Dockery calls for consensus on primary theological issues

JACKSON, Tenn. (BP)--Southern Baptists need to build consensus and forge a united identity centered on the one true Gospel, David S. Dockery writes in a booklet entitled “One Gospel: Toward a Southern Baptist Consensus.”

In the booklet, Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., calls for the unity of the church and doctrinal integrity. Union trustees unanimously endorsed Dockery’s initiative at their Dec. 1 meeting.

“I think our historical amnesia creates theological and biblical problems, so I wanted to try to frame the discussion historically and then offer a theological exposition of the Gospel around which we can unite,” Dockery said. “I think there are growing anxieties about different emphases within the Gospel across Baptist life. Our goal at Union is to be agents of grace and agents of reconciliation.”

Dockery said Southern Baptists need to recognize that various perspectives regarding the doctrine of salvation have been present since the early days of the 17th century, long before the Southern Baptist Convention existed. He also said it’s unlikely, apart from God’s intervention, that Baptists are going to come to unanimity on some positions, which he thinks are secondary matters.

“What I wanted to do was to call us back to a primary focus on the Gospel itself and understand those areas where we have strong agreement about the sinfulness of humanity and their lostness apart from Christ, that our salvation is found in Christ alone,” Dockery said.

Though Southern Baptists probably won’t agree on every point of doctrine, Dockery wrote the booklet as a way to build unity around areas where Southern Baptists can agree and work together for the good of the Gospel. He also emphasized that Southern Baptists should be unified against certain heretical teachings, such as universalism.

In a chapel service at Union Nov. 17, Dockery encouraged the university community to take the lead in building consensus among Southern Baptists.

“I invite us to move from controversy and confusion to a new consensus and take a step back, not just to commit ourselves afresh to missions and evangelism, as important as that is, but to commit ourselves first and foremost to the Gospel, the message of missions and evangelism, the message that is found only in Jesus Christ and His atoning death for sinners,” Dockery said. “I trust that we can hold hands together for the good of the Gospel beginning here at Union University, which can bring a fresh breath, a fresh wind of God’s Spirit across Tennessee Baptist life and across the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Dockery traced his own experiences growing up as a Southern Baptist in the 1950s, when being Southern Baptist carried a cultural and programmatic identity no longer seen today. Instead, in recent years, Dockery said the Southern Baptist Convention has become a gathering of loosely-connected groups -- including fundamentalists, evangelicals, revivalists, purpose-driven churches, quasi-charismatics, culture warriors and Calvinists.

Dockery acknowledged that tension may exist between some of the groups just as tension exists in some basic Christian doctrines. But he said tension doesn’t have to lead to division.

“It is possible to hold hands with brothers and sisters who disagree on secondary and tertiary matters of theology and work together toward a common good to advance the Kingdom of God,” Dockery said. “But we need to be of like mind on first-order issues, issues such as the authority and truthfulness of the Bible, the deity and humanity of Christ, the Holy Trinity and the exclusivity of the Gospel.”

--------
I posted this Tenn. (BP) article in its entirety because I feel so strongly that this is exactly the message that is needed from every seminary and seminary president affiliated with our convention! Amen brother Dockery!

In fact, I feel so adamant about the conduct of a certain Dean at Liberty University who has been doing just the opposite, and has with reckless abandon been sowing the seeds of division within the convention, that if any seminary our university is unwilling to indorse the spirit of Dockery’s booklet and is unwilling to police the conduct and comments of their own staff, then we as a convention should seriously consider if we can afford to continue a relationship with these men and these institutions.

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? (James 4:1)

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. (1Cor. 1:10)

Greg Alford