‘Baptist Life & Thought’ Category

One of our precious freedoms, won in part by Baptists, is freedom of conscience. Recently, the Hamilton Wentworth School Board here in southern Ontario has ruled that alternative lifestyles are to be taught in public schools and that parents will not be allowed to withdraw their children from classes when this issue is taught. The argument that I saw promoting this likened the issue to racism. Children are not exempt from classes dealing with the latter and therefore ipso facto should not be exempt from the former.

This is all very interesting and confirms my own conviction formed over the past few years that one of the greatest challenges to the Church in the West is going to be obedience to state matters that violate our conscience as Christians. 

In brief: this is not like racism at all. That is like comparing apples and oranges. I have known racism firsthand becuase of my Kurdish background in the UK–was regularly called Arab in High School and even called by the N-word. I loathe racism. But I do not believe sexual preference is in the same category. Nor do I believe the state has the right to dictate ethical values to myself or my children. Everyone has an ethical position and the state is hardly neutral.

Being a Baptist and having a rich heritage to draw upon I now see as so vital for the modern-day. We need to revisit the lives and thinking of Baptists from the 17 and 18th centuries.

Why do I love Andrew Fuller and his circle of friends? There are many reasons. One of them is this: their profound sense of belonging to a catholic body. Lest some of you think I think they were Roman Catholics, that is definitely not what I am saying.

What I am saying is this: through friendships with men like John Newton, John Berridge, Thomas Scott–all of them Anglicans–Thomas Chalmers and John Erskine–Scottish Presbyterians–the New divinity heirs of Edwards in New England–all of them Congregationalists–and even Hyper-Calvinists, like William Button and Arminian Baptists like Dan Taylor–these men had a balance in their Christian lives that is enviable. They knew they were Baptists and gloried in that heritage. They were Calvinistic and would not surrender these truths for the world. But their goal in life was not to make men and women Baptists or even Calvinists–it was to make them first of all Christians.

Honestly, it scares me today to see men building little fiefdoms based on secondary issues or even tertiary issues. And whose basic raison d’etre is not the great orthodox, catholic Faith. Oh that the biblical catholocity of Fuller and his friends might be more in evidence!

Addendum (written four hours later): I am a Baptist through and through (even closed communion). I am an unashamed Calvinist (certainly not hyper, nor committed to double predestination–here I follow the 1689). But I am first and foremost a follower of the Lamb. I want him, and his Father and Spirit, to be my all in all.

Addendum 2 (written a day or so later): That is why I am a Baptist, though. I am seeking to follow Jesus in all that he commanded (Matt 28:19-20). But I recognize and love brothers dearly who see things differently. For my position see John Sutcliff’s preface to his 1789 edition of Jonathan Edwards; Humble Attempt. It cannot be said better than he says it there.

Ove the past few weeks I have been sourcing patristic citations from Basil of Caesarea mostly (but today also Gregory of Nazianzus) in John Gill’s The Cause of God and Truth, and I cannot find any of them! It has been an extremely frustrating experience.

Gill is citing these Fathers to defend the perspective that the so-called five points of Calvinism have a much earlier heritage than the Reformation and post-Refomation theologians. Methdological concerns aside, it appears that Gill at times made paraphrases from the writings of Basil. I have been combing through the Greek and am so frustrated with coming up with not one quote that I can confirm in Basil’s corpus.

Thankfully, one of my PhD students, Steven Godet, is working on this very matter, and will provide answers!

Addendum (added Feb 26/2010): Have actually found three or four citations in the past three hours. Generally ok, but some of the quotes are paraphrases.

This past weekend (February 19–21) I had the distinct privilege of being a speaker at the 2010 True Church Conference held at Grace Life Church, Muscle Shoals, Alabama. What a privilege to meet and hear Jeff Noblit, pastor of the host church, Conrad Mbewe—“the Spurgeon of Africa”—and his wife, Barry King, a church planter in London, Jonathan Sims and David Miller—a really deep privilege.

I spoke twice: once on “Defining hyper-Calvinism” and on “Missionary Pioneer Andrew Fuller & hyper-Calvinism.” The first talk was particularly difficult to prepare, since I decided to focus on the soteriology of John Gill (1697–1771) and his teaching on the pactum salutis, eternal justification, and the free offer of the gospel. I do think Gill to be on the hyper-Calvinist side of the equation and thus to have been an innovator, following lesser lights like Joseph Hussey and John Skepp rather than the broad stream of Reformed orthodoxy of the seventeenth century. Although Gill quoted Thomas Goodwin, for instance, in supporting his view of eternal justification, he misunderstood Goodwin. But to present such in a popular format, I felt peculiarly difficult. Then to speak on Fuller and do him justice was a challenge. But I am so thankful for the opportunity to be with those brethren.

Flying back this a.m., I missed worship at the house of God. I therefore “listened”—that is, within my mind as I read it—to a sermon preached over a hundred years ago: “Feeding on ashes” by Alexander McLaren (1826–1910) [in A Rosary of Christian Graces (London: Horace Marshal & Son, 1899)]. What a gem—in many ways he was good as a preacher as his contemporary, C.H. Spurgeon (1834–92). A reminder of what life and true life is all about. I was struck by the way he read that clause, “Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you” (p.213), which he took spiritually and an offer of Christ of himself. Spurgeon had a richer view of the table of the Lord.

What would be helpful I am realizing is a scholarly study of the term Anabaptist in the 17th century. It would be very helpful to know exactly how the term was viewed and used. Anyone game for this?

Walter Wilson’s The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses (London, 1808–14, 4 vols.) is one of the gems that anyone researching seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dissent needs to know. Going through vol. 1 just now, I noticed that among those whom Wilson consulted for help in his researches was “J. Sutcliff, of Olney.” Sutcliff, the Baptist pastor of Olney, was an ardent bibliophile and helping Wilson would have been right up his alley!

In the midst of the discussion about Anabaptist origins of modern-day Baptists, it is very interesting that a document associated with Thomas Helwys (c.1575–c.1616), who is one of the key founders of Baptist witness in the first decade of the seventeenth century, can state quite plainly that it has been written—and I retain the spelling of the original—by “Christs unworthy witnesses,…comonly but most falsly called Annabaptists”—Obiections (1615), [p.vii].

Am working right now on a talk for tomorrow at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto on “Celebrating our roots; Anticipating the harvest”—a 400^th anniversary celebration of Baptist origins with John Smyth and Thomas Helwys and the like. It is historic in some ways since it will bring together Baptists from the FEBC and BCOQ to celebrate together our forebears and God’s goodness over the years.

In some ways gathering to recall the beginnings of those Christians called Baptists is a little like one of those rock concerts for boomers, who come together to hear a sixties band belt out some of their favourite rock n’ roll hits from that era. It would be easy to think that those aging rockers are merely indulging in nostalgia. Sure, there is some of that. But to a real extent their roots lie back in the sixties. That was the era that defined their social, sexual, and spiritual views and reliving the vibrant music of that era that stirred their souls so deeply then helps them reaffirm their identity now. In a somewhat similar way, what we are doing when we celebrate our roots is not mere antiquarianism: oh, wouldn’t it have been lovely to live in that era! No, we gather together to re-affirm who we are by recalling where we have come from.

I was recently asked by a good friend, Hélène Grondines, one of the finest artists I know and who is working on a portrait of Samuel Pearce (1766–1799), the Baptist leader of the eighteenth century, how I would explain who Pearce was in one line to non-Christians. Here is an initial go at it:

Samuel Pearce was a Baptist minister in England at the close of the eighteenth century whose preaching and walk with God, despite an early death at the age of thirty-three, made him an influential figure at the beginning of the modern worldwide expansion of Christianity.

It is extemely important that The Second London Confession (SLC), when it came to the section “Of Gods Decree,” did not reproduce The Westminster Confession (WCF) holus-bolus.

Chap. 3 of the WCF has eight paragraphs. Chap. 3 of the SLC has only seven. One, that on reprobation, has been entirely omitted. The WCF essentially reproduced the doctrine of double predestination that was part of the strong Augustinian tradition that ran from Augustine through the Venerable Bede (c.673-735) and Gottschalk (c.804-c.869) to the Reformers. The authors of the SLC, however, embraced a milder Augustinianism.

This needs exploring by someone in more detail!