In this interview, Al Mohler gets former President Jimmy Carter to acknowledge that his theological commitments are to neo-orthodoxy:
For those who think that Jimmy Carter is a "born-again" Southern Baptist should think again. I wonder why Mohler did not call Carter on this? It might be that Mohler's own reconstructionist views have compromised his commitment to the Gospel. Mohler has been known to associate with "orthodox" Anglo-Papists simply because they oppose homosexuality and abortion. He also signed the
. One has to notice the similarities between liberal social justice and "conservative" social justice when it comes to transforming society:
Mohler: I wanted to
ask you about the Bible. Just as you have become known, again, as a
Sunday School teacher, known throughout the world, and as you’ve written
so much, what do you believe about the nature and inspiration of the
Bible? How would you describe its divine inspiration?
Carter: I think allof
the Bible is divinely inspired, but it was interpreted, God’s message
was interpreted, by fallible human beings, who were constrained by their
knowledge of facts about the universe, for instance, when they wrote.
God, who created everything, knew that the size of stars and God knew
that the earth was not the center of the universe. And when the Bible
says that the stars would fall on earth as though they were little
twinkling things, obviously that’s not factual. And so I believe the
basic thrust of the Bible, the basic message of the Bible, is epitomized
in the life of Christ and in the teachings of Jesus Christ. And I also
believe that there is nothing in the Old Testament that contradicts the
basic teachings of Christ for peace, justice, humility, love and so
forth, and each person’s proper relationship with other human beings and
also a relationship with God. So I believe in the miracles of the
Bible. I believe that Jesus was come from a virgin birth. I believe
Christ died for our sins on the cross. I believe He was resurrected and
that we are promised, if we have faith in Christ through the grace of
God, that we will inherit eternal life. I believe that God loved the
world so much that He gave His only begotten Son. I believe those
things, but I know that there are some things as a scientist—my
background is in nuclear physics—there’re some things that weren’t
understood by the writers of the Bible. I just ignored those
discrepancies as insignificant.
Mohler: Years ago, in
another book you wrote that, “I now believe that even if some of the
more dramatic miracles encountered in the gospels could be untrue, my
faith in Christ would still be equally precious and unshaken.” Now I
want to note, you didn’t say they were untrue; you said if you
discovered that they were untrue, your faith would be unshaken. Speak to
that for me.
Carter: Well that’s still the case. You know, as I just described, I believe in the
miracles described in the Bible,
but even if I didn’t believe that Jesus walked on water, for instance,
or that Jesus did such certain little things, I would still believe in
Christ as my Savior. I would still try to pattern my life and my own
fallible human ways after Jesus’ life as a perfect example of the way
all of us should live—those kinds of things.
And so, Christ would still mean
just as much to me, personally, as my Savior, as my Companion, in many
aspects of my life, if He didn’t walk on water. That doesn’t make any
difference to me.
Mohler: The Bible
contains many things that, quite honestly, rub up against the
sensitivities of a modern age and require all of us to think about how
we’re going to apply the eternal truth of the Scriptures to some of the
most pressing and current controversies. The controversies over human
sexuality have been an issue. Even in just recent days, you’ve been kind
of in the headlines on that issue. What do you think about the Bible’s
normative statements about human sexuality? How should we interpret
those and apply those in the modern age?
Carter: Well I have to
admit, Dr. Mohler, that I’m kind of selective on that point of view. I
really turn almost exclusively to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who
never mentioned homosexuality at all as a sin. He never condemned
homosexuals and so I don’t condemn homosexuals. And our church, our
little church in Plains, we don’t ask, when people come to join our
church, if they’re gay or not. We don’t ordain, we don’t practice
marriage between gay couples in our church, but that’s a Baptist
privilege of autonomy of local churches. I’m against any sort of
government law, either state or national, that would force churches to
perform marriage between gay people, but I have no objection to civil
ceremonies. And so, I know that Paul condemns homosexuality, as he did
some other things like selfishness that everybody’s guilty of, and so I
believe that Jesus reached out to people who were outcast, who were
condemned, brought them in as equals and I also pretty well rely on
Paul’s writing to the Galatians that everyone is equal in the eye’s of
God and we’re treated with compassion. And I personally believe, maybe
contrary to many of your listeners, that homosexuality is ingrained in a
person’s character and is not something they adopt and can abandon at
will. So I know that what I’ve just explained to you might be somewhat
controversial, but it’s the way I feel.
I have one problem in my
political service with my faith and that is concerning abortion. I have
never believed that Jesus Christ would approve abortion and so I had to
interpret my duties as president compatible with the Supreme Court
ruling in Roe vs. Wade, but with my religious beliefs I did everything I
possibly could to minimize a need for abortion by liberalizing adoption
services and by starting a program—it’s still in existence, by the
way—called Women and Infant Children, WIC programs where, because one of
the—the key reason for abortions around the world is when a
pregnant mother doesn’t think she and her baby will be cared for. So I
did everything I could to minimize abortions because I don’t believe
that Jesus would approve of a liberal interpretation of that law.
Mohler: Well I
appreciate very much your candor, Mr. President. It’s helpful in a
conversation like this to be able to exchange not only a conversation
where we agree, but where we disagree, and I appreciate very much your
honesty in that. I want to come
back and ask you something else. I had a conversation like this with
Martin Marty, the great American church historian at the University of
Chicago.
Carter: Whom I admire very much.
Mohler: Well, and
another wonderfully gracious man. I asked him about how American, the
larger American culture, especially the intellectual elites, discovered
evangelicals. And he said, “They didn’t have to until one ran for
president.” And he pointed to 1976 and your candidacy and, of course,
the very phrase born again became so much a part of our national
vocabulary, very common among evangelicals for generations, but it
became a part of our national vocabulary because of all the secular
journalists who were scratching their head about what indeed you were
talking about. So I want to talk
about the gospel for just a moment. When you were president, you were
well-known, actually, for sharing your faith with other heads of state, a
rather unprecedented role for an American president. How would you
share your faith? How would you describe and define the gospel?
Carter: Well I did
this on several occasions; one had profoundly important significance.
The first time I did it was when I went to Poland. It was my first visit
to a foreign country and the communist general secretary of Poland, the
ruler of Poland, was an atheist. And I had a meeting with him in a
private room and afterwards he said, “Why don’t we exclude all of our
staff,” because he wanted to talk to me, and just the two of us, so we
did with an interpreter. And his brother was a devout Catholic and had
been to visit the Pope and he wanted me to explain the basic tenants of
my Christian faith, which I did to him. I don’t know what happen, but,
as we know later, the Pope himself came from Poland.
Another time I was in South Korea
and President Park, who was later assassinated, asked me about my faith
and we had a similar conversation—and I’ll abbreviate by just saying
“similar.” And he asked me if I would go get him acquainted with a
Christian in South Korea, which I did. I called one of my leading
Baptist friends and had him go see President Park.
The most significant was when I
normalized relations with People’s Republic of China in the first of
January ’79. And Deng Xiaoping came over and, when we were having our
final banquet, he said, “Mr. President, you’ve done a lot for the people
in China and you’ve never asked anything for your service. Is there
anything I can do for you?” And I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, when I
was a child I used to give five cents a week to build hospitals and
schools for those Chinese children and our number heroes that used to
come to Georgia were missionaries to China. And now you don’t permit
missionaries, you don’t permit Bibles and you don’t permit freedom of
worship. And I wish that you would reinstitute those three things.” He
said, “Let me think about it.” So the next morning, he told me, “We will
not let missionaries come back in, but I promise you that we will
authorize the distribution of Bibles for the first time and we’ll also
pass a law in China that permits freedom of worship.” So they did. In
1982, they did that. I was over in ’81 as soon as I left the White House
and they were really distributing Bibles, so now, as you know, the
fastest growing number of Christians on earth is in China and partially
because of that conversation I had with Deng Xiaoping.
Mohler: Mr. President,
in terms of the gospel itself, one of the issues you’ve written about
of late has been your concern about how it’s interpreted. In terms of
the question, “Must someone come to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ
to be saved?”, and in a couple of your books, you suggested that you’re
not ready to say that, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
What is your understanding of the gospel and the necessity of personal
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Carter: I believe it
is necessary and I teach that every Sunday in my classes that it is
necessary for full salvation and acceptance before God to believe in
Jesus Christ. The question then comes up, though, “However, how about
the people that don’t know about Christ? How about the ones to whom
Christians, evangelicals, have never reached or given them the message?”
And I don’t feel constrained, Dr. Mohler, to condemn those people as
lost or as going to hell, and I rationalize it, perhaps, in using
theological terms, in using biblical terms, by Jesus’ admonish that we
should not judge other people, but let God be the Judge. So, in a
quandary like that about people who don’t know about Christ, what would
be their fate? I’m inclined to believe that they will not be condemned
or punished by God.
Mohler: Well that is
an ongoing issue of deep concern to Christian and I think there’s
probably not a more important question that we could talk about, just in
terms of helping not only the listeners to this program, but all who
would be within our influence, to know that the gospel is, I believe, to
be revealed in Scripture to be the only message that saves. And you’ve
been a proponent of missions and I think back to when you were very
active in the Southern Baptist Convention and what was called Bold
Mission Thrust back in the early ‘70s, so you have kind of
simultaneously held this position where you’re not certain that those
who have not heard the gospel will be lost, but, at the same time,
you’ve been a proponent of sending missionaries. You just talked about
your experience talking to the Chinese leadership about this.
Carter: Well the Bold
Mission Thrust program was began by a conversation between me and Jimmy
Allen, who at that time was the president of the Southern Baptist
Convention, and I spoke at the Convention that year when I was
president. It was in Atlanta, I believe, and I was on the way to South
America. Well I’m not saying that we don’t all have a mandate; that was
the last thing that Christ told us really was that we should spread the
word about faith in Him in Judea and so forth and throughout the world.
And I believe it’s very important for evangelism to take place, but when
Christians fail to be evangelicals and don’t reach out to people with
whom I deal every day, in Ghana and in Nigeria and in Burkina Faso and
so forth in Africa, I just can’t bring myself to believe that they will
be condemned and sent to hell because no evangelical has ever been able
to reach them and tell them about Christ. But I don’t worry about it
because I believe that God and Christ, obviously, will deal humanely
with those people and will not send them into eternal punishment.
Mohler: Mr. President,
you have been known as a Southern Baptist from the moment you were
really born and grew into boyhood there in Plains, Georgia, and then
beyond when you were in the presidency, the very same thing. There’s no
doubt that there has been some change in that relationship over the last
several years as change has happened in the Southern Baptist
Convention, and I just feel like, given my responsibility, I should turn
to you and give you the opportunity to say what you would wish to say
to the Southern Baptist Convention as we are a denomination that you
have known throughout your entire lifetime.
Carter: Well I was a
Southern Baptist until the year 2000 and I was on the Brotherhood
Commission. I played an active role in a top echelon of the Southern
Baptist Convention without having an official office. I really became
concerned about the basic thrust of the Southern Baptist Convention on
two or three issues that happened in Florida in the Convention when it
was there, in particularly, the status of women. I feel very strongly,
in the eyes of God, women are equal to men and to choose the
particularly passages that say that women have to be subservient to men
and that they should not teach men and boys, I think it contrary to the
basic thrust of what Christ meant and said. I know that you have a
different belief in that and Southern Baptists do as well. Now there are
some seminaries that don’t even let a woman profess or teach boy
students in a class and others that won’t let women speak from the
pulpit and things of that kind. I believe in complete equality. My wife
happens to be a deacon in our little church in Plains that I’ve
described already. We have two pastors—one is a man and one is his wife.
They both are ordained and I participated in the ordination, so I
believe that throughout religious faith that women should be treated
equally with men. And, here again, I use the word rationalize pretty
often when I’m talking to you, at least. I think in Romans 16 when Paul
described all the leaders of Christian world in those days, he mentioned
a number of women who held exalted positions within the early Christian
church, so that’s been the main problem that I have with the Southern
Baptist Convention. Had it not been for that issue, I would be much more
accommodating with the Southern Baptist Convention.
I might say that a few years ago,
about five years ago, I felt a need to reach out to the Southern
Baptists. No, in 1990—longer than five years ago—I had an assembly of
about forty leading Southern Baptists at the Carter Center. Seven of
them had been or would be presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention
and we tried to see how we could bring all the Baptists back together in
a spirit of harmony. We had good luck while we were at the Carter
Center, but that was kind of undone later on and, to my grief. About
five years ago, I started to say, we started a move called “A New
Baptist Covenant,” primarily designed to end the distinction between
black and white Baptists and so we had an assembly in Atlanta, with
which you may be familiar. We had about fifteen-sixteen thousand people
come, about half black and half white, together. And we also reached out
to Hispanics in Texas and other places and also to some Asians. Now and
so I’ve tried the best I could to bring all the Baptists back together
and I think that the World Baptist Assembly is an umbrella under which
we could all serve. We at our New Baptist Covenant, which I’ve been one
of the leaders of it, we always take the position that we should just
assume that all of us believe that we are saved by the grace of God,
through our faith in Jesus Christ. And in detailed issues like
homosexuality or status of women or the autonomy of individual churches
or the leadership of a pastor leader or a servant, those kind of things
be relegated to a completely secondary position and bring us Christians
back together, but so far that has not been possible. And so I’m grieved
about it and I don’t claim that I’m right and other people are wrong,
it’s just the way I feel.
Mohler: Mr. President,
I think when we talk about some of these things as people who have been
members of the same denomination and of churches, as I think my boyhood
church was probably very, very similar to your boyhood church,
sometimes talking about these things can be far harder than if we were
talking to a Muslim or a Hindu or someone far beyond this and I just
can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that we’re having this
conversation and I want you to know that Southern Baptists admire you
for your public leadership, for your boldness to share the gospel, for
your leadership in the Civil Rights Movement when, quite frankly, you
and many others were right when we were wrong. And I say we as a
denomination. I was very wrong, but I am an inheritor of the same
responsibility. I’m very thankful for the work of the Carter Center and
you’ve largely, single-handedly, eradicated Guinea Worm Disease, which I
find to be one of the most remarkable things that any human being can
say. You’ve been President of the United States, you’ve received the
Nobel Peace Prize, but, in terms of the way human beings live,
eradicating a deadly disease is just one of the most amazing things that
could be said. I also recently noted that you and Mrs. Carter have been
married for over sixty-five years and in an age in which, quite
frankly, so many of our public leaders model anything but that kind of
faithfulness, I just want to tell you, I greatly admire how you’ve
demonstrated that marital faithfulness together. And I want to tell you
what a great honor it’s been to have a conversation like this and you
and I have exchanged ideas at a distance. I’ve written some articles
that I felt like I needed to write; you published a very candid open
letter to me in the Atlanta Journal Constitution a few years ago, but
the great honor is knowing that we can actually have a conversation like
this and we can stay by talking about our shared love of the Bible and
then talk about where that same Bible and our understanding of it leads
us also to differ. These are important things for us to talk about and I
want to tell you how much I appreciate you joining me today on Thinking in Public.
Carter: Well that
means a lot to me and I hope that sometime you and me might get together
for more private conversation and see what we can do to pull all of our
Baptist Christians together. That would be a real honor and pleasure
for me.
Mohler: Well, Mr. President, it would be a great honor for me.
Carter: Thank you. I
remember very well when you were editor of the Christian Index and how
much your writings and your editorials meant to me personally and to my
family. And I wish you well in everything you do.
Mohler: Those who
study the American presidency know that in a conversation like this, you
could talk about historical events of tremendous consequence and limit
the conversation to history. You could talk about the great social
developments and movements of the twentieth century. Movements that had
such a direct connection to the life of Jimmy Carter. You could talk
about geopolitics or economics or many other things, but it is
fascinating that in this conversation, the focal issue was theology.
Specifically, the Bible. That makes this conversation all the more rare
and all the more historical.
In all honesty, this is one of
the most interesting conversations I have ever had. It is destined to be
that way talking to a former president of the United States. There are
so few of them, and the opportunities for such conversations are so
rare. I am very thankful for this conversation, and in particular terms,
I am thankful I had this conversation with former president, Jimmy
Carter. There have been several twists and turns in terms of the last
several years in which I have found myself at odds with the former
president, often engaged in public controversy over matters that both of
us consider to be of very grave importance. When you have that kind of
public disagreement, much less with a former president of the United
States, there are risks in any kind of conversation. That is what makes
me all the more appreciative of President Carter’s willingness to enter
in to this conversation and for his remarkable candor and honesty
throughout the course of the conversation. President Carter is man of
intellectual integrity. He is very clear about what he believes and what
he doesn’t believe. And for me, the most important aspect of this
conversation is what it tells us about the trajectory of the twentieth
century. Not so much in terms of geopolitics but in terms of theology.
Theology amongst American evangelicals, American Protestants of the
twentieth century. The story of Jimmy Carter is also an inextricably
related to that story. It is fascinating that this conversation was
premised upon a love for the scripture, and that love for the Bible is
very clear in President Carter’s life. He is indeed the world’s most
famous Sunday school teacher. He did as President of the United States
invoke the scripture often, carried the scripture with him. He was
publicly identified with the scripture in a way that was courageous and
frankly, grating on the intellectual elites.
But the story of Jimmy Carter,
the very story that he narrated in this conversation, also takes us back
to what the sociologists call, “lived religion.” We can go back as
Jimmy Carter tells his story to a young boy in a local church, a rural
church in a deep southern state, the state of Georgia. A Southern
Baptist church, where he did indeed develop a great love for the Bible.
But as the twists and turns of this Bible become very apparent to us,
Mr. Carter also came to an understanding of the scripture in the terms
of its authority and inspiration that was well, at odds with where the
church had historically affirmed those very truths. For instance, it’s
clear that Mr. Carter holds to what in the twentieth century would be
defined as a new orthodox understanding of scripture. When he speaks of
the scripture containing truth, and when he clearly speaks of the event
of reading the scripture as being an act of revelation, he is speaking
the kind of language that was associated with Carl Barth and so many
others. There were many complimentary things that the new orthodox said
about scripture. But they did not affirm that every single word of
scripture was verbally inspired, something that scripture claims of
itself. Mr. Carter, in the midst of this conversation, made some very
interesting statements. For instance he said that as a scientist trained
as a nuclear physicists, there were some things in the Bible that the
writers of the Bible just didn’t understand. He said, “I just ignored
these discrepancies as insignificant.” In other words, he holds that the
authors of scripture were not only inspired by God and the Holy Spirit
in some sense, but they were also trapped within their own systems of
meaning. Now, that is a different understanding of inspiration than what
we have held that there is very clearly a divine inspiration that means
that the Holy Spirit guards the human authors of scripture from all
error. That is a crucial distinction. But it has to do with the question
also, as Mr. Carter intimated, that it was the men who were inspired
more than the words who were inspired. Now, when you start to look at
that you realize that the product of divine inspiration is there very
much at stake. Mr. Carter teaches the scripture with enthusiasm. When he
holds it in his hand, he refers to it as the Word of God. But as he
made clear in this conversation, he does not believe that is a word that
is in terms of plenary verbal inspiration, true in every one of its
words. But he also believes greatly what is found in the Bible. He says,
for instance, that he does affirm that miracles of the Bible. I was
very encouraged by his very bold affirmation of believing in the virgin
birth and in other super natural events recorded in the Scripture. But
then he makes the odd statement that if those things were not true, his
faith in Christ would still be intact. That is a separation of history
and theology that I believe is destructive of the gospel. The gospel is
predicated upon certain historical events, without which, there is no
gospel. Jesus Christ is not who scripture reveals Him to be. Now, that
leads to other aspects of the conversation that were truly revealing
having to do with how President Carter deals with issues of human
sexuality and sexual ethics. Very candidly, and even courageously, given
his own intellectual integrity, he spoke of his selectivity when it
comes to those passages. Now, we need to be very honest and say that
sometimes, evangelicals who hold to the inerrancy of scripture are
inconsistent and often selective where we ought not to be. But that
means that we need to check ourselves against that kind of selectivity
and make certain that we are employing a hermeneutic that is consistent
with our understanding of the inerrancy and infallibility of the Word of
God.
When it comes to discussing the
exclusivity of the gospel, President Carter said a couple of very
interesting things. For instance, he speaks very specifically of the
fact that he believes that a personal faith and knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ is, as he said, necessary for full salvation. For full
salvation and acceptance before God. He went on and said though,
“However, those who never hear will be judged upon their faithfulness in
some sense to what they do though.” And he said that “He will not
consign them to hell.” Well, the good news for both Jimmy Carter and
Albert Mohler is that neither of us is the divine judge. However, I
believe that scripture very clearly does say that there is a dual
destiny. The differentiation of which has to do solely with whether one
has come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle
Paul in Romans 10 says that “All who call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.” But then it makes very clear that those who are saved
are those who indeed hear the gospel and respond to it and believe.
“Faith comes by hearing,” says Paul, “and hearing by the word of
Christ.”
In other words, what we have in the case of President Carter and in this
very remarkable conversation is a trajectory that is all together
familiar to those who know what happened during the twentieth century in
the different kinds of developments in terms of Biblical inspiration,
Biblical authority, denominational life, and the public understanding of
scripture. President Carter wants to say many very true things about
scripture. He very clearly believes that the scripture reveals divine
truth, but he doesn’t believe that every word of scripture is inerrant
or inspired. And he believes that the divine authors of scripture,
though inspired, were trapped within the worldview of their times, and
thus susceptible to at least some degree of error. He suggests that when
it comes to human sexuality, even though he says straight forwardly
that the apostle Paul speaks very clearly to homosexuality, listing it
with other sins, he says that he does not want to judge homosexuals on
that basis.
Jimmy Carter is a remarkable
human being, and again, I have really appreciated the conversation with
him. I appreciate it even more reflecting upon the actual content of
that conversation; a conversation that dealt with some of the most
important and consequential theological issues that any two men could
discuss together. Furthermore, I am very thankful that President Carter
was willing to enter in to the public nature of this conversation, and
even as he will judge my words, well, inevitably in conversation, we
judge each other. And as I evaluate President Carter’s testimony about
the scripture, I have to say that it tells a story that desperately
needs to be told. A story that is altogether very common in then
twentieth century of a young boy who was raised with in the piety and in
the warm hearted, evangelical fervor of a Southern Baptist church in
the south, but who did not come to a deep understanding of the
scripture’s authority in terms of its diving inspiration, its verbal
inspiration, and its inerrancy. A young man who was caught up in the
twentieth century social transformations and who clearly understood that
social change was not only needed, it was a mandate. And one of the
issues that happened during the twentieth century is that so many
Christians, young Christians who saw deep social ills and signed on to a
progressive understanding of politics and social change, also began to
attach a progressivist understanding to theology and indeed to the
scriptures. And what we see is that in the case of so many Southern
Baptists and mainly Protestants of the twentieth century, is that they
did basically adopt something like a new orthodox understanding of
scripture. And that is where we see the problem in this conversation.
And that is where we also see the opportunity that the conversation
affords. President Carter was very candid and honest about his
understanding of the scripture, and I need to be equally so. I believe
that the scripture is the inerrant and infallible Word of God. I believe
that God inspired men, yes, and the writers of scripture as scripture
says of itself, to write in such a way that they were preserved and
protected from all error such that when scripture speaks, God speaks.
That puts a constraint upon us that does not allow the kind of
selectivity that we could just claim as an interpretive principle. Mr.
Carter is a very skilled and very serious interpreter of scripture. He
goes to commentaries and he reads, and as he teaches his Sunday school
class, he wants to speak of what the text says. But what the text means,
can’t be separated from what the text actually states and the divine
authority with which the texts speaks. Jimmy Carter is the world’s most
famous Sunday school teacher, and in his most recent book and in so many
others, he deals with the scripture. And by and large as evangelical
Christians, committed to the inerrancy of Scripture would read those
comments, they would find tremendous areas of commonality. President
Carter mentioned early on in the conversation that even where there are
issues in which we indiededly differ, there are vast areas in which we
are in agreement. That’s also true, but the issue for us, the difficult
issue, is where there is disagreement. Not where there is agreement. And
that’s what makes a conversation like this truly important. We are
called to be thinking in public. In order to discuss these things in
such a way that we speak with great respect and we speak with
appreciation for each other, for the appreciation of the opportunity for
a conversation about what really matters. What matters not only to us,
but to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That trajectory that is
represented by Jimmy Carter, that trajectory that piotous religion in
the south in the twentieth century meets head on with the great
theological transformations that came to the end of that century,
especially in that second quarter and continue now into the twenty-first
century. The issues of Biblical authority and the verbal inspiration of
scripture. The issues of human sexuality and the exclusivity of the
gospel, of the authority of scripture and the veracity of all that it
contains the miracles and everything else. All of these are still live
issues, just like the great social and political issues of the twentieth
century are still with us, so also are the theological issues, and that
is why this conversation is important not only to look to the past, nor
even just to think about the present, but to aim to the future. It’s a
great challenge and opportunity to speak to a former president of the
United States, an 87 year old man who continues to be active in public
life and to speak and to write of the things that are most important to
him.
I mentioned in the conversation
that I first heard the names of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich from
President Carter. It was in the course of his 1976 Presidential
campaign. I was 16 years old, and I had never heard those names before. I
went to look them up. Now, at age 16 I did not find out a great deal
about those two men, but as I studied theology as an academic
discipline, I certainly did. It’s interesting of course that he would
site those two theologians as most formative, in terms of his life and
his thinking. Reinhold Niebuhr was a very complex figure, a titanic
figure of Protestant theology of the twentieth century. A man who did
indeed stress the reality of human sinfulness, but he did so primarily
in terms of social structures. Not in terms of individual
responsibility. There is a great question as to whether Reinhold Niebuhr
actually believed in a personal God even though he did believe in a
force of divine justice. Now when we come to Paul Tillich, there is an
altogether different picture. We are rather certain that he did not
believe in a personal God. In fact, he made very clear that he did not.
He did not believe in a personal God, a revealing God, a God who speaks
in scripture, but rather he believed in a great force, a ground of
being. He merged existentialism with theological language. In other
words, Paul Tillich was one of the most radical theologians of the
twentieth century, and of course he gave birth to other radical schools
of theology that followed. Now, the interesting thing to note here is
that if you were a young man, a thinking young man, a thinking young
protestant in the twentieth century during the decades when Jimmy Carter
was coming to his intellectual maturity, if you were certain that vast
social change needed to take place, you often looked to those leaders
who were riveting the intellectual super structure for those changes.
Unfortunately, on the theological side, it was often the liberal
theologians who were right on some of the most important social issues.
And altogether, too many young evangelicals attached their theological
allegiance to liberal theologians who were right on other issues but
deeply wrong on areas of theology. This lead to a trajectory where as
there were a good many people who were raised in the piety of the
Southern Baptist Convention and other denominations in the United
States, but whose minds became very much attached to and even dependent
upon theologians whose own theological systems were radically at odds
with those who they had known as children. One of the things that we
need to note is that theology matters. Isn’t it interesting that this
theme that theology matters comes up in a conversation with the man
whose chief claim to fame, notoriety and historical significance, is
that he served not as a theologian and chief, but as Commander in Chief,
as President of the United States.
One of the most difficult things
to do in terms of a Christian conversation is to disagree, and to
disagree publicly. That’s why I so respect President Carter’s
willingness to enter in to this conversation, and even as it was an
opportunity for him to speak of his deepest convictions, it is also an
opportunity for us to consider what these things mean, not only to the
church in terms of its past, but in terms of its present and future. I
deeply appreciate the willingness of President Carter to enter into this
conversation. As I said in the conversation, I greatly honor him for so
much that he has been able to do in the world. Eradication of disease
and the alleviation of human suffering. I am thankful for the boldness
of his Christian witness when he was President of the United States.
As I said in the interview, I
greatly respect President Carter for all of the good things he has done.
Eradication of disease, so many things he has done since he has been
out of office. I also respect the fact, I have to say, that even when I
disagree with him, whether on matters theological or matters political
and cultural, here is a man who is in his ninth decade of life, is still
actively engaged in a way that is not only serious but indeed
courageous in terms of the fact that he articulates his beliefs, he
stands behind them, and he is willing to stand before the watching world
and stay on his own two feet for all that he believes. This is also the
kind of conversation in which, to be honest, I face a great personal
challenge. And that personal challenge is to be reminded again and again
of what it means for personal conviction to intersect with an entire
web of personal relationships that are important not only to me, not
only to a local church and to a denomination, but to a nation and to a
watching world. A conversation like this is a matter of stewardship. It
has given us a lot to think about. And as we think about these things,
my greatest concern is that we would be faithful to the full authority
and truthfulness of scripture, to the integrity of the gospel, the faith
once for all delivered to the saints. And along with President Carter,
who speaks very candidly of his conviction, it reminds us to speak with
equal candor of our own. There is a lot to learn from each other in a
conversation like this. That is why it is important to think and to
enter into conversation with people whose beliefs are not identical to
our own. And the great stewardship of course, is not only having the
conversation, not only thinking, but thinking in public.
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