Creeds

Back at the turn of the millennium, the Southern Baptist Convention decided to modify their statement of faith which goes by the title, The Baptist Faith and Message. The 2000 revision added the following:

The Christian & the Social Order

All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society… in the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death…

And,

Family

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. … The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation… Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage.

I wrote a letter to the California Southern Baptist newspaper expressing my disagreement with this change. I was reminded of this when someone asked me today why the School of Theology website doesn’t have the up-to-date version of the Baptist Faith and Message. Primarily, it’s because I don’t agree with it. Of course, The Baptist Faith and Message is not supposed to be prescriptive, anyhow. It is supposed to be merely descriptive since Baptists don’t believe in creeds. If you are required to agree with a statement of faith, it has become a creed–and no matter how much you claim to believe that the Bible is the final authority for faith and practice in the church, if you have to abide by a creed, regardless of what you call it, that creed has replaced the Bible as the final authority for faith and practice. I won’t abide that.

So, anyhow, here is what I wrote to the California Southern Baptist; they actually published part of it:

The problem I have with the recent amendments to the Baptist Faith and Message, condemning homosexuality as a sin and telling wives to submit to their husbands are as follows:

1. If we believe that homosexuality is a sin, why do we feel the need to list that one sin in particular? If we’re going to start listing sins, then we need to list all of them. Anything else doesn’t make any sense. After all, salvation is by grace, not by works. Why should we be emphasizing a specific sin? Didn’t Jesus and Paul both say that the law is summarized with the statement that we should love God and love our neighbor as ourselves? Then why this need to pick out this one sin above all others? I’m sorry, but I just don’t approve of fan clubs for specific sins, however useful bandying them about may be for the purpose of rallying troops and raising funds. It misses the point of what we’re about.

2. I don’t have a problem with wives submitting to their husbands; however, stopping there creates a false sense of what we as Christians are called to do. After all, if we look at Ephesians 5:21 we discover that all of us, regardless of gender, are supposed to submit to one another. That puts what follows in 5:22 about wives submitting in a little different light. So my argument against the recent addition to the Baptist Faith and Message is essentially that it has taken a biblical passage out of context and focused on only half an issue. I think it would be useful, if we want to think about the nature of our interpersonal relationships, to also consider what Jesus had to say about leadership in Matthew 20:25-28 (Cf. Mark 10:42-45, Luke 22:25-27):

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'”

The interesting passage in 1 Corinthians 7:4 also indicates that the point, scripturally, is mutual submission: “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.”

We need to recognize that submission is an act of love motivated by a free will choice; it cannot be made to happen. The meaning of the term “submit” in Ephesians 5, and the point of Paul’s argument, can be summed up in Matthew 22:36-40:

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

“‘Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'” (cf. Galatians 5:14 and Romans 13:8-10)

Everything boils down to loving one another. Jesus is so bold as to say that love is the whole point of the Bible: its central theme. Everything else is commentary. Thus, any interpretation we make of the Bible must make sense in light of the two commands, to love God and to love people. If our conclusion puts us at odds with either of these commandments, we can be certain that we have failed to interpret a passage correctly. If our attitudes toward one another violate the spirit and letter of 1 Corinthians 13 (Paul’s famous passage explaining what love is), then we are out of line.

Those men who are uncomfortable with the equality of women should ask themselves a slightly modified version of a question Abraham Lincoln asked those who advocated slavery. Would you like to be a slave? If the answer is no, as it must be, then perhaps it is obvious that slavery is a violation the golden rule. Likewise, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of being forced into a subservient role yourself, how can you in good conscience advocate it for others?