Winter 2019 Commencement Address: “Truths Worth Contending For”

Transcript:

Again, it’s such a delight to have each one of you on the
campus at Midwestern Seminary today rejoicing with us at what God has done
through the lives of these graduates and what He will do in the future. We are
a hopeful people because of Christ. That hope is made all the more sure because
of people just like you, who Christ has called to serve His church. This
morning in the context of commencement, I am preaching a sermon entitled:
“Truths Worth Contending For: Biblical Inerrancy.” We’re beginning a series
on this campus in the context of graduation and convocation over the next
couple of years where I will be preaching on particular topics, doctrinal
topics, of particular urgency and relevance. This morning we begin where we
should begin: biblical inerrancy. Now I acknowledge on the front end the
context of commencement for such an address presents certain limitations,
namely constrictions of time and the awareness that our crowd today, many of
you came primarily for a celebration of graduates, not a doctrinal
presentation. But the context of commencement also provides certain
opportunities. Most especially for an institution of higher learning,
commencement is perhaps the biggest, the grandest stage that we have to offer.
And our topic today, biblical inerrancy, merits such a stage. Indeed as a
Southern Baptist institution, the topic of biblical inerrancy demands a grand
public stage. To our faculty and seminary community this morning it is a
reminder and reassertion of one of our central foundational truths, biblical
inerrancy, we cling to it, and why we must contend for it. To our guests today,
biblical inerrancy simply put is the belief that the Bible is without error. It
is an argument for the truthfulness of God’s Word, that the Bible is indeed His
Word. It is divinely inspired, comprehensively truthful, and thus authoritative
for life and doctrine. And it is from this inerrant Word that we can know our
inerrant Savior, Jesus Christ. And so we preach and believe in this place that
Jesus Christ, as we have sung, is indeed God’s only Son.

He is the second member of the Trinity, the eternal Son of
God. He was born of a Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life. He performed signs
and wonders. He died on the cross for the sins of many. He was raised from the
dead on the third day. He shall return to judge the living and the dead. And only
those who place their faith through repentance in Jesus Christ have hope of
eternal life through Him. We know that truth and so many others from God’s
Word. To our graduates this morning, during your time here, we have done our
best in the purest and noblest sense of the phrase to indoctrinate you.

You chose that when you chose a confessional institution;
as Midwestern Seminary and Spurgeon College are. You purchased that when you
paid tuition. Biblical inerrancy is high on the list of items you have been
taught. You have encountered it early and often in your studies here and it’s
good for you to encounter it anew as we send you out for a life in ministry not
built on the inerrant Word of God is one built on sand. Indeed biblical
inerrancy is a truth worth contending for. In the months ahead we will also be
considering topics like the sufficiency of Scripture, the exclusivity of the
Gospel, penal substitutionary atonement, biblical complementarianism, biblical
marriage and many others. So it’s good and fitting and right that a theological
institution places front and center theological matters for ourselves. These
are truths worth contending for. To contend. Of course, that word takes us to
that little epistle, the epistle of Jude, where Jude opens that little letter
and calls his readers to contend earnestly for the faith once and for all
delivered to the saints. To contend earnestly for the faith once and for all
delivered to the saints. In the New Testament and the ancient world to contend
often appears in athletic or military contexts referring to a struggle or an
intense effort.

It is a present infinitive conveying ongoing action. We
are to contend continually. We transliterate the underlying Greek word into the
English word “agonize” or when verbalized “agonizing.” Not
to read contemporary uses or meaning back on the Greek, but it does give us a
sense of color. To contend earnestly, to appeal, to exhort, to encourage, to
contend earnestly for the faith entrusted to you. To entrust is to hand
something down, to pass something down with expectation of care, of
preservation, of stewardship, of protection, to contend for the faith. Here is
the apostle’s teaching, most explicitly, the preaching of the Gospel and the
collection of Christian doctrine, which was so quickly taking shape for that
faith once and for all. It is remarkable how quickly in the New Testament, the
early church, the apostolic teaching had come together, codified, congealed
into a recognizable body of truth.

Clear enough to know what it is and what it isn’t. Clear
enough to preach, to teach, to contend for it. Clear enough to know when it’s
been deviated from. Clear enough to know what and when we must contend for it.
We are not theological reductionists or doctrinal minimalists. Yes, we contend
for the heart of the Christian faith, but we contend for so much more. The
faith once and for all delivered to the saints. There’s a personableness to
this responsibility. It matters. You would contend for food for your children.
You contend for truth for the church. The spiritual wellbeing of the saints,
Jude reminds us, the spiritual wellbeing of the church depends on the
contention, the faithful contending of Gospel ministers. Contending. We should
mull this over together this morning. To contend for the faith, to contend for
truth, to contend for sound doctrine is a good and biblical activity. To
contend is a good and biblical word. To contend is virtuous.

It is noble, it is spiritual, it is essential. To contend
for the truth is what Christians ought to do. To contend for the truth is what
ministers are called to do. It’s what seminary instructors are paid to do and
it’s what you graduates have been equipped to do. Let’s tease this out for a
moment. To contend may include conflict. It may include fighting and even
schism if need be, but contending doesn’t necessarily include that. It means to
advocate, to articulate, to persuade, to appeal on behalf of, to set forth. And
we know in this arena, extremes always exist. On the one end is pugilism,
historically framed as fighting fundamentalists. We’re not called to be
pugilistic, belligerent, controversialists, needlessly polemical. If social
media is any indication, contemporary evangelicalism has a surplus of such. On
the other end is a passive, a weak, a timid faith. Those who appreciate being
liked so much, they’re willing as it were, to enter into a theological
nonaggression pact and float lazily down the river of doctrinal compromise.
There’s another way, a better way, a way I seek to practice by God’s grace and
a way I pray you will too. It is to be a cheerful contender, a happy warrior, a
person who is not looking for a doctrinal fight, but is prepared and willing when
called upon to engage one. We ought not be on the lookout for something to
fight over, but we should always be on the lookout for the truths we need to
contend for. Not poised to fight, but prepared and willing to do so. In the
spirit of 2 Timothy 2:24-25 we’re reminded this is a heart disposition as well.
Paul writes, “The Lord’s bond servant must not be quarrelsome but be kind
to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those
who are in opposition. If perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the
knowledge of the truth.”

Remember after all, we are trying to win a brother, not
win an argument. We are to contend in public, I believe, and to engage on
social media in such a way as like a pastor would a church member to the flock
to care, to counsel, to warn, to occasionally rebuke, but to never be
condescending or shrill or misrepresenting the other position intentionally. As
to that, fair warning, to contend is to run the risk of being labeled a
controversialist, a pugilist. The stakes are high, however. Undoubtedly you
will get mugged on social media. You will be perceived as cranky at times, as
misunderstood by many and even misrepresented by some, which is always a
delight. But I give you permission this morning, especially you Gospel
ministers not to sweat that too much. Be willing to ignore it. Be willing to
press on and know that to be in the arena is to contend and to contend is to be
misunderstood and misrepresented, but that is a risk we must be willing to take.

Ultimately, our aim is to please God, not man. Priority
number one is to protect His truth, not our ministry reputations. How to know
what to contend for, what makes the list? That’s a million dollar question, is
it not? The truth of the matter is we cannot always be advocating for
everything. To do so is to insufficiently contend for anything. You’ll
adequately contend for nothing. Our friend Albert Mohler has helpfully spoken
of theological triage and I suppose we intuitively do something along those lines.
For me, I often think along the lines of Stephen Covey’s four quadrants.
Stephen Covey, if you know his writings, he’s not a theologian. In fact, I
don’t even think he’s a Christian. But his quadrants for leadership and work
management I have found helpful when thinking about this category. Covey breaks
down life and work in four categories: what is important and urgent, what is
important and not urgent, what is urgent and not important, what is not urgent
and not important. As to contending, we should live in the first two quadrants:
important and urgent, important and not urgent and work hard to avoid the
latter two categories of urgent but not important and certainly avoiding not
urgent and not important. One final note as we think about contending on the
front end of the sermon, nature does indeed abhor a vacuum. We must speak right
and articulate the truth. We cannot assume the truth for what one generation
neglects the next generation so often rejects. This I know: unsound doctrine
always sprouts in the soil of ambiguity. It flourishes where doctrinal teaching
and preaching doesn’t. Like kudzu it overtakes where failure to contend for
sound doctrine exists. That is why we must be careful listeners and careful
speakers. We must listen for the passive tense, root out vagueness, ask people
to clarify their statements, to define their terms. Some argue we should not
assume the worst of others. I argue we shouldn’t assume anything in others.
Talk, dialogue, query. Ask them to help you understand their position. Be
charitable, be patient, be careful, but don’t be derelict, especially if you
carry the titles of doctor or reverend. Now, all of that is by way of
introduction.

This first topic demands something of a prolegomena and
thus we’ve had it. Why we contend. Biblical inerrancy. My aim this morning is
not so much to defend the Bible. I resonate with St. Jerome who famously said,
“Defend the Bible? That is like defending a lion.” It is not even so
much to make the case that the Bible is inerrant. It is rather to make the case
that the fact that the Bible is inerrant is a truth worth contending for.

As to the first, what is biblical inerrancy? I’ve already
said that it means simply that the Bible is without error, which is an accurate
definition, but we can be more thorough than that. More accurately it is to say
that the Holy Spirit super intended the biblical authors such that the original
autographs were free from error. More to the point John Frame has written,
“To say the Bible is inerrant is simply to say that it contains no false
assertion.” The Baptist Faith and Message, which is appropriate for us to
cite in this context, argues this, “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.” A touch more elaborative
statement, I can point you to the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy
in Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, those who know it know it is rather
long. I will not read all of it, especially not its affirmations and denials,
but I will pluck out three paragraphs to further elaborate here. The Chicago
Statement argues, “That as God, who is himself truth and speaks truth
only, He has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost
mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy
Scripture is God’s witness to Himself. Holy Scripture being God’s own Word
written by men, prepared and super intended by His Spirit is of infallible
divine authority in all matters upon which it touches. It is to be believed as
God’s instruction in all that it affirms, obeyed as God’s command and all that
it requires, embraced as God’s pledge in all that it promises. Being wholly and
verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all of its teaching.
No less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of
world history, and about its own literary origins under God and its witness to
God’s saving grace and individual lives.” Here of course the references to
the original autographs, the original manuscripts. I have been indulging myself
for the past couple of weeks in genealogical research and I was talking to a
friend at ETS and he mentioned that he had done some geological research on ancestry.com
and I said, “I’ve always wanted to do that.” And he told me about
ancestry.com, I looked into it and I found myself in that moment profoundly
thankful in a targeted way for the work of Mormons behind that effort and have
over the past week and a half or so be able to go back up the family tree, and
you begin to split, but some family lines going back into the 17th century.

Hope to go back further. Interesting thing about those
family trees. If you inaccurately confirm a relative who isn’t a relative, then
the next line up is what? Inaccurate. And it sends you off on a tangential of
people that none of which are your ancestors. Inerrancy is kind of like that.
If the Bible is impure at its fountainhead, if the Bible was errant as given by
God, then imagine the corruption and inaccuracies that have accumulated along
the way. For fuller treatment still, I would point the ambitious ones in the
room to books like “The Erosion of Inerrancy” by G.K. Beale,
“The Heresy of Orthodoxy” by Andreas Köstenberger and Michael Kruger,
for the most ambitious in the room I would point you to “The Enduring
Authority of the Christian Scriptures” edited by D.A. Carson. Yet my
personal favorite, and we’ll reference this again later, is “Baptists and
the Bible” by Russ Bush and Tom Nettles.

“Dr. Allen, if inerrancy requires such careful
definition, is it needed? This word itself, it’s sticky. We have to work for
it. We have to clarify it. We have to define it and it’s a stumbling block to
many anyway.” Well, let me remind us this morning if you avoid a word
because it needs careful definition there will be precious few words left that
matter in theology or any other discipline. “Inerrancy” is an
essential word. It is not a shibboleth as has been argued by some in the
eighties and nineties in particular. Others have argued that to assert
inerrancy as a perennial word and a word doctrine to contend for perennially is
a tendentious understanding of history. It’s a novel understanding. This word
was ginned up in the early 20th century, initially in the fundamentalist
modernist controversy and then took on new heights in the Baptist battles of
the late 20th century. Does the word “inerrancy” matter? Absolutely.

It is that truth and that word, “inerrancy,” both that are
worth fighting over. It’s not just an appropriate word, it’s an essential one.
It’s an indispensable theological term because it is more difficult to nuance
away. There’s less wiggle room with it. You can’t play games with it. There’s
not established elasticy to it like other words that erstwhile did speak to the
superiority and truthfulness of the Bible. Words like inspiration, infallibility,
and authority. The truthfulness of Scripture indeed has been a consistent
belief of the confessing church throughout the history of the church. Augustine
to St. Jerome, who translated the Vulgate, wrote in 405, “I confess that I
believe most firmly that only the authors of the canonical books of Scripture
were completely free from error. And if in these writings I’m perplexed by
anything which appears to me contrary to the truth, I do not hesitate to
conclude that either the manuscript is faulty or the translator has not caught
the meaning of what was said or I myself have failed to understand it.”

In other words, if there’s a problem, it’s with you not
with the text. Most compellingly, John Woodbridge’s book “Biblical
Authority: A Critique of the Roger’s/McKim Proposal” convincingly
demonstrates the persistency of inerrancy both in concept in term throughout
church history. In our own context, the Southern Baptist context, the book
“Baptists and the Bible,” which was published in 1940 by Russ Bush
and Tom Nettles, is an indispensable work on this topic. They argued and
demonstrated that throughout Baptist history, this high view of Scripture has
been asserted and reasserted and reasserted. I point each one of you to it. So
the point this morning heretofore is there are truths worth contending for.
There even are truths worth dividing over. Inerrancy is such a truth. Our
doctrine of inerrancy, we develop it and we can only have it through the
doctrine of divine inspiration. We must note that divine inerrancy, biblical
inerrancy is only possible because of divine inspiration and in this regard,
one of the touchstone passages, 2 Timothy 3 verse 16 where Paul writes that all
Scripture is inspired by God. All Scripture is given to us by God from his inner
most being. It’s breathed out and we develop from this verse and others the
doctrine of the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture. That God indeed has
inspired it and that inspiration covers the words themselves, meaning they are
God’s words is thus true. And the plenary doctrine of inspiration is that all
of those words are true, not some of them. All of them are true. This of course
does not negate the human authors’ writing style, et cetera, but it recognizes
that God inspired the author in such a way as to include what He wanted,
exactly what He wanted and communicated and captured it in the work of the Holy
Spirit. It is not to argue that inerrancy is precision-ism.

We acknowledge round numbers and general statements and
assorted ambiguities in the text. Moreover, it’s not a dictation theory of
inspiration that does happen in places in Scripture. Additionally, inerrancy
doesn’t preclude grammatical irregularities in the extant manuscripts, but even
the critics acknowledge these are largely due to issues of transmission and
translation. In other words, these are man’s mistakes, not God’s. And even
critics acknowledge with some 5,000 ancient manuscripts, it corroborates its
accuracy that what we have is unlike any other ancient document. Inerrancy, it
matters. I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. The Bible was
preached every week. I was in church most every Sunday hearing the Bible
preached. And as a kid you tend to, you tend to normalize your experience. You
assume that every family is like your family. And you have a sleepover with
another family and you realize they are rather different than your family in
many ways.

You, at least I assumed every church was like my church. I
didn’t have any theological categories, but I knew the Bible was important and
we believe the Bible and Jesus was important and he was God’s Son and we should
put our faith in Him and we’re supposed to tell other people about Jesus. And
so I just kind of assumed, “I guess all churches believe that. Surely they
do.” And I went to college my freshman year in a Jesuit setting at Spring
Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. And I went to class and I wasn’t even a
believer yet at the beginning of the semester, I became a believer in the
course of that semester, but not because of that class. But I was there and the
priest who was speaking began to talk about the Old Testament and just began to
matter of factly talk about the inaccuracy of the Old Testament, the
figurative, symbolic, allegorical nature of Genesis 1 through 11 and I’m just
there thinking, “Why not? I thought God created, and Adam and Eve were
real, and the flood happened.” And so there’s a class of 40 or 50 students and
you know they are typical college students, but there are three or four or five
of us whose head is spinning and asking, “Well, wait a minute, but this is
God’s Word.” And we found ourselves that day being ridiculed by the
professor. I remember one sweet young lady, a few rows over, raised her hand
and said, “My daddy is a Baptist preacher. My daddy has taught me since I
was a little girl the Bible is God’s Word. You’re telling me it’s not
today.” And he said, “That’s exactly what I’m telling you, dear. It
doesn’t matter what your daddy taught you.” This is a real life issue.

It’s a matter of real concern and when a church loses the
Scriptures, it loses the Gospel. When a denomination loses the inerrant Word,
everything begins to collapse within. And we can’t help but think about this
topic without reflecting on our own denominational context in the Southern
Baptist Convention. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of a
major conflict that would roil our denomination in the 1980s and 1990s. And
inerrancy became the focal point of that controversy for two reasons. Number
one, inerrancy was perceived to be the most essential point because flowing out
from it flows so many other doctrinal topics. And number two, practically it
was a simplifying, clarifying issue. The easiest for the people in the pew to
grasp and easiest for them to understand how grave the situation was. We’ve
been reminded anew in recent years that all of our leaders have clay feet,
including some of the personalities associated with the Conservative
Resurgence.

Yet that does not in any way undermine the necessity of
that effort. The justness of that cause or the paramount importance of those
issues then or now. At Midwestern Seminary, even closer to home, our own
denominational and institutional history occurred on this campus. Ralph
Elliott, the Elliot Controversy, the very first professor to sign our statement
of faith, wrote a book that would roil the denomination entitled, “The
Message of Genesis” when the opening pages just begin to teach the
documentary hypothesis–strait laced theological liberalism. We have in this place
a stewardship to always serve, never with that memory too distant. What is
more, that document that was signed, that confessional statement contained
literally an asterisk to it which created a hole in it that one could drive a
truck through. A confessional statement with an asterisk is no confessional
statement at all. So why must we have an inerrant Bible?

I am moving as quickly as I can. I shall move even more
quickly. Number one: the Bible self’s attestation. Throughout Scripture, the
authors refer to it as God’s truth. The Bible claims to be inerrant. Jesus
himself would say things like, “Truly, I say to you until heaven and earth
pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all
is accomplished.” In John 10:35 Jesus says, “The Scriptures cannot be
broken.” In John 17 Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by Thy Word. Oh
Lord, Thy Word is truth.” Or to put it more bluntly, given the Bible’s own
truthfulness and claims to truth, if Scripture is actually errant, brothers and
sisters, we have far greater problems at hand. Then it must not just be errant
or inaccurate but also misleading. In other words, if it’s errant, it’s thus
unworthy of our study, of our care, of our obedience.

Reason number two: issues of epistemology. If we don’t
have a true text, we do not have a certain Word. If the Bible is errant, then
where do we go for truth, for instruction, for spiritual nourishment? If the
Bible isn’t entirely true, who discerns what is? The slippery slope isn’t a
slope. It’s a deadly cliff. Just observe the Jesus Seminar of recent past.
There are others who claim to be more charitable than the Jesus Seminar,
though. And the argument goes something like this, “We can’t trust it at
every point, but it’s largely trustworthy.” Imagine being married to a
spouse who you couldn’t trust all the time, but you can mostly trust. Imagine
having an employee that wasn’t entirely trustworthy, but more often than not
was. Imagine having a medicine bottle that wasn’t always accurate, but most
days was. Imagine having a cardiologist who tended to be right. You see, if we
can’t trust the Bible at every point, we can’t trust it at any point. Third:
the authority of Scripture is linked to its inerrancy. Authority is eroded if
an errancy is questioned. That’s the point after all, right? If you don’t like
its truth claims, its moral expectations, you undermine it all together. If you
don’t want to be under its authority, if you don’t want it to tell you how to
live and who you are to marry, how you are to order the most intimate details
and aspects of your life, then the way you deal with that is to reject it
altogether and you’re able to reject it by denying it as God’s Word, by denying
that it is inerrant. Number four: why we must have an inerrant Bible: the
integrity of God. A Bible that can’t be trusted gives us a God who can’t be
trusted. Think with me, brothers and sisters, if God created all that is, if He
reigns in his sovereignty over all the cosmos, if He has accomplished
redemption for His people, it is but a small thing to preserve a text for His
church.

A Bible that can’t be trusted gives us a God who can’t be
trusted. Fifth: we need an inerrant Bible to know and follow Christ accurately.
Where else should we go, can we go, for the saving knowledge of the person, the
work of Jesus?

“Don’t give me the Bible, just give me Jesus,”
some might say. Brothers and sisters, we have no Jesus to give but the Jesus of
Scripture. When I hear, “Don’t give me the Bible, just give me
Jesus,” I hear, “Don’t give me the Jesus of the Bible. Permit me to
make one. Please make one up for me that’s more compatible.” Six: the
history of theological and denominational decline reminds us of the centrality
of inerrancy. I don’t have time to recount the Downgrade Controversy, the trajectory
of mainline Protestantism, the Southern Baptist Convention, Dean Kelley,
“Why Conservative Churches Grow,” and all the rest I would like to
speak to this morning along these lines. But let me just drive home this point
that Scripture is the norming norm as the Reformers argued. We know the
soundness of every other doctrine by measuring it against the Word of God and
every church, every denomination, every movement, every category and collection
of Christians who’ve moved away from the Word of God have moved away from the Gospel,
have moved away from everything the Bible teaches and holds dear as far as why
we exist, as relates to evangelism and the Great Commission, it always leads to
ruin. So much so we argue seventh: that inerrancy undergirds evangelism and
missions, the exclusivity of Christ. Can you give up on inerrancy but hold onto
the Gospel? I suppose possibly, but only briefly. We’re saved by the Gospel of
Christ, not the doctrine of inerrancy. But mark it down. When one generation
rejects scripture, the second always seem to reject the gospel.

Eighth: why do we need an inerrant Scripture? Those of us
who minister know this better than others. Our cultural moment demands a sure
Word and the more counter-cultural Christian witness is, the more pressure the
church feels. “I am not sure” does not buck up the troops. “I
think it might be what God said” isn’t a clarion call for faithfulness. And
ninth: inerrancy is a simplifying truth. If you will decide that once and for
all and believe it with all that you are, it will simplify a thousand other
doctrinal and ministerial conversations and topics that you encounter along the
way. My mind goes back to Billy Graham and that great story he tells about when
he was wrestling with the truthfulness of Scripture and got alone before God on
the mountain and opened the Word and was convinced in his heart that the Bible
was true. And he would talk about that turning point in his life in ministry
and how that propelled him onto faithfulness and to a life of gospel service.
Contending for the truth, biblical inerrancy.

My favorite quotes concerning Christian ministry and
contending for the faith is attributed to Martin Luther. I think he wrote it. I
hope he did. If not permit me to romanticize about him in this moment. Writing,
“If I profess with the loudest voice, the clearest exposition, every
portion of the truth of God, except precisely that little point which the world
and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ however
boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rage is, the loyalty
of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is
mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.” To
contend for the truth, what else would we do? We are called to a life of
consequence, of courage, of bravery, of sacrifice, of commitments. I’m reminded
of Thomas Macaulay “The Lays of Ancient Rome,” “Then out spake
brave Horatius/The captain at the gate:/To every man upon the earth/Death
cometh soon or late./But how can man die better/Than facing fearful odds,/For
the ashes of his fathers,/For the temple of his gods?” We are to keep the
faith, to proclaim the Gospel, to preach the Word, to contend for the faith
once and for all delivered to the saints. Brothers and sisters, and especially
graduates, there are truths worth fighting for. There are truths worth living
for. There are truths worth dying for. Thank you.

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