Random Thoughts About Ralph Elliott
By David Flick

While sitting in Sunday School class and listening to the S.S. teacher expound on a lesson from Genesis 3, I did some serious thinking. The teacher is a layman and a deacon. I love him very much. He is a wonderful man. He was doing his job as best he knew how. My problem was that I couldn't agree with what he was teaching. Furthermore, I couldn't agree with the writer of the lesson material. I was thinking, "How on earth did I manage to escape the skewed, literal fundamentalist understanding of the Bible?"

Our class uses VENTURES, from the LifeWay Family Bible Study Series. The title of the lesson was, "SIN: What went wrong?" The background passage was Genesis 3:1-24. The life question for the lesson was: "Why is there so much wrong in the world?" The question was never answered. Not for me, anyway. I did not participate in the discussion. They discussed trivial stuff such as:

A)  Why snakes don't have legs,
B)  The answer to how a snake could talk to Eve,
C)  How the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden tasted,
D)  Why childbirth is painful for women,
E)  "Work" in the Garden was "pleasurable" before Adam & Eve were expelled from the Garden,
F)  Genesis 3:15 was the first prophesy of Jesus Christ, and
G)  Genesis 3:16 proves that men are to rule over women, (Or to quote the author of the lesson material, "The relationship of equality that existed when God made woman from man changed into one of servitude.")

During the worship service I couldn't concentrate on the sermon for thinking about the odd manner which Genesis 3 had been discussed. I thought to myself, "I sure wish someone in the class had read Ralph Elliott's book, The Message of Genesis." But I had maintained silence because if I had interjected my thoughts there would have been a major stir in the class.  Ignorance, I suppose, is bliss. I know it is for the fundamentalists among us.

The Message of Genesis was already a Southern Baptist "banned" book when I entered the ministry. The book was written in 1961. By 1963, it was banned and considered outright heresy for Southern Baptists. I entered the ministry in 1964 and began pastoring my first church in 1966. Young ministers are strongly influenced by their peers and pastor friends. I was no exception.

Early in my ministry, I had heard many wild stories about "godless liberals" teaching in our Southern Baptist seminaries. My first mentors, as well as some of my ministerial student peers, led me to believe that Ralph Elliott was a godless liberal. Although I knew about the book, I refused to read it because it was said to be packed with heresy. I didn't read it until in the early 1980s. I believed my mentors and peers were right about  Elliott. I remember some of the things that W. A. Criswell said about the so-called liberal seminary professors.

Most of the people who hated Ralph Elliott never read his book. It is one thing for a person to criticize a book which he has read and digested. It is quite another thing for a person to criticize a book that he has never read. As I reflect on it, I doubt that the mentors and peers who told me that the book was full of heresy ever read the book. Fundamentalists are quick to believe hearsay. If they believe a "liberal" teaches or supports an idea foreign to their views, they will jump on the bandwagon and assume a mob mentality to destroy the perceived enemy. In the early 1960s, Ralph Elliott happened to be the enemy.

I have two hunches. One is that probably 95% of the people who impugned Ralph Elliott have never read his book. The other is most of the of the 95% simply believed the of prominent preachers (W. A. Criswell and K. Owen White) who railed against the book. In February of 1961, White wrote an angry article ("Death in the Pot") that was published in a number of Baptist papers. Criswell called him an "infidel." Paul Pressler's polemical letter to the deacons of Houston's Second Baptist Church, ("Report to Second Baptist's Deacons," Second Baptist Church, Houston, TX) strongly denounced Dr. Elliott as a Bible scholar.

Morris Ashcraft wrote the forward to Ralph Elliott's book (The Genesis Controversy)  which discussed the controversy surrounding the writing and banning of the book. Ashcraft wrote:

"The critics of Ralph Elliott were diverse in nature. Some were  students whose ultraconservative background prompted questions when Elliott taught them Old Testament study methods which had been almost universally accepted decades before. Others of them were disappointed preachers who had believed that they would be on the faculty or staff of the new Southern Baptist seminary in Kansas City. Some were opportunists. Some were just fundamentalists who are easily threatened. It should be pointed out that Elliott’s critics worked in shifts. One individual or group would chase him for a while and then drop out to be replaced by a fresh group. On many occasions, Professor Elliott and President Berquist were physically as well as emotionally exhausted from trying to meet with new individuals and groups with whom they had to work through the entire controversy again and again." (The Genesis Controversy, p. x)

I wish I had known in the 1960s what I know today about Ralph Elliott and his book. I am ashamed to say that I believed the radical critics of man and the book. That was then. This is now. I believe Ralph Elliott was unmercifully crucified by the radical fundamentalists. His career as a professor in Southern Baptist seminaries was cut short in untimely fashion. Southern Baptists should be everlastingly ashamed of the way they treated him. The fundamentalist treated the good and godly professor as though he was an evil theological villain who did not believe the Bible. Such is not the case. I have highest respect for the man. I believe his treatment of the book of Genesis is far more plausible than many of those put forth by literalists.

History will be kind to Ralph Elliott. History will not be kind to those who destroyed his career as a Southern Baptist professor. History will record that his ugly dismissal from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was one of the first nails in the coffin of Southern Baptist seminaries insofar as being sound  institutions of higher theological education. Ralph Elliott's dismissal was the beginning of the dumbing down of Southern Baptist seminaries. Gone are the days when Southern Baptist ministerial students can receive a genuine, well-rounded theological education. Presently, the six seminaries are little more than propaganda institutions that  produce cookie-cutter fundamentalists who learn only what the Southern Baptist fundamentalist leaders what them to know.

-- August 19, 2002

 (This article was written for  BaptistLife.Com Discussion Forums)