Thursday, January 23, 2014

Mohler’s Homo Ratio


It seems as though Dr. Albert Mohler has taken some heat for his recent foray into Mormonism by speaking at BYU. I say this because here recently he wrote an article which amounts to an apologia for his speaking at BYU (you can find the article here). I’ve already weighed in on the foolishness of Mohler of going to BYU in the first place (article here).

Let’s look at Mohler’s apologia.

One would think that since Dr. Albert Mohler is president of religious institution of higher learning, that he is a self-professed believer, that he is a minister,  that he is a Baptist, that he would go the Scriptures for any justification for his actions/words. Yet, this is not the case. Instead, he uses an ancient maxim, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the reason, the justification for joining hands with Mormons concerning the societal attack on marriage.

Mohler cites the foreign policy of the Allied powers in World War II adopting this maxim with their joining with the Soviet Union in order to defeat Nazi Germany. Any cursory study of that relationship clearly shows the Allies and the Soviet Union were not “friends” by any stretch of the imagination and in the end that alliance did irreparable damage to the countries which would eventually become the eastern bloc of nations as the “Iron Curtain” fell across Eastern Europe after the war. Read the sailor’s report of this “friendship” as they arrive in Murmansk or Archangel with matériel for the Soviet Union or the pilot’s accounts of treatment as they landed in the Soviet Union either by deliberate plans or by an emergency and one quickly comes away with the understanding we were not “friends.” For instance, the account of plane eight of the Doolittle Raiders who bombed Japan in April of 1942 as they land near Vladivostok. The Soviet Union was no “friend” to this American crew. The five crewmen would eventually plan their own escape and reach Persia in May of 1943. This maxim is hardly an “indispensable” or “inevitable” mandate to be used in foreign policy or anywhere else for that matter.

Mohler concludes his article by stating, “In a time of cultural conflict, the enemy of my enemy may well be our friend.” No, Dr. Mohler, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, especially when we are at odds with the Truth found in the Scriptures. Sorry, Dr. Mohler, your “reasoned” approach using an ancient, flawed maxim to justify your stance with Mormonism on marriage does not pass the test, the Biblical test (for starters, Rom 16:17; II Thess. 3:6, 14; II John 7-11). The Mormon church stands diametrically opposed to everything a Christian holds as Truth. They are indeed an enemy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Any kind of accommodation of Mormonism will only enrich Mormonism’s positions to the detriment of the Truth, just as the Allies accommodation of Stalin lead to the detriment of Eastern Europe’s freedom and plunged the world into a decades long Cold War.

There is a serious problem when men who supposedly stand firmly on the self-sufficiency of the Scriptures go off into human reasoning to justify their positions/actions. So much for Sola Scriptura being the call words of evangelicals, Mohler has shown us that it is homo ratio instead. Mohler has betrayed the very basic, the primary distinctive that Baptists have clung to for centuries, that the Bible is the sole authority for faith and practice.