Al Mohler on Heresy: Let’s show humility…sometimes

Al Mohler’s anticipated response to the latest theological square-off concerning technical points of Trinitarian doctrine among evangelical academics is finally here. One theologian promoted with pleasure Mohler’s latest piece:

Mohler’s statesmanship is specifically mentioned.

Yes, Mohler indicates more than once—not including his title—humility remains a key factor in these sorts of theological exchanges. While it’s true there’s a danger in ignoring real heresy on the one hand (Liberals do this), there exists a second danger like with the boy who cried wolf.

Some genuine doctrinal disagreements have nothing at all to do with the line between orthodoxy and heresy.

Consequently, according to Mohler, “Orthodoxy is, in part, an act of humility.” What does being Orthodox and remaining faithful to historic Christianity mean to this generation and specifically toward this particular debate in Trinitarian understanding? For Mohler, it means “believing and teaching what faithful Christians have always affirmed as taught in Scripture.”

Indeed for Mohler, the technical debate happening presently between evangelical theologians on exactly what implications may we rightly infer from relations between the Eternal Father, Eternal Son, and Eternal Holy Spirit calls for a humble spirit on all sides.

This is a time for cool heads, fraternal kindness, and clear thinking — and for all of us, a good dose of both historical theology and theological humility.

We fully agree.

As Mohler states, “All of our attempts to answer this question fall short of God’s glorious reality, but we dare not say less than the Scripture clearly reveals. We ought also to be very cautious in trying to say more.”

What is more, not only does Mohler fully acknowledge our lack of “adequate human categories” to understand how to “define these doctrines comprehensively,” he also concedes “our finite minds cannot fully comprehend the infinite divine reality.”

Thus, even more reason exists to under-gird our theological posture with humility as our primary building blocks.

By way of response, I offer two observations.

Humility for the “other side”

First, while Mohler rightly calls for humility concerning disputable doctrinal matters within Trinitarianism, he nonetheless appears to favor his own “side.” If I am correct, how does Mohler fit the supposed posture of a theological statesman concerning this issue? It doesn’t sound humble when Mohler says of those critics who charge their theological opponents with unorthodoxy that they’re basically reckless in their charges and therefore should presumably stop their unworthy actions.

These charges [the critics make] are baseless, reckless, and unworthy of those who have made them.

Or again, when Mohler writes,

Recent charges of violating the Nicene Creed made against respected evangelical theologians like Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware are not just nonsense — they are precisely the kind of nonsense that undermines orthodoxy and obscures real heresy.

Does this sound humble and statesman-like to you?

Or, finally, as Mohler claims of those who question the teachings of Grudem, Ware and others:

They endanger the very orthodoxy they claim to champion by making reckless charges they cannot possibly sustain.

“Reckless” charges they “cannot possibly sustain”? Does this sound humble and statesman-like to you?

Not to me it doesn’t.

Humble Statesman or Irritated Grump?

Second, given the statements recorded above, Mohler seems less like a humble statesman dealing with this theological disagreement and more like an irritated grump who doesn’t like it when people imply his “side” is flirting with heresy. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Neither do I.

Nevertheless, here’s a question for Dr. Mohler.

Where was Mohler’s call for cool heads, fraternal kindness, and clear thinking concerning a theological dust-up occasioned by a group of Southern Baptists only a few years ago? Where was his statesman-like humility?

Consider.

In 2012, a group of Southern Baptists published “A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation,” a theological document, they believed, raised legitimate issues in the Southern Baptist Convention. While the document apparently was the primary theological composition of one author, several Southern Baptists had differing levels of input into the document, Southern Baptists represented by pastors, directors of missions, seminary professors and presidents, state executive directors, college and university presidents and faculty; indeed, virtually every area of denominational life was represented in both composing the document and signing the document before publication.

Once the document went public, however, immediate accusations of “heresy” were vocalized from various sectors within and without the Southern Baptist Convention and continued for several days before Al Mohler wrote on the controversy the “Traditional Statement” aroused.

On June 12, 2012, Mohler published an article entitled “Southern Baptists and Salvation: It’s Time to Talk.”

In the piece, Dr. Mohler fails to show qualities one would expect from a statesman, qualities for which he pleads in the present controversy and indicated by Mohler’s supporters in the tweet above. Hear him again concerning the current debate over implications of the Eternal Trinity:

This is a time for cool heads, fraternal kindness, and clear thinking — and for all of us, a good dose of both historical theology and theological humility.

Even so, rather than calling for cool heads and clear thinking in responding to his fellow brothers and the “Traditional Statement,” Mohler piled on more indications that the group of Southern Baptists was flirting with heresy!

…I could not sign the document. Indeed, I have very serious reservations and concerns about some of its assertions and denials. I fully understand the intention of the drafters to oppose several Calvinist renderings of doctrine, but some of the language employed in the statement goes far beyond this intention. Some portions of the statement actually go beyond Arminianism and appear to affirm semi-Pelagian understandings of sin, human nature, and the human will — understandings that virtually all Southern Baptists have denied. Clearly, some Southern Baptists do not want to identify as either Calvinists, non-Calvinists, or Arminians. That is fine by me, but these theological issues have been debated by evangelicals for centuries now, and those labels stick for a reason.

While Dr. Mohler now wants theologians on both sides of the current discussion of the Trinity to embrace “cool heads” and “clear thinking” and definitively avoid implicating the other side in charges of heresy, he nonetheless was not hesitant at all in implicating his fellow Southern Baptists with flirting with heresy.

Furthermore, contrary to seeking humility in understanding theological differences, Mohler sniped to the signatories of the “Traditional Statement,”

I do not believe that those most problematic statements truly reflect the beliefs of many who signed this document.

What is implied in this claim but that the many to whom Mohler references are fundamentally ignorant of either what they were signing or what they actually believed or perhaps even both?

And, to demonstrate I’m hardly stretching a legitimate inference from Mohler’s claim, a group of informed scholars from a major Georgia Baptist College (now a university) challenged Mohler on this very point. In addition, several individual scholars wrote in defense of their signing the “Traditional Statement.”

To our knowledge, Dr. Mohler never retracted or corrected his understanding that the signatories of “Traditional Statement” expressed what, in his view, was theological language well beyond acceptable and bordered, if not actually crossed over into, heresy.

If I am correct, it seems to me Dr. Mohler’s present call for cool heads, fraternal kindness, and clear thinking in theological differences depends as much or more upon who’s getting defined the heretic as it does with who’s displaying the humility.

In other words,

Let’s show humility…sometimes.

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