Adrian Rogers, former President of the Southern Baptist Convention and long-time Pastor, published What Every Christian Ought to Know in 1999. This book is certainly intended for a broad popular audience rather than scholars and theologians, but that need not dissuade academics from taking the time to read it as it weighs in at a very reasonable 272 pages - many of which are spaced out with subsections and scriptural quotations.
Dr. Rogers addresses many important Reformed topics in his book including "The Word of God", "Eternal Security", "The Will of God", and "Faith and How to Have It". It is striking that although Dr. Rogers was quite critical of some Reformed doctrines such as Total Depravity and Limited Atonement, he is firmly on the side of the Reformers in the topics that he does address in his book.
"These hath God married and no man shall part:
Dust in the Bible and drought in the heart."
-From What Every Christian Ought to Know
In his chapter on the Word of God, Dr. Rogers states firmly, "The greatest enemy of the Bible is the so-called Christian who simply ignores the Bible and disregards it." There is no hesitance on his part to attribute the salvation of man to the hearing and reading of the Word of God. He might have well-named this chapter Sola Scriptura. He steps out of his realm of expertise, however, and begins making an apologetic for the Bible that is undermined by the fact that some of his arguments are broadly known to be untrue. For example, he uses the example of Christopher Columbus not knowing that the Earth was spherical despite the Bible saying that it was so in Isaiah 40:22. Unfortunately, this is not true. Columbus did know that the earth was a sphere, as did nearly everyone else in the 1400's.
In his description of the Bible, he describes the Bible in a way that Reformed Christians would agree with in saying, "The Bible has one theme - Redemption; One hero - Jesus; One villain - the devil; One purpose - the glory of God." Bearing in mind that this book is written for a popular audience and even an introductory level at that, stating that the purpose of the Bible is the glory of God is a rather unpopular view in modernity. "What? You mean it's not about saving me? Loving me? Showing me how special I am?" Right, the Bible is not about you. It's about God.
"The faith that fizzles before the finish
had a flaw from the first."
- From What Every Christian Ought to Know
Despite Rogers advocating in favor of eternal security, or the Perseverance of the Saints as the Reformed Community would call it (or Preservation of the Saints as R.C. Sproul would say), Dr. Rogers is typically Southern Baptist in his refusal to recognize any method or standard of recognizing that someone is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He begins the chapter on eternal security with a statement that would serve to make many false-converts believe that they have no reason for fear, saying, "You think you know somebody who used to be a Christian and is no longer a Christian. Maybe he never was a Christian, or maybe he still is a Christian. You are not equipped to judge." That's nonsense. Of course we are equipped to judge. Jesus gave very clear instructions on how to judge a tree by its fruit. The entire letter of 1 John is written so that we may judge whether we (and our neighbors) are in the faith.
Dr. Rogers shows that he knows this principle to be true in experience, without having committed it to mind, in the very next sentence of the book. He goes on, "Many people look like Christians and act like Christians, but they've never been saved." How would he know? After all, in his thinking, "we are not equipped to judge." It is natural to the American culture to refuse to admit that there are recognizable traits in Christians or markers of the work of the Holy Spirit because to admit that would be to admit that most "Christians" are in fact not Christians.
Yet, Dr. Rogers does go into much detail in the subsection of this chapter entitled "God's Sovereign Predestination" which examines Romans 8:29-30. This is a hearty task for a non-Calvinist, as there is no room left to retreat away from Predestination in that passage. Dr. Rogers does not try to hide from it, to his credit. Rather, he says firmly, "Do you know what 'predestined' means? It means your destiny is already determined." I imagine that this subsection would have been easy for him to cut from the final proof before publication, and have to give him his dues for leaving it in.
"I'm not trusting in my feelings,
I'm trusting in the Lord."
-From What Every Christian Ought to Know.
Admittedly, when approaching Dr. Rogers' chapter on faith, I was pleasantly surprised to find that his elaboration on procuring faith was properly God-centered. Many Southern Baptist pastors act and preach as though faith is something man-contrived and conjured from within like courage. Rogers goes to great lengths to dispel this error, and stands at direct odds with the "Word of Faith" movement (even naming the "name it and claim it" teachings as false) by firmly stating, "Faith is not positive thinking." In his elaboration on this, he touches on the Doctrine of Total Depravity without apparently noticing it. While many false-teachers would have people to "look inwardly" to find "their truth", Rogers says that "if you look into yourself and you're trying to think positively, actually you're going to find that rather than encouraging you it's going to discourage you. After a while it's going to dawn on you that you don't have what it takes, and you will be discouraged." Now Adrian, why would you say that we "don't have what it takes" if you don't believe we are inherently depraved? Again, Dr. Rogers shows that he knew this truth experientially, but had not made the leap of endorsing the view theologically.
Dr. Rogers stands in contrast to the vast majority of Southern Baptists in his elaboration of Romans 10:13-14 when he says, "In order to have faith, you must hear from God. You cannot know the will of God by guessing at it. This verse says that faith comes. You don't generate it; it comes. God gives faith... It is granted to us to believe. God gives faith. No one can believe God unless God enables him to believe." Wow! That is astonishingly Calvinistic for a non-Calvinist to voluntarily write.
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