MAINSTREAM MESSENGER
Vol. 3, No. 5 Sept. 2000 Editor: Bruce Prescott
On Fraudulent Accusations
by Dr. Bruce Prescott
In the October 2000 issue of SBC Life Dr. William Merrell, Vice President for Convention Relations for the SBC’s Executive Committee, accuses critics of the 2000 BF&M of “Exhibiting sanctimonious fraud of the lowest order” and suggests that we may be crying “bibliolatry” to cover our “own aberrant view of Scripture.” He then attempts to refute charges of “bibliolatry” by quoting at length from E.Y. Mullins, chief architect of the 1925 BF&M.
The fact that a Mainstream Baptist like E.Y. Mullins was, by non-Baptists, accused of “bibliolatry” demonstrates how radically wrong Fundamentalist criticisms of Mullins have been. SBC Fundamentalists have accused Mullins of formulating a theology that was so “subjective” that it undermined the authority of the Bible. Al Mohler, chief architect of the 2000 BF&M, said E.Y. Mullins “infected” the SBC with “an autonomous individualism” by crafting a doctrine of “soul competency” that served “as an acid dissolving religious authority, congregationalism, confessionalism and mutual theological accountability.”
Mohler, along with three other SBC Seminary Presidents, also denounce the 1963 BF&M for being a “neo-orthodox document.” They contend that Herschel Hobbs, chief architect of the 1963 BF&M, was either “duped” or theologically “naïve.”
Since most of the current leaders of the SBC think that they are the first Baptists to have a firm grasp of theology, it is good to find at least one who still holds what Mullins said with some esteem. It would be even better if Dr. Merrell would read what Mullins wrote more carefully and would compare it to what I have written and to what is written in the 2000 BF&M.
Almost all of the criticisms that I have used to describe the “bibliolatry” of the 2000 BF&M were stated more succinctly by E.Y. Mullins. At least seven years before penning the 1925 BF&M, he wrote a statement that some would now be quick to denounce as heresy:
“The Bible is indeed our supreme and authoritative literary source of the revelation of God which leads to salvation. But salvation is not conditioned upon our belief in, or acceptance of, a book. The knowledge of God of which we now speak is not derived from merely reading the pages of the Bible, or from the most rigidly scientific interpretation of its teachings. God’s revelation of himself to us comes through his direct action upon our spirits. He comes to us in redeeming grace. There is a spiritual transaction within us. We are regenerated by his power, and lifted to a new moral and spiritual level. It is then that we acquire a new appreciation of the Bible. God thus becomes our supreme authority, and the Bible is recognized as the authoritative record of his supreme revelation. . . . It is now time to ask and answer the question, What is our supreme source of the knowledge of God which gives rise to the doctrines of the Christian religion? The answer is the revelation of God in and through Jesus Christ.”
All Mainstream Baptists are saying is what E.Y. Mullins said in 1917.
The real “sanctimonious fraud of the lowest order” is being perpetrated by those who have been suggesting since 1963 that those who insist the Bible is the “record of” the “supreme revelation” of God in Jesus hold an “aberrant view of Scripture.”