“Soul Competency Takes a Vacation”
By Michael Clingenpeel

RICHMOND, Va. — The battle for the soul of the Southern Baptist Convention ended several years ago. Conservatives bested moderates in a winner-take-all contest.

The battle was over power, said some, not theology. On the surface they were correct. It was a struggle to gain control over the institutions, money and processes of the SBC.

Secretly, however, many people feared it was what conservatives said it was—an issue of theology. The two groups were far from ideological and theological twins, and the winner earned the right to stamp its theology into the hearts and minds of current and future Baptists. Power, after all, is the ability to achieve purpose. The purpose, the end goal, was theological.

I thought of this when I read a release from Baptist Press last week. The story described publication of a new book compiling selected writings of E.Y. Mullins, who in the first quarter of this century was president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Current SBTS President Al Mohler is the compiler of the articles, which are being published by Broadman and Holman, the publishing arm of the Baptist Sunday School Board.

In 1908 Mullins wrote The Axioms of Religion, in which he enunciated the doctrine of soul competency, claiming it as the “historical significance of the Baptists.”

Soul competency is the idea that every human being is free and responsible before God for his or her faith or the lack of it.

The idea is at least as old as the Bible’s concepts of God and humanity. God is revealed in general and specific ways to human beings. Human beings, created in God’s likeness, have the capacity to choose or reject God, and we are responsible for our decision.

Soul competency does not mean we are sufficient apart from God, or that we can believe anything we want. It recognizes dependence upon Scripture as the primary means of God’s revelation, and acknowledges Jesus Christ as the fullest revelation of God.

Mullins recognized soul competency as the hub of Baptist theology and practice. Everything else—priesthood of the believer, local church autonomy, separation of church and state, regenerant church membership, believer’s baptism—was spoke and rim.

According to the Baptist Press story, Mohler blames Mullins for much of Baptists’ reputed theological drift. Mullins elevated personal experience above revelation, according to Mohler, making the authority of Scripture secondary. Mullins, who in 1925 chaired the committee that produced the original Baptist Faith and Message statement, “set the stage for doctrinal ambiguity and theological minimalism,” the story quotes Mohler as writing. Soul competency, he continues, is “an acid dissolving religious authority, congregationalism, confessionalism and mutual theological accountability.”

Don’t miss what’s happening here. Conservatives won control of the SBC power. Idealogues like Mohler now direct the work of institutions that are reshaping the theological and ecclesiastical identity of Southern Baptists theology.

The new Southern Baptists will be champions of doctrinal correctness, but the new orthodoxy comes at the expense of freedom of the individual conscience. Without Mullins’ emphasis on soul competency, Mohler’s rigid Calvinist orthodoxy will likely stamp out an assembly line of Southern Seminary graduates who easily recite the arcane intricacies of a pre-approved theological system, but who lack an appreciation for the liberating mysteries of the Spirit and the humbling freshness of grace.

In the end, a theological system that holds soul competency in low regard easily degenerates into loveless, graceless legalism. It extends to no one else the freedom to think creatively under the tutelage of the Spirit, and is quick to rebuke actions that refuse to walk in lock step to its narrow expectations.

Perhaps that is the only explanation for Mohler’s recent decision to fire a 35-year employee of his seminary, whose principal transgression was to disagree with a statement made during a chapel address given by the current SBC president. When the employee, librarian Paul Debusman, wrote a letter to Tom Elliff questioning his statement that conservatives like himself would not have been allowed to speak in chapel prior to Mohler’s administration, Mohler fired him for actions “harmful” to the seminary.

Students at Southern Seminary, like all theological students, learn from the writings and behavior of their mentors. The past three generations learned theology and faith from theologians like E.Y. Mullins. Future Southern Baptists will have their leaders mentored by theologians like Al Mohler.

What a pity.

Editor’s Note: Mike Clingenpeel is editor and business manager of the Religious Herald, the newsjournal of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. This editorial appeared in the October 9 issue of the Herald.

October 1997