A couple weeks ago, I posted a review of a new book edited by Robert Plummer, Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, that chronicles the journeys of four individuals between four Christian traditions. Dr. Plummer was my hermeneutics professor at Southern Seminary, and he is also the author of 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible. Today, he joins me for a conversation about his experience in editing this intriguing new book.

Robert Plummer: As I explain in the introduction to the book, I began to notice a trickle of Evangelicals converting to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy – both from my local church and the seminary where I teach. When I looked for resources that helped in understanding this migration and responding biblically, I had difficulty finding anything helpful. I originally thought about describing and assessing the phenomenon myself but decided that the book would be much more interesting and accurate if recent converts were allowed to tell their own stories.

Robert Plummer: Frankly, I originally did not want to include Anglicanism in this book because Anglicanism is, in some expressions, thoroughly Evangelical. But the publisher convinced me that enough “free church” Evangelicals convert to Anglicanism that it is a related phenomenon we could not ignore. For example, Todd Hunter, former head of the Vineyard movement has recently written a book about his conversion to Anglicanism (see The Accidental Anglican).

Robert Plummer: I have several different hopes for the book, but let me focus on one here – for the Evangelical readership – that it would help us both understand and respond to persons leaving our churches for liturgical Christian traditions. Speaking quite directly… I believe an Evangelical understanding of the gospel, salvation, and the Scriptures is correct. (If I did not, I would leave Evangelicalism.) Yes, I respect persons leaving my faith tradition.

Nevertheless, through the responder sections of the book, I want to lay before potential converts the reasons I think they are making a mistake to leave Evangelicalism. And for those with friends leaving Evangelicalism, I hope this book equips them to make a loving appeal to stay. Chris Castaldo’s riveting account of his journey from Catholicism to Evangelicalism also highlights the strengths of Evangelical claims, I think.

Robert Plummer: Yes, authority is big. Who or what has the final say in matters of faith and practice – Scripture? Tradition? Experience? Or some combination? Obviously, as an Evangelical, I believe Scripture is the final authority, but I also understand the important secondary role tradition plays in all Christian churches – even those that deny they have traditions.

1. Ask questions and listen. Don’t immediately criticize. Try to understand the attraction of Eastern Orthodoxy.  Visit the church they are attending and graciously observe. Admit your own biases and erroneous preconceptions.
2. Read up on Eastern Orthodoxy in places like Wilbur Ellsworth’s and Craig Blaising’s chapters in Journeys of Faith. Another recommended book is Robert Letham’s Through Western Eyes. Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective.
3. Pray.
4. Speak the truth in love.

In December of 2009, I received a Masters of Divinity from Southern Seminary. Recently, as I was looking over my class list and the required credit hours for my MDiv years, I thought about the classes that I enjoyed the most. Each of them were so good that I would take them again. Here are my five favorites in no particular order.

Hermeneutics with Robert Plummer

Plummer’s new book, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible, gives an overview of what we discussed in this class. I took Hermeneutics my first semester, and I’m glad I did. This class set the course for me to interpret the Bible carefully throughout the rest of my seminary education and during my initial years of preaching and teaching in a local church.

Ministry of Proclamation with Hershael York

Don’t let the fancy name fool you. This was a basic preaching class. Each student was required to preach in class while being evaluated by Dr. York and the other classmates. But what could have been an awkward situation turned out to be a very encouraging exercise. The ethos of the class valued faithfulness, excellence, and the desire to listen to the Lord speak to us through one another. Even more memorable than the preaching segments were the casual conversations with Dr. York that concerned life, family, and pastoral ministry. There’s nothing like taking a class from a professor who has the life and ministry experience to back up his theory.

The Sermon on the Mount with Jonathan Pennington

This was a January class in which we worked our way through the entire Sermon on the Mount in five days. Dr. Pennington began the class with some issues of interpretation. The rest of the time was spent discussing the text itself. The big project turned out to be very practical. We were asked to craft 12 sermon outlines from the Sermon on the Mount. I wound up doing 34 because I was planning to preach through the Sermon on the Mount on Wednesday nights. That teaching series lasted more than a year and culminated in my memorizing the Sermon on the Mount and then delivering it by memory at church.

The Reformation with Shawn Wright

What I remember most about this class was the enormous amount of reading and outlining required. I probably did more work for this one class than two or three other classes combined. The good news was that at the end of the semester, I had worked through all the historical research and come out with a deeper understanding of Reformation theology. Because this was a difficult class, there weren’t as many students willing to take it. The smaller class size fostered an open atmosphere for fascinating discussions. I came to appreciate the different theological emphases of the Reformers and the pastoral motivations behind the cultural movement.

Contemporary Theology with Greg Thornbury

This was a “J term” taught by visiting professor Greg Thornbury from Union University. The reading requirements bogged us down in some very difficult and dense work from postmodern thinkers. But the class conversations were spectacular. The main thing that I remember about Dr. Thornbury was his passion for the subject matter that he taught. That excitement rubs off on students, even when the subject matter is difficult to comprehend at times.

(Favorite visual: Dr. Thornbury – eyes closed tightly, totally engaged in his teaching, gesturing like crazy while kneeling on a swivel chair that continued to slowly turn until he was facing the whiteboard and not the class.)

Grateful

Out of all the classes I took at Southern Seminary, I can’t think of one that wasn’t beneficial and enjoyable. I’m grateful for the educational opportunities God has given me, and I look back on all my seminary classes (but these in particular) with the fondest of memories.

The cover story of this month’s Christianity Today is a lengthy profile of Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The story is written by Molly Worthen, a writer and journalist finishing her Ph.D. at Yale. The article covers the history of the Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention as well as Mohler’s influence in the wider world of evangelicalism. After reading the story a few times, I wanted to weigh in with some thoughts.

First, I deplore the way that many evangelicals (particularly those in the conservative circles I run in) belittle Christianity Today. I’ve heard the jokes: Christianity Astray, Capitulation Today etc. Some dismiss CT as if the magazine never takes strong stands based on solid biblical reflection.

I have critiqued CT articles from time to time, but I don’t join the chorus of constant CT-critics. Generally speaking, the issues I sometimes have with CT’s coverage tend to be issues I have with the prevailing sentiments of evangelicalism. CT provides a snapshot of the para-church big-tent wing of evangelicalism, a tent that encompasses Christians with different views on a number of important issues. If I were to agree with everything I read in CT, I would no longer be reading the type of publication that CT seeks to be: an evangelical magazine that speaks from and to village-green evangelicalism.

Enough with that. Now, on to the cover story.

When I first heard about CT doing this profile, I thought, It’s about time! Albert Mohler is highly influential in a number of circles that are, in turn, highly influential for evangelicals. When you put these different circles together, you realize just how much influence Mohler exerts. Three circles stand out:

• The Southern Baptist Convention. (He is a denominational strategist who played an important role in the the Great Commission Resurgence, not to mention the fact that he casts the vision for the Convention’s mother seminary).
• The Religious Right. (Though he eschews the term “culture warrior” and is more nuanced than the typical voices in conservative politics, his cultural analysis is very popular. He has become a sort of spokesman for this wing of evangelical thought.)
• The Reformed Resurgence. (Through his leadership in Together for the Gospel, the Gospel Coalition, and his well-known Reformed theology, he has carved out a role as a guide to young Reformed types seeking church and cultural renewal.)

Looking at Mohler from the perspective of the Reformed Resurgence, the Religious Right, and the Southern Baptist Convention reiterates his status as a mover and shaker for evangelicals. In many ways, he resembles one of his mentors, Carl F.H. Henry. Speaking of Henry, the most ironic part of CT’s cover story is that it paints Mohler as being outside the mainstream of evangelicalism for his complementarian and inerrantist views when, in fact, it is Mohler (and not CT) who is carrying the mantle of former CT editor Carl Henry on these and other issues.

Worthen’s profile of Mohler is not condemnatory. She carefully presents his views on many issues. The best parts of the article are when Worthen is quoting Mohler or summarizing their conversations. She ably describes the building blocks of Mohler’s vision: for Southern Seminary, for the Southern Baptist Convention, for the conservative political movement, etc. Overall, Worthen’s article is neither a hack job nor a puff piece.

That said, Justin Taylor rightly described the article as “condescending.” The tone is negative at times, and Worthen’s condescension comes out in some of the offhanded remarks she makes in her reporting.

For example, when speaking of Southern Seminary’s current theological outlook, Worthen includes a parenthetical remark:

“As proof of the seminary’s current ‘diversity,’ some faculty protest that they are only four-point Calvinists.”

Her sarcasm aside, Worthen fails to understand the administration’s adherence to the Abstract of Principles, which ensures that all faculty fall in line as at least a moderate Calvinist. Her remark assumes that great theological diversity in a faculty is a virtue, whereas Mohler believes it is more virtuous for the faculty to be faithful to the confessional statement of the seminary founders.

Southern Seminary students aren’t portrayed nicely either. She describes the student visitors to Mohler’s personal library as “goggle-eyed” and gullible.

When it comes to Mohler, Worthen conveys respect for his accomplishments, but she wonders out loud if he is the intellectual everyone thinks he is. She writes of his personal library:

“A self-conscious air pervades the library, in the jumble of cultural artifacts intended to convey worldliness; in the shelves lined with a conspicuous number of Great Books, Harvard Classics, and other pre-packaged sets that seem the fruit of a single-minded mission to conquer a body of knowledge, or at least to give that impression.”

So the library may be part of Mohler’s attempt to come off as smart? As if the man, after all of his academic accomplishments, needs a big library to demonstrate his intellectual fortitude?

Later, she goes further, saying that Mohler is not so much an intellectual or theologian as he is an “articulate controversialist.” She trots out two of Mohler’s controversial positions (though it’s hard to imagine that his creationist views are that controversial for evangelicals, most of whom fall squarely into the Answers in Genesis camp and not Biologos). Because of the space she devotes to controversies, Worthen leaves out Mohler’s more important view of  ”theological triage,” a concept that is very influential for conservative evangelicals seeking to uphold sophisticated theological distinctions and yet engage in partnerships with Christians who hold other views.

Worthen’s most perplexing comment is her charge of elitism. She writes:

“Mohler is just as elitist as the moderates of Old Southern: he is certain he has the truth, and those Baptists who protest simply are not initiated into the systematic splendor of Reformed thought.”

It appears that, for Worthen, elitism equals being certain one has the truth. Is that necessarily so? Cannot agnostics be elitist? What about postmodern theologians who revel in uncertainty and easily dismiss the “ultra-rationalistic” theological viewpoints of earlier evangelicals? What about journalists who are certain that certainty equals elitism? If Mohler comes across as an elitist in this article, a closer reading makes Worthen come across even more so.

In the end, Worthen gets a lot of facts and details right, but she puts them together in a way that makes her portrait of Mohler unflattering. Yes, the article could have been worse. But it could have been better too.

Published by Oxford University Press, historian Greg Wills’ book, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 is now the definitive resource for understanding the history and identity of the oldest of the six Southern Baptist seminaries.

The research in these 500+ pages is groundbreaking. Over a period of several years, Wills combed through more than a million pages of documents. His access to recently-discovered records illuminates the details surrounding the crucial moments in Southern’s history.

Last year, I read and reviewed William Mueller’s book, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859 – 1959. Mueller sought to establish a line of continuity between the Seminary’s founders and the administration in the late 1950′s. What Mueller tried to do, Wills actually accomplishes. Since Mohler has been president, Southern Seminary has been brought in line with the theological vision of the founders.

The book begins by telling the story of James P. Boyce and his tireless efforts to establish a seminary in the south. Boyce brought together the best Southern Baptist minds of the time: Basil Manley, Jr., William Williams and John A. Broadus.

The school’s founding took place in 1859, just two years before the Civil War. The war would temporarily close the seminary and place its future in jepoardy. But the founders exerted enormous energy to raise the financial support needed to give the school long-term viability.

Wills charts the seminary’s path toward liberalism. In the 1880′s, Crawford Howard Toy, an Old Testament professor, was forced to resign because of his higher critical views of the Bible. During the presidency of E.Y. Mullins in the early 20th century, the direction of the faculty moved in a leftward direction. I do not agree Wills that Mullins should be categorized a liberal. Wills uses the term based on Mullins’ methodology, but I would reserve that label for theologians whose doctrinal affirmations actually depart from orthodoxy. Wills is right, however, to point out the importance of Mullins for laying the foundation for the later controversies of the SBC.

The 1958 controversy, in which 13 members of the faculty were dismissed, is described in great detail. The 1958 controversy helps the reader understand the tension of being a left-leaning academic institution tethered to a largely conservative denomination.

The later years of the 20th century were filled with controversy, as the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirmed its commitment to conservative theology and sought to bring the seminaries in line with the prevailing sentiments of Southern Baptist constituents. Wills recounts the battle for the seminary’s theological direction, expressing his agreement with the conservatives. Yet he seeks to portray the facts in a clear and objective manner.

Anyone interested in Southern Seminary or the history of the Southern Baptist Convention simply must read this book. I could not put it down! Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 is a magnificent achievement.

Related Posts:

A History of Southern Seminary
The Other Side of William Whitsitt
Duke McCall: An Oral History
John A. Broadus: A Living Legacy
E.Y. Mullins: A Man of Books and a Man of the People

SaidatSouthern.com has been launched. There is no better place to find a collection of blogs from Southern Seminary students, professors, and alumni. I encourage you to visit the site, add it to your Favorites list, and begin savoring the insights coming out of Southern Seminary right now.

The guys at Said at Southern have moved to their official site: http://saidatsouthern.com/

Said at Southern features blogs from Southern Seminary students, news for the Southern community, and commentary from faculty members. Tony Kummer, Timmy Brister, and Owen Strachan (three fellow MDiv students) have done a terrific job putting this site together and bringing on board other Southern students who blog (like myself). I have no doubt this site is going to be very popular.

Make sure you update your favorites to include Said at Southern!