Smell that smoke? It’s coming from the theological straw men lit up by the likes of Emir Caner, Jerry Vines, Paige Patterson, Malcolm Yarnell, and David Allen. The smoke is thick, but the fire is hardly hot. I refer to a newly released statement titled “A Statement of Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation.” I began seeing reference to it yesterday, and today I took a few moments to look it over. The sheer number of category errors, misrepresentations, and, at times, complete face-palming theological mistakes is mind-boggling. It seems the entire doctrine of original sin has been jettisoned as well, given language such as this: “We deny that Adam’s sin resulted in the incapacitation of any person’s free will or rendered any person guilty before he has personally sinned.” Seems like Pelagius has returned from the dead! So why do infants die again? Well, anyway. Here is another example: “We deny that only a select few are capable of responding to the Gospel while the rest are predestined to an eternity in hell.” These are theologians, yet, they are theologians of tradition, for they clearly continue to refuse to even hear what the other side has said for, well, all of church history. No one has ever argued, to my knowledge, that the elect have a capacity in and of themselves that the non-elect do not. We are all children of wrath outside of grace. The elect are no more “capable” of responding to the Gospel than anyone else. Dead men lack the capacity to respond to anything. Hence the necessity of saving grace. And on it goes.
So tomorrow afternoon, starting at 5pm EDT, we will do a Radio Free Geneva examining this new “statement” and exposing its contradictions, category errors, and simple false teachings. Join us, and invite any confused Southern Baptists to listen in as well!
