By David Saxon [1. Dr. Saxon is Professor of Bible at 海角原创 and Adjunct Professor of Church History at 海角原创 Baptist Seminary.]\n
Shortly after arriving to teach at 海角原创 Baptist Bible College in 1999, I heard from one of my colleagues that he was \u201cfirst a Baptist, and second a fundamentalist.\u201d I found that interesting because I had always formulated my identity in the opposite fashion: \u201cfirst a fundamentalist, and second a Baptist.\u201d My reasoning was that one must believe the fundamentals of the faith before the beliefs that make one a Baptist even matter. The fundamentals relate to the gospel, after all. What could be more foundational\u2014fundamental\u2014than the gospel?<\/p>\n
After serving at 海角原创 for a number of years now, I am beginning to understand my colleague\u2019s formulation of the question. He is certainly not suggesting that the Baptist distinctives are more important, essential, or foundational than the fundamentals of the faith. They are, however, more defining. Affirming that one is a fundamentalist certainly links one with a great and historic tradition of belief in and defense of the gospel. The New Testament, however, clearly proclaims that the central institution in this dispensation for promulgating the gospel is the local church. Saying that one is a fundamentalist says little about one\u2019s understanding of the local church and its purposes. Once one affirms that he is a Baptist, understood historically, then he has said a great deal about how he believes God is working in this dispensation. For us at 海角原创, being a Baptist includes adherence to the fundamentals of the faith but adds additional clarifying information about where we stand and why we are here.<\/p>\n
海角原创 is certainly a fundamentalist institution and has been throughout its history. Furthermore, 海角原创 is committed to dispensational hermeneutics. But the designation that made its way into the very title of the institution is Baptist.<\/p>\n
In an age characterized by ecumenical dialog, there is a prevailing tendency to identify core elements in one\u2019s faith that other Christians share and to celebrate the unanimity that results from focusing on those doctrines. In the case of organizations like the World Council of Churches, such a process has led to the abnegation of doctrinal commitment and the relativizing of the very concept of truth. The result is a pluralistic, postmodern religion that rejects the Scriptures as the authoritative norm for theological reflection.<\/p>\n
Among evangelicals who claim to accept the binding authority of God\u2019s Word, the distillation process results in different types of organizations and movements, such as the Evangelical Theological Society, Together for the Gospel, and the Christian Coalition. These are three very different organizations\/movements, but each represents a group of evangelicals who unite around a common thread of agreement, despite widespread disagreement in other areas.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, fundamentalism is the same kind of movement. When conservative premillennialists began gathering at the Niagara Conference in the 1870s, they exulted in the fact that they represented a wide spectrum of Protestant denominations in North America. They were united by their allegiance to the fundamentals of the faith and the premillennial hope of Christ\u2019s return. This limited focus has allowed fundamentalism to be a transdenominational movement ever since. When fundamentalists gather as fundamentalists and for fundamentalist purposes, they need not agree on non-fundamental issues, such as church polity or hermeneutics.<\/p>\n
For any fundamentalist, regardless of his denomination, this allegiance to the fundamentals of the faith is, in some ways, his highest ecclesiastical allegiance. Before he settled whether or not to immerse or sprinkle, he had to settle whether or not Jesus Christ is God. The blood atonement takes precedence over whether the church answers to the congregation, the presbytery, or the bishop; i.e., the political question is of little moment if we have not been redeemed by the blood of Christ. The fact that the fundamentals are the heart of the Christian faith and determine whether or not someone is saved means that there will always be some level of unity with anyone who affirms those fundamentals alongside us and declares his or her readiness to defend them.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, in this process of focusing on the essential and fundamental and setting aside the nonessential or non-fundamental lies a genuine danger. Kevin Bauder, with a different purpose than that of this article, has leveled a stringent criticism of fundamentalism that addresses this danger: \u201cFundamen-talists have displayed a tendency to focus upon the affirmation of an ever-shrinking list of core doctrines (and, to be sure, those doctrines deserve focus) at the expense of neglecting both doctrinal detail and doctrinal breadth. Because they are cut off from the Christian past, fundamentalists have little sense of the extent to which they have truncated the whole counsel of God.\u201d [2. In the Nick of Time, August 21, 2009.]\n
Once we have affirmed the gospel and the doctrines that underlie the gospel, namely, the fundamentals, we still have not said everything that is important for the work of God in this dispensation.<\/p>\n
海角原创 is committed not only to fundamentalism, but also to the hermeneutic of dispensationalism and Baptist ecclesiology, primarily because we believe that the church\u2014the local church, in particular\u2014is a doctrine of great importance to the work of God in this dispensation. As Israel was the vehicle for divine action in the world during the dispensation of law, so now God is working through the local church to call out a people for His name. How the church is constituted and how it functions are, therefore, crucial questions that we dare not set aside as unimportant matters.<\/p>\n
Like the Catholics, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, Baptists chose their name from an aspect of their ecclesiology, namely, their commitment to believer\u2019s baptism by immersion. I doubt that any Baptist would affirm belief in NT baptism as his highest theological commitment, but Baptists chose this appellation because it pointed to a truth that was and is constitutive for Baptist churches: the fact that NT churches are made up of regenerated and immersed believers, whose one and only true baptism is that which followed their salvation. The so-called \u201cBaptist distinctives\u201d are basically scriptural corollaries to this fundamental premise.<\/p>\n
海角原创\u2019s history is rooted firmly in northern Baptist fundamentalism. Her founder and first president was B. Myron Cedarholm (1915\u20131997). After studying at Eastern Baptist Seminary, Cedarholm served as the pastor of a small Baptist church in Philadelphia for five years before receiving a call to serve with the new Conservative Baptist Association of America in 1947. For three years Cedarholm functioned as one of the missionary-evangelists of the organization, and then in 1950 he was elected as the second national general director. He served as the general director until leaving the Association in 1965. [3. For a convenient survey of Cedarholm\u2019s life before coming to 海角原创, see Kim Ledgerwood, Rich in Mercy: Forty Years of God\u2019s Mercy at 海角原创 Baptist Bible College (Watertown, WI: 海角原创 Baptist Bible College, 2008), 17\u201325.]\n
Initially, the CBA of A was committed to preserving Baptist theology, which, its members believed, was suffering erosion in the Northern\u2014soon to be American\u2014Baptist Convention. As CBAmerica historian Stephen LeBar puts it, \u201cThe very word \u2018conservative\u2019 gives identity to the movement, because the intent was to conserve (to keep, to retain) the basic biblical distinctives that have historically distinguished Baptists as a people of God.\u201d [4. Stephen LeBar, \u201cConservative Baptist Association of America Historical Perspective,\u201d 2006, http:\/\/www.cbamerica.org\/documents\/history _CBA\/CBA%20Historical%20Perspective.pdf.] Liberals in the NBC had been attacking or undermining the gospel since the founding of the convention in 1907. The great fundamentalist battles of the 1920s among the Baptists had related primarily to the liberal assaults on the fundamentals of the faith. In those battles Baptists had participated in the great inter-denominational conservative efforts, such as the World\u2019s Christian Fundamentals Association, led by Minneapolis pastor W. B. Riley, in addition to distinctively Baptist organizations, such as the Fundamentalist Fellowship and the Baptist Bible Union.<\/p>\n
While recognizing the value of interdenominational efforts in certain contexts, the Midwestern Baptists of the 1940s and 50s believed they needed to carry on the fight for the gospel within the context of<\/p>\n
NT\u2014i.e., Baptist\u2014ecclesiology. This is noticeable in the first three \u201cfundamental principles\u201d of the CBA of A listed by Director Cedarholm, as summarized by LeBar:<\/p>\n
The tension that Baptists have always felt between centralization and autonomy is clearly present here. The point is this: battling liberalism is important and can probably be carried out by churches more effectively if they ally with one another. Nevertheless, doing church as the NT specifies is nonnegotiable, and these Baptists insisted that they would not sacrifice the autonomy of their local assemblies for any larger purposes.<\/p>\n
During Cedarholm\u2019s tenure as General Secretary of the CBA of A, the great debate over Billy Graham and his ecumenical evangelism erupted among the churches Cedarholm served. The well-documented rupture of the organization occurred in the early 1960s, with a fundamentalist minority separating from the Association by 1965 [6. For a portrayal of the events from the standpoint of the evangelical majority, see Bruce Shelley, A History of the Conservative Baptists (Chicago: Conservative Baptist Press, 1981). Accessed at http:\/\/www.cbamerica.org\/cba_Resources\/Documents.php.]. Cedarholm clearly sided with the fundamentalists and resigned that year, accepting a call from Pillsbury Baptist Bible College to be its second president.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota Baptist Convention, like the Conservative Baptists, emerged from the NBC, separating officially in 1946. Ten years later, R. V. Clearwaters, pastor of Fourth Baptist Church of Minneapolis, led the MBC to convert Pillsbury Academy into a Bible college. Pillsbury opened its doors in 1957 under the leadership of Clearwaters and, shortly thereafter, Monroe Parker. Both of these men were also to figure prominently in the fundamentalist fight in the CBA of A, and both were warm associates of Myron Cedarholm; therefore, Pillsbury\u2019s reason for existence was the desire of Minnesota Baptists to have a fundamentalist context for training their young people. The school was equally committed to fundamentalist separatism and Baptist ecclesiology [7. For an interesting history of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, see Jon Pratt, \u201cPillsbury Baptist Bible College, A Legacy of Serving the Lord\u2019s Church: The Story of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College,\u201d Vox Ecclesia 6:1 (Feb 2009), 6:2 (Apr 2009), and 6:3 (June 2009). Accessed at http:\/\/edenbaptist.org.].<\/p>\n
Cedarholm\u2019s presidency of Pillsbury was numerically successful but featured unfortunate controversy between Cedarholm and Clearwaters. This controversy did not relate to theological matters; both men were staunch Baptists and fundamentalists. In 1968 Cedarholm resigned from Pillsbury and began 海角原创 Baptist Bible College in Watertown, Wisconsin. Theologically, 海角原创 belonged to the same tradition as Pillsbury and the militants who had left the CBA of A (who now constituted the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship). 海角原创 existed because fundamentalists needed Bible colleges, but, like Pillsbury, it was oriented toward a certain community within fundamentalism, namely, those committed to Baptist polity.<\/p>\n
This orientation was obvious to the first generation of students at 海角原创. First, Cedarholm preached on the local church so often that students\u2019 Bibles almost literally fell open to Matthew 16:18. Second, the academic dean was Richard Weeks, whose enthusiasm for Baptist history was infectious. His collection of rare Baptist works still remains a treasure trove for 海角原创 students. Third, the students discovered that 海角原创\u2019s focus was unswervingly on local church ministry. Throughout the school\u2019s history, the faculty, staff, and student body have actively engaged in ministry in the area churches. For his first twenty-three years in ministry, Cedarholm poured himself into local churches, and he obviously regarded his work in higher education\u2014both at Pillsbury and at 海角原创\u2014as an expansion of that focus rather than a re-direction or mitigation of it.<\/p>\n
Integrally involved in this vision for the local church is the fulfillment of the Great Commission. From the beginning, the Baptist insistence that evangelism is a mandate to the local church to be carried out through the local church dominated the philosophy of Cedarholm and 海角原创. The goal of evangelism is regenerated people, immersed into a local body of believers, and experiencing discipleship through the proclamation of the Word.<\/p>\n
Thus, while acknowledging that non-Baptist fundamentalists faithfully win souls and build churches, Cedarholm and the other early leaders of 海角原创 conceived of every aspect of their ministries as integrally connected to their identity as Baptists. Therefore, to say, \u201cI\u2019m a Baptist first and a fundamentalist second,\u201d is another way of saying, \u201cI\u2019m never just a fundamentalist; I am always a Baptist fundamentalist.\u201d The NT church is the context in which the gospel\u2014the fundamentals of the faith\u2014is lived out.<\/p>\n
It is not surprising, then, to discover that these leaders, especially Richard Weeks, devoted considerable effort to carefully elucidating exactly what constitutes a Baptist. What he achieved has become a distinctive facet of 海角原创\u2019s ethos.<\/p>\n
Dr. Richard Weeks, 海角原创\u2019s first academic dean, was an avid bibliophile and Baptist historian. Well educated, he had pastored for several years in Chicago before he went to Pillsbury and then finally to 海角原创 to teach Baptist Polity and Baptist History, among other classes. Not content with the usual BAPTIST acrostic for the Baptist distinctives, he began a study of the various lists of distinctives identified by a wide variety of Baptist writers\u2014old and new, northern and southern, American and European, and especially fundamental Baptists of the early 20th century. Out of this study he created a list of what he viewed to be the key Baptist distinctives, without trying to force them into an acrostic grid. He also established an order to these distinctives, considering not so much that some distinctives are more important than others, but rather that some distinctives tend to flow out of other distinctives. The result was BRAPSIS2. The following paragraphs will not seek to prove each distinctive scripturally, since such reasoning is readily available in other 海角原创 publications and, indeed, in any faithful analysis of Baptist polity. Instead, this discussion will focus on the logic that drove Dr. Weeks to organize the Baptist distinctives as he did.<\/p>\n
The first distinctive, of course, is \u201cB\u2014Bible, the sole authority of faith and practice\u201d in the local church. Other Protestant denominations might object that they also hold this principle, which, indeed, is generally regarded by historians as the formal principle of the Reformation (justification by faith being the material principle [9. The authority of Scripture is the \u201cformal\u201d principle in the sense that it establishes the framework within which all the other advances occurred. Justification by faith is the \u201cmaterial\u201d principle in that it was the main theological issue to be hammered out.]). What is distinctive about Baptist theology is that Baptists regard the New Testament as the source of their polity and the ruling authority in their churches. Because the distinctives are, by definition, ecclesiological and show how Baptists differ from Protestant denominations, this first distinctive has the role of establishing that the rest of the points will find their authority in the NT alone. This claim instantly sets Baptists apart from Reformed models of the church that look to the Old Testament and episcopal models that depend on tradition for their principal authority. Incidentally, this Baptist claim that the NT is the sole authority for ecclesiological faith and practice is implicitly dispensational, since dispensationalists insist that the church is solely a NT phenomenon. The first and most important point that Baptists derive from the Scriptures regarding the local church is the makeup of its constituency: \u201cR\u2014a regenerated and immersed church membership.\u201d At a stroke, this thoroughly biblical assertion rules out pedobaptism, the parish church structure, and the state churches that constituted Christendom from the fourth century until modern times. If the church is made up only of believers\u2014those who have consciously chosen Jesus Christ as their Savior\u2014then the local church is obligated to reflect as accurately as humanly possible the body of Christ. Thus Baptist churches accept into their membership only those who have professed both by word and by scriptural baptism that they belong to Christ. If \u201cB\u201d is the formal principle of the Baptist distinctives, consider that \u201cR\u201d is the material principle; that is, each of the remaining distinctives flows logically out of the concept of the church as reflected in the NT: a body of visible, baptized believers.<\/p>\n
Can such a body answer to any authority outside itself other than Christ? Can the local assembly guard its purity if it answers to a human authority such as a bishop or a presbytery? Baptists say no, affirming \u201cA\u2014the autonomy of the local church.\u201d Baptists do not deny the kinds of fellowship, cooperation, and fraternity between local churches that are demonstrable from the NT, but they recognize in each local assembly the right and responsibility to carefully guard its own purity. The purity of the church is the corollary of the immediate headship of Christ over the assembly. In other words, the stubborn Baptist insistence on autonomous churches is just another way of saying the \u201csubmission of the local church is to Christ alone as its Head.\u201d Viewed in this way, it is easy to see that \u201cP\u2014the priesthood of the believer\u201d is the personal application of the principle implicit in the autonomy of the church. Just as local churches cannot be made to answer to manmade institutions, such as the papacy, other episcopal overlords, or extra-church presbyteries, so the individual believer within the context of the local assembly answers to Christ alone. We do not need the church to give us authorized interpretations of Scripture or a priest to hear our confession or dispense grace to us, and we ourselves exercise the ministry of reconciliation. In short, we do not need a priest because we are priests.<\/p>\n
Can such a principle have even wider application? Is there a sense in which every man answers directly to Christ rather than to some ecclesiastical authority? If, in fact, every man will stand individually before God and give an account, then it necessarily follows that each man is personally responsible for his own beliefs. Baptists have historically defended the \u201cS\u2014soul liberty\u201d right of every man to enjoy the freedom to determine his own religious beliefs. No room exists in such a view for coercion of religious persuasions or ecclesiastical activities or for persecution of any sort. The Baptist struggle for religious liberty is a glorious theme in church history. It is remarkable that a great many Baptists have paid the ultimate price for their convictions while at the same time staunchly defending the soul liberty of the very ones that were persecuting them.<\/p>\n
The final three distinctives in Dr. Weeks\u2019 list do not connect as obviously to the previous four, but they are important components of the Baptist witness. Having already affirmed that only immersed believers belong in the church, BRAPSIS2 now argues that Baptists are not sacramentalists: they believe in only the two ordinances commanded by Christ in the NT: hence, \u201cI\u2014Immersion and the Lord\u2019s Supper, the only two ordinances.\u201d Of course, one must flesh out this distinctive quite a bit to make it truly descriptive of the Baptist position. By insisting that baptism is immersion and only immersion, Baptists are tacitly arguing that baptism is symbolic only, not sacramental. How one performs baptism conveys the symbolism the NT intends by the rite. Baptists believe that the crucial fact about baptism is its ability to picture the believer\u2019s death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. When churches alter the mode of baptism, they not only disobey the express command of Christ (who, after all, said to \u201cbaptize,\u201d a Greek word that clearly means to immerse) but also destroy the symbolism of what the NT intends to be simply a symbol. While some sacramentalists have immersed (such as the Greek Orthodox), few have insisted on immersion because the sacramental churches regard the rite itself, not the symbolism of the rite, as the crucial thing. Baptists react strongly against any attempt to associate spiritual transactions with physical or ecclesiastical activities. Here, perhaps, is the connection with the previous distinctive. Each soul is answerable directly to God; that is a fundamentally spiritual assertion. External acts, such as the ordinances and ecclesiastical affiliations, reflect or perhaps symbolize spiritual realities, but they do not create or sustain those realities.<\/p>\n
Such reasoning naturally also leads Baptists to understand the Lord\u2019s Supper symbolically as well. Communion with Christ is not conveyed in some special way by the physical activity. Dr. Weeks closed his list with the two varieties of separation that should result if one takes the previous six distinctives seriously. Before this article addresses them, however, note that the acrostic does not assert that Baptists have only two offices. Dr. Weeks certainly believed in only two offices, and the Baptist Heritage class at 海角原创 incorporates the belief in the two offices of pastor and deacon in the lecture on the autonomy of the local assembly. Historically, however, some Baptists adopted the Reformed belief in ruling elders who are distinct from the pastoral office. Today, some Baptist churches are employing this Reformed model; others are urging a plurality of elders but insist that the pastor and elders have the same office though sometimes varying levels of practical authority. In any event, Dr. Weeks believed it historically inaccurate to say that Baptists were distinguished by a belief in two offices, and therefore he did not include this point in BRAPSIS2. This is yet another indication that Dr. Weeks\u2019 acrostic was carefully designed with both historical and theological factors in mind.<\/p>\n
It is interesting that Dr. Weeks believed that both \u201cS1\u2014Separation of Church and State\u201d and \u201cS2\u2014Separation: Ethically and Ecclesiastically\u201d are Baptist distinctives. The first of these points, which flows logically out of the Baptist belief in soul liberty, is undisputed and remains a magnificent contribution of the Baptist churches to modern Western civilization. Dr. Weeks also taught that Baptists are intrinsically separationists. Given the substantial number of Baptists in church history who have failed to maintain either ecclesiastical or personal separation, one can imagine this point in BRAPSIS2 facing significant challenge. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical separation is the necessary corollary of belief in autonomous churches, and ethical separation is the biblical outworking of the priesthood of the believer. It is interesting that since 1930, the large majority of fundamentalists have been Baptist. As noted earlier, fundamentalism is defined by the doctrines essential to gospel proclamation and thus necessarily spans conservative denominations; perhaps, though, the separation that has defined the fundamentalist movement finds its most natural affinity to Baptist ecclesiology. In short, Dr. Weeks\u2019 inclusion of separation, while controversial, may itself provide an interesting insight not only into our distinctiveness as Baptists but also our identity as Baptist fundamentalists.<\/p>\n
海角原创 views its historic commitment to being Baptist as a commitment to the NT model of the church. We value our non-Baptist brethren, particularly those committed to fundamentalism, and appreciate their contributions to the work of Christ. Nevertheless, we are convinced that to the degree that we successfully inculcate NT teachings into our students, to that same degree those students will choose to be Baptists.<\/p>\n
This is a day in which many eschew labels and regard them as unnecessarily divisive. We, however, do not know of any other effective way of proclaiming our adherence to the polity of the NT as it has been understood historically by Baptists than by proclaiming ourselves Baptists; and we do not hesitate to align ourselves with the glorious history of men and women who ministered, suffered, and sometimes died, not for the label, but for the biblical truths the label communicates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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