April 17, 2000
Mohler criticizes Mullins' influence
and doctrine of soul competency
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___An "autonomous individualism" has "infected" the Southern Baptist Convention through the doctrine of soul competency and driven Southern Baptists of the 20th century away from biblical authority, Al Mohler said in a Founders' Day address at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary March 30.
___Mohler, president of Southern Seminary and the SBC's most
Al MOHLER
visible spokesman on national TV, critiqued the influence of E.Y. Mullins, the seminary's fourth president, who served from 1899 to 1928. Mullins was the most visible Southern Baptist spokesman of the early 20th century, a shaper of Baptist theology and the driving force behind creation of the Baptist Faith & Message doctrinal statement in 1925.
AND SOUL COMPETENCY
Mullins scholars see Calvinism behind Mohler's speech
Who was E.Y. Mullins?
___Mohler currently serves on a committee charged with proposing revisions to the Baptist Faith & Message. Those revisions, which have not yet been enumerated publicly, are to be considered by messengers to the SBC annual meeting in June.
___Soul competency is a belief that individual Christians are responsible to God for reading, understanding and living out God's word. It implies that no other human authority can dictate how an individual interprets Scripture or relates to God.
___Both Mullins and Herschel Hobbs, chairman of the committee that revised the Baptist Faith & Message in 1963, called the doctrine of soul competency the most distinctive belief of Baptists. "The Baptist Faith & Message of Southern Baptists is based upon the competency of the soul in religion," Hobbs wrote in a 1971 book explaining the doctrinal statement.
___In his address, Mohler said Mullins turned Southern Seminary and the SBC off the course charted by the convention's and seminary's founders by making personal experience more important than biblical authority.
___"In Mullins' theology, we see a shift from biblical revelation to religious experience as the starting point," Mohler said.
___This, he explained, was a "revolution from the influence of James Petigru Boyce," the seminary's founder and Mullins' mentor.
___Though such a belief "did not make Mullins a theological liberal," it did link him with the modernists of the early 20th century, Mohler said, also citing various other ways Mullins was influenced by "liberals" in the North before assuming the seminary presidency.
___This view has been strongly disputed by Russell Dilday, distinguished professor at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary and former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dilday, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Mullins, has countered Mohler's previous comments on Mullins in speeches and writings.
___"To suggest Mullins makes experience his source of authority or puts it above the Bible ... is an inaccurate reading of Mullins," Dilday said. "He makes it very clear the Bible is the ultimate authority.
___"Mullins does give great emphasis to Christian experience in his thought, but the view of James Leo Garrett is more accurate in pointing out that he used it primarily as an apologetic tool, not as the source of Christian truth nor as a universal organizing principle," Dilday said. "Mullins is clear on the fact that the Bible is the authority, not experience."
___Another scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Mullins concurred with Dilday's critique.
___"Mohler does not understand Mullins and thus distorts his teaching and discredits his leadership and influence," said Dwight Moody, dean of the chapel at Georgetown College, a Baptist school near Lexington, Ky.
___Mullins is perhaps best known for crafting what Baptist historian Bill Leonard has called the "Grand Compromise." This compromise created a doctrinal statement and denominational environment in which Baptists of diverse theological persuasions worked together for the advance of missions and evangelism.
___"Doctrines were articulated in such a way as to make room for congregations that represented a variety of diverse theological traditions. Each could believe that its way was the Baptist way," Leonard wrote in his 1990 book, "God's Last and Only Hope."
___"This was less a synthesis than a Grand Compromise based in an unspoken agreement that the convention would resist all attempts to define basic doctrines in ways that excluded one tradition or another, thereby destroying denominational unity and undermining the missionary imperative. Doctrinal positions were articulated in terms general enough to unite as many Southern Baptists as possible in fulfilling the missionary task."
___The Grand Compromise was destined to fail, Mohler asserted in the Founders' Day address.
___"This Grand Compromise did not last and could not last," he said. "I do not question Dr. Mullins' motives, ... the sincerity of his heart, the clarity of his vision. ... Yet there is a warning to us in the intentional shift Mullins made away from revelation as the sole source of religious authority and Christian theology and a shift to experience; for as we have discovered, human experience is no solid ground for establishing truth."
___Leonard, a former professor at Southern Seminary who now is dean of the new divinity school at Wake Forest University, admitted the Grand Compromise "may not seem appropriate now, but it was one way of trying to reconfigure and re-energize a divisive and defeated people post-Civil War.
___"To take the Grand Compromise out of its historical tradition and try to judge it almost a hundred years later may be appropriate contemporary theology, but it is bad history," he said.
___Though Mullins' emphasis on soul competency had a positive influence in denying "external human authorities," it had a long-term negative effect as well, Mohler said.
___"The result was an autonomous individualism that has infected the Southern Baptist Convention and now widespread has infected evangelicalism to this day."
___Southern Baptists today should "look with a critical eye and judge ... what should be kept and what should be left behind in the legacy of every historical generation," he said.
___Mohler's comments on Mullins' legacy and the influence of soul competency on Southern Baptists came on the heels of similar yet stronger statements published in the Winter 1999 issue of the seminary's theological journal.
___"For over 70 years, Southern Baptists have harvested the shallow discipleship and vapid theology that resulted from sowing Mullins' theological seeds of experience," wrote Sean Michael Lucas, a seminary archivist and associate director of the seminary's Center for the Study of the Southern Baptist Convention.
___"It is time to return to the emphases of the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention, trained in the hardy doctrinal tradition of the Princeton theology," Lucas continued. "If we do, perhaps God would be pleased to grant us a new Reformation that will lead to a new Renaissance."
EXPERIENCING GOD has also come under attack as doctrinally weak.
___In this vein, Lucas also blasts the "Experiencing God" discipleship materials produced by LifeWay Christian Resources as "imbalanced" and having "little doctrinal content."
___Although "Experiencing God" has been the best-selling product of the SBC publisher in the last decade, it wrongly follows Mullins' emphasis on personal experience, he suggests.
___And incorrect discipleship will lead to incorrect theology, he wrote. "It would not be a far leap from discipleship with little doctrinal content to salvation with little orthodox doctrinal content."
___Jimmy Draper, president of LifeWay, said he has not read the Southern Seminary article challenging "Experiencing God," but he has heard similar criticism from others.
___While he doesn't want to get into a fight, he said, charges that LifeWay is promoting experience as more important than Scripture are misguided.
___"My own experience or anybody's experience always is measured by the word of God. But there are people who seem to feel God doesn't reveal anything to us.
___"To imply that 'Experiencing God' says experience is more valuable than the canon of Scripture is simply not true," Draper said. "Such a claim takes 'Experiencing God' out of the context in which it exists.
___"When you got saved, you had an encounter with God. You experienced it. That wasn't just doctrine. 'Experiencing God' is about helping people come to grips with God's purpose and will for their lives. Anybody who tries to simplify it to a doctrinal treatise does not understand it."
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!
