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I’m not making it personal. I was merely trying to clarify your perspective to get some idea of what you might believe or might have been taught. I readily admit I’m Southern Baptist. More particularly I’m a traditional Baptist in the mold of Charles Spurgeon or John Bunyan or John Gill or William Carey or James Petigru Boyce. I’m a modern Baptist who believes in the Doctrines of Grace like Al Mohler, James White, John Piper, John MacArthur and Paul Washer. I grew up in Tennessee, mostly under the ministry of Dr. Adrian Rogers, and I have a degree from a Southern Baptist University. I come from a long line of Baptist preachers, professors, Sunday School teachers, missionaries, and deacons. One wing of my family was made up of faithful conservative Presbyterians and they influenced me as well. I hold the Bible to be inerrant, infallible and authoritative. That’s who I am and that is my perspective.

It sure seems that Peter considered Paul’s letters Scripture.

“And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” (2 Peter 3:15-16)

It’s hard to say exactly what Paul believed about his writings. However, he certainly seemed to recognize his authority.

“I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me.” (1 Corinthians 4:14-16”

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1)

In 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 we find that Paul claimed spiritual authority by means of the Holy Spirit.

9 But as it is written, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

I wasn’t trying to beat up on you, but your comment conveyed a dangerous attitude toward the Scriptures. As I explained, I’m a Southern Baptist. I was born in the 60’s and was saved in the mid-70’s. During that era, Southern Baptists were fighting over the Bible and my pastor was a leading figure in the fight on the conservative side. I had seminary professors in my family who were leading the fight on the opposite side. So you might say I had a front row seat to what has been called “The Battle for the Bible.” Some held my high view of Scripture, while others merely believed the Bible contained the word of God and it was up to you to find it. Eventually my denomination split, largely over this issue. My own family split to some degree, too. While I was always a conservative, I had friends, family, and professors on the liberal side. I have watched people I know well slowly drift away from the Christian faith altogether. Time and again their slide started with compromise on the authority of the Bible—the whole Bible. Some left their longtime Baptist churches and joined mainline Protestant denominations and others went the way of Rome.

Now that I’m older I look back and recognize that fight over the Bible, and the fallout from that fight, was one of the defining events in my life. It set the course of my life and by extension my children’s lives. So this isn’t a small matter at all.

I say with Christ, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” (John 17:17)