So, there were no liberals in the SBC??

Those who decry the Conservative Resurrgence in the Southern Baptist Convention often claim that there were no liberals in the seminaries. Perhaps they forget about someone like Professor John Durham. You see, in the Summer 1984 copy of The Review and Expositor (Vol. LXXXI, No. 3) published by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville there was an article written by John I. Durham who was, at that time, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at the Southeastern Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina titled "The King as 'Messiah' in the Psalms.".

In the article, the oh so well educated Dr. Durham said "Few biblical concepts have fallen prey to this tendency [the tendency of 'discrediting of an ancient idea by imputing to it a meaning it did not have in its own plane of existence any more frequently than has the Old Testament concept of messiah, particularly in its occurrences in the Psalms...To deal with the most frequent misunderstanding first, the one connected with the 'width' of the concept of messiah in the Psalms, we must first note that messiah in the Psalms refers always and only to the ruling king, the 'Davidic' king who was Yahweh's appointed and so anointed messiah representative. These references are not intended as predictions of Jesus who is the Christ (Cristos, which also means anointed), though they have very often been taken as such, beginning as early as the New Testament period." In other words, Mr. Durham says that when the New Testament writers say that the Psalms are referring to Jesus they are WRONG.

Further, he says that any such intepretations are based on "ignorance, prejudice, eisegesis, undisciplined piety, and over-used imagination, and so are wrong and unjustifiable reasons." In other words, if you believe that the Psalms are talking about Jesus when they mention the Messiah, you're stupid.

Although I no longer go to a Southern Baptist Church, I am thankful as a conservative, Bible believing Christian that there were those in that denomination who were willing to stand up to the liberalism that was running rampant in the seminaries at the time.