March 1, 2004 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

R. Kirby Godsey, 68-year-old president of Mercer University, has said that he is considering retirement, though no date has been set. He has been at the helm of this Southern Baptist-associated school for 25 years. During this period, Mercer has received multiplied millions of dollars from the Georgia Baptist Convention (at a current annual rate of $3 million).

Godsey’s 1996 book When We Talk about God ... Let’s Be Honest (Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys), denies, reinterprets, or questions practically every doctrine of the Christian faith. Godsey says that “the notion that God is the all powerful, the high and mighty principal of heaven and earth should be laid aside.” That is wicked heresy of the highest degree.

For a quarter of a century, students at Mercer (the current student body is over 7,000) have been influenced by this man and by professors who hold similar views (but who are not as bold as Godsey about putting their doctrine into print). These students have graduated into positions within the Southern Baptist Convention at the local, state, and national level, and have, in turn, influenced many others.

There have been several attempts to have Godsey step down, but the fact remains that this man has remained at the head of one of the SBC’s influential schools for a quarter of a century In response to Godsey’s 1996 book, the Georgia Baptist Convention executive committee issued a resolution which stated that Godsey has “departed significantly from Baptist doctrine,” but instead of labeling the man an unbeliever, they meekly requested that Godsey “prayerfully reconsider his theological convictions.” In 1997 they voted to maintain the convention’s association with Mercer, though at a reduced level.

This is not how the Bible says we are to deal with heretics (Titus 3:9,10), but it is a testimony to the fact that large numbers of people in the SBC at the state level are at least sympathetic with heresy and unbelief. Many others do not like what Godsey is teaching, but they are not willing to make the only statement against heresy which means anything, which is to publicly denounce it in no uncertain terms and to separate from it in the strictest sense.

CONSIDER SOME EXCERPTS FROM GODSEY’S BOOK:

GODSEY: “A seminary professor named Billy McMinn made me question everything. ... Before he was finished, he had stretched some new creases into my religious skin. One of his tools was the first volume of Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology. ... I learned in that seminary course that doubting is a crucial part of believing. ... As a young seminary student, I recall wrestling with the Christian view of ‘life after death.’ During my studies, the theologian and writer, Nels Ferre and I developed an enduring friendship. ... Professor Ferre and I talked into the night about matters of ultimate destiny and the impact of believing in ultimate universal redemption upon the motivations of the moral life. We corresponded and met together on many different occasions” (When We Talk about God, pp. 22, 197).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: This is a sad testimony of how Dr. Godsey began his odyssey into unbelief. It happened at seminary. Dr. Godsey has degrees from two Southern Baptist seminaries, Samford University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Tillich, one of the fathers of neo-orthodoxy, was an adulterous man who denied practically every doctrine of the Christian faith. To him, death represented “the absolutely unknown, the darkness in which there is no light at all” (Wilhelm and Marion Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought, vol. I, 1976, p. 2). Godsey also describes his close friendship with rank modernist Nels Ferre, author of the infamous book The Sun and the Umbrella (New York: Harper & Row, 1953). In this book Ferre denied the virgin birth, deity, miracles, atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as the infallible inspiration of Scripture and the doctrines of heaven, hell, and judgment. Ferre says, “To call Jesus God is to substitute an idol for Incarnation; to call him Savior, in the ultimate sense, is to deny that all salvation comes from God our Savior...” (Ferre, Sun and Umbrella, p. 35). This is the man of whom Godsey speaks so highly and who influenced Godsey so powerfully during his seminary years. Beware of the leaven of theological modernism, dear friends. Don’t ever send your young people off to a school which has THE LEAST BIT of modernistic influence. The result can be soul damning.

GODSEY: “Similarly, Christians do not approach the coming of Jesus Christ in terms of historical data. The data of history about Jesus is interesting but not conclusive” (When We Talk about God, p. 45).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: The history about Jesus Christ which is given to us in Scripture is not merely “interesting,” and it is certainly not inconclusive. The biblical records are perfectly true and accurate. The authors of the Gospels wrote by inspiration of God and what they gave us is the infallible Word of God. If it is true history, it really happened as it is described, but the modernist redefines everything. The normal definition of history is “an account of facts or a narration of events in the order in which they happened.” In other words, history is the record of things which really happened. That is not necessarily what the modernist means when he talks about biblical history. He might be speaking of the record of things which never did happen! Karl Barth, for example, had his “primal history,” which was history in some metaphysical sense, not in any real temporal sense. For Karl Barth and many other modernistic theologians, Adam and Eve were “historical,” but they were not real people and the events did not really happen; the resurrection of Christ was “historical,” but it did not really happen as it is described in Scripture. Strange history! It is difficult to understand men who use traditional Bible words but reinterpret them according to their own private definitions.

GODSEY: “In all likelihood, the authority for our faith should not rest upon the Bible alone, or even primarily. For the Christian faith, the Bible is not the center of faith. ... The simple identification of the Word of God with the Bible is a grave mistake. ... The Bible, then, should not be viewed as a boundary of belief. ... Christian revelation does not offer us a statement of faith to be endorsed, but a way of life to be embraced. ... Our confidence in the Bible as Holy Scripture should not rest upon believing the book to be a miraculous, divine dictation where its writers simply serve as God’s recorders. ... To ascribe infallibility to the written words of the Bible is wrong. ... Jesus often tried to bring his followers beyond the pages of Jewish Scriptures. No human words are sufficient to contain God. ... Turning the Bible into a rule book distorts the power of the gospel and misappropriates the teaching of Scripture. ... The notion of the Bible’s infallibility, instead of giving honor to the Bible, actually leads to a treacherous idolatry of the Bible. ... If the Bible is beyond all criticism and analysis, it becomes absolute itself instead of pointing to God who is Absolute. ... Regarding the Bible as inerrant and holding fast to its inerrancy as the sine qua non test of faith exposes the human sin of trying to possess God. ... While not being an absolute authority, the Bible is indispensable to a full understanding of our life of faith. ... Therefore, while wanting to avoid a mindless and idolatrous worship of the Bible, we can hardly overestimate the significance of the Bible in our own searching for God’s will” (When We Talk about God, pp. 50, 51, 52, 53).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: It might sound very pious to claim that human words cannot contain God, but it is not piety which makes such claims; it is unbelief. The fact is that God Himself has given the words of the Bible. That is the claim which the Bible makes for itself. Hundreds of times we read statements in the Bible such as “thus saith the Lord.” The Lord Jesus Christ held the highest possible view of the Old Testament Scriptures. He quoted the Scriptures continually and never hinted that the Scriptures were anything less than the perfect Word of God. He said “the Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35), and not one jot or tittle shall pass away until all be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17,18). The Apostles held the same view of Scripture. The Apostle Paul said the words given by the Apostles were Holy Spirit-taught words which contain “the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10-13). Paul commended the Thessalonian believers because they received his writings not as not as the word of men but as “the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13). Peter said the Scriptures are the incorruptible Word of God (1 Peter 1:23-25) which were given by divine inspiration (2 Peter 1:19-21). The Modernist wants to appear to have a high regard for the Bible even while undermining and despising it. This is what we see in Godsey’s book. He attacks the Bible in the strongest possible language, claiming it’s history is unreliable and its words are mere undependable human words, yet all the while mouthing the profession that this alleged myth-filled Bible is somehow indispensable to an understanding of the life of faith. This is nonsense. If the Bible is myth and error, it is not the Word of our perfect Almighty God, it is not what it claims to be, and it is as worthless as some Babylonian or Greek mythology. The Modernist tries to hide behind the smokescreen of making the Bible an idol. We don’t know any one who worships the Bible and neither does he. That is a straw man. The Modernist’s pride always comes to the surface when he discusses the Bible. He looks down on humble Bible believers as “mindless.” At least Godsey is honest here. This is his true opinion of the man who humbly takes the Bible for what it claims to be. To modernistic theologians like Godsey, such a man could not possibly be intelligent. Where does this leave the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles? They held the Scriptures in the very highest esteem. Were they mindless?

GODSEY: “The story of Adam will be misconstrued entirely if we read it like a source book for human genealogy. The point of Genesis is not to trace human history back to Adam” (When We Talk about God, p. 81).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: There is not a hint in the Bible that the first chapters of Genesis are anything other than history in the normal sense of the term. The Bible does contain poetry and symbolism and parable, but it plainly delineates these so that the reader can distinguish between language that is symbolic and that which is not. There is no reason to view Genesis 1-3 as parable or poetry. Adam is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and he is always viewed as a real man. If Adam were merely symbolic of humankind, why does the Bible say Adam lived 930 years and then died (Genesis 5:5)? If Adam was merely a symbolic representation of mankind, what happened to mankind when Adam died? Adam is mentioned seven times in the New Testament with not a hint that he was a parable or myth or symbol (Luke 3:38; Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:22,45; 1 Timothy 2:13,14; Jude 14). If Adam and Eve were mythical, the Apostles were very confused when they spoke of them as real people!

GODSEY: “At the wellspring of their life, people are good even when they do evil. When people’s actions are evil, they are acting against their essential nature and their deepest purpose for being here” (When We Talk about God, p. 83).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: David, Jeremiah, Jesus Christ, and Paul had a different view of man’s nature: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matt. 15:19). “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10; Psalm 14:1-3).

GODSEY: “Our confession of faith should not require us to try to account for human sin by means of some intricate doctrine of the devil. The figure of Satan serves as a powerful and dramatic symbol of the presence of pain and temptation in all our experiences” (When We Talk about God, p. 103).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: If Satan is a mere symbol, the Lord Jesus Christ must have been very confused. He thought He was tempted by the Devil for 40 days and nights, and He carried on a dialogue with the Devil during this temptation (Matthew 4). How does one carry on a dialogue with a symbol?

GODSEY: “Salvation is not a solitary event. We must find hope together. Indeed, the preoccupation with personal salvation can itself become one more illustration of human sin” (When We Talk about God, p. 110).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: The Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles preached personal salvation. The Bible says “whosoever” shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That sounds like personal salvation to me, and I would urge every reader to make absolutely certain that he has personally received this salvation in Jesus Christ. Salvation is a wonderful thing with which to preoccupy oneself.

GODSEY: “The compelling confession of our faith is not that God will love us or forgive us if we will repent our sin. The truth of the Christian gospel is that God loves us and forgives us already--no conditions” (When We Talk about God, p. 115).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: This is certainly not what the Bible says, and, given the choice between believing a modernistic theologian and the Bible, we have no difficulty making our decision. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT SHALL BE DAMNED” (Mark 16:16), and “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT the Son shall not see life; but THE WRATH OF GOD ABIDETH ON HIM” (John 3:36). That sounds like a condition to me -- the condition of faith.

GODSEY: “The Virgin Birth is more truth than fact. Facts are historical and mundane. Truth transcends the ages. ... Its status as an actual historical fact is unimportant. Clearly, there are many records of so-called ‘virgin births’ in history. It was certainly not a novel image to denote an extraordinary event. The preoccupation with this virgin birth as a doctrine based in ‘flesh and blood’ distracts us from the truth of the Incarnation” (When We Talk about God, pp. 120, 121).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: This is typical modernistic doublespeak. For the modernist, “historical” does not really mean historical and truth does not really mean truth. The virgin birth is taught to us in Scripture as a fact of history. There are records of other virgin births in history, but we know that these are myths. There was only one genuine virgin birth, and that was the birth of Jesus Christ. If Christ was not virgin born, (1) the Bible is lying, (2) Christ was not the sinless Son of God, (3) He could not have died for my sins.

GODSEY: “Christians seem to become remarkably troubled about whether Jesus is humankind’s only savior. Is Jesus God’s only word? The simple answer is ‘Of course not.’ ... I can only say that, for me, Jesus is the central event of history, I cannot speak for another. ... The unique place of Jesus in my own life is clear to me, but my belief should not compel others to come to make my confession. ... The arrogant assertion that all other religious affirmations are pagan confuses our viewpoint with God’s. We have no basis for such absolute judgment, and our judgments are unseemly” (When We Talk about God, pp. 133, 136).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: It is not arrogance which motivates the Christian to claim that Jesus Christ is the only Savior; it is faith. My own fallible judgment is not the basis for my belief that non-Christian religions are pagan. This is what the Bible itself says. The Bible prophets boldly proclaimed that there is only one God, the God they served, and all other gods are manmade idols which are an abomination before the true and living God. The Lord Jesus Christ made the most exclusive claims for Himself. He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER, BUT BY ME” (John 14:6). The Apostles believed this and proclaimed: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is NONE OTHER NAME under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). When the Apostles addressed the followers of other religions, they presented them with the exclusive claims of the Lord Jesus Christ and demanded that they repent and trust Christ (Acts 17:22-31).

GODSEY: “Theories of atonement are treacherous mostly because they divert us from the power and simplicity of grace. ... Closer to our own era, we have become far more consumed by what is known as the ‘substitutionary theory of atonement.’ It’s simple. If you don’t believe it, you are not a Christian. In fact, this doctrine is cited as one of the five beliefs that fundamentalism requires in order to meet its criteria of being Christian. ... This theory, again, gives us a picture of God that looks more like a judgmental tyrant. It winds up making God responsible for Jesus’ death” (When We Talk about God, pp. 140, 141).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: A “grace” which does not include the doctrine of atonement is an unbiblical grace. The grace of Jesus Christ is the free, unmerited mercy of God bestowed upon a sinner BECAUSE OF the atonement or payment or satisfaction which was made by Jesus Christ. “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). This verse explains clearly that grace is the result of the cross-work of Jesus Christ whereby the sinner was purchased from the slave market of sin. We are justified “by his blood” (Romans 5:9). God is not a tyrant because He must punish sin. He is HOLY! He is RIGHTEOUS! The only way God can be just and also the justifier of the sinner is for the requirements of His law to have been completely satisfied. This was done through the payment made by the Lord Jesus Christ. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:25, 26).

GODSEY: “Accepting Jesus is not the basis of salvation. Jesus came to say that we are saved. We are forgiven. God’s forgiveness lies within us. ... No conditions, no prerequisites, no plans to follow--grace is not a conditional affirmation. ... God receives us and accepts us as we are--no conditions, no plans of salvation to figure out, no doctrines to adopt” (When We Talk about God, pp. 145, 148).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: This is a universalistic view of salvation. Supposedly, men are not saved because they receive the payment the Lord Jesus Christ made on the cross; they are already saved. Christ did not come to save man; He came merely to show men that they are already saved. If you can find this in the Bible, you must a different Bible than the one I have read for 30 years. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

GODSEY: “Jesus was clearly not concerned to establish churches. Church planting was not in Jesus’ language” (When We Talk about God, p. 175).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: This is an amazing statement which flies in the face of the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Sounds to me like He was very concerned about church work. Later He sent the Apostles to the ends of the earth to establish churches. The result of this command is described for us in the book of Acts and the Epistles. The church building work of the Apostles was not their own program. It was the command of Jesus Christ, and He was there establishing churches with them by His Spirit, as He promised -- “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matthew 28:20). John saw Christ standing in the midst of the churches and received Christ’s messages to the churches (Revelation 1-3).

GODSEY: “The New Testament does not give an almanac of the end of time. Just as we should not look to Genesis for a scientific rendering of creation, we should not look to Revelation for a scientific account of the end of the world. ... Chasing after a literal rendering of these passages and transcribing them into the complicated theories of the millennium is a mistake. ... Speaking plainly, heaven and hell are not places in space. Heaven and hell describe our relationships with God. ... Neither should the term body be construed as material. ... The form of the resurrection is not at all clear in any literal sense” (When We Talk about God, pp. 199, 205).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: With Godsey, practically nothing in the Bible is literal truth. All is symbol, myth, parable. If the Bible does not mean what it says literally, though, taking obvious symbolic language into account, no man can say dogmatically what it really does mean. To interpret the Bible other than literally is to rob it of its absolute authority. This, of course, is precisely what the modernist seeks to do.

GODSEY: “The image of God meting out rewards and penalties of heaven and hell leaves us with a view of God that is very different from the vision of God embodied in the work and life of Jesus. ... Our ideas of heaven and hell should be secured from our childish views of God. Arbitrary judgment is childish” (When We Talk about God, p. 200).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: God’s judgment is not arbitrary, of course. Arbitrary means based on no fixed rules. God’s judgment is based upon His absolute holiness and righteousness. It is based upon His perfect law. God IS a Judge. He does send unsaved sinners to eternal Hell. To claim otherwise is to ignore the testimony of the entire Scriptures.

GODSEY: “Death is not a boundary. Hell is not a boundary. Whenever a person chooses to accept God’s forgiveness, the power of forgiveness becomes effective in his life. ... God will never close the door. ... The ‘day of judgment’ is not some certain date in the future on which history will close and each person will be brought before God for evaluation. ... The time of judgment may be endless, but it is not eternal” (When We Talk about God, pp. 202, 204).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: We wonder what book this idea came from? It did not come from the Bible, which warns that “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2) and after death “is the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). Abraham in heaven told the rich man in hell that “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence” (Lk. 16:26). That sounds like a serious boundary to me. Indeed, there is no salvation after death. Those who are cast into the lake of fire are tormented there forever (Revelation 20:10).

GODSEY: “Fundamentalist Christians who exclude churches from associations because people do not embrace the right set of Christian beliefs reflect yet another form of the treachery of fundamentalism” (When We Talk about God, p. 194).

COMMENT BY BROTHER CLOUD: The modernist will always portray the uncompromising Bible-believing Christian as an evil monster. The fundamentalist, who preaches the grace of Jesus Christ and who strives to be faithful to the whole counsel of God, is a treacherous person, he says. The loving, nonjudgmental modernistic theologian smiles benignly at practically everything. He is incredibly tolerant, but he has one sore spot and that is his abhorrence of the evil old fundamentalist. Too bad. We are not going away. There are hundreds of thousands of fundamentalist Bible-believing Christians in North America and throughout the world who believe the Bible is the eternal, infallible Word of God. May their number greatly increase! Who would you rather have by the bedside of your dying relative? The modernist who thinks people are already “saved” and who would merely encourage the dying with new interpretations of the gospel and send them out into eternity unprepared, or the old fundamentalist who, with tears in his eyes and the love of Christ in his heart, knows how to explain the “old, old story” of the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ?

GODSEY MALIGNS FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS

The Mercer University web site contains the following statement by Godsey:

“I believe that over the next few decades, fundamentalism will be unmasked and exposed as a fraudulent form of faith. ... There is not a dime’s worth of difference in Christian, Baptist, Jewish, or Islamic fundamentalism. They are all dangerous, evil forms of religious commitment. People who maim and kill and destroy and put other people down in the name of God are children of evil and the appeal to God’s name does not bring sanctity to their work. ... And, we should not remain silent about the ascendance of fundamentalism in our Baptist ranks. Fundamentalism has corroded the Baptist message. It has undermined the Baptist witness. It has set Baptists as a denomination, adrift in the sea of insignificance and fundamentalism will ultimately be exposed as a fraudulent force of faith. In the end it will fail because it is evil” (http://www.mercer.edu/baptiststudies/conferences/presentations/godsey.htm).

There is not an ounce of truth in this statement. It is a vicious libel against Christians who take the Bible seriously as the infallible Word of God. Isn’t it amazing that those who claim that Christians should not judge, those who call for peace and tolerance, are so ragingly judgmental and intolerant toward fundamentalists!

GODSEY’S WORD OF “HOPE” AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

The day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on America, Godsey called the Mercer University student body together for a special chapel service with the theme “Overcoming Our Nation’s Tragedy.” In his message that day Godsey did not even mention God. He said: “So, where do we turn? I think we need to be present for one another, to listen, to listen in small groups, to listen in classes, to listen in the cafeteria, to listen and embrace and take care of one another.” There we have this modernist’s incredibly feeble message of hope, his pathetic answer to the question of evil, his humanistic non-gospel. Having rejected the omnipotent God, he has only himself as a saviour.

Who did Godsey blame for the events of September 11? Here is what he said: “What has happened is rooted in religious intolerance, generated very often by Christian and Jewish and Islamic fundamentalists that lie behind much of the world’s terrorism.” Thus he took that solemn occasion to take another cheap shot at fundamentalist Bible believers. I challenge Godsey to back up his accusation by documenting cases of Islamic-like terrorism committed by Christian fundamentalists.

The man has rejected God’s Word and thus has no wisdom and no salvation, and this is the poisoned fruit of theological modernism.

CONCLUSION

I have a respect, of sorts, for a man like Godsey. He is willing to publish his denial of key Christian doctrines in a plain manner. He knows that the enemy of theological liberalism is biblical fundamentalism, so he lashes out at it without mercy. Many of his fellow liberal professors are not this courageous. To various degrees, they have the same doubts about traditional Bible theology as Godsey, but they hide their true views, or they speak of their heretical doctrines only tentatively, or they cloak their unbelief with the language of belief. They sign traditional denominational confessions with their “fingers crossed” and are not willing to face the condemnation of Bible-believing Christians and possibly the loss of their jobs. That is cowardly. Dr. Godsey is an arch heretic, but he is manly one!

My friends, beware of the Southern Baptist Convention. In spite of the “conservative renaissance” and the many commendable steps that have been taken at the national level to distance the convention from modernism, it remains a deeply compromised, New Evangelical hodgepodge of truth and error. Though there are godly Southern Baptists and some good and Scriptural things in many Southern Baptist congregations, this good is leavened with Billy Graham ecumenism, Jimmy Carter modernism, rock & roll worldliness, contemporary worship charismaticism, Rick Warren pragmaticism, and Masonic Lodge paganism. “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6).