Nothing But The Blood
To Southern Baptists, “The book of Common Prayer” is a mostly unfamiliar object. Many years passed in my life before I heard of such a book. I first encountered the Book of Common prayer in a visit to an Episcopalian Eucharist service.
The closest thing we baptists have to a common prayer book is probably our hymnal with its responsive readings and the many beloved hymns it contains.
Quite memorable from the days of my youth are the many “blood hymns” such as “Are You Washed In the Blood”; “There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood”; “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross; and “Nothing But the Blood”.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
As I thought more about Christian Theology (and the Baptist flavor of Christianity), I realized that “Blood Theology” was not for me. A discussion of blood theology will have to be in another writing. However, it has occurred to me that some of these hymns can keep their attraction for me … if I treat blood as a metaphor for “love”. If we choose to use this substitute, we get “Nothing but the love of Jesus” which is acceptable to me – and perhaps to others who struggle with theology associated with blood.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you…” John 13:34
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Union University was, when I attended, a moderate Southern Baptist 4 year college. In the departments of mathematics and other sciences one could discuss and listen to a variety of viewpoints without name calling and without insinuating certain viewpoints would doom one to eternal hell. My professors gave me the invaluable gift of critical thinking and demonstrated the Love of God in their character and in their actions.
When the fundamentalists took over the Southern Baptist Convention and gutted the seminaries, we were left with underwhelming scholarship. Dr. Al Mohler, current president of the Baptist seminary in Louisville, is on record as stating that anyone who believes that “creation” and “evolution” can be reconciled is neither a good Christian nor a good scientist. Baptist leaders like Dr. Mohler promote laughter among scholarly critics. Did we learn nothing from the Galileo episode? Christians finally, after hundreds of years, allowed the Bible’s description of the sun going around the earth to be interpreted poetically rather than literal true science. I have read the first chapter of Genesis many times and appreciate it as a beautiful poem describing the power of God and the majesty of creation. To reduce it to a nonsensical, juvenile scientific explanation of the universe being formed in seven 24 hour periods in an unlikely sequence of magical tricks seems misguided and falls short of appreciating the wonder of our universe. To rigidly insist on such an understanding is ignorant and pathological to intelligent Christianity.
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When I was young (less than 20 years old) Southern Baptists had among their common beliefs three ideas that became very precious to me. These beliefs were “Priesthood of the Believer”, “the Competency of the Soul”, and “the Separation of Church and State”. It saddens me to have watched these core beliefs become eroded to the point where I often felt that perhaps I am the last Baptist.
It further saddens me to watch the Southern Baptist Convention morph into a wing of a Political Party and to give support to the notion that only conservatives are “true Christians.” It is abundantly clear to me that Jesus was a Liberal.
Of further interest to me is the strong thread (though a minority one) of universalism in Christian (and particular in Primitive Baptist ) theology.