(We are grateful to Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, for making the following report available for the readers of Ecumenical Trends.)

Sixteen scholars and church leaders appointed by the Interfaith Evangelism of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic bishops have been meeting in conversation for five years. The purpose of our conversation has been to understand one another better through honest mutual exchange, and to clarify our mutual understandings of the nature and authority of the Holy Bible.

The first report of our conversation is directed to Interfaith Evangelism of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist convention and the Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic bishops. While we share a great deal in our Christian faith concerning the authority and truth of the Bible, this report is not intended as a confessional statement either for our churches or from the participants in the conversation. It is an account of the topics we have discussed, the processes we have followed and the clarification of terms at which we have arrived. While fully cognizant of our serious differences, our goal has been truth and clarity in charity. Our common and ongoing quest for the truth of Christ has deepened our appreciation for one another and strengthened our love for the Holy Scriptures.

Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics believe in the Triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we confess the full deity and perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. We find these truths of faith in God's written Word, the Sacred Scriptures. While our two traditions differ with regard to the extent of the biblical canon, we cherish the Sacred Scriptures, use them regularly in our worship and devotion, and seek by God's grace to understand them more clearly. On the basis of these core convictions, we addressed important issues on which Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists have differed historically, including the inspiration and authority of the Bible, its inerrancy and infallibility, the role of the Church in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and the nature and significance of historical-critical approaches to the study of the Bible.

We have met at both Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist institutions , and at each gathering we have shared together in the reading of Scripture and in common prayer. In the context of patient listening and candid sharing with one another, we have each read and reported on documents in the two traditions that illustrate our points of agreement and disagreement. Among the documents we have studied are the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum, 1965), Baptist Faith add (sic) message (1963), the instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993), The Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy (1978 & 1982), the Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith of the First Vatican Council (1870), and the Report of the Presidential Theological Study Committee (1994). Our sessions also included study and exegesis of selected biblical texts. Included in this document is a list of key terms that we formulated with a view toward clear articulation of our points of agreement, our points of disagreement, and issues still to be considered.

We have learned a great deal from each other. We will continue this conversation on other themes that concern our Christian faith. We hope that this report will be useful to teachers and students of our Christian faith, and thus contribute to better mutual understanding and deeper devotion to the Bible. (End of quoted article)

In the List of Terms that follows, while differences are noted, their importance is made out to be only peripheral and minimal. Catholics admit that the Word of God "contains revelation, while both Scripture and Tradition witness to revelation." They are very direct in their assertion of papal infallibility, and repeat the Roman Catholic claim that it was the Reformers who rejected the Apocrypha rather than the Roman Catholic Church that added these books.

While it also notes differences in biblical interpretation, if the "other themes that concern our Christian faith" are dealt with in the same cavalier fashion, we must question the supposed "conservative take over" of the Southern Baptist Convention. While they are to be congratulated on their strong stand on biblical inerrancy, this noble truth becomes empty if united with a compromise with the most anti-Christian Cult in the world.

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