As we’ve seen in previous installments of this series, Al Mohler alleges that kinists are heretics. We looked at his bogus claim about “racial superiority.” Now let’s start to look at the theological basis of his allegation: our allegedly defective view of human nature. For starters, this is an interesting place to root one’s definition of heresy or orthodoxy, as Christians have squabbled violently over the nature of humanity for thousands of years. Our varying views of soteriology – the doctrine of salvation – largely depend on our varying views of human nature. Is mankind innately wicked and sinful, pretty sinful but otherwise morally capable, or completely capable but sometimes ignorant? Depending on how you answer, you’re either a Calvinist/Lutheran, a semi-Pelagian/Roman Catholic/Arminian/Eastern Orthodox, or a Pelagian/Gnostic/New Ager. There is therefore precedent for basing part of one’s definition of orthodoxy vs. heresy on one’s definition of the nature of man. Having said that, however, it is a post-Nicene development. Human nature is not the subject of the Nicene Creed, often referred to as one of the most basic Christian confessions of faith. In that creed, phrases like“for us men and for our salvation…and was made man,” and “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” imply a view of the nature of man, but do not go into great detail about it. The creed is properly about Christ’s relation to the Father, plus a few statements about the Church, the resurrection, eternal life, and baptism.
So Mohler may be on to something when he argues that we are outside the Faith due to our allegedly defective view of human nature, but ultimately his argument can only put us in the same category of heretics as he’d place an Arminian, a Catholic, an Orthodox, or a Calvinist. He doesn’t allege that we have a different theology, christology, or eschatology. He shouldn’t either, because we don’t. Pro-white Christians hold identical views on these matters as do the other members of the Christian world. At best, Mohler can argue on the basis of a post-Nicene split over soteriology and anthropology. For centuries, Protestants have placed a sometimes lesser or greater emphasis on differences in these departments. Interdenominational efforts such as Campus Crusade for Christ and Billy Graham Crusades have bridged the divides between Arminian and Calvinistic/Lutheran views of human nature in order to focus on the common elements of our soul-winning efforts: exposing people to their sinfulness, their need of a Savior, and God’s free gift of justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ. I point this out to illustrate how for many years evangelicals of various denominational backgrounds have found common cause in soul-winning, even while holding mutually exclusive views of the nature of man. The Synod of Dordt explicitly declared Arminianism to be heresy, while many Arminians in evangelical churches today will tell you that Calvinism is heresy. Calvinists and Lutherans have pronounced similar edicts against each other. Nonetheless, these evangelicals share a common belief that – to a great extent, if not fully – man’s nature is fallen, and he is incapable of salvation without the grace of God in Jesus Christ. On this we all agree. Even Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox will agree on this point. How fallen we are, how we got there (e.g. through double predestination or not), and how we get out of that fallen condition, is where we disagree.
Therefore if pro-white Christians confess the same Nicene Creed as does Mohler, with no different interpretation of it than he himself holds, and we confess the same understanding of human nature in that man is fallen and needs the Lord Jesus Christ to save him, for what reason does he allege that we are heretics and doomed to hell?
Based on the above, it is hard to see how he can pronounce his verdict upon us with any degree of intellectual honesty. If he’s referring to unbelieving members of the Alt Right, that’s a different story – but they’re not heretics; they’re pagans, atheists, and humanists, and so belong in an altogether different category completely outside the Faith. But judging by the fact that he directly called us heretics, Mohler wasn’t talking about them. You don’t call Hindus or atheists heretics because they are completely outside the Faith, not at all a part of the Church, and have no allegiance to Christianity whatsoever. We can call varying stripes of churches heretical if they contradict the doctrines of the Nicene Creed – as the Mormons do in denying that there is only one God in the entire universe, for example, and in positing that God the Father had carnal, biological relations with Mary in order to produce the Lord Jesus Christ – but we don’t call unbelievers heretics.
The only basis upon which Mohler could make his argument is on an understanding not of each individual man’s nature, but on the nature of mankind as a whole. This is where I think he is making his argument, as it is also the ground upon which Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, LDS, and varying Protestant sects have made their arguments against the Alt Right. Essentially, it boils down to a view of mankind as composed of fungible, interchangeable units with no essential or permanent distinctions. This unfortunately is an anti-trinitarian, anti-Protestant, anti-scriptural proposition. This view of mankind in toto is itself harmful and, dare I say, heretical.
The view of mankind which Mohler regurgitated (it was not a thought that originated with him, I assure you) simply looks at Ephesians 2:14, Galatians 3:28, and Colossians 3:11 and applies a unitarian, humanist, Marxist hermeneutic to them. In defiance of Protestant norms of interpretation, it rips these verses out of their historical and literary context and foists them, isolated and misinterpreted, to the list of things that Christians are supposed to believe to be real Christians. Then Mohler and his peers go further and posit that if we don’t act on those beliefs by letting in non-white illegal immigrants and adult male “child refugees,” and cater to the whims of anti-white #BlackLivesMatter anarchists, we are heretics. This is nonsense.
In an upcoming installment I’ll make further headway in explaining why Mohler’s pronouncement that we’re heretics is incorrect. I urge our readers to check out previous Faith and Heritage articles on these verses, and on good interpretation, here and here and here among others.
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