Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 01:2 (Summer 1958)
Article: Ethics For Conservative Baptists
Author: Kenneth Knappen

CenQ 1:2 (Summer 1958) p. 7

Ethics For Conservative Baptists

Kenneth Knappen

Assistant to the General Director Conservative Baptist Association of America
2561 North Clark Street, Chicago 14, Illinois

Ethics describes right behavior in a given situation. “As a man thinketh, so is he,” declares the Scriptures. Therefore if a man is taught that ethics is relative, humanistic and opportunistic, his whole moral fiber will be affected. If, however, he is taught that ethics is absolute, authoritarian, and unselfish, his life will reflect an opposite morality.

The founding fathers of the Conservative Baptist Association were concerned about ethics. Men of conviction had to separate themselves from conventionism, because conviction is incompatible with inclusivism. Jesus clearly taught the exclusive nature of truth in Matthew 6:22, 23; John 14:6; Luke 11:23, and many other places. For this reason, Conservative Baptists identified their affiliates as churches who had voted their agreement without mental reservation with the declaration of faith, and declared that the purpose of the new Association was to provide a fellowship for those who were not content to “walk in fellowship with unbelief and inclusivism.” The Association went on record as receiving the Scriptures as the Inspired Word of God and as sole authority in matters of faith and practice.

Conservative Baptists shun the questions and doubts of humanism in favor of the certainty of the “Word of God as a valid expression of ethics, and determine the right and wrong of each situation in the light of the truth of the Word. Conservative Baptist ethics are Bible-based. A humanistic approach to ethics carries the elements of its own destruction. Either it loses its morals, or it becomes a religion in itself. Tragically, sometimes both result. In Communism we have a clear example of a humanistic morality losing its morals. In the Social Gospel of the Liberals we have illustrated a humanistic ethic becoming a religion in itself. How true the now famous words of “Christian Century” a generation ago, “The God of the fundamentalist is one God, the God of the Modernist is another....” These have “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” Romans 1:25. Anti-nomian fundamentalists and neutralist neo-evangelicals exhibit an unhealthy zeal to “re-examine” certain- aspects of authoritarian inspiration. This attempt at a synthesis of Revelation with rationalism is less humanistic than the philosophy of August Compte or John Stuart Mill in degree only! It equates the mind of man ...