Was A. T. Robertson a conservative Baptist?
By R. L. Vaughn

      The name of A. T. Robertson is probably almost immediately recognized by older Baptist preachers, and probably most seminary Greek students and scholars. He was a great Greek scholar, but I do not see his theology as thorough-going conservatism (or even thorough-going Baptist). Robertson taught for nearly 40 years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Concerning creation and evolution, he said the following to his students.

“Give Haeckel a primordial germ and let it be charged with potency to make the universe and he will do the rest. Give them a God to start with, only don’t call it God. Evolution, I am willing to believe in it, I rather think I do, but not in atheistic evolution. I take not a primordial germ, but God and start with Romans I, that the things around me are enough to prove God. They can not prove God was not before matter. I can not prove that he was. Lincoln at Hampton Roads Conference said: ‘Write ‘Union’ at the top, and I don’t care what you write under it.’ I say write God at the top, and what if he did use evolution? I can stand it if the monkeys can. They [The] thing that differentiates you from a monkey is that you have a soul. If he did do it that way, he still did it.” (pp. 76-77)

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“The Bible opened with the picture of a Garden. However man got in it, – evolution, I don’t know – they had fellowship with God.” (p. 175)

      Changing the biblical statement that God put or placed man in the Garden to a weak and watery “however he got in” is not conservative (nor even Baptist in my understanding of the orthodox beliefs of true Baptists). A man who does not know how man got in the Garden may be qualified to teach Greek, but he is not qualified to teach the Bible.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul...And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Genesis 2:7, 15

And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:2

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New Testament Interpretation (Matthew – Revelation) Notes on Lectures of Dr. A. T. Robertson, 1931 - via baptistsearch.blogspot.com - Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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