Posted on 04/19/2003 7:55:27 AM PDT by Between the Lines
One cannot help noticing the interest in Calvinism lately expressed among some Baptists has prompted from others a cry of alarm. One group tends to represent the Baptist heritage as passively shaped by Calvinism, and the other wishes to deny the Calvinist (or Reformed) influence completely. The truth is somewhere in-between.
The concern for eliminating the Calvinist influence among Baptists is misguided.
Every body of believers needs to be in touch with the best of its theological tradition. For Baptists, that tradition is Reformed, or Calvinist, thought. Those who wish to look into this view need only discover for themselves the evident Calvinism of the Particular Baptist London Confession of 1644 and the even more pointedly Calvinist nature of the Second London Confession of 1677. These statements, along with the Savoy Confession and the Westmins ter Confession, evidently came from a co mmon stock of doctrinal expression. The words of the 1644 Confession and its successors are suggestive of Calvin's "Institutes" and not at all of, for instance, the early Anabaptist Schleitheim Confession. This is true not only in the ordinary sense of common vocabulary and system, but also in regard to the tone and the habitual focus. Again, one can point to the undisguised Reformed theology of John Gill, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Andrew Fuller, Isaac Backus, Richard Furman, Basil Manly Sr., James Petigrew Boyce and quite a number of others who were powerfully instrumental in the doctrinal expression of Baptists through the middle part of the twentieth century.
All this has been vigorously preached by the defenders of Calvinist theology, only they have sometimes taken an additional, and unwarranted, step further. They often assume that this put Baptists (especially Southern Baptists) right in line with the most extreme expressions of Calvinism. They assume that Baptists must be advocates of the Canons of Dort, the famous five-point Calvinism that was formulated some half- century after John Calvin himself was dead. Or they align Baptists with the hard-edged Calvinism of early New England Puritan thought. In fact, the Reformed thought that most influenced Baptists, especially in the South, was one that had been softened and moderated by Scottish Common Sense philosophy and by the Baptists' own insistence upon the competence of believers to respond in faith to the gospel.
Interestingly enough, along with this Calvinism moderated by Scottish Presbyterians and Baptists of the American South came a real openness to the strongest and best of Christian thinkers from other traditions. The great Broadus, who set the standard for intelligent and heart-felt preaching among Baptists, remembered with gratitude that the advanced students of Boyce, the founder of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, read from Turrettini (a moderate Reformed thinker) and Thomas Aquinas. E.Y. Mullins, Southern Seminary's president for the first quarter of the 20th century, could adapt Schleiermacher's insights to a basically Reformed worldview.
Some worry about an "aggressive Calvinism" on college campuses. I worry more about a fundamental resistance to any vigorous kind of theological thinking. For the life of me, I cannot see that college campuses are about to be overrun by Calvinists--aggressive or otherwise. If there is genuine theological study going on, which in fact there is, then it is a matter for which we might be grateful. I am concerned about aggressive relativism in ethics and religion; I am concerned about aggressive nihilism in the moral life of college students; I am concerned about aggressive addictions and aggressive sexually transmitted diseases; I am concerned about aggressive indifference in the formation of the intellect among students.
But aggressive Calvinism? I haven't seen that yet. And I do find, however, among our best students an appreciation for the ordered, energetic, biblical teachings of John Calvin and some of his followers. To reject this rich tradition by pretending it has nothing to do with Baptist history would be wasteful and wrongheaded. To confuse the distinctive Baptist form of this tradition with its most radical historical expressions is to miss the Baptist genius that reshaped Calvinism in a way that proved fruitful for the aspiring denomination of Baptist Christians in America.
Laissez faire theology, which forgets its debt to thinkers of the past, may do for a period of time. In fact, that has mostly been the state of things since World War II, after which careful theological teaching was submerged in denominational boosterism and a cult of personality, with results that we have sadly lived with these past two decades. The atheological approach to church life leaves us narrow-minded and unimaginative, merely reciting the prejudices we have gathered like lint over the past 50 years; while a well- wrought theological tradition keeps us alive to conversation partners from every Christian generation, providing a foundation of substance for our mission and our ministry. As P.T. Forsyth once wrote, "The non-theological Christ is popular; he wins votes; but he is not mighty; he does not win souls; he does not break men into small pieces and create them anew."
A.J. Conyers is professor of theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco
You still haven't gotten it. Nobody is headed for the Lake of Fire because of sin. The penalty of sin is separation and those in that state can only escape it by removal from that state.
Jesus Christ has paid the price, but unless the state or condition is changed, you still won't change from a state of separation.
That state of separation is changed upon faith of the believer being made efficacious for salvation and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
Consider man like a broken elevator that was design to go all the way to the top floor initially. Adam fell and broke the power connections to take back to the top. Somebody had to have the tools to fix the system so power would still flow to the elevator to make it work. Jesus Christ was the first guy who was able to ever qualify to get into the system to make the repairs. He repaired the elevator for everybody. Now if somebody gets on the elevator and sits there demanding to go to the top floor, but rejects how God has built the system and refuses to push the up button,...he isn't going to go anywhere. In fact, it's been preprogrammed that unless somehow the signal gets up to the controls to qualify as an up signal, latter on all the trash is gonna get thrown on the elevator and it's going to drop into the furnace,...that's already programmed. So all somebody has to do for salvation from that furnace, is simply get on the elevator and use it the way it was designed. If they don't, they'll follow the program and burn with the garbage.
I bet you must be the darling of the GRPL.
That is a nice dramatic flourish, but not correct. They do not go to hell for keeping God's commandments, but for breaking them and being unrepentant about it.
You are arguing against the Bible. See my earlier post to you on Paul and good works.
Isaiah 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
The point is you will not earn your way into heaven without Christ
Moose has been attacking the GRPL for drawing their circle wide enough to include "Pelagians". But both are in serious error for excluding the saints of God, those who have entered in at the gate as Jesus has appointed, and who follow the leadership of the true and living apostles and prophets Jesus has sent in our day.
The excluders need to be careful, lest they only end up excluding themselves. It is solemn mockery before God to set yourselves up as the judges of another man's heart, calling evil another man's good life, calling good another man's evil life, excluding them based on the label you seek to fasten on them, assigning them to a group that you profess to be out of favor with the "orthodoxy" of the day. God will judge us as individuals, according to our works, and does not share what those judgments will be with you guys. Nor have the final chapters of our lives yet been written, though God foreknows them.
By the way, "verbal smackdown", whether by Moose or by the GRPL, is natural-man behavior. When you forsake all such behavior, repent of your sins, come unto Christ, learn of Him, and are truly born again, you will no longer seek the symbolic victory, that is to say, the verbal smackdown.
If they can't argue them in accordance with the rules, we also have a Smokey Backroom forum.
The moderators are not going to referee religious arguments and when appropriate we will move them.
A very important and necessary clarification.
Isaiah 64:1-12The prophet Isaiah is pleading on behalf of a sinful people, as Moses did in his day.
1 Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence,
2 As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!
3 When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence.
4 For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
5 Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned: in those is continuance, and we shall be saved.
6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
7 And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
8 But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.
9 Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people.
10 Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
11 Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste.
12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?
It is really important not to leave the implication ("good works = filthy rags") that there is no point in keeping the commandments of God.
The keys are repentance with faith in Christ, then comes baptism and the Gift of the Holy Spirit, which brings sanctification, that through obedience, keeping God's commandments, living a life of service, yielding our hearts to God, the Holy Spirit may sanctify us, that we become holy, without spot.
>> The point is you will not earn your way into heaven without Christ
That is correct. Know anyone who believes otherwise?
Isn't there a difference between wanting a new bike, properly paid for, comparable to what the average kid has, and coveting your neighbor's bike?
Repentance is not like "sorry you got caught". Repentance is not being bound down by guilt forever. It is the key to freedom from being bound down by guilt forever, thanks to the atonement of Christ. But you do need to feel a Godly sorrow for the bad things you have done, enough to know they were wrong, enough to forsake them for the rest of your life.
Let the Holy Spirit be your guide as to the degree of repentance that is necessary. When you are done, you will have departed from wrongdoing, you will have made amends as necessary, you will have the sense that the Lord has forgiven you, and when you are able to forgive yourself, you will feel a great burden lifted. Then, strive to retain a remission of your sins (the goal of repentance and baptism, Acts 2:37-38) as a lifelong process.
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