Episode 83: The Nicene Creed, Biblicism, and the Local Church

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local miserable congregation. Yeah, we got Mexico in June, and then a church camp in VBS in July.

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So all mine, I think, is kind of ministry -related. Not to say that we might not take a couple days at some point.

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My boys have really liked watching Major League Baseball, and it's like the one thing that you can go to with your family.

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You can get tickets for like $15. I could take my whole family to an

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NFL game or a basketball game, but Major League Baseball, we can.

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Right. It's been a fun—last year we went to a

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Cardinals game, and so this year we're talking about looking at that again.

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So we might do that, but anyway. Yeah, and when I said there was something not ministry -related, me and my son, we work for a—it's a

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Christian camp. It's not a church camp. I always tell people, growing up in Shirley, whenever I would watch

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TV and you would see people on TV shows or movies going to Camp Lake Wanamaka or whatever,

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I always thought, that's not real. That's a TV thing. Nobody actually goes to a camp like that.

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But that really is real, and I found it out several years ago. I started working for this camp running their horse program, and so I'm going to be working for the camp for— it'll take five or six weeks starting next week working for the camp.

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Me and my son are, so that takes some time, too. So it kind of adds to the busyness.

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But we've also got, as I said, VBS, and then it's a youth thing that we're doing, and then we've got a mission trip to Utah as well.

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So busy time in June and July. That's good, though. Busy is good, not busy for the sake of busy, but busy with those things that we're talking about is good.

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But the one thing both of us are not doing is going to Indianapolis. Yeah, and this is going to come out after.

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So all the stuff we're going to talk about today will actually be coming out after the meeting anyway.

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But I think there are some things important. What we're going to talk about today is the Nicene Creed.

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And, of course, I don't know what will happen at Indianapolis, but apparently they're going to propose from the floor that this be added to the

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Baptist faith and message. Am I understanding that right? That's the way I heard it. Like I told you,

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I've been out of the loop a little bit on some of this, and so I did not even know this until I just overheard it yesterday and seen a little bit about it online.

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But I don't know any details. Yeah, so I have a few thoughts about this.

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So first, how about you tell me what you're thinking about? So what's your thought?

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So I don't know where we want to start. First, maybe what is the Nicene Creed? Yeah, I mean, maybe just think about what it is.

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The Nicene Creed is... About being nice? It comes from a church council that met in Nicaea in 325 and...

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And then again, I think at 381, is that right? Yeah, I think. Is that the

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Constantinople in 381? Yes. Yeah. So essentially, this happens.

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Even in the Scripture, we see this happening. A lot of things are answers to false teaching.

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I was teaching yesterday through Paul's dealing with the gifts of the

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Holy Spirit, and a lot of what Paul teaches us through 1 Corinthians is

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Paul responding to things that were going wrong. And throughout church history, we also see that a lot of doctrinal clarification comes about because things were being taught wrongly, and they had to be responded to.

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So my understanding of Nicaea is that they called this church council meeting.

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The bishops met, the pastors met, essentially to hammer out a statement, a creedal statement to answer false teachings, especially around the

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Trinity and who is Jesus Christ. And so as they were clarifying that through what we would call today the

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Nicene Creed against the Arians, if I'm correct, they were seeking to state faithfully what is revealed in Scripture about who the

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Lord is. Yeah, let me just read it. So I believe that this was...

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I'll pull it up so we would be accurate. So it goes back to the Council of Nicaea in 325, like you said, additions by the

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Council of Constantinople in 381, accepted in its present form at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and the phrase about the sending of the

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Holy Spirit was added in 589. Anyway, a 1 ,500 -year -old, longer than that, but 1 ,500 -year -old creed.

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So here it says, We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, and in one

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Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages,

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God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the

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Father. Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven.

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He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made human.

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He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. The third day

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He rose again, according to the Scriptures. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the

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Father. He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never end.

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And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the

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Son. And with the Spirit and the Son is worshiped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets.

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We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. By Catholic means universal.

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We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and to the life in the world to come.

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Amen. So, you know, one thing, Ed, is like every believer should be able to affirm that.

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I know that there is some debate about, you know, the eternal begottenness of Jesus, if we should speak of it that way or not.

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That's the way I speak, you know, and I know that.

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So here's the thing. I'm offering you some of my thoughts on it. I think that the

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Southern Baptist Convention in its meeting in Indianapolis, and I don't know what they're going to,

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I actually think they should not do this. And here's the reason why.

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I really smell something very fishy with this. I don't know what's, I don't know what, like, so, for example, if this is so important, why are you bringing this up, like two weeks before the meeting this comes out, and you're going to do it from the floor?

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Like, what's going on with, like, this seems very suspicious to me. And I don't disagree with the creed, but I'm actually going to push back on some things.

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Like, I'm affirming, so let me just make this clear. I'm affirming everything in this creed, okay?

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Okay. But here are some issues I have. One, I'm highly suspicious that this may be being introduced to maybe distract from the law amendment, and I don't know how all that plays out.

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I just know the politics in the SBC and using the procedures in the

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SBC to push things through. It's just stomach churning. And we both know that the way that it goes at the annual meeting is there's so little time to deal with anything.

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And every time you add one more thing, that's going to cut down the time that you have to really deal with more important stuff.

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In Nashville? It's going to be so easy to crowd out the law amendment, any real discussion, because, guys, we got to move.

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We got to move. In Nashville in 2021, and you know, me and you, we're not Paige Patterson fans at all, but in Nashville in 2021,

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J .D. Greer moved to have a prayer meeting at the beginning, and that sounds very noble, but you know that was to keep

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Paige Patterson off the stage. That's hypocrisy, man. It felt so icky, if you will, to use a procedural to keep something from happening and then call it in the name of prayer.

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So anyway, so that's red flag number one for me. Red flag number two is while we affirm this creed, it really scares me, and I hate to say his name because I'm not trying to publicly call out people per se on this podcast, but it really concerned me the trajectory of Matthew Barrett, Dr.

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Barrett and Midwestern, that his trajectory with Roman Catholicism is concerning to me, and anyone that's giving to Southern Baptist institutions should bring this up and ask for clarity and explanation.

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But you can't get that from the local church level, and that's one of the reasons we've backed off. But the point is

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Roman Catholics affirm this creed, which, again, I'm affirming the creed.

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I'm just saying the creed's not doing enough for me. So you know where I stand, and we stand on a confessional statement, which this creed lies behind the

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Trinitarian formulation in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. So it's like, yes, this is the context.

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But if you have a confession of faith, like the 1689, you don't also have to go back and affirm the

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Nicene Creed. It's implicit in that. I mean, maybe you would even say explicit.

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It's all together. But one of the issues, of course, is—and

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I don't have it up in front of me— is the Trinitarian language in the Baptist faith and message.

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You know what I'm talking about? I think there's a little bit of—it could be interpreted another way.

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So if people are actually in good faith wanting to introduce this to strengthen the

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Trinitarian formulation of the Baptist faith and message, then I'm all for it.

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But it really just doesn't sit right with me. And I don't know what they're going to do.

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This podcast is coming out afterwards, so everybody will already know what they ended up doing with this.

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I'm just saying, before the meeting happens, that I have some concerns with the way that this has come about.

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Well, like I said, I was first introduced that this was even a thing just yesterday.

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And what I said immediately was—and this is less sophisticated than the things that you just mentioned.

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But basically, I see two things. I see you're going to have a group that's going to say, OK, put it in there.

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That's fine. Everybody has to affirm this because it teaches Orthodox Christianity.

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Right? I mean, it's just Orthodoxy. It's not Eastern Orthodoxy, but just small -o

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Orthodox Christianity. This is just the right doctrine of Christianity. So everybody's got to agree with it.

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You can't not agree with it. So I figured you'd have your one side saying, how can you oppose this?

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And you would have the other side essentially saying, well, we don't need to do this because it's already in the

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Baptist faith and message. All the things taught here are already there, and you're just going to cause problems.

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You guys are just trying to cause problems wanting to put this in there. So I kind of seen it as it was going to be—nobody's going to say that they don't agree with the

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Diocesan Creed. Right. But I figured you were going to have one side saying, we all agree with it.

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Just put it in there. Why not? And you're going to have one side saying, you're just doing this because you're trying to cause problems, and we shouldn't.

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And I figured that that was how it was going to break down. And I don't even know who is planning on putting it in there or anything.

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I don't know any details about it other than just that it was mentioned. And I know that, like you said, there are a couple of things in the

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Diocesan Creed that throughout the centuries have been a little bit debated. But for the most part, the language of the

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Diocesan Creed has been influential, like you said, even in the way that our more modern confessions of faith are formulated around the things that the

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Creed is discussing. So I pulled up a blog post by Jeffrey Riddle.

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And so a couple of things, it talks about the Baptist faith and message. It says that it never uses the classical theological term

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Trinity in its definition of the doctrine of God. He says, my guess is that it comes from a basic Biblicist impulse in SBC life, which includes a tendency to use only explicitly biblical language.

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However, inconsistently, this might be applied. It likewise does not use classical creedal language of one

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God and three persons. And then he says, one could see how a modalist might be able to affirm the line at the close of paragraph one, the eternal triune

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God reveals himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

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So you're not going to hear me defending the Baptist faith and message.

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Here's what I've always said about the Baptist faith and message. The Baptist faith and message is a good document if you are interpreting it through the lens of, say, like the 1689 or something like that.

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If you're interpreting through the right lens, then it's fine. But the problem is, and this comes with women pastors and all these other things, there's a lot of bad actors out there who are not interpreting it through faithful lens.

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So I can understand the desire to strengthen the Baptist faith and message, but it would be my argument just by, why don't you go back to what y 'all started with?

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Why don't you go back to the 1689? Because that really,

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I mean, that's over the course of 150 years or whatever it's been, 180 years, we've just kind of dwindled down to affirm less and less stuff.

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So obviously, that's where I'd find myself in agreement. We don't need to be affirming less stuff today.

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We don't need to make things easier, if you will. But on this whole Biblicism debate,

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I think as Baptists, we want to be careful. We absolutely affirm the

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Orthodox creeds. We are confessional. All these things are good. But I really don't like the just bashing or using the term

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Biblicism as always negative. Does it make sense? Yeah, let me play the dummy here, because I am.

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But let me ask you a question, because I've heard the term used a lot. I've heard Dr. James White talk about the term a lot, and I've read some blogs and articles by other people using it.

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What is the definition? Because I think a lot of just your average, if I told people in my church that, hey, we're being called

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Biblicists, they would be like, well, isn't that what we are? Yeah, we're Bible people. Okay, that sounds good to us, because we are

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Bible people. That is what we want to be. So can you explain maybe a little bit of the,

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I'm not saying technically the definition, but kind of the general idea that's being conveyed when people like Dr.

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Riddle or Matthew Barrett or people kind of in this Thomist movement use the word

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Biblicist. What is meant by that? Well, and I don't have anything pulled up.

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Well, I'm just asking for Quattro's definition. What does Quattro think of when he hears them using that word?

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Well, I think the, I'm going to try to give it from their perspective. I think the worst definition you can give of a

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Biblicist is the no creed but the Bible people. You know? Church of Christ or something.

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That really gave rise to the, right, the Campbellite, you know? Right. So the idea of no creed but the

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Bible is dangerous because it ignores the reality of God has not given the

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Bible only to the individual Christian. He's given it to the church.

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So you and I would disagree with the Biblicist definition.

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If by Biblicist someone means no creed but the Bible, I'm not a

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Biblicist. Right. Agreed. Because I believe that the creeds are absolutely helpful in even one sense.

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Even in one sense, you might say necessary because, so let me read you something that I wrote for Founders.

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This is with a confession of faith. But I wrote a confession of faith is meant to be a servant of the

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Bible. It is subservient to the Bible and seeks to point us to the Bible and say, essentially, we're not only saying the

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Bible is the highest authority here, but also that we're not ashamed to actually say in writing what we believe this book teaches.

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So a confession of faith is simply man's attempt to say, here is what we confess the

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Bible teaches. The Bible ultimately needs no defender. It is, as they say, the anvil that has broken many hammers.

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But a confession of faith is saying to the world, when we guard ourselves with truth, this is what we mean by truth.

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This is what we believe the Bible says. I'm going to skip down a little bit. But truthfully, a confession of faith is not a necessity so much as it is just the reality.

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That is, everyone believes something about the Bible. You can write down what you believe, or you can choose not to write it down.

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But does it change the fact that you confess something about the Bible? So back to our illustration.

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No creed but the Bible. That's a creedal statement, right? In one sense, it's a self -defeating statement, because you've just given us a creed.

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Your creed is, you don't need a creed, right? And so to say you don't like creeds or confessions of faith is to pretend that you don't already have a confession of faith.

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You don't already have a creed. Everyone has a set of beliefs.

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There's historical snobbery there. It's saying in the 21st century, we're smarter than everyone else in history.

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In church history, we don't need them. We don't need our brothers and sisters in church history. We can go from the closing of the

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New Testament and jump 2 ,000 years later to us, and we don't need anything in between. And I also think that, to some degree, the bad definition of biblicism is pointing to the idea of the person that says,

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Well, I've got my Bible, so me and my Bible, I can read the

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Bible, and even if I come to conclusions that no other person in the last 2 ,000 years, and that nobody else agrees with, they're wrong, and I'm right, because I read the

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Bible, and I think it says this. Honestly, there are a lot of unhealthy churches.

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We know that. But if you can't find any church that you can go to because every church is wrong about all this stuff because you've been reading your

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Bible alone at home, you're probably the one that's wrong. You know what

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I mean? There's got to be some Christians who are believing the Bible, especially if you're –

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I'm talking about in an area like where we're at, where there are a lot of churches. There are a lot of unhealthy churches.

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But there are churches that are Christians believing the Scriptures, and I'm not saying they're right about everything, but I think a lot of times the negative connotation of biblicism is the idea that,

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Well, I'll just go read the Bible by myself, and whatever conclusions I come to are right, no matter what anybody else thinks.

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The way I would think about the word biblicism, if I didn't know that that was the idea, is

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I would think, Well, it's just a person who says, I want to understand how to rightly read and interpret the

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Bible, and then the Bible is the final authority on everything. And I think the right way to think about the confessions or creeds is that, like you said, they're helpful.

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They're servants to the Bible. But the Bible is the thing that is that final authority.

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It's the thing that is inherent and infallible. And so the most important thing for us as Christians is that we rightly interpret and understand what the

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Bible teaches. Because if we rightly understand and interpret what the Bible teaches, then that's the right thing.

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That is God's mind. That is the mind of Christ on whatever subject. And so the problem that we end up with is the person who's not willing to engage with what

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Christians from the past, or even Christians today, are saying about a Bible passage because they've already gotten in their mind that they must be right.

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Well, I think must be correct. So extreme example, biblicism. Words that we use that aren't in the

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Bible. Trinity, local church, even the term, which

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I know Church of Christ folks have this, revival. None of those words are actually in the scriptures.

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But the concepts clearly are. Clearly they are. And so if you, you know, the extreme biblicist, for example, might not want to use language that I use like covenant of works, covenant of grace.

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So anyway, yes. But then there's another side. And I'll just read Jeff Johnson's quote here, because Dr.

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Johnson, which is a friend of both of ours, wrote some serious critiques of Thomas Aquinas.

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He's really been under the gun on some of these things. But he put, if biblicism is, and this is from his book,

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The Revealed God, if biblicism is the refusal to incorporate extra biblical and contra biblical concepts and ideas into Christianity, then let's make biblicism great again.

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So I think what he's pushing back on, and I wouldn't consider myself a

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Thomist, you know, but, you know, I think there are some things.

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There should be much more agreement on these things. But what frustrates me is, and I see it more from the

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Thomist side, in my opinion, and that is you're going to have whatever Aquinas thinks about the metaphysical realities within the

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Trinitarian formulations. And you understand, like, add intra and add extra operations and whatever he says, and however he formulates it because of philosophy, like, that has to be it.

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And if you don't see it that way, you're basically going to lead your people into heresy. But the argument

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I would want to put is that you can try to formulate all these things rightly and be led into, well, not

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Pentecostal oneness, sorry, that was what came to my mind, Unitarianism.

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So, for example, in the Great Awakening, and we can look at this, you know,

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I don't have it in front of me, but one of the guys going back and forth with Jonathan Edwards, do you remember his name? What was his name?

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I don't remember. I'd have to look it up. Maybe I'll find it in a second. But one of the guys going back with Jonathan Edwards about Jonathan Edwards was defending the

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Great Awakening, and this guy was saying, no, it's not true. Well, that guy ends up going off and at the end of his life becoming a

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Unitarian. So don't say there's not a real danger of conflating the persons of the

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Trinity. So there is absolute danger of dividing the persons of the Trinity. Sure. And there's also danger of conflating the persons of the

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Trinity. And so I think that we need to be careful of saying, you know, somehow we got into Aquinas today.

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I wasn't ready for all that, really. But the point that I'm trying to make is that really, and sometimes with both sides, there's a lot of bombs thrown at each other.

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You know, I'm not going to say any names, but there's guys on both sides, really, that I think wind up finding themselves more harmful to the unity of the church than really helpful.

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You know, I actually am in agreement with people on both sides of the debate. I'm not trying to find a squishy middle or whatever.

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But so the worst definition of biblicism is no creed but the

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Bible. But you can't use that term then and just label everyone who disagrees with you about the metaphysical operations of the

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Trinity or whatever and just say, well, you're a biblicist. Well, hold on just a second. These brothers are not saying no creed but the

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Bible. They're just saying it's okay to take the scriptures seriously when, you know, not making everything anthropomorphism or whatever.

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Well, and to some degree, everybody can claim that whoever disagrees with them is doing so because they're a biblicist to some degree.

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So the Catholics can say to all Protestants and Reformed believers, well, you guys are just biblicists or you never would.

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The Reformation was just a biblicist. They could claim it was just a biblicist

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Reformation anyway, because what were they doing? They were getting back to the preaching of the

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Bible. So they could claim that. I heard recently,

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I was listening to an interview with R. Scott Clark, and essentially he was claiming all these

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Baptists, they're claiming to be Reformed, but they can't be Reformed because they're not paedo -Baptists.

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And essentially he was saying that, well, they're all biblicists. Their problem is that they're biblicists or they would be, or we would all be

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Presbyterians. That was essentially his argument. And so, yeah, every group can say the group that's went out from them or the group that's diverged from them at some point, well, the problem was that they were biblicists.

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But that's, I think that's not really what's going on there. We're disagreeing over particular doctrinal points, not just.

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And then honestly, I'm not saying that any of these things aren't important. I think they are very important.

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And I think that the discussion, making sure that we understand God right, is the most important thing.

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You know, what was it that Tozer said? What you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

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So that's, I don't want to sound like I'm saying that's unimportant. However, I will say for the average, the average

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Christian who really loves the Lord and loves the scripture and loves the local church, honestly, some of these things are getting off into weeds, getting off into areas of speculation.

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When it comes to some of the things you were mentioning earlier about thinking about divine simplicity, and it gets to a point where the average person,

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I'm saying the average person who really does seek to understand the

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Lord as revealed in the scripture, is going to have trouble maintaining a simplicity of faith when thinking through a lot of these issues, because they are complex, and they're also in some ways very speculative, instead of simply trusting the way that God has revealed himself in the scripture.

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Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that there's always tension.

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You can always err, I think, was it Luther that used the analogy of the horse? You know, it's like you can be like a drunk and try to climb up one side of the horse and fall off the other, you know?

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That's right. But that's why we need the church.

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That's right. And not just, not only the local church, I'm saying. We do need to listen to those who've gone before us.

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But we can also always check them with what? With the scripture. That's right.

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But if you find yourself reading the Bible and coming to conclusions that no one else has come to, well, you sure have a high view of yourself if you think you're right and everyone else is wrong.

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Right. Furthermore, the way that we articulate the faith has been tested and tried over 2 ,000 years now.

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And it'd be foolish, you know, like, for example, someone's like, I'm going to come up with a different word besides Trinity, you know?

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And you're like, that's really not helpful, you know? In fact, and here's what happens, too.

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And so one thing I was going to say is the problem with, like, Biblicism or even another term,

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Christian nationalism, which is a whole different debate. The problem with some of these terms is there's so many different definitions, right?

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Well, and I also think we don't want to run into a non -historic kind of Christianity that just is, well, you know, our non -denominational

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Bible church, community church, was started by Brother Tim 10 years ago, and that's as far back in church history as we go.

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Well, no, our churches need, like, whether or not it's a part of your confession of faith,

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I would tell any pastor, look, take some Wednesday nights, go through the Apostolic Creed, or the

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Apostles Creed, go through the Nicene Creed, go through the Chalcedonian Creed. That's not going to hurt your people, you know?

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I mean, that's going to be good. That's going to help them. Do a church history class on Wednesday nights.

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Man, that's going to help your people. That's right. We need not think of the

33:08

Christian faith as I'm going off in the corner with my Bible. And it's really individualistic, because that's just like, basically it's like people think, well, whatever

33:17

I get out of the Bible, you know, like you go to the worst case scenario, again, the worst definition of biblicism is going to the

33:23

Sunday school class and saying, well, what this passage means to me is, and it's like, no, that's not, you can't do it that way.

33:33

Right? And here's the thing, too. A lot of people who would even claim, you know, why

33:39

I'm a biblicist, they actually have 2 ,000 years of church history that are feeding into their understanding of the

33:46

Scriptures, whether they admit it or not. And I'm saying that's a good thing.

33:52

Yeah, I think it's a good thing. Now, on the other side is trying to use these things as a club to beat

33:59

Christians over the head. So, for example, with us, with the 1689, this was practical in our church.

34:05

You don't have to be a strict confessionalist to be a member of our church. I actually think that's against the spirit of the confession itself.

34:13

I think it's against liberty of conscience. So, you know, I think that to use man -made documents as a club, you know, goes against the spirit of Christian unity.

34:26

But, you know, going back to, do I think it would be good for Southern Baptist churches to affirm the

34:31

Nicene Creed? Yes, of course. Do I smell something a bit fishy with how all this is coming out?

34:37

Yes. Is there some sort of, could it be there's some sort of movement to, like, get rid of certain professors or something that are trying to push forth, hey, we could...

34:50

So, for example, there's lots of missing in the Nicene Creed. You don't have the local church.

34:58

You don't have repent and believe the gospel. You don't have justification by faith alone.

35:04

You know, so there are, it should just be a baseline. Yes, we affirm this.

35:10

That should be obvious. And then, you know, like I've already stated my case, I'm just beating a dead horse.

35:17

I think it's helpful to have just a better confessional statement, you know. But anyway, what do you think?

35:23

Well, and I would also, you know, as you said, it doesn't say enough. And I think part of the issue, and this goes back to what we were saying about the

35:34

Baptist Faith and Message earlier, the Baptist Faith and Message is a document that was constructed to be vague.

35:42

It was constructed to be, you guys can disagree and still both affirm this document.

35:48

That's how it was put together. They wanted it to be a Big Tent document. At least by the 2000 version, that was the goal,

35:56

I think. Was to make it a document that the broad swath of the

36:03

SBC could all be okay with, could all agree with. And so because it's constructed that way, it doesn't have specific enough language in some places that we really would want it to have more specific language.

36:17

And then the other problem that you've already mentioned is even where it does have specific language, you have people wanting to redefine the words.

36:29

You know, so I would say the Baptist Faith and Message already has specific enough language on that pastors should only be men, right?

36:41

It has specific enough language on that, and we're still having a problem with it. The problem isn't the language, the problem is people are wanting to, you know, they're wanting to redefine what pastor means or something like that.

36:53

And so you're never going to be able to have a document that it's wording protects you from people wanting to redefine the word.

37:04

You know, like I said, we're going to be going to Utah in July. And one of the issues you run into when you talk to a lot of people in the

37:16

Mormon church is that they use the same words that we do, but they have completely different definitions.

37:23

Words like atonement or testimony, Jesus Christ. They don't mean in their, to them, what they, what the

37:32

Bible teaches those things to mean. And that's where the creedal statements and confessions are so helpful.

37:39

That's right, because we need to be able to say, well, no, what do you mean by that word?

37:44

Well, this is what we mean when we say that word. That's where I would, and it's in that vein where I say the creeds and the confessions are necessary.

37:55

Not that it's not, not that we're taking away from the Bible at all, but necessary to articulate and clearly say this is what we believe about the

38:05

Bible. So, you know, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses down the road from us, you know, like, what do you guys believe here?

38:11

We believe the Bible. Okay. Well, they believe the Bible. We believe the Bible. So who's right? Well, here we're articulating.

38:18

This is specifically what we believe about the Bible. And we stand in 2000 years, a long line of faithful brothers and sisters who believe the same thing, you know?

38:28

Right. And I think that's important. If you find yourself disconnected from 2000 years of church history, that's an issue.

38:36

And of course, notorious, like with Baptists, we think our history began with Billy Graham or whatever.

38:43

I mean, really, a lot of people in the younger generations, they don't even know who Billy Graham is.

38:50

That's right. So it's like our history seems so short. And I think we would do well to show that we stand in a long tradition of faithful brothers and sisters.

39:02

I don't know if we resolved anything in this episode. I don't think we did, but I thought it was just an interesting thing to bring up.

39:11

Because like I said, I didn't even realize that this was a thing. And I feel like it, like you said,

39:18

I don't see how it's going to fix anything in the SBC. But at the same time, it's one of those things that I'm like,

39:25

I don't know how you would, like, it seems, it does seem like a diversion. I just don't like stuff like this.

39:32

If you're serious about this. What's the point of this? That's right. I don't like doing stuff like this.

39:37

So from a church level, can you imagine? And this can be like our last segment, and then we can wrap up.

39:43

But from a church level, can you imagine saying, hey, guys, in two weeks, we're going to vote on the

39:51

Nicene Creed in our church in two weeks? Like, you wouldn't do it that way. That is not how you would handle it.

39:58

You would say, you know what, we need to affirm this is important. And we want to put this in our church documents.

40:06

And we're going to teach to it. We're going to talk about it. We're going to be transparent. We're going to give everybody plenty of time to look this over, to pray, to think through, to discuss.

40:19

And you're talking about at minimum, like at absolute minimum, you're probably talking about a three month process.

40:26

But that is that would be fast. At absolute minimum. You're probably at more like six, eight, 12 months, just because you want plenty of time to teach through it, to work through it, to discuss.

40:40

Not that there's anything. Look, it's not that there's a problem with the

40:45

Creed, in my opinion. It's just like you just want to give everybody plenty of time to understand what we're doing here.

40:51

And you want to be transparent. Transparency, transparency, transparency. This reeks of what is behind the curtain here.

41:00

What's going on? You're just going to throw this out two weeks before the meeting. I don't I don't like that.

41:06

It seems very suspicious to me. You know, I know that you guys before you adopted the 1689 is your confessional statement.

41:15

You guys taught through it, worked through it. Everybody understood where you guys were going in our church.

41:22

Actually, this went this goes back several years. We had taught through we had taught through the

41:28

BFNM. Then we went through the Baptist catechism on Wednesday nights.

41:34

Then we taught through the abstract of principles. We did all of that before we moved to the you know, we have the abstract principles as our confessional statement.

41:44

But but the point is that we did all of that before we changed confessional statement.

41:50

Yeah, I mean, so so that took that took years, actually. If you if you go back to 2018 or 19 or whenever we started working our way through the

42:01

BFNM before we ever made a change. So I understand what you're saying.

42:06

I mean, what the goal, if you're looking at your local church, the goal would never be to rush something through.

42:13

The goal would be to have consensus and understanding because we want a church that believes the same thing.

42:21

And it does feel like when we're not being transparent and when things are rushed through, honestly, it just feels like politics.

42:28

Even if the thing being rushed through is is a good thing. The the process feels like politics.

42:36

Yeah. Yeah, that's right, man. And that's just why, you know, and I keep hearing this and I get it.

42:42

We just can't walk away from the SBC. We can't give it to the liberals. And I'm just like, look, dude, you people that.

42:49

And again, I commend those brothers fighting. OK, I do absolutely do. But you've got to come to a point where it's like I'm not scared if the liberals take it over because Christ is building this church.

43:04

I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Not saying it doesn't make things harder. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a blow to our society and evangelicalism and all that.

43:14

I'm not I'm not just by God doesn't matter. No, if I had my choice, I much rather not them have.

43:21

But I'm not scared of that. Like if it happens, it happens. I'm focusing on the local church and Christ is building his church.

43:30

He hasn't promised to build the SBC. The SBC has been around.

43:35

It's taken less than 200 years for the SBC to go woke and liberal. And, you know, so it's like God will raise up something else.

43:43

And I'm OK with that. I don't have to be married to the idea that the

43:49

Southern Baptist Convention, if it goes liberal, it's doomsday. It's not. Christ is building his church.

43:55

And so that's what I'm just saying. Like you get sucked into all these political games year after year. I'm not going to speak for the other brothers, but for me, it was it was pulling me away from the local church.

44:08

Right. And again, we've had these conversations, but like, is there really that silent majority in the church, in the

44:15

SBC? It hasn't shown itself yet. Maybe it will this year. Maybe everything will go through. This is what

44:20

I imagine. And I'm saying this before the meeting happened. So I think I think even with the pushback,

44:27

I feel like the law amendment will go through. OK, but I feel like there's going to be give and take.

44:33

I feel like there'll be victories and they'll be gone. But, you know, but we almost got them, you know, and it'll be, you know, when we're going to get them,

44:40

Eddie. Next year, that is like me as a Razorback and Dallas Cowboys fan.

44:45

That's what I was about to say. I'm not a good Cowboys or Razorback fan because I get tired of next year.

44:51

And I told I told our director of missions yesterday, I said, you know, we've been we've heard this year after year after year after year.

45:01

This is the year, guys. This is the year we we got to win this year. I mean, we've heard that right.

45:08

Nashville, Anaheim, New Orleans. We just keep hearing it right. This is the year we got to win this year.

45:15

And and and I'm just I'm weary of it. And like you said, I just want to I just want to serve the

45:22

Lord in the local church. And look, the SBC, why do we think when the SBC is the thing, when we see it cross denominations, the

45:32

Lord takes the faithful churches and uses them to build his kingdom, regardless of what the denominational structures do.

45:39

Look, the Methodist churches went apostate. The faithful churches have left. What faithful churches there were aren't there anymore because that communion, if we want to use that term or denomination, has went apostate.

45:53

Yeah. I mean, they're just gone. And and I'm not saying

45:58

I'm happy about that. I'm not. I hate to see that happen. But that's not got

46:04

God back on his heels. Yeah. The Lord is still going to be victorious in building his church.

46:10

And so he's going to be victorious in building his church in Marshall and in Perryville.

46:18

And I can't say El Pechote. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Or in Ogden, Utah.

46:25

You know, he's going to be victorious in building his church around the world, regardless of what happens to SBC.

46:32

Now, if the Lord chooses to save the SBC from from going that direction, praise

46:37

God. Amen. Yeah. That's what I want. But I believe that the Lord, that the

46:44

Bible tells us to focus where we're at. And you read the New Testament and you're right.

46:51

That doesn't use the phrase local church, but most of it is written to local church. That's and that's.

46:56

Yeah. Absolutely. You can't understand the New Testament without the local church. So if I'm going to if I'm going to be obedient to the things the

47:05

Lord told us in the New Testament, it's going to mean a lot of focus on a local church because that's what it was.

47:13

So, yeah. Amen. Yeah. Spot on, bro.

47:18

I think that another thing I just want to mention is that the Bible hasn't given us a formal structure for denomination.

47:28

Like we should absolutely partner with churches. We see that in the New Testament.

47:35

But God in his wisdom has saw fit not to give us formal denominational structures.

47:41

And that's a good thing. And so these things are not wrong. Like, I don't think, for example, the concept of NAM is wrong.

47:50

I don't think the concept of the Southern Baptist Convention is wrong. But when these things go awry, when these things go astray, when these things become liberal or whatever, don't hold on to them so tightly.

48:04

They're like, I don't know how we got. What are we going to do with this? Like, hey, move on. It's OK. I know.

48:10

But but the seminaries, they're training all these pastors. Christ is going to build his church, folks.

48:16

There's a lot. Not that there won't be consequences. Not that there won't be uphill battle. We're going to make it.

48:22

OK, we are going to make it. Press forward. What's funny is some of these guys,

48:28

I just mentioned is some of these guys have a very kind of like post -meal outlook, you know.

48:33

And and and it seems like their work, they're the ones worry. We're like, but wait, right.

48:39

Aren't you supposed to have the optimistic outlook? You know, here I am, the all millennial. It's like I seem to be more optimistic than you.

48:47

But that's because I don't associate the kingdom of Christ with the physical. You know, like I don't have to marry it to the physical.

48:54

It has physical results, obviously. But but but I don't have to marry it to any any of these physical institutions.

49:02

Only the local church, because Christ is has is building and has promised to build the local church.

49:09

Man, we've been talking a long time. You got anything? Well, I'll just say to our listeners, I'm sure this is kind of rambling and we kind of went off in a lot of different directions.

49:18

But, man, I've enjoyed the conversation and I'm going to miss you over the next few weeks.

49:26

I'm sure we probably won't get a chance to talk. I know we've mentioned this to our listeners before, but a lot of a lot of our doing the podcast is really a chance for me and you to catch up each week a little bit, too.

49:39

And so I know we both got a lot coming up. So I'll be praying for you guys and and the things the

49:45

Lord is going to be doing in your ministry and in the mission trip and everything. I know you will be praying for us as well and hope everybody has a really great summer.

49:55

They probably won't hear this till all that's over. But but man, it's been good.

50:01

And we're excited about what the Lord is continuing to do. Amen, bro. Why don't you sign us off?

50:07

We'll see you guys next week. We'll see you guys next week.

50:49

We'll see you guys next week. We'll see you guys next week.