Downgrade at Southern Seminary: Higher Criticism (Part I)

Welcome to a special three-part series on the liberal drift of, not just the Southern Baptist Convention, but Southern Seminary in particular. And I know a lot of people have questions about this, and I'm so pleased today to be joined by Dr. Russell Fuller to discuss this more.

Thank you for joining me, Dr. Fuller. It's a pleasure. I appreciate it so much. I just want to introduce people to who you are. You attended Dropsy College, and you're a two-time graduate of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

You have your textbooks, Invitation to Biblical Hebrew and Invitation to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, published. And where can people find those if they want to find those, out of curiosity? Yeah, it's.

Published by Kriegel, and so a lot of people find it at Amazon and other places. An academic bookstore would have them, of course. Okay, so if you want, if.

You're interested in that, you can go and buy those. But you publish these two books, and they're actually used at not just Christian, but also Jewish and secular colleges and seminaries throughout the country to teach students how to read Hebrew.

You received your graduate medallion award from Hebrew Union College in 2017, and you were a Bible professor for two years at Mid Continent College, and for 22 years as an Old Testament professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

So quite a accomplishment. You've been teaching for many years, and I understand you were just recently let go from teaching at Southern. And I just want to say that it is a pleasure to be speaking with you.

I know you're also, and I didn't mention this, one of the only, I think you are the only, signer of the Dallas Statement on Social Justice that was, who is a current or was a current professor full-time at a Southern Baptist College.

Right, especially like in.

The theology school. There was another professor who signed who is in part of a music school, but as part of a theological faculty, yeah, I'm the the only one in the Southern Baptist Convention to sign that.

Okay, so and by.

Way of introduction, I just want to let the audience know, because we're gonna let Dr. Fuller do most of the talking here, but I want you to understand kind of where we're going here. There has been a lot of talk about a liberal drift in the Southern Baptist Convention.

I'll just point you to a few things. Resolution 9, which endorses critical race theory as an analytical tool. Dr. Walter Strickland's interview with the New York Times last year, where he says that he teaches James Cone's ideas without mentioning his name.

There are three professors at Southern where you worked that were recorded teaching ideas consistent with critical race theory. And the list just keeps going on. And so a lot of these things are happening, and people have questions.

They think, Southern Baptist, I mean the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, aren't we conservative? What is happening to this denomination? And so I want to pick your brain about this, and I'm so thankful you've allowed me to do that.

Before I do, though, my first question is, how are you doing just in general since.

Being let go from Southern? Yeah, I'm doing fine. My wife and I are doing fine over this. Obviously no one likes to be fired, but I have a clear conscience about my stuff I did at Southern Seminary. I stood up against the critical race theory that's being taught there, and the social justice.

And not only that, but there's other problems like things that deal with post-modernism and other problems that I stood up against that, and I think that there was a price to pay for that. But I have a clear conscience.

I feel good about it. I felt I did my duty. I think I did the right thing. Were you surprised when you were let go? No. As a matter of fact, for the last two years I've been threatened many times to be fired for, again, bringing up that the direction of the school is problematic.

We've got some teachers who are teaching things that are a real problem theologically, and clearly not consistent with the abstract of principles, which is the governing document, sort of the theological standard that's expected of all professors at Southern Seminary.

And we have teachers that are teaching outside of that. And so when I made those statements, I was given, you know, like things like letters of official reprimand saying, basically, if you don't stop saying these things.

And, of course, they would say I'd say these things falsely about these professors, that, you know, I'm gonna lose my job. So you were intimidated. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So there is.

A liberal drift. There's a real liberal drift in the convention, and at least.

From your perspective at the seminary. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I want to.

Get into that more. Okay. And in this first, you know, time that we're talking together, I'd like you to just give me maybe one example, because I know there's a whole family of problems, it sounds like.

Right. What would one of them be?

Yeah. One problem, I was an Old Testament professor, and let me tell you about an example in my department itself. We hired a, we interviewed a fellow and hired him either in very late 2017, early 2018.

His name is Dominic Hernandez. And when we went through the interview process, we were able to look at his dissertation. And when I looked at his dissertation, I discovered that he believes that the book of Job, especially chapter 18 verses like 13 and 14, teaches mythology.

And what's mentioned there in those verses that I mentioned, two names. One is the king of terrors, and this is a poetic description of death. And then the first born of death, and that's a poetic description of disease.

But instead of seeing this as just talking about death and disease, he sees these as mythological beings, entities, you see. And it's not that it's like Bildad is the one doing the speech here, and it's not like Bildad is the one who's mistaken in teaching mythology.

But it's the, actually it's the author of the book of Job is doing this. And he also wrote a paper and gave a presentation at the Society of Biblical Literature. And this is, of course, a organization that does not accept anything close to the inerrancy of Scripture.

And he gave a paper there in the Bible and Miss section. And again, no one goes there to argue against mythology in the Bible and Miss section at the Society of Biblical Literature. It's just the opposite.

It's a liberal group. It's a liberal group, and they're arguing for mythology. So he's giving a paper in a section at the Society for Biblical Literature for mythology. And in that paper, it's interesting, you read the first few sentences, and he talks about, he'll go calamity, terror, the devouring of flesh.

You know, this is what you expect to read in mythic literature. This is what mythology does. And this comes from the mind, the creative mind of the author. But then he goes, but suppose that author really believed that these were real personages, real entities, that they really existed.

And then he goes, maybe it could be. And he asked the question, maybe the author of Job is doing this very thing, that he really does believe in mythological beings and so forth, and real personages. And then later on, he goes, his paper that he gave there, he goes, this paper is going to show the relationship between the mythological king of terrors and firstborn of the dead.

And he capitalizes those because it's a proper name. And the relationship to this ancient Near Eastern deity called Mot, which is, which is, which means God. So he's saying, listen, what Job is doing, and what ancient Near Eastern mythology doing, it's the same thing.

And I'm going to show how these personages, these entities, are very similar. And so he's clearly teaching that the book of Job is teaching mythology, which is something absolutely contrary to Scripture, because by definition, mythology's error.

And if you look at the New Testament, especially Peter and Paul, they'll talk about mythology, and they always contrast mythology with truth. The ancients knew what mythology was. They knew it was falsehood.

They knew it was not real, in one sense. Now there were people who really did believe in mythology. There were Greeks who would really believe the myths. I'm sure there were ancient Near Eastern people who believed, really believed the myths.

But the Apostles, the prophets, they knew what.

A myth was. They knew it was error. So I think a lot of people hearing this for the first time, their heads are probably spinning right now. They're saying, wait a minute, you're telling me at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, there's a professor who believes that there are parts of the Bible, at least the book of Job, that promote mythology?

Yes. Or that Job is mythological in some sense, which I.

Guess would be the implication. During the interview process, I asked him about death, about whether he believed it was a real, that the Bible taught that death was a person, not a state. And we're not talking about some type of personification, whether it's a real person.

And his response to me was this, I don't think you have to believe that death is a real person, that the Bible teaches such a thing. But if you did, I'd be okay with that. After he left the room, and we as the Old Testament department discussed that, I said, listen, he said he would have no problem if a person believed that the Bible teaches that death is a real person.

They said, no way, he didn't say that. So when we went to lunch with him, I said, hey, there was a misunderstanding about what you said with my question. So I asked you the question again. I said, do you believe the Bible teaches that death is a person?

He gave me the same answer. He goes, listen, I don't think you have to believe the Bible teaches that, but I'd have no problem if you did. So he made it very clear, again, that to him, the Bible teaches that death is not just a state.

It's not some type of personification. It's a real, the Bible teaches that death is a real being, a real entity, personage. So you challenge this. Yes. And what was the response then? Yeah, the response I got from my fellow faculty, one in particular said, you're misreading him.

And he says, no, you're confusing this. It's not the author of the book of Job that's teaching error. It's Bildad. And we know Bildad gets things wrong, and so there's.

No problem here. Bildad who's being quoted in the book of Job. That's right.

Bildad who's being quoted in the book of Job. That's right. And so months later, I asked this professor, I said, when we walked in that meeting, how much of the dissertation had you actually read? And he said, I hadn't read, I didn't read any of it when we walked in there.

Somehow he knew I had misread it, though he hadn't read it himself. But what this shows, John, is a bias of mind, that if real evidence is even demonstrated to him, he's not going to accept it. And as a matter of fact, what I asked after that first meeting is, is there anything else we can look at?

And that's when I got his paper that he gave at the Society of Biblical Literature. And there it was clear over and over again, he said, the author of Job, the author of Job. When that professor was shown that, he recognized what I was telling him was true, but it didn't matter.

He still supported it. And later on, one of the deans at Southern Seminary, Herschel York, the dean of the School of Theology, he said the same thing to me. He says, you misread Hernandez's work. And I said, well, Herschel, did you read his dissertation?

Not yet, but I'm going to. Somehow he knew I misread the work, but yet he himself hasn't read it yet, you see. And again, this shows a bias of mind that no matter what evidence I show him, he's not going to accept.

It's already, you've misread him, you see.

Well, it almost sounds like, I mean, this was in the hiring process, I'm assuming, when you're questioning.

Yeah, the first part was with Herschel York, it was later.

It was later, right.

And what he said, also what Herschel said is, yeah, but he's teachable, and so we can correct him, you see. So he was admitting there's a problem here by saying that to me. He goes, but he's very teachable and so forth.

But we knew when we hired him, he believed this. And let me tell you, I wrote notes up, and these notes, the Dr. Mohler knew about this. There was no way Dr. Mohler, after this going through this process, there was no way he did not know the truth about Dominique Hernandez when we hired him.

I believe that's impossible.

Well, that is a frightening prospect, and it sounds like Dr. Hernandez is teaching in the Old Testament department. So he's able to, if he wanted to, disseminate these views to students.

Yeah. Let me tell you this also. The last paper, this was just about a month ago, the last paper I read by a student was for an interview for the student who wanted to get into our PhD program. So he had to submit a paper, and I read it.

And in that paper, he would write the Satan in italics. He did a paper on Job, and he would write the Satan in italics. So when I came to the meeting, I asked him, I said, why did you write the Satan in italics?

Why didn't you just say Satan? And he looked at me and he goes, Dr. Fuller, I agree with you. The Satan of the book of Job is the same Satan that we see in the New Testament and even other parts of the Old Testament.

He goes, but my professor, Dominique Hernandez, wanted me to write this way.

Oh, my goodness.

Because you see, he doesn't necessarily want to see the Satan of the book of Job as a Satan of the New Testament.

Well, this is a frightening prospect, because this is the kind of old line liberalism that I keep hearing doesn't exist in the Southern Baptist Convention, because usually the defenders of the Southern Baptist Convention will say, well, critical race theory, it's an analytical tool.

It's not a problem. The authority of scripture comes in. But we don't have any of that old liberalism. We got rid of that during the resurgence. This is the old liberalism. This is what Machen was talking about.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. This comes from like a higher criticism. Yeah, this comes from like a higher criticism. And in higher criticism, of course, the assumptions are not that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, the very word of God.

The assumption is just the opposite, and that you treat it like any other book. There's no God didn't write this book. It's another man's book. And therefore, I think Dr. Hernandez is looking at scripture.

He's looking at ancient Near Eastern materials. And he's like, these are the these are. I'm treating the Bible just like I would teach in like I would treat any ancient Near Eastern material.

Let me quote for you. This is from Dr. Hernandez's dissertation on page 288. He says, perhaps it is through Job's criticism of the traditional wisdom espoused in Proverbs and in the Torah that the book of Job makes its greatest contribution to the wisdom tradition.

Yeah, that was something else I brought up at the meeting. I said, listen, it looks like what he's saying here in these comments is that, you know, Job's the book of Job, its greatest contribution is that it's going against other parts of scripture.

It is criticizing other parts of scripture. When I brought that up, one of the person is in the process in the interview process said, oh, no, no. What he means by criticize is just carefully analyzed, kind of to explain and so forth.

But then I showed other passages where he would say things like the book of Job, as it were, rejects other biblical teachings. It would say things like the book of Job teaches against what the Bible says in other places.

It's considered biblical wisdom that's wise in the Bible. In other words, what the Bible considers wise in other places, the book of Job is teaching contrary to that, teaching against that. And then he talks about even though Job criticized this idea of just retribution, he goes, it didn't die after Job criticized it.

Even the New Testament brought it back up. And what he's saying is that the just retribution, especially at the end of the world, at the Eschaton, he goes, the New Testament teaches, even though Job had harsh words to say against that, he's really saying the Bible's contradicting the Bible.

And I brought this up and I said, this is an unacceptable candidate. We should not hire him. Did he sign the abstract.

And principles? Absolutely. So see, this is what we hear all the time is, well, look, we have a faculty that signed the statement. And I know that happened during Machen's time as well, and that has happened.

I mean, what's the explanation for that? In my opinion,.

We want to hide behind that. When you have somebody sign that, hey, see, they signed it so that they believe this. So they can't believe in mythology. They can't believe the Bible contradicts itself. Even though they do.

Even though they do. And so we hide behind confessions. We hide behind, you know, things like this. The thing is, even if you have the most perfect confession, even if you have the most perfect abstract of principle, it's not going to prevent somebody who wants a job from signing it.

And that's what goes on. Well, this is scary to know.

That there's at least one professor teaching higher criticism and students are learning this and taking this to other places. I need to ask you, because I'm anticipating criticism. You're very brave for coming on and talking with me about this.

Are you trying to disparage Dr. Hernandez in any way? Because I know people are going to say that about you.

Right. No, I am not trying to go after him personally. Even when he first came in for the first interview, I'd never met him. All I did was read his dissertation and say, hey, there's problems here. I have nothing against him personally.

I didn't even know him when he walked in the room. Didn't even know who he was. What I was concerned about is what he's teaching is dangerous. It's nothing personal. I have nothing. I've never had a cross word with him.

But when I look at his teachings and even after he's been on our faculty now for a year or so and see what he's teaching, it's very dangerous. He even believes that you can get greater exegetical information about things like the fate of the wicked from ancient Near Eastern materials than even the Bible.

He even says things like that in his dissertation.

Well, if anyone wants to check out Dr. Hernandez's dissertation or any of the notes that Dr. Fuller has compiled in your research when you're in the hiring process, you can go to Enemies Within the Church and find those.

The links are in the info section of this video. And I appreciate you making those available and I appreciate your bravery in joining me, Dr. Fuller. And I look forward to next time. Thank you, John. God bless.

Bye now. And now an important message on how you can help from the president of Founders Ministries, Dr. Tom Askle. Like most Southern Baptists, I was saddened to.

Hear the announcement from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in April that they were cutting dozens of positions from their faculty and staff as a result of the difficulties that came from the COVID -19 pandemic.

But I was even more concerned when I learned that the administration was requiring those who were dismissed to sign a non-disclosure agreement if they were going to receive severance pay. This separation agreement includes the sections in it that would prohibit anyone who signs it from discussing its contents or even acknowledging its existence to his wife, to his pastor, or to anyone other than his lawyer or his accountant.

Well, two professors have determined they are not going to sign this agreement. Dr. Russell Fuller, who is a well-recognized and esteemed professor of Old Testament and Hebrew and Aramaic, served at Southern Seminary for 22 years and he has said that though millions of dollars were offered to him, he simply could not sign this document.

Dr. Jim Oreck also has come to that same conclusion and he said his conscience will not let him sign this agreement, though he taught 18 years at Boys College with distinction. Both of these men have served with distinction at our flagship institution.

It grieves me that they are now faced with the prospect of having no severance pay from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So I've taken it upon myself after consulting with fellow pastors and friends to try to raise the money that they are owed that they should have received from Southern Seminary.

It's going to take $40 ,000 in order for the severance pay that they have lost simply for refusing to sign this NDA and I'm asking you to help out with that. All the money that is received will go to these two men to help cover some of the expenses of their families during this time of transition.

There's a GoFundMe account that we have set up where you can give directly or the elders at Grace Baptist Church have acknowledged that our Benevolence Ministry and our Deacons Fund will also be used to help out with those who have been affected by the COVID -19 crisis and we would certainly take it under advisement if you wanted to give a gift to our Benevolence Ministry.

You can find out more information in the notes below where you can contact us for more more detail or where you can send your gifts. But beyond that I'm going to ask you to join me in praying for Dr. Fuller and Dr. Orrick.

Pray for their wives and their children and ask the Lord to continue to bless them and to use them in his kingdom's work. They are great gifts to the church and they have many years of usefulness in front of them by God's grace.

Thanks for considering this request.