Don’t Just Do Something: Stand There!

by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.                                                                             Vol. X, No. 9, Nov/Dec 1997

[Al Mohler is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville. The following is excerpted from a convocation address he gave opening the 1993-94 academic year. In his remarks he refers to the Abstract of Principles, the seminary’s statement of faith, which — as he says — “has been a central part of this institution’s life and commitment for 134 years...” Bold print has been added for emphasis.]

What operative convictions are revealed in the Abstract and in the testimony of those who framed the confession?

First, that truth is always confronted with error, and that the doctrinal depository of the Church is ever in danger of compromise. The founders of this institution were quite ready to speak of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, of evangelical truth and heresy. This was a vocabulary used with individuals certain of the reality of divine revelation and the necessity of orthodox teaching. These issues were taken with deadly seriousness.

They offered no apology for stipulating doctrinal issues nor for demanding theological fidelity. In fact, Boyce specifically aimed his critical sights at "That sentiment, the inevitable precursor, or the accompaniment of all heresy—that the doctrines of theology are matters of mere speculation, and that its distinctions only logomachines and technicalities...."  There is no theological indifference to be found here— no doctrinal minimalism or lowest common doctrinal denominator is the focus or sentiment.

This is a robust, full-orbed faith from beginning to end; a faith which would establish Southern Seminary on its rightful course.

Southern Seminary was established in the very year Darwin published his The Origin of Species. Critical philosophies were already spreading from Europe to the United States. Harvard had fallen to Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. Established seminaries in the North, once considered secure in the faith, were now seen to be wavering. Boyce and his colleagues saw a "crisis in Baptist doctrine" approaching, and they were determined that Southern Seminary be ready. 

Second, that a confession of faith is a necessary, proper, and instrumental safeguard against theological atrophy or error. As Boyce argued, "It is based upon principles and practices sanctioned by the authority of Scripture and by the usage of our people...." Further, "you will receive by this assurance that the truth committed unto you by the founders is fulfilled in accordance with their wishes, that the ministry that go forth have here learned to distinguish truth from error, and to embrace the former...."

Beyond this, the confession is a safeguard to trustees, to faculty, to students, and to the denomination:

It seems to me . . . that you owe this to yourselves, to your professors, and to the denomination at large; to yourselves because your position as trustees makes you responsible for the doctrinal positions of your professors, and the whole history of creeds has proved the difficulty without them of correcting errorists of perversions of the Word of God—to your professors, that their doctrinal sentiments may be known and approved by all, that no charges of heresy be brought against them; that none shall whisper of peculiar notions which they hold, but that in refutation of all charges they may point to this formulary as one which they hold ex animo, and teach in its true import— and to the denomination at large, that they may know in what truths the rising ministry are instructed, may exercise full sympathy with the necessities of the institution, and may look with confidence and affection to the pastors who come forth from it. 

Here is where the institution would stand, before God and before the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. The founders were certain that this was solid ground, and in this they were surely right.

Third, that a theological institution bears a unique responsibility to protect the integrity of the Gospel, and that its professors should give their unmixed and public attestation to the confession of faith.

As Boyce commented: "You will infringe the rights of no man, and you will secure the rights of those who have established here an instrumentality for the production of a sound ministry. It is no hardship to those who teach here to be called upon to sign the declaration of their principles, for there are fields of usefulness open elsewhere to every man, and none need accept your call who cannot conscientiously sign your formulary."

Fourth, that those who teach the ministry bear the greatest burden of accountability to the churches and to the denomination.

Boyce delivered his address as the ghost of Alexander Campbell still haunted the Baptist mind. Campbell criticized confessions of faith as assaults upon freedom of conscience and, as Boyce lamented, "threatened at one time the total destruction of our faith." As Boyce feared, "Had he occupied a chair in one of our theological institutions, that destruction might have been completed."

"It is with a single man that error usually commences;" argued Boyce. "Scarcely a single heresy has ever blighted the Church which has not owed its existence to one man of power and ability whose name has always been associated with its doctrines." Boyce specifically identified Campbellism and Arminianism.

Those who founded this institution were painfully and solemnly aware of the history of heresy which included Arianism, Nestorianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism—a parade of doctrinal deviation. And they were determined to safeguard the institution they would establish, in so far as human determination would suffice. They knew nothing of radical revisionist theologies which would follow, of process philosophy and deconstructionism, of demythologization and logical positivism. But they knew the pattern of compromise and deviation which marked the checkered history of the Church and its testimony to the truth. They had seen the radical Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and they had seen enough to understand the challenge.

The faculty of Southern Seminary would be held to a standard higher than that required of the churches, higher than that required of students, higher than that required of those who would teach at many sister institutions. As Boyce stipulated:

But of him who is to teach the ministry, who is to be the medium through which the fountain of Scripture truth is to flow to them—whose opinions more than those of any living man, are to mold their conceptions of the doctrines of the Bible, it is manifest that more is requisite. No difference, however slight, no peculiar sentiments, however speculative is here allowable. His agreement with the standard should be exact. His declaration of it should be based upon no mental reservation, upon no private understanding with those who immediately invest him into office; but the articles to be taught being distinctly laid down, he should be able to say from his knowledge of the Word of God that he knows these articles to be an exact summary of the truth therein contained.

Let those who would understand Southern Seminary understand this: That our faith is not in the Abstract of Principles, but in the God to whom it testifies; that the revealed text we seek rightly to divide is not the Abstract of Principles, but Holy Scripture, but that this Abstract is a sacred contract and confession for those who teach here—who willingly and willfully affix their signatures to its text and their conscience to its intention. They pledge to teach "in accordance with and not contrary to" its precepts.

The Abstract is not something foreign which has been imposed upon this institution—it is the charter of its existence and its license to teach the ministry. Its purpose is unity, not disunity; its heart is bent toward common confession.

In some sectors of theological education, confessionalism is assumed and charged to be dead—a fossil of an ancient era when the Church claimed and proclaimed objective truth on the basis of divine revelation.

Some would now celebrate what Edward Farley has identified as the "collapse of the house of authority."  Confessions, creeds, doctrines, truth-claims, supernaturalism, theism, commands—all these are swept away by the acids of modernity.

It cannot be so here. Not because we are unaware of the currents of modern knowledge; not because we do not understand the challenges of a relativistic and secular age, where all issues of truth and meaning are automatically privatized and politicized; not because we are unaware of the hermeneutics of suspicion, but precisely because we have faith in God, and in His truth unchanged and unchanging.  Our motive is not to seek false refuge in an antiquarian past absolved of all its faults and blemishes, but to keep the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We fear no charges of foundationalism, positivism, or authoritarianism. We do fear God and His divine judgment.

The Abstract is our most fundamental centering covenant with each other as faculty, students, president, and trustees. For students it is the framework within which you should expect to receive instruction and education. You will not be tested by the Abstract upon your arrival nor your departure, but it should frame your expectations and assure the confessional parameters of your study here. It is a pledge your professors have made before they enter your classroom to teach, and it is because they so highly esteem their calling to teach the ministers of the Church that they have come here and committed their lives to serve the Church and the cause of Christ by investing their lives in you. They do so gladly, heartily, and with consecration. They deserve your utmost respect, affection, and dedicated attention.

For faculty, the Abstract is the charter to teach and the standard of confessional judgment. Southern Seminary is a confessional institution, a pre-committed institution. Teachers here should expose students to the full array of modern variants of thought related to their courses of study. But these options are not value-neutral. The standard of judgment is found within the parameters of the Abstract. In this charter is found the platform for true academic excellence, where all fields of study are submitted to the most rigorous and analytical study; but also found here is the standard for confessional fidelity to the churches and the denomination, for these fields of study and research are conducted by those who have established their own confessional commitments and who make these plain and evident to those who come here to study and to learn.

But the importance and impact of the Abstract of Principles and of Southern Seminary reaches much farther. We have arrived at a critical moment for the Southern Baptist Convention and its churches. A denomination once marked by intense theological commitment and a demonstrable theological consensus has seen that doctrinal unity pass into a programmatic consciousness. We are in danger of losing our theological grammar, and, more seriously by far, of forfeiting our theological inheritance.

This crisis far outweighs the controversy which has marked the Southern Baptist Convention for the last fourteen years. That controversy is a symptom rather than the root cause. As Southern Baptists, we are in danger of becoming God's most unembarrassed pragmatists—much more enamored with statistics than invested in theological substance.

The Abstract is a reminder that we bear a responsibility to this great denomination, whose name we so proudly bear as our own. We bear the collective responsibility to call this denomination back to itself and its doctrinal inheritance. This is a true reformation and revival only the sovereign God can accomplish, but we must strive to be acceptable and usable instruments of that renewal.

The Abstract represents a clarion call to start with conviction rather than mere action. It cries out, "Don't just do something, stand there!" This reverses the conventional wisdom of the world, but it puts the emphasis rightly. Southern Baptists are now much more feverishly concerned with doing than with believing—and thus our denominational soul is in jeopardy. This people of God must reclaim a theological tradition which understands all of our denominational activity to be founded upon prior doctrinal commitments. This is true for the denomination at every level—and of the local churches as well.

But this message is also critical for the future of theological education and of Southern Seminary. We can never measure our life and work in terms of activity and statistics. In the view of eternity, we will be judged most closely, not on the basis of how many courses were taught, how many students were trained, how many syllabi were printed, or how many books were published, but on whether or not we kept the faith. The other issues are hardly irrelevant, and they are valid markers of institutional stewardship and ministry. But there is a prior question: Does the institution and those who teach here stand for God's truth, and do so without embarrassment? May we answer that question with the humble confidence of Martin Luther, and say "Here we stand; we can do no other. God help us."