Downgrade at Southern Seminary: Postmodernism (Part II)

The Baptist Faith and Message and the Meaning of Scripture

Thank you once again for being with me, Dr. Fuller, to talk about the leftward drift of the Southern Baptist Convention and in particular what you saw at Southern Seminary. Last time we talked a bit about higher criticism on the campus of Southern Seminary, and I was hoping this time we could talk about something else, perhaps postmodernism and where you saw that you'd mentioned that in the first interview.

I wanted to read for you just a clip from the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. It says that scripture is the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.

From the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Postmodernism, Authorial Intent, and Scripture Interpreting Scripture

What is postmodernism? Yeah, when you think of postmodernism, it's an extreme skepticism and relativism that is very suspicious of absolute claims or universal claims concerning objective reality, concerning morality, concerning truth, concerning language, social progress, things like this.

So it's an extreme skepticism in this way. Oftentimes when it's applied to literature or when it's applied to scripture, what you'll get is people who will question things like authorial intent. They don't like authorial intent, and what they'll say is there's no one right way of doing biblical theology.

There's no one right way to read the text, a text of scripture. And so instead of looking, instead of trying to find a way to interpret scripture that we can prove, that we can verify. So okay, we want to prove that what Paul's teaching here is actually what he's teaching.

Can you show in other places in Paul or in the New Testament proving, like for instance, let me give an example. We have a lot of controversy about the first three chapters of Genesis. Okay, a lot of controversy on this.

And the way I think we ought to interpret that, can we find other places in Scripture that refer back? Like for instance, there's a controversy. Is Adam a real person? Well, when we read later on in the New Testament, you can clearly see from Paul that he sees him as the first historical person.

And so if we let scripture interpret scripture, that's the right way to interpret the Bible. And so like the Westminster Confession says, the infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself.

And therefore when there's a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold but one, it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. You see, that's how we should interpret scripture.

We should let scripture interpret scripture. That's the right way of doing it. Well, these are basic.

Hermeneutical principles if you learn a grammatical historical method of interpreting scripture. Correct. Which I thought. Southern Baptists, I thought, you know, that's what they were supposed to be teaching.

And it seems like what you're saying right now is post-modernism actually contradicts even the Baptist faith and message. Absolutely. You can't have post-modernism.

Because again, it's suspicious of absolute claims of objective reality and truth. Well, what we claim as Christians is to have the truth, the objective reality. Where we have a professor at Southern Seminary named Jonathan Pennington.

He'll say things like this idea of objective, to be able to objectively verify your interpretation or to objectively verify the interpretation that you have. He goes, we shouldn't do that. We should look for productive readings.

Not have all this angst and pressure, a feeling that we've got to find. What did Paul really want to say here? But let's have some productive readings, you know, things like this. And so again, in his post-modernism, he's going to, he doesn't really like, well, he doesn't like authorial intent.

And he prefers to say, why don't we talk about textual intent? Or why don't we talk about the ideal author? Because he'll say, we can't get in the mind of Paul. We can't get in the mind of the prophets.

And so we'll talk about the meaning of the text. But again, there can be different readings of it or different meanings of it. Paul didn't have just one idea, you know, there. But this is very dangerous.

This is very dangerous. Because we believe that the scriptures give us the mind of Christ. Gives us the mind of God and how we're to believe about him and how we're to live our lives. And so we find the mind of God.

We find the mind of Paul in the scriptures, you see. Where he would say, no, no. He, again, he doesn't like this notion of authorial intent. He, again, and he, in interpretation, again, he wants to see the community ultimately decides the meaning of the text.

Well, we would say, no, the meaning of the text is fixed. It's stable. Now, we might misread it and misinterpret it, but it has a fixed meaning. And that is what is true, whether we discover it or not.

The meaning of the text is stable and it's objectively, we can verify it. That's what we believe. He doesn't believe that. So here's a quote from a book.

That's published out there called Reading the Gospels Wisely from Jonathan Pennington, page 230. He says that the church recognized the need for a ruled reading or regula fidei, that guided the proper reading even of canonical texts.

And this sounds to me, when I read a statement like that, more like Roman Catholic theology than a Southern Baptist understanding. It sounds like you read the Bible in community. The community is what determines the meaning.

Am I tracking? That's correct. Because in the context where you're reading there,.

He's talking about when the Orthodox had a controversy with heretical groups. And he goes, hey, they both had the same Bible. So the Bible couldn't determine between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in that situation.

There needed to be like some kind of confession, some kind of ruled reading that would determine the meaning of Scripture. What he's doing is he's making confessions, he's making them constrain our reading of Scripture.

And he's got it just the opposite. And the Baptist faith and message says the opposite. It says the opposite. That's why it's more like you say, Catholicism. Because in Catholic theology, remember, it's tradition.

And of course, the Magisterium of the Pope, that's what determines the meaning. That's the official interpretation of Scripture. It comes really through tradition and so forth. He's doing the same thing by making the community the final arbiter of what Scripture says.

Well, he says this as well in one of his papers. And it's in the context of human authority, creeds, confessions, verse, biblical authority. So he's not talking about things fundamental to existence and natural revelation like the laws of logic.

He says, so we need to not live in the anxiety that fundamentalists have that the Bible is the only authority or only source of truth and understanding. Are you a fundamentalist, Dr. Fuller? According to that definition, I certainly am.

Okay. By the way, if he's not a fundamentalist according to that definition, he's denying the sufficiency of Scripture there. And so apparently he's calling... if he's going to claim... if he wants to be able to sign accurately the abstract of principle, okay, then he's just called himself a fundamentalist as well.

But he's denying it there. Again, what he's saying is we're not like fundamentalists who take the Scriptures are only in final authority. No, no. We also, he says, we hold the creeds. Even creedal orthodoxy.

We believe in a creedal orthodoxy. Right. Including the Westminster Confession. He doesn't even interpret the Westminster Confession. Right. Because the Westminster Confession is going to tell you Scripture is our sole authority.

Creeds are a sub-authority. In other words, the authority of all authorities is Scripture. Creeds are only authoritative as they're consistent with Scripture. We constrain our creeds according to the proper reading of Scripture.

We don't constrain the Scriptures by creeds. We correct creeds by Scripture when we find errors in them. We don't correct Scripture by creeds.

Gadamerian Hermeneutics and the Limits of Objectivity

I wanted to read for you a few other quotes. And this goes along with the denying objectivity, but he says, and I was hoping maybe you could explain this a little more. These are big words. So I think when you get into post-modernism, sometimes people fall asleep and they think, what are you talking about?

But it's actually very important because it really does undermine core doctrines. He says, there's no simple right way to read a text as both pre-modern Christian hermeneutics, and he says this big word, Gadamerian post-modern interpretation, understand.

Instead, there are a variety of more or less faithful readings or performances of a text that are closer or farther on a spectrum to the census literalis. There is, there are also unfaithful readings and misreadings to be sure, but a richer understanding of what it means for a text to mean releases much steam from the pressure cooker of modernist exegesis.

And it's, and listen to this, it's angst-ridden drive to find the one true objective meaning upon which all application can supposedly be built. So he's, it sounds like he's saying there's pre-modern Christian hermeneutics and Gadamerian post-modern interpretations, which he affirms.

Correct. What, what is he talking about there when he uses those words that people might not understand?

Yeah, Gadamer was a German sort of philosopher, post-modern philosopher. He's a big fan of Gadamer, and there's another one he likes even more, a guy named Umberto Eco. And if you read his papers and stuff, you'll see he praises these men.

You can tell their influence upon him. Gadamer is famous for his, he's really a philosophical hermeneutics guy, is what he is. He believes, he writes on the philosophy of hermeneutics or the philosophy of the science of interpretation.

And one of his big ideas was the reader brings all sorts of prejudices to a text. And so, so in other words, even a reader, when he comes, he has so many prejudices that this notion of getting this objective meaning out of a text is virtually impossible.

So is that the spectrum then? That's part of the spectrum. Okay. Yeah, that's part of the spectrum. And then at the end of that quote there, again, this, this pressure cooker of finding the one true meaning.

Well, most of what I taught at Southern Seminary was Hebrew and Aramaic. I taught mostly languages. And the whole purpose of teaching the languages is so people can really look at what the Bible says in the originals to the best we can and to, to get the proper interpretation.

What was Paul trying to tell us when he wrote this? Or even better, what was God telling us when he wrote the scripture? We're looking for the true meaning of the text. Now, now let me ask you this.

You had a lot of students come through. I'm assuming, yeah, different probably cultures and ethnic backgrounds and maybe even genders. And I mean, I know your books have been used now at Jewish seminaries and so forth.

So when you're teaching that science, really, that of interpretation, understanding the language itself, are you able to teach people with different backgrounds and different experiences to arrive at an objective meaning?

Absolutely. There are methods that you can use in interpretation. To me, the most important thing is to read scripture and to look at how did the Apostles interpret the Old Testament. Let's imitate their methodology.

Okay. Sometimes they, they interpreted things on a theological level. In other words, they weren't just doing like a, like a verse and looking at the grammar of it,.

But they were looking at the broader theology. And you think someone with a different experience than yours can arrive at?

Absolutely. The same conclusion using the same tools. Take a, for instance, a man like Augustine. Okay. He was from Northern Africa. Okay, so he wasn't affected by, you know, whiteness and these other postmodern ideas.

Look at the way he understands scripture. Then look at a guy like Calvin. Look at the way he understands scripture. Then you look at some modern interpreters. They're very similar. Yeah. They come from different times, you know, different locations on the map, but they, their understanding of scripture, their interpretation of scripture, very similar.

Because they're trying to arrive at the meaning that the author intended for the original audience. Exactly.

They're looking for an originalist understanding of the passage. What did God intend for us to understand when he wrote the, when God, through Paul,.

Wrote Ephesians? Right. That's what we're trying to discover. Now, I may be going out on a limb here, but I would assume that folks like Jonathan Pennington would not be favorable to someone like me, for instance, using this approach to read his book or his writings.

If I just, you know, did not read them objectively the way he intended, but read them the way I wanted to read them.

Oh, no, he wouldn't. Like, if you started misquoting him, I'm sure it would be very offensive. Right.

You don't understand. You're misquoting. So when anyone says that to you, you know, I bet we talked in the last episode about Dr. Hernandez and you, you know, you came with these objections and people, you don't understand Dr. Hernandez was the response you got.

Oh, that's right. You could use this, I guess, as a response and say, well, I'm bringing my own meaning to the text. I have a lens and I, so, but we, but none of us function that way, I guess is the point.

That's, no, that's right. I mean, in true, in the true world, you can't live a postmodern life. You just can't. It's impossible. It is. I mean, when you're driving down the road, and you see this sign that says bridge out ahead, you're not going to interpret that postmodern, you know, you're not, you're gonna, you better stop your car.

Yeah, or objective reality is about to take place in your case. Now, let me tell you this. I wasn't the only professor to speak out against the teachings of Jonathan Pennington. When we voted for him a few years ago for promotion, we had almost a 50 -50 split in the full professors meeting and that was about 30 of us.

We're the oldest professors and the most conservative professors on campus. And it was basically a 50 -50 split about him. And so, many in the faculty were very concerned about him. Dr. Moeller even said after that vote, he goes, well, I don't like his books.

I don't like the books. And he's talking especially about his book, Reading the Gospels Wisely. And also he just came out with a recent book on the Sermon on the Mount.

You know, it's a curious thing that you say Dr. Moeller did not like his book, Reading the Gospels Wisely. Well, if you go to the Gospel Coalition's website, which is a popular Christian neo-reformed blog, on February 18th, 2013, and it's still there, Dr. Pennington's book is prominently posted, Reading the Gospels Wisely, a narrative and theological introduction, as one of Al Moeller's top 10 books that every preacher should read.

And it was actually third on the list. And the article's still there. So why would Al Moeller, who agrees with the Baptist faith and message, and apparently has.

Spoken to you privately. No, no, that was spoken before the full faculty.

Well, it wasn't spoken publicly in the same way that this Gospel Coalition article was public. That's correct. So no one outside that faculty. That's correct. That's right. But in a private conversation, he has said he doesn't agree with this book.

And he does hold to the Baptist faith and message. Why would he say this is one of the top 10 books every preacher should read and hire someone like a Jonathan Pennington?

I cannot explain that. But let me say this. This is part of the problem. We have professors at Southern Seminary who teach sound doctrine. But unfortunately, what they'll do is that for some of our professors who do not teach sound doctrine like Jonathan Pennington, and that book, by the way, it's hard to read, you know, four or five pages without finding something problematic in that book.

But what you'll see is a professor who writes, again, who is sound in his teachings, like, for instance, Tom Schreiner. He wrote the blurb on the back and he says, now, I don't agree with everything that Pennington says.

But he says, but it's the best book on the Gospels. Well, I tell you what, students, they have a lot of respect for Tom Schreiner and they trust Tom Schreiner. And here's Tom Schreiner telling them, this is the finest book on the Gospels.

And then when there's people out there who read some of Tom's works and he says, hey, it's the best book, they're going to get this and read it and think, hey, this is good stuff.

And it's very dangerous. Well, this is concerning. This is very concerning for a number of reasons, not just the fact that postmodernism, which undermines the sufficiency of scripture, is being taught, but that it sounds like there's contradictions going on behind closed doors at Southern seminary, endorsements of books, and then take this dangerous approach and then reneging on the endorsements privately.

I mean, I don't know what to make of that. It sounds like you don't quite know what to make of that either. I want to ask you sort of in closing here. What are some of the implications of this? Give me like a, you know, for a working class person who's just reading their Bible wanting to follow the Lord, they don't care about postmodernism, perhaps.

That's just heady stuff that intellectuals debate. Give me like an actual example of how this would undermine perhaps evangelism or one of the things that we do.

Messianic Prophecy, Isaiah 53, and the Basis for Evangelism

If you take postmodern theory and use that as your lens to read scripture, you are going to completely misread scripture. And Jonathan Pennington's a New Testament scholar, but what he does in one of his papers that he gave to the students on campus there is he said the notion, he's quoting this author named David Crump, and he's agreeing with Crump.

And what Crump says is it's a self-induced illusion to believe that the Old Testament teaches some type of messianic paradigm, that some messiah would come years and years later and he's going to, you know, heal the sick, raise the dead, forgive sins, that he would die and ascend to heaven and all these things.

He goes, this is a self-induced illusion. And Jonathan Pennington says, but he was quoting him saying he's agreeing with this guy. And then Pennington goes on to say, yeah, and even key passages that the New Testament interprets of the Old Testament, even passages like Isaiah 53, you would be hard-pressed to see that as truly messianic.

He's denying that the Isaiah 53 and many passages of scripture teach anything about messiah at all. Wow.

So this is usually the basis for Jewish evangelism, for I mean, not even just Jewish evangelism, but anyone who wants to just share how Christ fulfilled the Old Testament promise. This is fundamental.

That's right. Christ said, if you knew the scriptures, they speak of me. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, if you look at what he's saying, and again, he's denying an entire messianic paradigm in the Old Testament. And what he says is, and again, he's quoting from a guy, but he's agreeing with this corrupt fellow.

And he goes, you only get that because you've been brainwashed by reading, you know, basically the apostles and reading the early church fathers and then later on people like reformers and so forth. So we as Christians have been conditioned, we've been brainwashed to read messiah into the Old Testament.

The problem with that, as you know, I went to a Jewish institution. I've studied the old rabbis, and let me tell you, and this is a scandal in and of itself, the old rabbis saw messiah in the Old Testament more than most Old Testament evangelical professors I know.

They saw messiah everywhere in the Old Testament. Now, the Jews don't have a problem with messiah in the Old Testament. What they disagree with is that Jesus is the messiah. That's where the difference is.

But if you read, and by the way, they weren't brainwashed by reading the apostles. They weren't brainwashed by a Christian reading of the Old Testament. But if you read the old rabbis, I tell you what, they saw messiah everywhere.

Matter of fact, they had two statements, John, I'll tell you. It's in the Talmud around section 99. One of the statements is the prophets only testify of messiah. Now when they say the prophets there, they're not just talking about, you know, Isaiah through Malachi.

They're seeing all of scripture by the word prophets there. And what they're saying is the scriptures only prophesy of messiah. So to them, all of scripture is pointing toward messiah. That's what the rabbis say.

Then they say this, they say, the world was made for messiah. And by that, they mean all human history is directed, guided by God for messiah's coming and for the establishment of his kingdom. By the way, those two statements are very similar to ones you'll find in the New Testament.

When Jesus is talking about John the Baptist and he'll say, for the law and the prophets prophesied unto John, you see. In other words, the whole Old Testament prophesied unto the John the Baptist's coming.

The opening of the messianic age, you see, the opening of the messianic kingdom, you see. And then what Paul says in Colossians, that the world was made by Jesus and for him. The whole world, all human history is centered on the messiah because he is the one who's going to come.

He's our second Adam. And he's going to come and where the first Adam failed to obey the law of God, the second Adam is going to obey the law of God perfectly. But it's beyond that though. He's also going to die for our sins that the sin for Adam and all of his descendants can be laid on him, you see.

And that's the gospel. That's the gospel right there, you see. And so you don't need a modern interpretation. You need the Old Testament scriptures. That's right. You need the New Testament. Look at how the New Testament interprets the Old Testament.

That's our model for how to interpret scripture right there. And also how did how did like the prophets of the Old Testament, how did they interpret the Pentateuch? Yeah, you see when I pressed this they of course they had Jonathan Pennington rewrite this paper he gave to the students about three different times.

A paper on this topic? This topic, the one he did about Isaiah 53. And what he did was he simply just cut it out of the paper. He never went back to the students even though, you know, he was called into the dean's office and you know, hey, you cannot say Isaiah 53 doesn't refer to Jesus and there's no messianic paradigm and you can't do this.

Right. But he doesn't go back and say, oh, I got it wrong. I messed it up. He had two more months in that semester to tell the students. You remember that line about Isaiah 53? Forget that. He just simply cut it out and gave a new paper out.

He never he never corrected the record. Wow. Then later on after he did two more editions of the paper and the administration kept saying do another one, do another one. He couldn't get it right. So finally he had to write a private document saying I do believe in Isaiah 53.

I don't believe in postmodernism. I do believe in authorial intent. And so I asked the administration.

Are we going to make this public? No. Why not? Well, his book is public. Absolutely. Al Mulder's endorsement of it is public.

Yeah, his. The errors that he teaches in there are very public. Why are we not going to correct that publicly? No.

Promotion, Endorsements, and the Consequences for Southern Seminary

Well, there's been a lot of questions that some have been answered and some I think are still hanging and one of them is why not just correct?

That's right. And one more thing. And yet one more thing. They were going to try to promote him again this about a month ago when the coronavirus hit so we can't do that. As I told you the first time they had a vote on him, it was like 50 -50.

To promote. To promote him to a full professor. My guess is next year they will try to promote him again. And I tell you what, it won't be 50 -50 this time. The next time they vote for him because there's no longer people like myself there and others who were going against this.

Are you saying that there there have been other professors then since that first vote who have been.

Fired or let let go that would have voted with you? Yeah, I'm telling you the next vote it will be virtually unanimous for the next time because again those of people like me and others who stood up against this we've been let go.

And so you watch the next time he's voted for it. It'll probably be next year. And you watch he will it won't be 50 -50. It will be. That's your prediction. That's my prediction. I predict.

Is that an objective prediction or is that a postmodern? No, no, no, that's right. That's right.

No, we'll just see but I'm telling you of course they won't they'll never tell you but I'm telling you it will be virtually. What do you want to put your job on the line like that? Do you want to really speak out against this?

I don't think so. Yeah.

Well, this this has been um enlightening and disturbing at the same time, but I again appreciate you being willing to talk about this. We need to talk about this and I'm looking forward to sitting down with you one more time and having a discussion about the leftward drift.

So until next time. Thank you. Thank you. To help assist professors russell fuller and jim orwick who have refused to sign the separation agreement southern seminary required in order for them to receive their pay Go to gofundme .com sbts-profs.

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