Molly Marshall: The Rest of the Story

by   David Couric                                                                                                                                 Vol. VII, No. 10, December 1994

Molly Marshall's controversial resignation as associate professor of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary may have left many Southern Baptists wondering: Just what was all the commotion about theologically?

The issue of "universalism," the doctrine that everyone eventually will be saved and go to heaven, often has been the subject of speculation in reports about the incident at the Louisville, KY, seminary. Marshall resigned effective at the end of the fall semester rather than face immediate dismissal proceedings.

A position such as universalism is, of course, in direct violation of Southern Seminary's official doctrinal statement and far outside the mainstream of Southern Baptist and general church history. In fact, universalism gave rise to the Universalist Church of America, which now has become the Unitarian-Universalist Association. Unitarians get their name from a rejection of God in the historic trinitarian sense, or three persons in one nature, in favor of a God in the Unitarian sense, or one in person and nature. Thus, the deity of Christ is denied in Unitarianism.

With any kind of universalism, Southern Baptist missions and evangelism are "down the drain," according to Cal Guy, retired professor of missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas. "I call it 'unbotherism,'" says Guy. "It just doesn't bother us at all that people are going to hell." He also calls universalism "trying to be nicer than God." Based on his experience in missions and as a professor for 36 years, the 77year-old Guy points out the end result of the influence of universalism: "You're dead in missions."

But Marshall, who has taught at Southern Seminary the past 10 years, emphatically denies she is a universalist, insisting she has always taught in accord with the seminary's confessional document, called the "Abstract of Principles." The 20 articles of faith were written into the seminary's charter when Southern, the SBC's first seminary, was founded in the middle of the last century.

Marshall seeks refuge in a position that attempts to avoid the extreme of universalism while at the same time rejecting the classical Christian view that no one can ever be saved outside of Christianity, which she sees as the other extreme and labels "exclusivism." The compromise position Marshall affirms, which seems closer to universalism than orthodoxy, is referred to as "inclusivism," the idea that for God to be "fair" there must be a way for those who never hear the name of Christ and the gospel to be saved anyway in the end.

In an Aug. 16, 1994, letter to Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr., Marshall said she affirmed each of the articles in the Abstract of Principles, ranging from the Scriptures to the judgment. Marshall signed the principles "in good conscience" as a tenured professor in 1988, she wrote in the letter.

On Article 9 concerning repentance, Marshall stated, "Unrepentant persons who do not experience the conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit and the concomitant transformation of life are spiritually dead in their sins. They will not share in the eternal life granted to those in Christ. Hence, I clearly refute the notion of universalism.'

Under Article 20 on the judgment, she commented, "The judgment is made on this day concerning how an individual has responded to Jesus Christ. One's positive response to him as Christ and Lord determines one's everlasting status, i.e., to life eternal or punishment. I repudiate the idea that all will be saved (universalism)." Marshall concluded the letter to Mohler with the statement, "I concur with the Abstract of Principles and have been teaching faithfully within its framework."

Although Mohler, based on his own investigation, judged Marshall's theology in general to be outside the parameters of the Abstract of Principles, it is Marshall's dissertation, "No Salvation Outside the Church? A Critical Inquiry," that has been criticized more than once since she began teaching at Southern in 1984, after finishing her doctoral work at Southern in 1983.

In 1986 and again in 1991, then-seminary trustee John Michael of Louisville charged Marshall with universalism. The second time an academic warning was issued to Marshall and another professor, Glenn Hinson, who left a month later to join the faculty of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, a moderate [liberal, TCP] seminary in Virginia. Also in 1986, the editor of the Indiana Baptist state paper, David Simpson, published an editorial critical of Marshall's dissertation.

The issue of universalism also has been among critics' reactions to an article Marshall wrote in 1993 in Southwestern Seminary's Journal of Theology and a 1992 address she delivered at Averett College in Virginia.

In her "No Salvation Outside the Church? A Critical Inquiry" dissertation, Marshall includes Christianity in what she means by "church" and answers the title's question to allow that there is indeed salvation outside the Christian religion. [Emphasis added. TCP]

Christ may be the only way of salvation in her system, but knowledge of Christ is not necessarily a prerequisite to salvation. One can be saved by Christ without knowing anything about him. Marshall's inclusivism would allow for the possibility of someone from any world religion being saved by Christ but without that person ever converting to Christianity.

For example, Marshall writes in her dissertation: "Throughout its long history of development, the inclusivist approach has retained the central core of the Christian faith by professing Jesus Christ to be the unique mediator of God's salvific grace to all, and thus constitutive for salvation, without limiting the benefit of his sacrificial life and death to those who explicitly know and believe in it."

Then Marshall remarks, "It would seem fair to suggest that eschatologically those who do not know (Christ) have the inevitable opportunity for clarification of or confrontation with him who has been the unknown object of their faith."

And Marshall goes on to say: "Accordingly, the possessive exclusivism with which some Christians have regarded Christ as the property of the Christian faith is a clinging sin that must go the way of the cross... Christ has bound himself to all of mankind, not just to Christians ..."

One of the most astounding aspects of the dissertation, to the average Southern Baptist at least, is Marshall's acceptance of the probability of a "postmortem encounter with Christ." This means those who have never heard the name of Christ in this life will have a "first chance" to be saved after death. In other words, the unevangelized will be "evangelized" at or before the judgment, Marshall speculates. Apparently some of these, although at the brink of judgment, will refuse even then to believe.

Therefore, not all will be saved, and universalism in its usual sense is avoided. In addition, those who do not hear the gospel and yet reject Christ before death will not get a second chance, according to Marshall.

Marshall bases her view of "the opportunity that remains after death for the unevangelized to encounter Christ" on her interpretation of I Peter 3:19 and 4:6 about Christ proclaiming the gospel to the "spirits in prison" and to the "dead." The difficult passage is also the basis for the famous line between the burial and resurrection in the Apostle's Creed: "... he descended into hell ..." The Abstract of Principles includes an article on "The Mediator" with some similarity to the Apostle's Creed, but the line about the descent into hell does not appear: "He was buried, and rose again the third day," according to Article 7.

On faith, Article 10 in the Abstract of Principles states, "Saving faith is the belief, on God's authority, of whatsoever is revealed in His Word concerning Christ, accepting and resting upon Him alone for justification and eternal life. ..." Taking the original context of the seminary's confessional document into consideration, it is highly unlikely the founders entertained any notion of postmortem evangelism. Such an idea would also undermine Article 13 on the perseverance of the saints this side of the grave: All Christians are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."

For the founders of Southern Seminary, it apparently wasn't necessary to find a postmortem way of escape for those who never hear the gospel, because the answer to the question of the unevangelized is in Article 6 on the fall of man. There it says everyone has "a nature corrupt and wholly opposed to God and His law" and that all people "are under condemnation, and as soon as they are capable of moral action, become actual transgressors."

Although Marshall claimed to affirm this principle in her letter to Mohler, her dissertation states, "God's seeking grace is expressed universally and thus one does not approach a Muslim or Hindu as one already condemned before God ..."

As Cal Guy puts it, based on his reading of the first three chapters of Romans, people who never hear the gospel are like everyone else: responsible for their sins. They have rejected three things, he says: "the light of nature, conscience and the law" and therefore stand condemned in sin before God – their only hope being faith in Christ alone, which comes from hearing the gospel. In his view, the answer is not to find a way around getting the gospel to the world, or to rationalize the failure to do so, but to be ever more diligent in the task of missions and evangelism.