Crosswalk.com – Albert Mohler’s Weblog
Emerging Church leaders, influenced by postmodern theory, rightly understand that every individual is deeply embedded in a social location. They are certainly correct in accusing much of mainstream evangelicalism from missing this point entirely–blissfully unaware of how the ambient culture has influenced our own ways of thinking. But does an acknowledgement of the role of social location relativize the meaning of a text?
Al has an ongoing problem that continues to blind him to the way in which he is ultimately seduced by modernist thinking: Bibliolatry. Text as truth. Worship of the Bible as the premier locus of revelation. When fundamentalists hear “revelation”, they think “Bible” rather than “Christ”. When they hear “the Word”, they think “the Word of God” as synonomous with “Bible”, and what’s worse, they think “Bible” in terms of an “obvious” meaning of text (of course, it’s obvious in the way that fits their modernist, authoritarian worldview). They (the Southern Baptist demoninational leadership) have already demonstrated that they are unwilling to tolerate what others might see as the “clear meaning”, or those who question whether something Mohler might see as “clear” as actually “Biblical”.
Where does all this lead us? As Carson understands, a necessary and appropriate critique of evangelical habits of thinking–including unhealthy influences from modernist thinking–should be welcomed by serious-minded evangelicals. Yet, “Once we have acknowledged the unavoidable finiteness of all human knowers, the cultural diversity of the human race, the diversity of factors that go into human knowing, and even the evil that lurks in the human breast and easily perverts claims of knowledge into totalitarian control and lust for power–once we have acknowledged these things, is there any way left for us to talk about knowing what is true or objectively real? Hard postmodernists insist there is not. And that’s the problem.”
The last half of the above quote was from Carson, whom Mohler is using here to drive home his point.
But here’s the problem, Al. When what is “objectively real” is specified by a group with a particular telos, in order to further those goals, this is what is being questioned. The manner in which the Southern Baptists in power now achieved that power was with an aim in mind that consisted of “a network” of “good ol’ boys” intent on “acquisition of power”, and brought into the fold scores of others who they were able to convince that “the liberals” were going to destroy the denomination. Even those who were likely to agree with their “fundamentals” but who were not willing to engage in the “witch hunt” to take away jobs and pastorates and missionary assignments and professorships, were “unacceptable” as leaders in this “conservative backlash”. It reminds me a lot of the Republican modus operandi. It makes me suspicious of whether or not Paul Pressler (one of the master minds behind the “SBC Takeover”) and Karl Rove have had contact along the way, so similar are the slanderous whispering campaigns.
“Once we have acknowledged the unavoidable finiteness of all human knowers”
Given, then retracted when it comes to their own knowledge; in that case, it HAS to absolute. And “it’s in the Bible, plain as day”. Of course, Al. They cloak their own sense of infallibility in the “truth of the Bible” (that is, their “selected canon” , properly interpreted).
and then this:
“[Once we have acknowledged] the evil that lurks in the human breast and easily perverts claims of knowledge into totalitarian control and lust for power”
VERY Easily. I have a suspicion that this present SBC leadership has succumbed to this danger.
“easily perverts claims of knowledge into totalitarian control”. Also very similar to the Bush administration, with whom the SBC Leadership is tightly aligned, and amomng its most avid, rabid supporters and defenders. It often seems indistinguishable from the “tenets of the faith” for them (support for Bush, the Iraq war, and the integrity of Fox News).
