The Mystery of Mullins in Contemporary Southern Baptist Historiography -- By: Russell D. Moore

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 03:4 (Winter 1999)
Article: The Mystery of Mullins in Contemporary Southern Baptist Historiography
Author: Russell D. Moore


The Mystery of Mullins
in Contemporary
Southern Baptist Historiography

Russell D. Moore

Gregory A. Thornbury

Russell D. Moore is a Ph.D. student in systematic theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he has served as Research Assistant to the President since 1998. His first book, Why I Am a Baptist, co-edited with Thomas J. Nettles, will be published by Broadman and Holman next year.

Gregory A. Thornbury is Instructor of Christian Studies at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Who Will Be Saved? The Doctrine of Salvation at Century’s End (Crossway). He has also written a chapter on A. H. Strong for the revised edition of Baptist Theologians (Broadman and Holman). He is a Ph.D. candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

E. Y. Mullins and the Obstinance of History

Throughout the recent theological controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention, the factions involved have claimed historical precedent as a means of fortifying their doctrinal and ecclesiastical positions. This phenomenon is natural and quite necessary. Alister McGrath observes that, “We are all condemned to live and speak in history and historical forms. Like an intellectual prison, our very historicity limits our intellectual options.”1 The theologian, McGrath continues, cannot elude this reality, finding “himself or herself within a tradition. .. in which the past obstinately impresses itself upon the present.”2 This obstinance of history surfaces at every turn of Southern Baptist debates over the content and character of Baptist theological conviction.

If, then, tradition is unavoidable in current theological disputes among Southern Baptists, then Southern Baptist theologians must grapple with the significance of the theology of E. Y. Mullins. And they have—repeatedly, and often. We might even call such grappling with Mullins an obsession. The reason for this obsession resides in the fact that most Southern Baptist theologians recognize Mullins’s defining and unparalleled role in the development of contemporary Southern Baptist theological understanding. Like it or not, we must deal with Mullins.

Historically, in addition to Southern Baptist interest, Mullins’s non-Baptist contemporaries took keen interest in his work. But the ideas that many Baptists heralded as a great theological advance instead elicited concern on the part of other evangelicals who reviewed Mullins’s thought. In his review of The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression, Princeton theologian Caspar...

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