Crawford Toy a "heretic" not a hero - Mohler

[William Thornton]

Since questions have been raised about Mohler’s application of the Toy controversy to present mod/libs, here is Mohler in his own words:

The admiration of liberal Baptists for Crawford Howell Toy should be a matter of both amazement and genuine concern. It is also a telling indication of how many of those identified as “moderates” in the Southern Baptist Convention controversy actually view the Bible. To celebrate Toy is to celebrate his beliefs about the Bible. Those beliefs were not heroic.

In his inaugural address as a professor at Southern Seminary, Toy argued that the Bible has both a human and a divine element. As his theological pilgrimage revealed, Toy would use this hermeneutical distinction in order to argue that the Bible contains nothing but truth in its divine element, even as its human element shows all the marks of human fallibility. The human element contains both errors and myths, but the Bible’s “religious thought is independent of this outward form.”

In other words, Toy became what Christians throughout all the centuries of church history and in all the major traditions of the Christian Church would rightly identify as a heretic. He abandoned faith in the deity of Christ and abandoned the Christian faith. Yet, moderates in the SBC controversy often celebrated Crawford Toy as a hero and as a theological martyr for academic scholarship. Tony Cartledge continues this tradition by expressing his admiration for Crawford Toy, going so far as to claim that he “was no less devoted to Christ” than Lottie Moon. “There’s more than one way to be a hero,” Cartledge concluded.

The key issue is that Toy’s "understanding of the Bible left him completely vulnerable to every heresy and doctrinal aberration. Broadus rightly warned Toy of this danger at the time of his resignation."

The salient quotes would be that “To celebrate Toy is to celebrate his beliefs about the Bible…[his] understanding of the Bible left him completely vulnerable to every heresy and doctrinal aberration.”

Mohler rightly makes the connection between Toy’s view of the Bible and that of contemporary Baptist moderates and liberals and the dangers thereof. While I wouldn’t presume that all mod/libs have such views, I certainly heard not a few who did over the years. Applying this to Flick and Mark is not something I have done.

I still say that celebrating Toy against the backdrop of Lottie Moon is perplexing. I can only hope that Cartledge and other mod/libs recognize that something is wrong with Toy that colors his ‘heroic’ stance at SBTS and that which is wrong is gravely wrong and not to be celebrated.

I note that BDWeaver has Moon in his pantheon of heroes on his blog but not Toy. No doubt he gets it.

[Mark]

It just seems a typical Mohler smear tactic. Just because Cartledge celebrated Toy's integrity, all moderates must celebrate his theology...

Mark, it seems to me Mohler was more or less declaring moderate Baptists to have abandoned the faith in scriptures...

Exactly, and correctly observed, both of you. That's what I grumbling about.

[Stephen Fox]

From Heavy Topic at Hand

http://www.tnr.com/video/fiction/albert ... ing-french

[William Thornton]

If a leader of the Conservative Resurgence dreamed up a fictional account of someone running off the theological cliff, they couldn't have done better than this factual account of Toy and Moon. It resonates. It is indeed a warning about liberal views. It is surely legitimate to present it as such and Cartledge left himself wide open by putting Toy on the same pedestal as Lottie Moon.

I would finish this discussion by asking Mark, David, and Timothy what they think about Crawford Toy joining a Unitarian church. I believe there were plenty of Congregational and even Baptist churches in Cambridge in his day, probably some very strong ones.

[Mark]

I would finish this discussion by asking Mark, David, and Timothy what they think about Crawford Toy joining a Unitarian church. I believe there were plenty of Congregational and even Baptist churches in Cambridge in his day, probably some very strong ones...

I think Toy's theological views may have indeed (or may not have) drifted somewhat by the end of his life, although much of that appears to be speculation - whether it be Tony Cartledge or Al Mohler doing the speculating. My larger point was that none of that necessarily means others of us are heretics, as Mohler seemed to suggest.

[Haruo]

It's not unheard of for a New England ABC church to be dually aligned with UUA...

[Big Daddy Weaver]

An ABC congregation that is also affiliated with UUA? Trinitarians and Unitarians? I really don't think so.

I think you meant ABC and UCC. Riverside is dually aligned ABC and UCC.

Granted, I've heard UCC described as Unitarians Considering Christ

But there is a real difference between UCC and UUA or at least there should be...

[Big Daddy Weaver]

Well, I can say I learned something new this weekend!

Very interesting.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

The history of First Parish of Bolton (ABC, UCC, UUA, Quaker) is interesting.

As of 2004, the church had a couple dozen Unitarians and UCCers and only a handful of Baptists and Quakers. However, the pastor notes that the church has more Catholics represented than any other group.

The pastor also describes UUA as not really a "Christian" denomination. From the UUAers I met in Atlanta, Berkeley and Waco, I'd say that's an actual description. I did know guy once who said his homechurch was "Unitarian Universalist with a Christian Identity."

Are there any regulations or guidelines for churches that affiliate with ABC? If ABC and UUA is an acceptable combination, could say a Buddhist group looking to give itself a more interfaith appeal come along and affiliate with ABC-USA?

[georgefrink]

Tony Cartledge's headline on his own blog at http://www.tonycartledge.com is "Lottie Moon's rooms."
Nowhere in the text of Cartledge's blog do the words "Baptist" and "hero" occur side-by-side.
The "Baptist Hero" headline is pasted on at Ethics Daily, the secondary publication.
I am puzzled that Al Mohler or anyone else would conflate that headline with the content author's work, since content authors typically do not control the headlines used by publications to which their work is consigned.
Discarding the miscast headline, we can focus on what Cartledge actually said, and it seems abundantly clear (IMHO) that with regard to Crawford Toy, he was talking about Toy's integrity more than about Toy's identification with Baptists.
That may be what attracted Al Mohler's fire and seems to me to be why Mohler tries to make short shrift of Cartledge's concerns about the sentiments Patterson imputed to Lottie Moon.
It is plain to me from Cartledge's post that if Patterson imputed carelessly conceived motives to Lottie Moon, then Patterson lacks the intellectual integrity which Crawford Toy displayed.
Whether Cartledge actually meant to imply exactly that or not, it's there to be discerned and, IMHO, hard to ignore.
As a result, I was not in the least surprised to see Mohler take up the cudgels against Cartledge and his well-made argument.
Patterson and the conservatives in general have to be defended now in their time of burnishing the image of what they have done.
Who better to defend Patterson than Mohler?

[William Thornton]

Tony Cartledge's headline on his own blog at http://www.tonycartledge.com is "Lottie Moon's rooms."
Nowhere in the text of Cartledge's blog do the words "Baptist" and "hero" occur side-by-side.
The "Baptist Hero" headline is pasted on at Ethics Daily, the secondary publication.
I am puzzled that Al Mohler or anyone else would conflate that headline with the content author's work, since content authors typically do not control the headlines used by publications to which their work is consigned.
Discarding the miscast headline, we can focus on what Cartledge actually said, and it seems abundantly clear (IMHO) that with regard to Crawford Toy, he was talking about Toy's integrity more than about Toy's identification with Baptists.
That may be what attracted Al Mohler's fire and seems to me to be why Mohler tries to make short shrift of Cartledge's concerns about the sentiments Patterson imputed to Lottie Moon.
It is plain to me from Cartledge's post that if Patterson imputed carelessly conceived motives to Lottie Moon, then Patterson lacks the intellectual integrity which Crawford Toy displayed.
Whether Cartledge actually meant to imply exactly that or not, it's there to be discerned and, IMHO, hard to ignore.
As a result, I was not in the least surprised to see Mohler take up the cudgels against Cartledge and his well-made argument.
Patterson and the conservatives in general have to be defended now in their time of burnishing the image of what they have done.
Who better to defend Patterson than Mohler?

Cartledge concludes:

Increasingly, I have also come to admire Crawford Toy, who was no less devoted to Christ, and who was willing to suffer rejection by Southern Baptists rather than surrender to the narrow-minded demand that he forgo scholarship and limit his teaching to popularly accepted notions.

There's more than one way to be a hero.

The headline is a good point and Cartledge's explanation in his comment stream notes his disapproval of Toy's later departure from Baptist life. Nonetheless, the tale of Toy is problematic for Baptists, especially if you wish to apply the lable "hero" to him.

[Stephen Fox]

Are my Baptist Heros and Albert Mohler is Not.

I have repeated my list often before, many in my roll call of Faith above.

In my comment at Cartledge's Blog on Toy and Lottie, I think the first comment, I talk about Gezork.

The Geneaology of Dissent is a Matter of Record.

The WMU is on record.

Here on MLKing weekend, right after a Historic Sermon by Barack Obama at the Vermont Ave Baptist Church in Washington DC; I am not worried about what a little man, a protege of D James Kennedy, says about Crawford Toy; much less what comes from Paige Patterson on Lottie MOon, when the every literate person in the world who wants to know, knows what the WMU thinks of Paige Patterson and his takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and its IMB

[Stephen Fox]

Glenn Jonas said...
"It is almost inconceivable to think of what it would have been like in the late 1800s for a single woman to move into an incredibly patriarchal society -- patriarchal not in its good sense, but in its exponentially wicked sense -- where women didn't really count," Patterson said. Despite severe challenges, Lottie Moon immersed herself in the Chinese culture and succeeded in winning the respect of the Chinese people."

I quoted the above statement from the original article. What an amazing statement from someone who was an architect of the movement that has done everything in its power to keep women in subjection in Baptist life. And now he's praising Lottie Moon for bucking the patriarchal system of her day! Incredible hypocrisy.

And, by the way, what is the difference between "patriarchal in the good sense" and "patriarchal in its exponentially wicked sense?"

Great remarks from Glenn JOnas at Campbell's blog. Get's the heart of the intergrity question from one of Baptists better historians.

[T. D. Webb]

Before looking for denominational "Union Labels" and pontificating about heroics (or heretics), perhaps, all of us should consider the following: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." John 14:6 Christ, His prophets and disciples, all point to the essential element of one's Christian faith. That essential does not require that one must be well read, highly educated, subscribe to any particular religious tradition, or be a member of any denominational church organization. The definitive proof of the truth in one's claim of being a Christian is that person's relationship with Christ. Therefore, can anyone who denies Jesus Christ as the only true Savior and Son of God have any valid claim of being referred to as a "Christian"? That said, I must agree with William. From my perspective Dr. Toy's actions after leaving the SBC testify to something other than the stuff of Christian "heroics", Baptist or otherwise.


In His Grace and Peace,

[Sandy]

The history of First Parish of Bolton (ABC, UCC, UUA, Quaker) is interesting.

As of 2004, the church had a couple dozen Unitarians and UCCers and only a handful of Baptists and Quakers. However, the pastor notes that the church has more Catholics represented than any other group.

The pastor also describes UUA as not really a "Christian" denomination. From the UUAers I met in Atlanta, Berkeley and Waco, I'd say that's an actual description. I did know guy once who said his homechurch was "Unitarian Universalist with a Christian Identity."

Are there any regulations or guidelines for churches that affiliate with ABC? If ABC and UUA is an acceptable combination, could say a Buddhist group looking to give itself a more interfaith appeal come along and affiliate with ABC-USA?

Maybe not a group, but I know of an ABC-USA pastor who has, at the very least, studied in a Buddhist monastery. You can read his bio on the church website here: http://www.covenanthouston.org/about_staff.cfm

Some of those parish churches in New England and the Northeast are "community churches" historically, and their dual or multiple affiliations are the result of a different mentality related to membership and worshipping together.

[Bruce Gourley]

I've waited to weigh in to see how this conversation would go. What is really ironic about Mohler's condemnation is that Mohler himself is a heretic compared to his Baptist ancestors (who did not believe in the 19th-century theory of biblical inerrancy or deify the Bible, and who were widely condemned as theological liberals by orthodox Christians -- and with just cause, because most Baptists of the 17th and 18th and into the 19th centuries believed that true faith was dependent upon freedom of conscience, not institutional loyalty or theological correctness).

The truth is that heresy changes over time: today's orthodoxy is often yesteryear's heresy, and today's heresy is often yesteryear's orthodoxy. Hence historical heretics like Mohler (and many other fundamentalists) are able to craft their own orthodoxies and point fingers at their opponents for not believing the new orthodoxy.

Also ironically, Baptists were not the initial critics of Toy: rather, the Christian Intelligencer, a periodical of the Reformed Church in America, fired the opening salvo (and in turn riled up some Baptists in the North, the region in which the seeds of formal fundamentalism were sprouting). What did Toy said that offended Calvinists? He declared that Isaiah 53:1-12 referred not only to the future Messiah, but also as having a contemporary message for Israel. (My guess is that William also holds to this heretical view of the Isaiah passage. And I'm pretty sure he holds to Toy's heretical view that the six days of creation were not six literal days, and that the earth is more than 6000 years old.)

More irony: the faculty of SBTS did not declare Toy a heretic or unorthodox in dismissing him. Instead, they charged him with holding views that differed from general Baptist views. This from the same faculty members who, ten years earlier, had applauded Toy's inaugural address in which he clearly stated his views of the Bible as having both a human and a divine element. Specifically, Toy's inaugural described the Bible as having an internal nature (referring to spiritual matters, or the work of the Holy Spirit) and an external nature (elements such as history, geography, and grammar that were quantifiable). Again, my guess is that William would agree with Toy's heretical views of the Bible as having both divine and human elements.

In summary, Mohler is but a clanging cymbal who is trying to create enough noise to cover up his own modern, heretical, unorthodox views about the Bible.

This article provides more detail about Toy's evolving views. And for those interested, here is Toy's Handbook on the History of Religions, written late in his life while at Harvard, and published in 1913 following his death. It does not speak to his theology per se, but to his later view of the broader story of the historical development of religions.

[T. D. Webb]

What is really ironic about Mohler's condemnation is that Mohler himself is a heretic compared to his Baptist ancestors (who did not believe in the 19th-century theory of biblical inerrancy or deify the Bible, and who were widely condemned as theological liberals by orthodox Christians -- and with just cause, because most Baptists of the 17th and 18th and into the 19th centuries believed that true faith was dependent upon freedom of conscience, not institutional loyalty or theological correctness).

Bruce, it is curious that you assert the theory of Biblical inerrancy found its birth in the 19th Century. When did your Baptist ancestors originally determine that Scripture was "errant"?

In His Grace and Peace,

[Stephen Fox]

Thank you, Bruce; no kidding.

Hoping maybe you will join Glenn Jonas and Shurden and do some definitive piece on this matter for BHHS soon, as you are already on your way.
Would be a great issue to also include Furman's John Shelley's great piece on Herbert Gezork. I don't speak for Shelley in any capacity whatsoever, but I would imagine he would be honored to have his piece from circa 03 Furman magazine in BHHS issue.
It is a story you will want to see for sure, about the fellow who was shown the exit at Furman to later become President of Andover Newton.
From resistance to Hitler as youth pastor in Berlin in the mid 30's; through Furman and a higher criticism Inquisition; to march with King and John Lewis at Selma; to Andover Newton which became in January 09 the site of ecumenical talks between Baptists and Muslims as showcased by Parham where Muslim cleric Sayyid made a George Truett like appeal; quite a remarkable story to parallel this Crawford Toy discussion.

Webb; go again to Mark Noll on the Bible and the Civil War. It was Robert E. Lee and Billy Sherman who found the Bible errant.

[William Thornton]

I've waited to weigh in to see how this conversation would go.

Would you comment on his ending up a Unitarian.

[Bruce Gourley]

I've waited to weigh in to see how this conversation would go.

Would you comment on his ending up a Unitarian.

He was railroaded out of Baptist life but committed to remaining a Christian.

Now, perhaps you can comment on why you believe some of the same heresies that you fault Toy for holding?

[Bruce Gourley]

What is really ironic about Mohler's condemnation is that Mohler himself is a heretic compared to his Baptist ancestors (who did not believe in the 19th-century theory of biblical inerrancy or deify the Bible, and who were widely condemned as theological liberals by orthodox Christians -- and with just cause, because most Baptists of the 17th and 18th and into the 19th centuries believed that true faith was dependent upon freedom of conscience, not institutional loyalty or theological correctness).

Bruce, it is curious that you assert the theory of Biblical inerrancy found its birth in the 19th Century. When did your Baptist ancestors originally determine that Scripture was "errant"?

In His Grace and Peace,

Is truthfulness (now or ever) dependent upon the textual perfection of your Bible?

[William Thornton]

I've waited to weigh in to see how this conversation would go.

Would you comment on his ending up a Unitarian.

He was railroaded out of Baptist life but committed to remaining a Christian.

How do you know this? No one else seems to have this information. I reread the article you linked and the author merely said that Toy "remained a Baptist for several years but later associated himself with the Unitarians," which may be sufficient for you to conclude that he was "committed to remaining a Christian." Most Baptists would at the least say that something was amiss if a person joins a nominally Christian group that holds genuinely heretical views.

Now, perhaps you can comment on why you believe some of the same heresies that you fault Toy for holding?

I understand that you stand by your screed that inerrancy is a heresy. I reject that. If six-day creation would have got one fired in 1879, I suppose I would have been sacked on that.

Sorry, you cannot spin the life of Crawford Toy to make him a hero.

[Bruce Gourley]

Would you comment on his ending up a Unitarian.

He was railroaded out of Baptist life [u]but committed to remaining a Christian.

How do you know this? No one else seems to have this information. I reread the article you linked and the author merely said that Toy "remained a Baptist for several years but later associated himself with the Unitarians," which may be sufficient for you to conclude that he was "committed to remaining a Christian." Most Baptists would at the least say that something was amiss if a person joins a nominally Christian group that holds genuinely heretical views.

Now, perhaps you can comment on why you believe some of the same heresies that you fault Toy for holding?

I understand that you stand by your screed that inerrancy is a heresy. I reject that. If six-day creation would have got one fired in 1879, I suppose I would have been sacked on that.

Sorry, you cannot spin the life of Crawford Toy to make him a hero.

Unitarianism is a Christian faith, despite what some Baptists (many of whom at one time denied that non-Baptists were Christians) might say. As to inerrancy, if I were firmly committed to that modern, humanistic, rationalistic view of the Bible, I too would refuse to acknowledge it is heresy. Finally, who is a hero and who is not is rather subjective. I tend to find my Baptist heroes in persons (current or past) committed to the historic, core Baptist principles of freedom of conscience, religious liberty and separation of church and state. Fundamentalist heretics like Mohler are about as far from historic Baptist hero status as one can get.

[William Thornton]

Mormons and other nontrinitarians are classified as Christians, also. Toy's journey cannot be dismissed easily by saying he remain a Christian. God alone knows but his joining the Unitarian church is something that makes him problematic for modern mods.

Who is a hero is certainly subjective.

[T. D. Webb]

Bruce, it is curious that you assert the theory of Biblical inerrancy found its birth in the 19th Century. When did your Baptist ancestors originally determine that Scripture was "errant"?

Is truthfulness (now or ever) dependent upon the textual perfection of your Bible?

Bruce, I find the Scriptures, those who recorded them, and the One who inspired them infinitely more reliable and truthful than unbelieving critics who deny them. By the way, was your question your final answer to my question? Also, when you make reference to "your Bible", what are you implying?

In His Grace and Peace,