This time the fight is not as much over Scripture’s inerrancy as it is over its sufficiency. The question is whether Scripture ought to be regarded as a comprehensive guide for the Christian life, the place where our inquiry starts and ends; or is it instead a mere touchpoint to be reinterpreted and mediated through the thick lenses of contemporary sensibilities? Conservative evangelicals claim to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. But that belief is too often held in only a theoretical way. Many Baptist leaders these days actually appear embarrassed by how the Bible applies to our modern debates.
Southern Baptists, like most conservative evangelicals, are distinguished by the things we say we believe about the Scriptures. We call ourselves “People of the Book.” That old-time phrase carries with it certain theological commitments, but it also describes our inclinations. When presented with pressing questions, our first instinct is, we say, to open our Bibles. To go to the Book.
This certainly proved to be the case during the major twentieth-century rift in American Protestantism. Southern Baptists emerged squarely on the conservative side of the fight between theological liberalism and orthodoxy, one that was fought primarily on the battleground of whether Scripture is inerrant. Almost entirely alone among the major denominations, Southern Baptists waged a successful campaign in the 1970s and ’80s to beat back the liberal theological incursions into their institutions. Thus, America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), with all its 180-year history, 47,000 churches, and 14 million members, remains conservative and evangelical to this day. At least in theory.
However, a new rift is developing within the SBC, as it is in other conservative evangelical denominations. This time the fight is not as much over Scripture’s inerrancy as it is over its sufficiency. The question is whether Scripture ought to be regarded as a comprehensive guide for the Christian life, the place where our inquiry starts and ends; or is it instead a mere touchpoint to be reinterpreted and mediated through the thick lenses of contemporary sensibilities? Conservative evangelicals claim to believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. But that belief is too often held in only a theoretical way. Many Baptist leaders these days actually appear embarrassed by how the Bible applies to our modern debates.
A genuine, practical commitment to sufficiency regards Scripture as providing a sufficient basis for living a godly Christian life, both for an individual and for ordering and ruling the life of the church. A corollary of this belief is that Scripture’s meaning is plain and accessible to any Christian.
The idea that Scripture is sufficient should function as an anchor for us during times of cultural convulsion. Ordinary believers should be hearing from their pastors and Christian leaders that, come what may and despite what the world says, they can be confident that we have in the Scriptures a clear word from God on how we should live. As a result, we can know what the right and good paths are, even if those paths put us significantly out of step with broader social mores.
