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
A burning in your busom?
From a Biblical standpoint, ... Michael and Adam are two separate creations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.