TOM NETTLES

READY FOR

REFORMATION?

Bringing Authentic Reform to Southern Baptist Churches

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Copyright © 2005

by Tom J. Nettles

All rights reserved

Ten-Digit ISBN: 0-8054-4059-3

Thirteen-Digit ISBN: 978-0-8054-4059-1

Published by Broadman & Holman Publishers

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 270

Subject Heading: CHURCH RENEWAL-BAPTISTS

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture text is quoted from the New American Standard Bible, © the Lockman Foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977; used by permission. Other versions are identified as follows: Moffatt, The New Testament, a New Translation by James Moffatt. Copyright © 1964 by James Moffatt. Used by permission of Harper & Row, Inc. and Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. NEB, The New English Bible, © The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970, reprinted by permission. NRSV, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, used by permission, all rights reserved. Phillips, reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. from J. B. Phillips: The New Testament in Modern English, revised edition, © J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. RSV, Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973.

With deep appreciation for their scholarship, genuine piety, love of truth, honest historical methodology, and encouragement to me as a historian, I dedicate this book to the late Drs. Robert A. Baker and W. R. Estep.

Acknowledgments

I thank Len Goss and his helpful and encouraging colleagues at Broadman & Holman. A casual inquiry by him at a Sunday morning worship service led to the completion of this project. The people of Broadman & Holman have indicated a desire to encourage ongoing reformation in Southern Baptist life and were willing to give this book a chance to do that. I hope they will not be disappointed.

Several friends have read the manuscript and given helpful suggestions about form, style, and substance. Among them are Tom Ascol, friend and faithful steward of the gospel for decades; and Peter Beck and Jeff Robinson, astute and aspiring students and future scholars. They have given helpful suggestions in both form and substance. The book sounds a surer and more affirming note because of their observations; its weaknesses may be attributed only to me.

I have learned through more than three and a half decades that I accomplish nothing without the encouragement and helpful involvement of my lovely and beloved wife, Margaret. She gives space, exhortation, personal interest, and enchantment to the day-in, day-out plodding of research and writing. She manages a home with consummate skill in a way that frees the mind from clutter and clatter.

Though all that I have written manifests in many places the personal weaknesses, ...