Fundamentalists are not alone in establishing their faith on logic and reason. The Pharisees perfected it. The apostle Paul, who had been a Pharisee, described their faith as “the ministry of death” because it was founded on “letters engraved on stones.” He said, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor. 2:6-7) The mindset of the Pharisees lives on in the faith of Fundamentalism. That is what is killing the Southern Baptist Convention. The only thing that will revive Baptists as a people is a return to a “living faith” in which all are “servants of a new covenant” that is established and “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Cor. 3:3-6)
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