Faith & Message

W. T. Conner kept the balance between God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom. While God alone saves, Conner guards human volition, response, and self-determination against false concepts of a deterministic, fatalistic, magical, and non-ethical deity. Man, called by the Holy Spirit, is free to receive Jesus, the Son of God, whose mission it was to seek and save the lost.

While some Calvinistic authors seek to portray W. T. Conner as affirming the five major points of their system, a close reading of his work shows that he is broadly Protestant and deeply evangelical. Even though Conner adheres to a nuanced doctrine of unconditional election, his teaching on the biblical doctrine was merely single, not double, and never attributes to God’s will man’s disobedience o...

W. T. Conner saw God’s purpose of Salvation evidenced in three distinct movements: (1) religious history, (2) Old Testament teaching and history, and (3) the life of Jesus Christ. Discover how God’s fixed purpose, in three separate parts, draws to complete realization in Christ, the Messiah.

W. T. Conner agreed with Princeton theologians that there was nothing deeper in the mind and purpose of God than His purpose to redeem. This was evidenced in that God’s final revelation in Christ as Savior and Lord matched purposefully with man’s greatest need , salvation from sin.

W. T. Conner traced the biblical concept of death from the Law to the Gospels and from the Epistles to the Apocalypse. He understood sin’s penalty as spiritual death and natural death as the summation and consummation of natural evil.

In his treatment of sin and the suffering it causes in the world, W. T. Conner shows God using sin as part of his redemptive purpose in Christ. See how W. T. Conner reads the Bible as a story of God redeeming sin and suffering through the blood of the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world.

Building on Christ the cornerstone as his foundation, W. T. Conner anchored his view of social justice in theology. Sin is the source of all social injustice. Christ is the source of all social reconciliation, first between man and God and then between man and man.

Challenging the progressive philosophy of his age, W. T. Conner teaches from Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome that morality without religion is a falling tower doomed to degradation. Renewed spiritual life in God is the only remedy for man’s immorality.

If, as the Doxology Hymn reminds us, all blessings flow from God and sin separates us from God, the separation of sin naturally results in alienation from God. W. T. Conner taught that the goodness of God is not in a person apart from spiritual recreation in Christ.

W. T. Conner appealed to general evangelical theological consensus when making his case for infant salvation. While Conner does not cite his influences, it is likely he referred to the theologians he often cited like the Scottish Congregationalist P. T. Forsyth and fellow Southern Baptist E. Y. Mullins. Conner did not cite a biblical proof text, but relied on God’s character as revealed in Christ...

Like E. Y. Mullins before him, W. T. Conner nuances the traditional understanding of original sin and total depravity. Conner - while describing children with the label “sinner” - refrains from teaching inborn guilt for Adam’s sin, arguing that slavery to sin’s evil forces and the natural human inclination toward sin more closely mirror Scripture’s explanation of mankind’s sinful heredity.

The Apostle Paul taught that no one is righteous, because all have turned away from God. W. T. Conner described this as the universality of sin.

W. T. Conner highlighted Jesus’ and Paul’s emphasis on the servitude of sin. He pointed to John 8:32-36 and Romans 6-7 as the basis for his discussion.

W. T. Conner did not teach that sin was constituent in human nature but inherent in it. It wasn’t the extent of sin that poisoned human spiritual life but the nature of sin that cut humans off from God.

W. T. Conner described human sin as one’s guilt in relation to a holy God. Study Conner’s view of human accountability before God in view of His illuminating revelation.

Southern Baptist Theologian W. T. Conner taught that unbelief was at the heart of sin. Selfishness, Conner reasoned, was at the heart of unbelief. He taught that people could finally reject the Spirit and blaspheme God, calling evil good and good evil.

Based on his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans, W. T. Conner linked sin with man’s knowledge of God’s revelation . God’s moral law shines on human transgressions and the grace of Christ lights up the darkness.

Sin is rebellion against the will of God. W. T. Conner starts his study of the doctrine of sin with an understanding of man’s willfulness. Conner distinguishes his teaching from mechanistic theological determinism, providing instead for a real will in man.

Along with A. M. Fairbairn, W. T. Conner stood for the orthodox Christian doctrine of God’s eternal fatherhood and Christ’s eternal sonship based on historic Christian revelation. To Conner, God’s revelation trumps human theory.

In W. T. Conner’s estimation, a person is one who is able to give themselves and share themselves lovingly with others. This is the way Conner applied the word person to the Trinity.

W. T. Conner went out of his way to defend against tritheism. This view of the Trinity emphasizes the separation within the Trinity to the point of devaluing the unity of God within the Trinity.

Conner takes his stand on the Trinity as the true method of interpreting the Christian facts. He stands by this truth, stating that the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit is as much the work of God as is the work of the Father.

There cannot be three individuals who are infinite and absolute in nature. Much of the popular speaking and writing on the Trinity comes dangerously close to tritheism, as if God were three individuals gathered around a table in agreement.

Modalism paints Father, Son and Spirit as three modes or representations of God. Why, asks Conner, would God choose to be represented in only three ways rather than more or less than three unless His was a triune nature?

Was Jesus Christ only a man or is He eternal belonging within the unity of the Godhead? Jesus said “I and the Father are one.”