I Was Thinking...
When did souls become incompetent?
by Tony Cartledge, editor, 
The Biblical Recorder (N.C.)

What makes a Baptist Baptist? The fact that any two Baptists might give different responses in part of the answer. While Baptists share many basic tenets of faith with other Christian groups, perhaps nothing has marked Baptists more than a consistent insistence on "soul competency."

The belief affirms that individual believers have the right, the responsibility and the competency to approach God directly and to seek God's wisdom in interpreting and applying scripture.

E.Y. Mullins, who was president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for 29 years (1899- 1928) and who also served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1921-1924), is remembered as a champion of soul competency.

In the midst of the fundamentalist/modernist debate that threatened to divide Baptists in the 1920s, the respected denominational statesman encouraged individuals and churches to respectfully disagree on secondary matters while working together on more primary issues such as missions and evangelism.

Mullins' effort to build consensus despite diversity was a important key to the early and ongoing success of the Cooperative Program, which began in 1925 and is now celebrating its 75th anniversary.

The flexibility and cooperative spirit enabled by a belief in soul competency contributed mightily to the Convention's growth and development as the largest and most missions-minded Protestant denomination in America.

Now, however, current Southern Seminary president Al Mohler has pronounced that Mullins had it all wrong. In a "Founder's Day" address on March 30 at the seminary, Mohler said Mullins' emphasis on personal experience steered Baptists away from biblical revelation, resulting in "an autonomous individualism that has infected the Southern Baptist Convention, and now widespread has infected evangelicalism to this day."

In 1997 Mohler wrote even more pointedly in his introduction to a reprint of Mullins' classic The Axioms of Religion. There he described soul competency as "an acid dissolving religious authority, congregationalism, confessionalism and mutual theological accountability."

Of all the beliefs that set Baptists apart from other Christians, nothing comes closer to bedrock than a belief in soul competency. But now we are told that soul competency is a "spreading infection, a corrosive acid?"

Infectious and acidic influences may abound in Southern Baptist life, but soul competency is not one of them. Baptists have proved through the years that it is indeed possible to allow individual and congregational freedom without losing all accountability to the larger community of faith.

Properly understood, soul competency does not replace biblical authority with personal experience, as Mohler implies. Rather, it encourages a dynamic faith that grows from an ongoing personal encounter with divine revelation as opposed to a rote recital of denominationally accepted beliefs.

While Mohler's concern may grow largely from Mullins' departure from strict Calvinism, which Mohler embraces, the issue is larger than Calvinism. The question is whether denominationally defined doctrinal purity is more important than individual responsibility before God.

There is a special irony to Mohler's criticism of soul competency. It is that very attribute of Baptists life that has made a place for him and for other devotees of Calvinism, even though their beliefs are fundamentally at odds with the vast majority of other Southern Baptists.

Most Baptists believe the clear teaching of 2 Corinthians 5: 14-15, that Christ died for all people and not just for the predestined "elect." Echoing John 3:16, Baptists across the land sing "Whosoever Will" without any doubt that whosoever will may come and be saved.

And yet there is room in Baptist life for someone with a decidedly different belief to become president of our oldest seminary and to participate in a revision of the "Baptist Faith & Message."

Some would argue that Mohler's ascendancy is in itself an argument that the forbearance of doctrinal differences can go too far.

Nevertheless, such allowance for diversity is not an acid that dissolves Baptist values-it is an acid test tat identifies a crucial Baptist distinctive.