Updated March 30, 2005 (first published March 8, 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) -

Southern Baptist seminary professors form a significant part of the deeply compromised Evangelical Theological Society. Members include representatives of all six Southern Baptist seminaries. Three Southern Baptists are on the ETS executive committee, two of these are teachers at Southeastern Theological Seminary and one is provost at Southwestern Seminary (“Prof’s motion aimed at refining ETS statement, avoiding split,” Baptist Press, Dec. 8, 2003).

Why is this significant? On November 21, 2003, at the 55th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, members voted NOT to expel two members, Clark Pinnock and John Sanders, who espouse the gross heresy of open theology. Only 32.9 percent of the members voted to oust Pinnock, in spite of his claim that God does not know the future perfectly. 62.7 percent voted to expel Sanders, a little less than the required two-thirds.

In November 2001, the ETS members voted on a resolution that stated, “We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate and infallible knowledge of all events past, present and future including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents.” Those who oppose open theism claimed a success, since the majority voted in favor of the resolution. It was a hollow victory at best, since it was non binding and therefore meaningless, and about 40% of the members either abstained or voted AGAINST this simple Bible-based resolution.

What is open theism? Open theist Gregory Boyd says, “God can’t foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they in turn create their decisions.” Boyd tells the story of a woman who sought God’s guidance about her marriage and felt His specific leading, and yet her husband committed adultery. “For Boyd, the proper pastoral response necessitates informing Susan that God Himself was shocked to learn of the divorce” (Mark Rathel, “Why open theism is not merely an academic debate,” Baptist Press, July 10, 2003).

Pinnock and Sanders also deny the Bible doctrine of eternal torment. Pinnock said, “The fire of hell does not torment, but rather consumes the wicked” (Christianity Today, Mar. 20, 1987). He says further, “Let me say at the outset that I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine. ... How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely, a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God” (Pinnock, Criswell Theological Review, April 2, 1990).

Bruce Ware, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wanted to expel the open theists, but he was encouraged in that he thinks the vote “will have the effect of anchoring the society a bit from continued freefall.” That is the confused, compromised, halfway New Evangelical position of being against something but not being willing to take a truly Scriptural stand against it and separating plainly from it. Ware even said that the vote will “serve as a warning to members that the society has doctrinal boundaries and takes them seriously.” All I can say to that is that he must be kidding.

L. Russ Bush, dean of faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is do his best to save this apostate organization. He told the Baptist Press, “I have appealed to some of the leaders of that movement to wait a year to see if we can rescue the society that we have” (Dec. 8, 2003). He wants the ETS to “clarify its doctrinal stance on the inerrancy of Scripture.” Even if that happens, the doctrinal basis would still be far too shallow to allow a Bible believer to participate. It is not enough that men believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God in whole and in part; we must believe all of the doctrines that the Book teaches.

The Evangelical Theological Society has a weak doctrinal statement composed of two simple points, a statement on the inerrancy of Scripture and a statement on the Trinity. Any organization with a doctrinal statement that feeble has no reason even to call itself Christian. The statement says nothing about the gospel, about how to be saved, not to mention the hundreds of other teachings of Scripture. Why, the Mary worshipping Pope John Paul II believes in the Trinity and in the inerrancy of Scripture “in the autographs” (which is almost meaningless because it says nothing about the condition of the Bible TODAY).

God commands us to “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). That refers first of all to the gospel of Jesus Christ, apart from which no man can be saved, and then it refers to the entire body of truth that God has given us in the Bible. That is our faith. No organization has the scriptural authority to ignore the vast bulk of the faith for the sake of a broad fellowship and unity.

Timothy was instructed to allow “no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). That is a VERY narrow doctrinal position! In the conclusion to his first epistle to Timothy, the apostle instructed the young preacher, “That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 6:14). A spot refers to a small thing; it refers to the details of God’s Word. This is how diligent and narrow Timothy was to be about doctrine, and it is contrary to the “unity in diversity” position that is so popular today, the fight only for the “great fundamentals” position. And the theme of the epistle that Timothy was to keep “without spot” was ecclesiology (1 Tim. 3:15), instruction pertaining to church leaders, the woman’s role in the ministry, care for widows, and such. These are the very things that are considered of “secondary” importance (the “non-essentials”) to the modern evangelical. In his book No Place for the Truth, David Wells rightly observed that “the great sin in evangelicalism is to be narrow” (p. 129).

Not only are we responsible to keep the doctrine of the New Testament faith in its entirety, but we are to mark and avoid those who teach contrary to it. When Paul warned Timothy about false teachers, he named their names and used severely terminology to describe their errors. Here are a couple of examples:

“Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:19-10).

“But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some” (2 Tim. 2:16-18).

The only error that Paul mentions in regard to Hymenaeus and Philetus was their error in regard to the resurrection. They were labeled dangerous false teachers because they spiritualized a prophetic event! Again, in the eyes of the New Evangelical the interpretation of prophecy is looked upon as a matter of Christian liberty and certainly not an issue of separation.

The deep theological compromise in the Evangelical Theological Society is not new. Harold Lindsell addressed the society in 1965 with these words of warning: “Rarely does one hear of a journey from liberalism to orthodoxy; from an errant Scripture to an inerrant Scripture. For the most part it is a one way street in the wrong direction. It is a the opinion of this writer that the moderating proponents among the New Evangelicals stand in mortal danger of defecting from the foundations on which the New Evangelicalism was built, of evacuating that which it came into being to defend, of surrendering to an inclusive theology that it opposed, and hiding its deception in a plethora of words semantically disguised so as to curry favor with those who deny inerrancy, and at the same time to retain the allegiance of those who cling to the old doctrine” (ETS Bulletin, Winter 1965).

Lindsell knew what he was talking about. In his books The Battle for the Bible (1976) and The Bible in the Balance (1979) he documented the apostasy that was rampant within evangelicalism. In the latter he warned, “I must regretfully conclude that the term evangelical has been so debased that it has lost its usefulness. ... Forty years ago the term evangelical represented those who were theologically orthodox and who held to biblical inerrancy as one of the distinctives. ... WITHIN A DECADE OR SO NEOEVANGELICALISM, THAT STARTED SO WELL AND PROMISED SO MUCH, WAS BEING ASSAULTED FROM WITHIN BY INCREASING SKEPTICISM WITH REGARD TO BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY OR INERRANCY" (Harold Lindsell, The Bible in the Balance, 1979, p. 319).

In The Battle for the Bible, Lindsell gives examples of members of the Evangelical Theological Society who denied the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. One was Richard Bube, a professor at Stanford University. In his book The Encounter Between Christianity and Society, Bube claims that Christians are not required to believe that there was a real “man by the name of Adam who experienced the events of Genesis in a natural historical sense.” Bube also claimed (falsely) that “there is no information in the Bible that is ... opposed to theories of organic evolution” (The Battle for the Bible, pp. 128-129).

In his 1978 book The Worldly Evangelicals (page 18), Richard Quebedeaux described the “revolution in orthodoxy” that “a small, highly literate, zealous elite” of “younger evangelicals” had already infiltrated the ETS a quarter of a century ago. Quebedeaux was referring to those who call themselves evangelical but who are redefining doctrines such as the inerrant inspiration of Scripture.

Seventh-day Adventists are welcome in the Evangelical Theological Society. The Discerner for April-June 1993 noted that Adventists “were prominent at the ETS’s Nov. 19-21, 1992 annual meetings in San Francisco.” The Adventist Theological Society met concurrently with the ETS meeting in 1995. Thus one can follow a false female prophetess (Ellen White), deny the eternal fiery torment of hell, teach that salvation is a subtle combination of grace plus law, attempt to put the yoke of the sabbath upon New Testament believers, and hold the strange heresy of investigative judgment and be acceptable to the Evangelical Theological Society. (There is no doubt that the Seventh-day Adventists teach a false gospel whereby they redefine grace to include works. See our book Avoiding the Snares of Seventh-day Adventism, available from Way of Life Literature. In this book we quote many firsthand Adventist sources to illustrate their false doctrine.)

Roman Catholic priest Francis Martin addressed the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in November 1998.

An acceptance of homosexuality has been allowed within the Evangelical Theological Society for decades. Long-time ETS member Ralph Blair of pro-homosexual Evangelicals Concerned (EC) says, “There’s more support for EC’s approach than is generally thought, even though its on the quiet” (EC’s Winter 2003 Record).

Thomas Hanks spoke at the ETS annual conference in 1988 in Wheaton and said, “...homosexuals are still waiting for evangelicals to develop a coherent presentation of the gospel that includes them... with acceptance and meaningful experience of life in the Body of Christ.” He said that it is “evangelistic fraud” to denounce homosexuality as sin or sickness and then promise “that simple faith in Jesus will solve” all such problems. He said that homosexuals should “live out their homosexuality bravely, but without pride.” Hanks was invited back to speak at ETS conferences in November 1992 and again in November 1997 and repeated his heretical challenge to revise negative thinking about homosexuality. Hanks is “an openly gay man,” according to the Spring 1998 issue of the Evangelicals Concerned Record.

One of the former presidents of the ETS was Marten Woudstra, a professor at Calvin Seminary. Woudstra died in 1991. The pro-homosexual Evangelicals Concerned (1/92 Record) said Woudstra was a “longtime friend of the EC ministry, taking the view that the Bible contained nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today” (Calvary Contender, Mar. 1, 1992).

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).