This post belongs to a brief series sparked by a discussion at SBC Today. The posts in this series are modified snippets of some comments I made in that discussion.

When Calvinists say no one can do good, isn’t that an exaggeration? Isn’t “good” just a value statement so we can speak of people doing “good”, “better”, “best”, etc?

That is not the way I mean the word good. It is bad of my neighbor to knock over my trash can. It is good of my neighbor to leave my trash can alone. It is better of my neighbor to move my trash can to the road for me if he sees I forgot to put it out. Those are value conditions, but that is not what we speak of if we are talking about moral goodness. Then there are only two categories: good or evil. A person does good, or they do evil. They commit acts of sin or acts of righteousness. There is no middle ground.

When a lost person pursues actions that promote the good of society, we can commend them and praise God for his common grace to mankind, but that does not make their actions pleasing in the sight of the Lord. For then again Isaiah 64:6 comes into play – however righteous their deeds may appear to us, to him they are as filthy rags. Or again Romans 14:23, if it is not of faith, then it is sin. If they are not seeking God’s glory, if they are not serving God, if they are not motivated by a heart for God, then their actions – however glad we may be that they do those things – are still sin in the sight of God. If we are not doing what we do out of service to Christ, then what we do is sin. There is no middle ground.

This post belongs to a brief series sparked by a discussion at SBC Today. The posts in this series are modified snippets of some comments I made in that discussion.

I believe there have been/are four stages to human will and corruption:

1. Original innocence in which Adam and Eve had uncorrupt free will, the freedom to do good or evil and the ability to desire good or evil.
2. Mankind after the fall, when the will has been corrupted so that while mankind still has the freedom to do good, we no longer ever have the desire to do good.
3. Mankind in Christ in which we have the freedom to both do good and desire good, but with additional factors: the flesh to draw us toward sin and the Spirit to grow us in righteousness.
4. Glorified humanity, when we will have the freedom to do good or evil but will only ever desire good. We will continue sinless, perfect, without the flesh, without the stain of sin.

I don’t see in Scripture anything proposing a kind of mediate state between #2 and #3 in which we are elevated out of deadness but not fully raised to life.

This post belongs to a brief series sparked by a discussion at SBC Today. The posts in this series are modified snippets of some comments I made in that discussion.

Calvinists believe that the will of man is so corrupt, no one will ever choose God, no one will ever seek God, no one will ever desire God, unless God first does a work of grace in the life of the individual, removing his dead heart and corrupt will and giving him a new heart and faith. But what caused people to have dead hearts? Does God himself impose limits on our freedom, or have we done something that has caused our lack of ability to respond to God?

Furthermore, if we are unable to respond to God, does a real option even exist? Can we speak of people having the option to receive Christ if they do not have the ability to receive Christ?

Because of our depraved will, we would never respond to the offer of the gospel. But that does not mean the option does not exist. Our ability to respond to the offer is removed due to something we have done to ourselves. I once saw a picture of a little girl from Nigeria who as a toddler was caught in ethnic conflict and had both of her arms cut off. I thought how heartbreaking for someone so young, someone who had nothing to do with the conflict, someone with no ability to defend herself, but be injured so terribly. There are many real options now eliminated because of the loss of her arms. Some try to present the Calvinistic view of the will as though humanity were like that little girl, hindered through no fault of our own. But we are more like the guy who ignores the warning labels on his power tools and cuts off his own arms. Tragic, absolutely, but also his responsibility. We, in Adam, made the free will choice to ignore the warnings and play with the power tools and the consequences are lasting.

This began life as a comment on SBC Today. Thought I’d modify and repost it here.

What is the nature of human free will? Are we completely free to choose to do anything we want to do? If so, who grants us that freedom? If we say we are not free, who restricts that freedom? At SBC Today, L. Manning Garrett contrasts his understanding of two views of free will found within the SBC. I believe his contrast is not altogether accurate, so below I clarify my view with some arguments about the nature of human freedom after the fall of man into sin.

“Most Calvinists who hold to compatibilistic free will maintain that determinism eliminates real options but determinism does coexist with a free will.”

It is not determinism that limits real options, it is sin that limits real options. Sin keeps sinners from desiring a savior. Mankind has the freedom to accept or reject Christ. All are free to make that choice. But because of sin, none will accept him unless God first does a work of grace, turning a dead heart into a heart of faith.

Every human being on the planet has the real option of choosing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But left to themselves, no human being on the planet would ever choose Christ because every human being is a sinner with hearts and minds and wills corrupted by sin, void of faith, and desiring only fallen things.

Obviously, God’s choice then becomes crucial for if God does not choose to impose his will on human fallen will, then no one would be saved.

Garrett’s article goes on to describe the Calvinist view as essentially defined by determinism – that Calvinists believe in “the determining force of a totally depraved will”. The problem with this explanation is it implies that the determining force something external, as though sin were something beyond me now acting on me. But this does not hold.

First, with Adam as federal head, what happened in Adam happens in us. His fall was not something external to us, it is something very much part of what we as humans have done – in Adam – to ourselves. Thus the effects of original sin are not imposed upon us from some external force absolutely beyond are control but were imposed upon ourselves through Adam.

Second, beyond Adam, we have our own sinfulness. Even if we were not corrupt in Adam, we have nonetheless done a good job of corrupting ourselves. Whether the source of our corruption is in Adam or in our own committed sins, we are corrupt, depraved, fallen, sinful, wicked, desiring evil, turning from good, acting from selfishness rather than faith, etc etc.

Third, Scripture itself tells us, several times, that our every desire is sinful, our every thought wicked, our every action rebellion. As has been noted again and again, Romans 3:9-20 should settle this issue. No one seeks for God. No one will call out to him. No one does good. Any argument from libertarian freedom will have to explain how we get from Romans 3:11 to saying anyone can seek God if he so chooses.

Fourth, we have brought this condition on ourselves, through Adam’s sin and through our own. Because of our condition, our every desire is sin and the words of Genesis 6:5 – pre-flood words repeated after the flood in Genesis 8:21 as a universal indictment – continue to be true of us today: every intention of the heart is only evil continually. A heart which only ever has intentions of evil will never choose good (which we saw in Romans 3:12). We are free to choose good in that God does not prevent anyone from doing good, but we hinder ourselves by the wickedness of our hearts. The only remedy is a work of God’s grace, a work that we see him carry out in individuals but not for humanity as a whole. Thus our only hope to ever be able to make a free will choice for God is if God first changes our wills, removing hearts of stone and giving us hearts that beat for him.

When I look back over the last decade-and-a-half of my still short life I am often amazed by all that has taken place. God’s grace is best understood against the backdrop of life and certainly my life is overflowing with evidence of his grace.

I spent some time last night watching a video of three emergents babble on about emerging spirituality in American culture. The emerging church is a movement that started as an way to merge Christianity with postmodern ideas, an attempt to update Christianity, demonstrated by Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian or Doug Pagitt’s book, A New Kind of Christianity.

In the video, the discussion revealed a combination of old school liberalism and new age, relativistic spiritualism, a convergence of ideas that defines the religious belief of many young people today where truth has little value and what matters is what you feel, what you experience, what belief fits your self-perception. I was particularly impressed that Tony Jones came out and admitted that this new notion of spirituality is little better than invent your own religion – take this element you like from this group, that element from that religion, mix it all together, and call it your own.

This is the same error committed by ancient Israel when the people of God, chosen by God to be a light to the nations, instead hid their light and adopted the religious beliefs and practices of their neighbors. God was not pleased with their open-mindedness and progressive ideals.

What the video demonstrated was the pridefulness of man, the enormous hubris we display when we declare that God is pleased whenever we disregard his revelation, the Bible, and invent for ourselves what we think makes for a good religion. Proponents of the emerging church do not believe they are acting in rebellion against God. They believe God wants them to conform Christianity to a modern age, changing beliefs and teachings to fit what the world finds acceptable, to bring in to Christianity tolerance of other religious beliefs and moral practices. But continuing in such folly can only have one ending: God’s judgment.

But what really struck me as I watched the video was that their story should be my story. I am the man who has committed tremendous quantities of time walking in folly. While some of my greatest periods of rebellion centered in my early college years, my foolishness has never really abated. And yet again and again God has kept me from plunging beneath the waves. I spent years playing with drugs and alcohol – mildly, but still involved; I had periods of deeply unhealthy curiosity in the occult; I toyed with the claims of other religions; the list of my foolishness could go on and on and on and on.

Even once I had reached a period of relative stability, it was not very stable. There was a time, not so long ago, when I was inches away from universalism, heavily influenced by the writings of George MacDonald who said that everyone will go to Heaven. And yet I found universalism so incompatible with the Bible’s teachings, but its claims so compelling, that I almost went crazy with the thought that perhaps the whole God thing was a sham.

At another time, I was deeply fascinated with Eastern Orthodoxy and medieval western mysticism. (I once met Orthodox speaker and writer Frederica Mathewes-Green and from our discussion she predicted that I would be Orthodox within a year.) This was before I had heard anything about the emerging church so it has been interesting to observe that many emergents claim a deep appreciation for Orthodoxy and mystical theology. I consumed many of the mystical writings emergents now champion. What they find appealing I also found appealing – a mystical practice of spirituality that centered more attention on how my emotions and thought life could shape my religious experience than on how the dogmatic truths of religion should shape my thinking and feeling.

Mysticism tells us to base our religious knowledge on subjective feelings and experience but the God of the Bible tells us to base our knowledge on his objective Word. The Bible is the standard of truth. My feelings and opinions must be brought into conformity with the Bible.

By rights, I should be one of three things: a burned out addict on the streets; an angry atheist consumed by nihilistic depression, since with no god there could be no meaning and no hope; or a postmodern emergent with no real grasp on truth since I would hold that truth is essentially unknowable or that it changes from person to person. But while Satan’s onslaughts against me have continued unabated, what was true during those past struggles continues to be true now: God has never released his hold of me. This is absolutely due to grace.

Even if I had never read what the Bible has to say about God’s sovereignty in my salvation and in my perseverance, I would have hints of the truth of Calvinism. If my unchanged will played a roll in my destiny, I would be Hell bound. Time and again, my will, my choice, my desire was to flee into destruction. But God grabbed me and rescued me from the pit of darkness and never let me go. I have deserved none of the good that God has done to keep me on his path. During many periods of my life, I did whatever I could to flee from his grace, but God never loosened his hold. The words of the song Always Thou Lovest Me are true of my life:

I sought the Lord and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek him seeking me
It was not I that found O savior true;
No I was found of thee!

I find, I walk, I love, but O the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee;
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul
Always thou lovest me!

Thou didst reach forth, thy hand and mine enfold
I walked and sank not on the storm vexed sea
Twas not so much that I on thee took hold
As thou, dear Lord, on me.

I have cast myself into many a stormy gale. I made Satan’s work easy – I sought the struggle. Time and again, the ship of my soul was dreadfully tossed about. But by God’s grace, the anchor lines ran deep and strong and the storms were weathered.

Those anchor lines ran to the bedrock laid down from childhood onward. I am so very, very grateful to have been raised in a church that taught the Bible in its fulness, in its depth, in its breadth. I am grateful that biblical truth was never dumbed down, that we were not fed a superficial spirituality which left the door open for postmodern platitudes or the squishiness of America’s #1 Christianish religion, moralistic therapeutic deism. Moralistic therapeutic deism is held by many who call themselves Christian and proclaimed by many who call themselves pastors. It is the belief that if we live a basically good life, stay out of trouble, go to church from time to time, then we will be okay when we die. I am grateful for parents who often seemed overbearing and unreasonable and yet laid a foundation with which God would hold me fast. A foundation built on God’s Word and deep, rich, theological teachings about what his Word says. I am grateful that my mom sat me down time and again and drilled into me the catechism so that I would never forget rich truths of the Christian faith. And I am grateful that God orchestrated it all, for without his hand, his plan, his guidance, his Spirit, his Word, I would be utterly, irretrievably lost.

Instead of leaving me lost, God took me and changed me and saved me and filled me with himself and has given me work to do in his kingdom. The job he has given me is to shepherd his people, to help lay the same foundation in others that has been laid in me. That foundation is his Word, his truth, his revelation to us. God gave us his Word as the anchor for our souls. If we cast aside that anchor, we will be dashed upon the rocks. This is why I find it so distressing that many Christians, many churches, many pastors, many seminaries, many publications, many lectures, many conferences, many church growth methods, many Christian leadership seminars, produce something that resembles little more than a soupy mess. We marvel that the church is in decline, that young people are jumping ship, that so many people embrace movements like the emerging church, that so many have fallen into scandal, and we wonder what to do about it, yet we seem reluctant to return to the foundation of revelation given to us which would rescue many from the darkness.

This revelation is one aspect of God’s grace. He did not have to give us the Bible. He did not have to preserve it through the centuries. He did not have to convict men with the need to know it and translate it and protect it and pass it on. And yet he has done so. We don’t need to hold panel discussions to try and decide what the future of spirituality should look like. We have God’s Word to tell us what has been, what is, and what always will be.

Because of these things, I hope and pray that mine is always a ministry of the Word. It has caused me a great deal of pain and distress to know that so many in our churches today see the pastor as the chief motivator or innovator or coordinator of the church. The pastor is seen as the charismatic leader of a great self-help, motivational speaking organization, and he goes to the people to make them happy and he holds the events that make them feel good and if he would only not meddle too much, he will do okay. But such is not my ministry, nor is it the ministry of any who have been called to shepherd the people of God. The winds are blowing against the sails, the waves are beating into the hull, sharks are circling in the water, and nothing but God’s Word will give us a safe, steady course. And God, by his Spirit, has given us his Word. By his Spirit he has preserved it. By his Spirit he changes our hearts to receive it. By his Spirit he gives us understanding. By his Spirit he instructs those who will instruct us with it. By his Spirit he calls certain men to use his Word to lay a bedrock foundation into the hearts and minds of countless saints so that when they face their storms, they will not sink into the darkness.

And so, may I be able to say of my ministry what Paul said of his in Acts 20:26-27: Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Paul was not concerned with whether people were made to feel comfortable with their lives. Rather, his ministry usually led to people feeling quite uncomfortable. He was not concerned with whether he won the affection of the churches or was seen as the most dynamic speaker. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 1:17 he argues that preaching is not about fancy speech: For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. His goal, his concern, his ministry objective was to deliver to the people of God the whole counsel of God. Only the whole counsel of God, found in his Word, is sufficient to save sinners and build saints.

Thanks be to God who gave me his Word throughout my life as he preserved me safe through many storms. Thanks be to God for his grace. Thanks be to God for the work of his Spirit. May God preserve his church to pursue deeper knowledge and depth of his word and to have greater faithfulness to obey what he has instructed. May we be known as a people who love the Word of God and stand on God’s unchanging truth as we live it out every day of our lives.

Penal substitutionary atonement is the view that Jesus Christ came to die in our place for our sins, satisfying the just wrath of a holy God. Because of sin, we all deserve judgment. Because of Jesus, we have the possibility of forgiveness. Forgiveness comes because Jesus took our place, bore our sins, carried our sorrows on the cross.

The great passage for this is found in Isaiah 53. Note in particular verses 4-6:

But some have challenged the penal substitutionary understanding of the cross. One of the arguments is that Psalm 49:7 makes it impossible for one man to die on behalf of another:

Context is key, and it does not take much more context to realize that Psalm 49:7 does not prohibit penal substitution. For starters, take a larger block, Psalm 49:7-9:

The Psalmist says that the reason one man cannot redeem another man’s life is because the price is too great. The ransom of life is costly and one man can never afford to pay for another. But faithful Christians have taught that this is one reason why the Son of God had to be our substitute. For a list of reasons, I could not pay for your sins. I cannot even pay for my own. But Jesus Christ is of infinite worth and value. While the cost is too great for me, the cost is not too great for the God-man. Thus the author of Hebrews goes to great length to show that Jesus Christ is more precious than anyone or anything else, that Jesus alone is able to be a complete and final sacrifice for us.

But there is another contextual clue in Psalm 49 that tells us the Psalmist is not tossing out the possibility of penal substitution. In fact, Psalm 49:15 anticipates that God himself will come and be a ransom for us:

No man can ransom another. I cannot even pay for my own sins. But thanks be to God that God himself has ransomed me! The Psalmist knew the price for his life, his sin, was great. But the Psalmist also knew he had a deliverer and that one day God himself would do that which was necessary to ransom men from sin and death. And so we say with Paul the words of Romans 7:24-25: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Far from disproving penal substitution, Psalm 49 affirms that God himself will ransom us from our sins.

In 2005, Zondervan released the completed version of their new translation Today’s New International Version. This translation was to be the successor of the popular New International Version, first released in 1978 and updated in 1984. To Zondervan’s disappointment, the TNIV never took off. Pastors and leaders warned people against the translation because of its gender neutral approach and the changes made to passages dealing with men and women in the church.

Due to the TNIV’s poor reception, Zondervan has now decided to drop the translation. Instead, they have released a new update to the New International Version, an update generally known as the 2011 NIV. This update retains much of the original NIV but also incorporates many of the changes found in the TNIV as well as adding changes not found in previous versions.

Because the gender neutral approach of the 2011 NIV largely matches that of the TNIV, many have expressed similar concerns about the new version. What I find particularly concerning, and believe Zondervan must have considered, is that the new version is being sold simply as the NIV. With the TNIV, people knew what they were getting. But with the 2011 NIV, a person might walk into the bookstore and expect to find the same NIV they have always known only to receive the new version with all of its changes. Customers did not purchase the TNIV, so Zondervan has found a new way to expand the audience of their gender neutral translation.

But even as many people have voiced concern with Zondervan’s gender neutral approach, many others have cried foul. These people have pointed out that most modern translations, including the English Standard Version, engage in some degree of gender neutrality. Why single out the 2011 NIV for doing what everyone does?

To a degree, these critics are correct. Modern translations generally include some degree of gender neutrality. The problem is, there are at least two ways to approach gender neutrality.

First, a brief example of gender neutrality. In the old days – say, back in the early-mid 90’s – a person could say, “All men must eat to survive,” and people would know that by men you mean people, human beings in general. But in the late 90’s and continuing on today, a movement began to make gender language more generic. Instead of saying “all men” we began to say “all people.” Further, pronoun use has also changed. Back in ye old days, he could be taken as a generic pronoun so one could say, “If anyone is hungry, let him eat.” Today, however, the trend has been to say either, “if anyone is hungry, let him or her eat,” or, “if anyone is hungry, let them eat.” The third person plural has become a de facto gender neutral pronoun.

In the Bible, the language of address is almost always masculine. For instance, Philippians 1:12 reads, “I want you to know, brothers…” The Greek word here is ἀδελφοί, a masculine plural word meaning brothers. To make the verse gender neutral, the 2011 NIV reads, “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters…” For that particular verse, the change is fairly inconsequential. In fact, though the ESV simply reads brothers, it includes a footnote that says, “Or brothers and sisters. The plural Greek word adelphoi (translated ‘brothers’) refers to siblings in a family…”

While in some places the ESV and 2011 NIV make similar changes, there are many gender neutral changes made by the 2011 NIV that are not found in the ESV. Here is what I see as the difference in approach:

Some translations, such as the ESV, seem to say, “Where the authors of Scripture clearly have universal intent, the language may be adjusted to reflect gender neutrality.”

Other translations, such as the 2011 NIV, seem to say, “Where the authors of Scripture are not clearly referring specifically to men or women, the language should be adjusted to reflect gender neutrality.”

Here is one example, from Philippians 2:4. Note the three translations below:

KJV: Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

ESV: Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

2011 NIV: not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In the Greek, all the pronouns in this sentence are masculine. This is clearly reflected by the KJV.  But it is also clear that Paul’s intent here is to refer to all believers. This is not an instruction for men only; this is for all believers in the church, men and women. That universality is demonstrated in the ESV and 2011 NIV. Also note that in the 2011 NIV, the masculine pronoun is not used as a gender neutral. For this particular verse, the change is not important. But this approach means the NIV translators have to make interpretative decisions as to when it is or is not acceptable to change what the Bible says. In some places, the changes are not so inconsequential. For instance, note Hebrews 2:6:

KJV: But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?

ESV: It has been testified somewhere, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?”

2011 NIV: But there is a place where someone has testified: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?”

Note the difference. The context of the passage is Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews is resounding with praise for Christ and is demonstrating how Christ is truly unique in the world. Here, he points back to Psalm 85:4-6 as a Messianic prophecy about Jesus. In the KJV and ESV, Psalm 85:4-6 retains its gender-specific language, with masculine singular pronouns. In the 2011 NIV, Psalm 85:4-6 has been made gender neutral, using third person plural them in place of third person masculine singular him. But in this the 2011 NIV is inconsistent. Hebrews 2:6-8 quotes from Psalm 85:4-6. In the Psalm, the NIV makes it gender neutral. In Hebrews 2, the translation is mixed, with the first part gender neutral and the rest gender specific. The reason they do this is because Hebrews 2:6-8 is clearly about Jesus. But if the quote is about Jesus, then the Psalm is about Jesus. The Psalmist may not have known what he was writing, but God knew what he was giving. If the intention of the words in Hebrews 2:6-8 is gender specific, the intention of Psalm 85:4-6 is also gender specific.

Similar examples abound, though I consider Hebrews 2:6-8 to be one of the more serious examples. In a nutshell, though the ESV includes some gender neutral portions, the translators were careful to do so only when the text is clearly universal whereas the translators of the 2011 NIV took an opposite approach, taking a gender neutral approach everywhere except in those passages that they determined were clearly intended to be specific.

For myself, I am comfortable with the approach taken by the ESV translators but feel the translators of the 2011 NIV have gone too far for the translation to be acceptable.

More information about the changes in the 2011 NIV can be found all over the web. Here are two:

An Evaluation of Gender Language in the in the 2011 Edition of the NIV Bible

Gender Neutral Issues in the New International Version of 2011

This year’s Southern Baptist Convention concluded yesterday, wrapping up one of the tamest – and least attended – convention meetings that has been held in some time.

That said, this year’s convention still held some surprises. The biggest one for me was the resolution dealing with the 2011 NIV from Zondervan. Without going into a lot of detail (plenty of detail can be found all over the web), the 2011 revision of the NIV has imported a lot of the gender neutral problems present in Zondervan’s previous TNIV. The TNIV is being discontinued, but much of its carcass has endured in the new NIV. Because the new revision is being sold as the NIV, people will not realize that what they are getting is the gender neutral version rather than the NIV they have always known. Lifeway, the publishing and bookstore arm of the SBC, sells the new NIV and seemed likely to continue doing so. But that may change.

At the 2011 SBC, a messenger rose from the floor to propose the following resolution (source):

WHEREAS, Many Southern Baptist pastors and laypeople have trusted and used the 1984 New International Version (NIV) translation to the great benefit of the Kingdom; and

WHEREAS, Biblica and Zondervan Publishing House are publishing an updated version of the New International Version (NIV) which incorporates gender neutral methods of translation; and

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists repeatedly have affirmed our commitment to the full inspiration and authority of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:15-16) and, in 1997, urged every Bible publisher and translation group to resist “gender-neutral” translation of Scripture; and

WHEREAS, This translation alters the meaning of hundreds of verses, most significantly by erasing gender-specific details which appear in the original language; and

WHEREAS, Although it is possible for Bible scholars to disagree about translation methods or which English words best translate the original languages, the 2011 NIV has gone beyond acceptable translation standards; and

WHEREAS, Seventy-five percent of the inaccurate gender language found in the TNIV is retained in the 2011 NIV; and

WHEREAS, The Southern Baptist Convention has passed a similar resolution concerning the TNIV in 2002; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, June 14-15, 2011 express profound disappointment with Biblica and Zondervan Publishing House for this inaccurate translation of God’s inspired Scripture; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage pastors to make their congregations aware of the translation errors found in the 2011 NIV; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we respectfully request that LifeWay not make this inaccurate translation available for sale in their bookstores; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we cannot commend the 2011 NIV to Southern Baptists or the larger Christian community.

Notice the third Resolved: That we respectfully request that LifeWay not make this inaccurate translation available for sale in their bookstores

Baptist Press had this to say about the vote:

In a surprising and dramatic move moments ago, messengers voted first to consider a resolution highly critical of the TNIV (sic) 2011 and then passed the resolution nearly unanimously. The resolution came from the floor — introduced by messenger Tim Overton — and not from the Resolutions Committee. Overturn’s appeal for messengers to consider the resolution passed by at least a 2-to-1 margin, and the resolution itself got only a handful of opposing votes. The Resolutions Committee had asked messengers not to consider the resolution.

So despite the fact that the resolution was offered from the floor and despite the fact that the Resolutions Committee asked messengers not to consider it, it was considered and passed nearly unanimously.

In Southern Baptist polity, churches are said to run the show. In reality, however, churches do not directly run the show so much as have a say in who gets to say who runs the show. Messengers from churches vote for the officers of the SBC, including the SBC president. The president of the SBC is then in a position to nominate trustees for the various entities of the SBC. It is the trustees who call the shots for the entities (entities being groups like IMB, NAMB, the seminaries, and Lifeway, to name a few). During the Conservative Resurgence, the approach was to elect conservative presidents who would nominate conservative trustees for the various entities. (Note: there is a little more to it than that, but I’m trying to keep this short). Because of this, messengers to the SBC do not have the authority to directly instruct entities on what they should do. We can make recommendations, we cannot dictate policy.

In the case of the NIV and Lifeway, a resolution was passed requesting that Lifeway stop selling the new NIV. It is now up to the trustees of Lifeway to decide whether or not to respect the clearly expressed will of the SBC.

At one point during the GCR debate last year, I asked a pastor with more convention experience if the GCR would ever be enacted. Some of the trustees of the entities addressed by the GCR recommendations were clearly in disagreement with those recommendations. Since the recommendations are non-binding, the trustees would not have to execute them. The pastor responded that such a thing is possible, but it would be very unusual for an entity to defy the will of the SBC as expressed at an annual meeting.

I asked James Smith of the Florida Baptist Witness if he had heard anything about Lifeway’s response. He replied that “staff will consult with trustees on how to react to resolution.” Here is hoping that Lifeway’s trustees will respect the clearly stated will of the SBC regarding the 2011 NIV.

The Atonement is scoured, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into a fiction, and the resurrection into a myth, and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren and maintain a confederacy with them.

“Another Word Concerning the Down Grade”, The Sword and the Trowel 23 p397; quoted in Preaching for Bodybuilding by Joel Breidenbaugh.