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Dr. Steve Holmes

Although I have ‘befriended’ Dr. Steve Holmes for a while now on Facebook, I have realised only now that he has a theological blog. Mea culpa.

I have met Dr. Holmes in the late nineties and the first years after 2000, in the research seminar at King’s College London, where the head of the theology school there, the late Colin Gunton, allowed me to attend and even invited me to read a paper once. Steve was a lecturer there at the time.

Steve Holmes is now Senior Lecturer at the School of Divinity, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is also an ordained Baptist minister (you may find HERE more details about him.

In order to convince you that it is worth browsing through his blog, I offer to you here a fragment from a post on a controversial ecclesial matter among Romanian Baptists, that of the ministry of women. It deals with the decision of the Baptist Union in Great Britain of fully accepting the ministry of women in church, while not alienating those who believe otherwise.

The BUGB affirmation of the ministry of women 2: practicality

The BUGB Council decision was not to walk apart from those who cannot accept the ministry of women; rather it was to be more intentional about affirming the Union’s support of the ministry of women. If this does not mean exclusion, the question has rightly been asked, what does it mean? What difference can this make on the ground?

One way of thinking about this, it seems to me, is in terms of a hierarchy of doctrinal truths. We might distinguish between four levels in which a doctrine might fall:

A. If you do not believe this, you are not adequately Christian;

B. If you do not believe this, you are not adequately Baptist;

C. If you do not believe this, your position is eccentric within the Baptist community;

D. You can believe any way you like about this.

Now, it is important to realise that we will have different estimations of what belongs where (a point that, being missed, often leads to simple incomprehension in ecumenical discussion). Let me offer for example, though, Trinity and Christology as class-A doctrines, and believers’ baptism and congregational government as class-B. The interesting distinctions come further down. Read on…

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This is Steve’s second post on this topic. The first one could be found HERE. Enjoy!

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