I have the honor to serve this year as president of the International Society of Christian Apologetics (ISCA). Our annual meeting is going to be very accessible to many in the Southeast, at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC, Fri-Sat., April 10-11. The theme is “Inerrancy and Evangelical Identity.” How essential is a full view of biblical authority to who we are as Evangelicals? It is a doctrine that is under renewed assault, even from within what purports to be Evangelicalism.
We are going to have a stellar line-up of plenary speakers to address such an important topic.
First we have as a one-two punch two giants from the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land and Paige Patterson, who will talk about the struggle for inerrancy in that denomination and what we can learn from it for the struggles ongoing in other Evangelical churches and organizations. Nobody has had more personal experience with such things than these two. Land will talk about the history of the struggle for inerrancy in the SBC, and Patterson will focus on the practical lessons to be learned from it. This will be balanced by rising star Sarah Geis, Doug Groothuis’s protégé at Denver Seminary, who will speak on making the case for inerrancy, not so much to the church as to the world. Their titles are as follows:
Richard Land, “The Southern Baptist Convention, 1979-1993: What Happened, and Why” (To learn more about Richard Land, go to http://www.drrichardland.com/about. )
Paige Patterson, “The Consequences of Revolution: The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention: A Case Study” (To learn more about Paige Patterson, go to http://www.paigepatterson.info/. )
Sarah Geis, “The Apologetics of Inerrancy: Making Our Case to the World” (To learn more about Sarah Geis, go to http://justifiedfaith.com/author/scgeis/. )
Then I will do a presidential address on “Discerning the Times: Why We Lost the Culture War and How to Make a Comeback,” in which I will address the related area of how subjectivist hermeneutics undermines biblical authority and our ability to apply it to the world around us.
I think this is a great opportunity that many of us should take advantage of. Registration is available at
http://www.isca-apologetics.org/annualmeeting. I hope to see many of you there!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
R. A. Forrest Scholar & Prof. of English, Toccoa Falls College
107 Kincaid Dr., Toccoa Falls, Ga. 30598, 706-886-6831, ext. 5213
President, International Society of Christian Apologetics
Web Site: http://doulomen.tripod.com
Blog: https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com
E-Mail: dtw@tfc.edu
“To think well is to serve God in the interior court.”
— Thomas Traherne
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