Sean the Baptist (in the UCA)

Pope Benedict Welcomes Baptists to Rome

This is the text of the Pope's words to delegates from the Baptist World Alliance at a recent audience in the Papal apartments in advance of the latest round of Baptist-Catholic conversations (Paul Fiddes, among others, is on the BWA team - lucky sod!).  See here for an account of the conversations.  I am sure that they did not meet in front of the Raphaels (too many tourists interrupting) but any excuse to show great pictures.

Dear Friends,

I offer a cordial welcome to you, the members of the joint international commission sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. I am pleased that you have chosen as the site of your meeting this city of Rome, where the Apostles Peter and Paul proclaimed the Gospel and crowned their witness to the Risen Lord by the shedding of their blood. It is my hope that your conversations will bear abundant fruit for the progress of dialogue and the increase of understanding and cooperation between Catholics and Baptists.

The theme which you have chosen for this phase of contacts – The Word of God in the Life of the Church: Scripture, Tradition and Koinonia – offers a promising context for the examination of such historically controverted issues as the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, the understanding of Baptism and the sacraments, the place of Mary in the communion of the Church, and the nature of oversight and primacy in the Church’s ministerial structure. If our hope for reconciliation and greater fellowship between Baptists and Catholics is to be realized, issues such as these need to be faced together, in a spirit of openness, mutual respect and fidelity to the liberating truth and saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As believers in Christ, we acknowledge him as the one mediator between God and humanity (1 Tim 2:5), our Saviour, our Redeemer. He is the cornerstone (Eph 2:21; 1 Pet 2:4-8); and the head of the body, which is the Church (Col 1:18). In this Advent season, we look to his coming with prayerful expectation. Today, as ever, the world needs our common witness to Christ and to the hope brought by the Gospel. Obedience to the Lord’s will should constantly spur us, then, to strive for that unity so movingly expressed in his priestly prayer: "that they may all be one… so that the world may believe" (Jn 17:21). For the lack of unity between Christians "openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and harms the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature" (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1).

Dear friends, I offer you my cordial good wishes and the assurance of my prayers for the important work which you have undertaken. Upon your conversations, and upon each of you and your loved ones, I gladly invoke the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, understanding, strength and peace.

HT: InternetMonk

Warner on Gender Justice

This quotation exactly describes the state of play within BUGB (as recent conversations here in College made plain):

'Those evangelicals who affirm in principle gender equality in work, marriage and ministry are yet to address the issue of institutional sexism within their own organisations and events, and develop strategies that implement gender equality in practice.'
Warner, Rob, Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966-2001: A Theological and Sociological Study (Studies in Evangelical History and Thought; Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), 210-211.

Life in the Southern Baptist Convention

...continues to be utterly depressing, judging from this post from Wade Burleson.  Burleson is a Trustee of the International Missions Board of the SBC and a regular blogger.  He is constantly appealing to others within the SBC to be true to their Baptist identity.  Miraculously, he remains within the SBC.  But now the IMB have chosen to censure him for saying what he thinks.  To give you a flavour of life in the SBC here is a quotation from the IMB Trustees Standards of Conduct:

'Individual IMB trustees must refrain from public criticism of Board approved actions. Experience has shown that it is not possible to draw fine lines in this area. Freedom of expression must give way to the imperative that the work of the Kingdom not be placed at risk by publicly airing differences within the Board.'

Baptist?  More like crypto-facist from where I am sitting.

Baptist Quarterly: Latest Issue

Volume 42.3 of the Baptist Quarterly has just arrived.  The articles are:

Brian Haymes, "On Religious Liberty: Re-Reading A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity in London in 2005", 197-217

Haymes' article is now available to read online.  Thanks to Stephen Copson for the update.

Michael I. Bochenski, "Polish Anabaptism in the 16th Century: A Story Little Told", 218-233

R. E. Davies, "Thomas Hollis and Family: Baptist Benefactors", 234-244

Brian Haymes article, based on a recent lecture, is required reading for anyone who has only read the most famous quotations from the flyleaf of James I's copy of Helwys' book.

The issue also gives advance notice of the Baptist Historical Society Centenary Summer School to be held in Prague on 16-19 July 2008 (for information about what is happening in Prague during that month see here and here).  The theme of the conference will be 'Baptists and the World: Renewing the Vision" and Bill Leonard, Ian Randall and Toivo Pilli are already lined up to speak.

English Separatism and the Pilgrim Fathers

This theme was the focus of this morning's In Our Time on Radio 4.  It gives a reasonable overview of the main historical circumstances surrounding the departure of East Midlands Separatists for the Netherlands and from there to the Americas.  Not a mention of Baptists or Smyth and Helwys though.  You can listen to it here.  The picture is of the Mayflower Compact , signed on arrival at Cape Cod.  I hate pictures of boats.

Is Universalism the Next Big Thing?

I have often wondered about the dynamics that inform the question of which 'doctrines' suddenly become 'up for grabs' within contemporary Baptist/evangelical life.  Theological ideas that, in the past defined someone as explicitly 'liberal' become from time to time 'legitimate' areas of exploration so that to take the view that had previously been defined as 'liberal' no longer places you outside the evangelical fold but to the left-wing of it.  We have seen this happen with e.g. the issue of biblical criticism, women in ministry, social justice concerns, open theism, models of atonement.  I am interested in the question of who decides that it is now OK to talk about such things and to question established / received opinion, without getting drummed out of the brownies.

I suspect that, along with the homosexuality debate, the whole area of 'universalism' may be the next big thing.  Of course it will take a Steve Chalke or equivalent to really set the thing running, but for those who might be interested in seeing how a universalist position might be compatible with orthodox Christian belief may like to check out a long running series of posts by D. W. Congdon at The Fire and the Rose (which is explicitly theological in focus) and the ongoing series of posts by Chris Tilling here and here with more to follow (which have a more exegetical approach).  For me, there are three things in relation to the issue of which I am certain:

1.  Addressing the issue is a matter of exegesis and theology combined. Those who argue for a theological approach sometimes give the impression that, due to the ambiguity of the biblical evidence, exegesis adds little to the debate; as if Barth's theology, which tends in a universalist direction, was anything other than exegetical to its core.  Those who want to be 'biblical' about this often assume that (a) the evidence is pretty straightforward and (b) that once we have interpreted the biblical evidence that ends the discussion.  The key issue is what kind of exegesis, and it seems to me that it will always be exegesis shaped by some basic theological convictions, profoundly affected by contextual circumstances and explicitly detached from over-confident claims about what the Bible really teaches or what the authors (specifically Paul) really thought or meant.  As I argue in a short forthcoming article on women in ministry this means that, ultimately, our responsibility as biblical interpereters today is not to adopt Paul's contextually framed 'answer' to such issues, but to explore the implications of Paul's story of God's purposes in Christ for our own context.

2.  Universalism, because it is about salvation, must in the end be a matter of faith and hope and not epistemological certainty.  But faith and hope ought to be directed towards the 'end' that is the end of the gospel story, and not any other narrative.

3.  If there were to be a move towards a greater faith and hope that 'all will be saved' it would be a tremendously liberating development.  Mission could again become what it ought to be: our participation in God's saving purpose in the world, rather than our attempt to populate heaven on God's behalf by 'saving the lost'.  The church would be released to be authentically the church: the redeemed, peace-loving new humanity whose existence is in service of the reign of God, rather than its own self-perpetuation.  Complex ethical issues could be placed into their appropriate perspective: that of God's loving, inclusive purposes for the world rather than God's exclusive rule-making and enforcing.

As you might be able to tell, I hope that discussion of universalism might be the next big thing.

Papers on Baptist Identity and Ecclesiology

A recent conference, held at the Elstal Baptist Seminary in Germany, explored issues of Baptist ecclesiology and identity.  The particular focus was on the notion  of 'autonomy' of the local church and how this affects the relation between local and intermediate expressions of church (often called 'structures' - an insufficiently ecclesial word in my view).  A report of the conference can be found here.  The statement that emerged from it is here.  Best of all, the main papers given and the conference are available in .pdf (response papers can also be found here).  They are:

Are Baptist Churches Autonomous?	Nigel Wright, Principal, Spurgeon's College, London
'Counsel and Help': European Baptists and Wider Baptist Fellowship	Ian Randall, Senior Research fellow, IBTS, Prague, and Tutor, Spurgeon’s College, London
Everything Old is New Again: Emerging Church Ecclesiology	Gary Nelson, General Secretary, Canadian Baptist MInistries
Local Churches and Wider Structures from the Perspective of Reformation Ecclesiology	Uwe Swarat, Professor for Systematic Theology, Baptist Seminary at Elstal, Germany
An Historical Theologian Looks Anew at Autonomy	William Brackney, Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics, Acadia Divinity School, Nova Scotia
Models of the Church in the New Testament	Neville Callam, BWA General Secretary Nominee
Issues of Power, Authority and Interdependence from a Biblical Perspective	Christoph Stenschke, Professor, University of South Africa