Benajah Harvey Carroll

Benajah Harvey Carroll (December 27, 1843-November 11, 1914) was a Baptist pastor, theologian, teacher, and author.

Carroll was born near Carrollton in Carroll County in north central Mississippi, one of twelve children to Benajah Carroll and the former Mary Eliza Mallard. His father was a Baptist minister. The family moved to Burleson County, Texas in 1858.

Carroll served in the army of the Confederate States of America from 1862-1864. In 1865, at the age of twenty two, he converted to Christianity. In 1866, he married the former Ellen Virginia Bell. After her death, he married the former Hallie Harrison in 1899.

Carroll was a denominational leader both in the Baptist General Convention of Texas (of which he was a leading founder) and the Southern Baptist Convention. Much of his rise to prominence developed through proving himself a formidable foe in controversy - including debates with Texas politicians, standing for board policies and convention authority in the Hayden controversy in the Baptist General Convention, and opposing the president of Southern Seminary during the Whitsitt controversy at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. While Carroll had Landmark tendencies, he was not the champion of the Landmark Movement some have made him to be. Of the four major controversies involving Landmark ideas, Carroll sided against the Landmarkers in three of the four. Only in the Whitsitt controversy did Carroll side with Landmarkers and, for Carroll, that controversy was about trustee authority, not Landmark beliefs. Carroll's theology can best be described as moderately Calvinistic, postmillennial, and thoroughly Baptist. His postmillennialism was associated with neither the social engineering of Walter Rauschenbusch, nor the expectation that every soul in every community would be converted. Instead, Carroll held such a strong confidence in the work of the Holy Spirit, Christ's Vicar, that churches who accepted their role as God's instruments on earth would not ultimately fail in the Holy Spirit's mission to bring about the conversion of the vast majority of humanity, at which time Christ would return to fully institute His kingdom on earth. Carroll vehemently attacked Roman Catholicism for the papal claim that usurped the Holy Spirit's role as Christ's representative, dispensational premillennialism for their pessimism about the success of the Holy Spirit and the success of churches, Campbellism for their reliance on human apprehension and denial of direct revelation, and modernism for the over-reliance on scientific method to the exclusion of Divine revelation and historical evidence. He led in founding the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas in 1908. He served as president of the seminary until his death.

Carroll's younger brother, James Milton, was also an important Baptist leader in Texas. His son, B.H. Carroll Jr., would later become Tarrant County school superintendent and the namesake of the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas.

Some contend that Carroll's affinity for cigars was originally captured in the painting of him that hangs in the Rotunda at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. According to popular legend, the painting showed him holding a cigar, that was blackened out due to pressure from fundamentalists who were uncomfortable with the presence of the cigar. Popular opinion about the propriety of cigars forced Seminary administrators to have the painting changed. According to the research of Dr. Karen Bullock, a former church history professor at the seminary, the earliest photos of the painting do not appear to be any different than the present form of the painting (without a cigar.)

Carroll published 33 volumes of works, and is best known for his commentary, "An Interpretation of the English Bible". Benajah Harvey Carroll died November 11, 1914, and is buried at the Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.

Quotations

"Keep the Seminary lashed to the Cross. If heresy ever comes in the teaching, take it to the faculty. If they will not hear you and take prompt action, take it to the trustees of the Seminary. If they will not hear you, take it to the Convention that appoints the Board of Trustees, and if they will not hear you, take it to the great common people of our churches. You will not fail to get a hearing then." --deathbed commission to Lee Scarborough, his successor as president of Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.

"These modern devotees of higher criticism must wait each week for the mail from Germany to know what to believe or preach, to find out how much, if any of their Bibles remains." -- "Theological Seminaries and Wild Gourds"

"The modern cry 'less creed and more liberty'is the degeneration from the vertebrate to the jelly fish, and means less unity and less morality, and it means more heresy."-- "An Interpretation of the English Bible"

"It is a positive and hurtful sin to magnify liberty at the expense of doctrine." -- Ibid.

References

*"Fighting the Good Fight: The Life and Work of B. H. Carroll", Alan J. Lefever, Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1994
*"A Texas Baptist Power Struggle: The Hayden Controversy", Joseph E. Early, Jr., University of North Texas Press, 2005; ISBN 1-57441-195-0
*"Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, Vol. 1", Broadman Press, 1958
*"Pneumatology: A Unifying Theme of B. H. Carroll's Theology", George B. Macklin, Ph.D. Diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas: Roberts Library, 2007.

See also

*Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
*B. H. Carroll Theological Institute
*List of Baptists
*List of preachers