Burleson's proof of inquisition

His accuracy questioned, pastor/blogger Wade Burleson published a transcript today demonstrating that the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) inquisition against which he warned, was indeed at hand.

A refined taste for Protestant theology is required to see how, in the course of a tape-recorded interview, SWBTS chancellor Paige Patterson confessed that he did indeed wish to winnow all of the Calvinist professors out of his staff.

To the untutored ear, the key statement sounds like a Christian divinity school throwaway line:

Southwestern will not build a school in the future around anybody who could not look anybody in the world in the eyes and say, "Christ died for your sins."

Patterson is conversing with theological illuminate. however, and they know the targeted Calvinists would not say that.

Calvinists believe (oversimplifying) some sinners are damned by their failure to repent. Thus Christ did not die for them. As you can see. For his death did not save them.

So a Calvinist would say, as Burleson explains:

Christ died for sinners. Do you know yourself to be a sinner and in need of a Savior? If so, Christ died for you.

That distinction is made by the tulip Calvinists whom Burleson is defending as part of his larger defense of doctrinal diversity among Southern Baptists.

Amid his demonstration that he was both honest and factually correct in his warnings of a looming (perhaps now abandoned) anti-Calvinist inquisition at SEBTS, Burleson does make his larger intention clear:

. . . It is the essence of five-point Calvinism, and these are the people Patterson wishes to purge from Southwestern. If Southern Baptists cannot see that the purging in the Southern Baptist Convention continues, and that anyone who doesn't agree with a particular ecclesiological, soteriological, pneumatological and eschatological ideology of those currently in charge and their vocal sychophants, then we are in a very dangerous place as a cooperating convention of autonomous churches.

Burleson is then resisting SBC's destructive consolidation into a narrow group of what former Biblical Recorder Editor Tony Cartledge has called Batholics and Cathists.

That grinding consolidation, and fallout from the running battle of conservative takeover. are already doing the denomination harm.

Diversity is winning hearts and minds, and in addition, Burleson's opponents are finding it difficult to persist with the argument that further harm is just fine, thank you.