Recently controversial Southern Baptist 'heretic' gently returns

Miguel De La Torres returned heretically Wednesday to the Associated Baptist Press opinion section. He was there to amplify and clarify arguments which in February ignited a Southern Baptist blog firestorm.

De La Torres performance gave heretics a good name. He explained that he didn't call Jesus a sinner for His response to the Canaanite woman, who in Matthew 15:21-28 sought to have her daughter freed of a demon. Equally important in our view, De La Torres said:

Many also thought I was being heretical by implying that Jesus learned something from the Canaanite woman’s persistence in demanding aid from him. But do the Gospels themselves not tell us that the fully human Jesus, as he grew into his divinity, “increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God” (Luke 2:52)?

You may recall that passions ran high. The original piece was called “tripe,” “heretical trash” and so on. Which our "heretic" touched in good-humored passing. He reserved his time Wednesday for more serious considerations, closing with the suggestion that "Jesus is not afraid of our honest inquiry." And with humility asked "if you are willing to be the sister or brother in Christ of a heretic dog like me?"

Read it all here.

Baptist bloggers object to the question: Was Jesus was a racist?

Miguel De La Torre ignited a Southern Baptist blog firestorm Monday with an iconoclastic reading of Matthew 15:21-28. That passage has Jesus responding to a Canaanite woman's plea that He heal her child. In the key phrase Jesus says:

I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not good to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs.

Jesus' comparison of the woman of color to "dogs" strikes De La Torre and many before him [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] as an arguably racist remark.

His conclusion in the Associated Baptist Press (ABP) opinion piece, not a new one to the world of progressive Christianity, strikes the fundamentalist bloggers as saying that Jesus committed a sin: racism. Yet Jesus is God incarnate, argues J. Thomas White of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Perfect. Sinless. Some therefore suggest that De La Torre is heretical when he writes:

To deny this woman a healing and call her a dog reveals the racism his culture taught him. But Jesus, unlike so many within the dominant social structure of today, was willing to hear the words of this woman of color, and learn from her.

Passions run high. They call the piece "tripe," "heretical trash" and so on. Some swear off the ABP for presuming to publish a "false teaching." They wonder at the competence of the ABP editors and want the piece deleted. Only a couple gently defended open debate.

Quietly reasoned explanation of the text, the sort of explanation which might be heard by skeptics and others whom our angry ministers would regard as unsaved, was rare.

Should we wonder whether there is a relationship between this occasional Baptist blogger preference for heated expostulation and the report in this year's National Council of Churches' Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches that Southern Baptists are declining in number?