Two Statements That Hinder Baptist Cooperation

Ed,

Excellent article. I’m a baby Calvinist after having been a Christian for more than 40 years. How I came to be a Calvinist is a story that demonstrates that God, as the author of all things, has a sense of humor. However, I was not prepared for the vitriol that surrounds the doctrine. Seriously, I had no idea that it could raise tempers and unseemly behavior on BOTH sides. When I consider the sacrificial love, Christ has for us, I wonder why we can’t seem to remember the great commandment to love the Lord with all our hearts and mind and OUR brother as ourselves.

As far as Southern Baptists are concerned the allowance of the differences between believers began in 1787, when the Separates and Regulars agreed to drop their differences and unite. From henceforth they would be known as United Baptists. As to the Sovereign Grace issue, they were primarily agreed on all five points of the issue as any perusal of the writings of that period will reveal. However, the Separate Baptists had some ministers who were hung upon Hebs.2:9 where the KJV renders it that Christ “tasted death for every man.” In context, most Sovereign Grace ministers understood that it meant for every son or child. However, since the translators had rendered it every man, some of the uneducated ministers tended to focus on every man as a legitimate explanation. Added to that is the fact that some of the brethren who advocated a more general kind of atonement had suffered for the faith by being locked up in prison for preaching the Gospel. Their more calvinistic brethren were not unmindful of that fact.

Now we have the anomaly of people thinking Calvinism, as it regards the doctrines of grace, is heresy and that these truths are not the heart of the Gospel which is what Mr. Spurgeon had in mind. Here we have the First and Second Great Awakenings and the launching of the Great Century of Missions involving the theology of Sovereign Grace. Then we have perhaps the greatest gospel preacher of the 19th century being given a short shrift who was held in such regard that when the founding President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was invited by Spurgeon to preach in the latter’s church he refused as he did not feel worthy of it. And James Petigru Boyce is well known for his calvinism…along with the Sovereign Grace views of all of the first faculty ministers who were reflecting the founding father, Basil Manly, Sr., whose son wrote the Sovereign Grace view into the Abstract of Principles, because that is what they believed. And all of the Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1845 until the 1900s were firm believers in the Doctrines of Grace, one of whom, P.H. Mell, wrote a book on Predestination. their spirit of advocacy was not that of belligerence but of loving affection for those with whom they disagreed. They also wanted Southern Baptist ministers to be persuaded of these truths…at their own pace. They allowed for differences; they did not expect that the more Arminian side would become so numerous and so rigid that they would began to sound alarms to the effect that the founding theology of Southern Baptists from the get go in American was heresy!!! That, in essence, is what our present arminian types are really saying, because they can’t say it wasn’t there. When the founding theology was expressed in the London Confession of 1689 (FBC Charleston, as expressed by William Screvens in his last words to his congregation before he died saying they ought to hold to that Confession) and the Philaldelphia Confession of 1742 (the founding confession of many Baptist Assns. and churches throughout the South), and the Sandy Creek Confession of Faith of 1816 which was adopted by a committee chaired by Luther Rice (the Father of Missions for Southern Baptists and who advocated that a minister must preach on election and predestination as they are in the Bible). Another member of that committee was Basil Manly, Sr., the clerk of the assn. and the father of the Southern Baptist Seminary. He suggested the founding Southern in 1836 and then served as President of the three educational conventions of the Southern Baptists in 1857, 1858, and 1859 which established the seminary. The Abstract of Principles was drawn up by Basil Manly, Jr., with the assistance of Dr. A.M. Poindexter, anoted Sovereign Grace preacher in Va.(I think it was Va., if memory serves correctly). While the New Hampshire Confession of 1832 seem to be a way out of Calvinism for many who did not like Sovereign Grace, the truth of the matter is that in this century its calvinism was still evident enough for Kenneth Good to write a book on that issue in that confession, too. It is like those who took Andrew Fuller’s work, the Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, and used it as an excuse to ride sufficiency in to full fleged General Atonement. The truth is that Andrew Fuller never thought of himself as anything other than a believer in Sovereign Grace and of all five points in particular as is evident in his three volumes of Works. His ideas on sufficiency, I think, were drawn from one scholar who has been regarded by some as the person most responsible for limited atonement. I refer, of course, to Dr. John Own and his Death of Death in the Death of Christ, and the fact that he said Christ’ blood was of such value that it could pay for the sins of a multitude from a 1000 worlds (give me a Puritan any day of the week for being able to glimpse the future). How else shall we get enough to fulfill the humorous remark of Rev.7:9 of a “number no one can number/” Not even God? It is neuter, I think, gentlemen.

By the way you folks might like to know a prototype of present day Arminian type Baptists from the 1800s. I would suggest you read the Life and Labors of Elder Rueben Ross, who was won to Christ by a Sovereign Grace minister and whose funeral was preached by a Sovereign Grace minister. Elder Ross evidently did not know, understand, or preach Sovereign Grace. He is the first full fledged type or prototype of the modern Southern Baptist minsiter. He did hold to perseverance of the saints.