10 comments

1. I saw someone on X/Twitter say that when you make your statements about Baptist doctrine, “they hear…” and that’s when I realized it’s not about the statements. It’s about what they hear.
   The Bible tells us to be careful how we hear. So that we don’t hear what we think we hear but what we actually hear
   It’s a hearing problem. In my experience Baptists suspend such biblical rules when their worldview is under threat. They don’t do it knowingly. It’s a reflex reaction.

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   • Indeed.

     The influence/affect of postmodern subjectivism upon the Baptist movements is profound as it is surprising.

     I tried to address it in A House of Cards? A Response to Bingham, Cribben, and Caughey,” in Matthew Bingham, Chris Caughey, R. Scott Clark, Crawford Gribben, and D. G. Hart, On Being Reformed: Debates Over a Theological Identity (London: Palgrave-Pivot, 2018), 69–89.

     My impression is that unless I agree with the Baptists they only see me as another persecutor.

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2. Dr. Scott, I read your six essays on Featly and the ‘Dippers.’ Thank you, very helpful, especially the last paragraph of the sixth article. You said that Particular Baptists do not follow the implications of the covenant of grace to its logical conclusion, for if we did, we would embrace infant baptism (my paraphrase). I agree. Also, I retract my accusation about straw manning; it was too harsh an accusation (ninth commandment?, I shudder). Perhaps I should have said my friends and I are in much more agreement with you than you think. You are the history professor and know way better than me how these matters are argued in theological circles. Thanks for all the reference material. I made it through most of it today (minus the $64 book). I had no clue you had all that stuff already written about. So, thanks again. What a blessing you are to me and my friends.

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   • Hi Bobby,

     I appreciate this.

     I’m not sure that I agree with your paraphrase. My view is that the Particular Baptists have their own covenant theology. There are some among the Particular Baptists, which I described in the essay “Engaging With 1689,” who hold a view that formally looks like the Reformed insofar as they seem to want to affirm that the covenant of grace is truly present in the types and shadows. My impression is, however, that view is not winning the day among Baptists. As part of the movement to recover their own roots, I see Particular Baptists, led by Sam Renihan and Pascal Denault, rejecting the idea that the covenant of grace is actually, as I like to say, “in, with, and under” the types and shadows. They have, as I said in the episode, emptied the types and shadows of the covenant of grace altogether. Indeed, Sam is so resolute in the approach that he’s embraced the limbus patrum! For Sam and Denault, the only historical manifestation of the covenant of grace is the New Covenant.

     The radical view (Renihan and Denault) is not only utterly incompatible with Reformed theology but with historic Christian theology. Read the Epistle to Barnabas, or Justin against Trypho, or Irenaeus, or Tertullian, or Cyprian, or Clement of Alexandria or Augustine (as a sum of Western theology to that point). They all see one covenant (of grace), multiple administrations. They would repudiate the radical view as Marcionite or worse.

     The minority PB view, I don’t remember what name I gave it in “Engaging,” is inconsistent because they want to have the covenant of grace and deny it at the same time. If Abraham is an administration of the covenant of grace, and it is, and God said, “I’ll be a God to you and to your children,” and he did, then the implications are clear as Peter says in Acts 2:39. The Abrahamic promise is still in force! Sam and Pascal have resolved this tension by simply identifying Abraham with Moses and turning Abraham into another covenant of works and postponing the covenant of grace until the New Covenant.

     Does that help?

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     • Absolutely, in my original remarks aside from the slander I mentioned that for me the light bulb came on when I saw Moses as the Old Covenant and Abraham as the everlasting Covenant. I do not know how to talk about these things in proper categories but my 17 year Bible Study buds see salvation in the OT being by grace through faith in the promise (gen. 17:7). And how else could God save, by obedience to Moses? God forbid. So we (our group) would agree that covenant grace has always been the way God saved His people. Our problem was more along the lines of the implied passages feeling stretched and presupposed and the direct passages just fitting the apriori that circumcision equals baptism. And indeed that is what you’ve been saying. But for me I had you and Presbyterians trying to get Moses across the Jordan so I couldnt’t see it. When I listened to “I will be a God to you and your children,” I saw clearly that 1. Moses didn’t cross the Jordan but 2. Abraham sure did. Then I understood your/the reformed view way more clearly. It’s still fogged like the man who only saw trees but it’s coming into view. Thank you so much again.

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3. Thank you, Dr. Clark. I am Particular Baptist and I have had the same discussion with “Reformed Baptists” since the early 1990’s. I even had this discussion with a pastor that graduated from Dallas Theological that called himself “Reformed”. My wife’s family is CRC in Grand Rapids, that is how she was raised, and we understand what Reformed really means. Kenneth Good, a Baptist, wrote a book many years ago called “Are Baptists Reformed?” and he outlines the differences between Reformed and Baptists. I would encourage any Reformed or Particular Baptist to read it to help them understand the substantial differences. It may be out of print still, as it was when I read it back in the 1990s, but thanfully, there is inter-library loan, as you suggested. I am thankful to you, Dr. Clark and the many Reformed folks that I read and listen to, but I understand where we disagree.

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   • Thank you Frank for your, well, frankness.

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   • Totally agree, Frank, as a convinced/convicted Particular Baptist. I’ve been a member in 3 Reformed churches during the early-mid 90s, yet am more convinced than ever that I am indeed a Biblically, God Caused/Particular Baptist. Thank you for your comments, and I too love my dear Reformed brothers & sisters! And I’ve never stopped!✝️📖🙏I read them daily. Glory to God!

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     • Rob,

       Can you say briefly what convinces you of believers’ only baptism?

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4. Thank you for this Heidelcast. I subscribe to the WCF, but since moving to rural Missouri I’ve had to Worship at a rural SBC due to no conservative Presbyterian churches in our area. Your blog and Heidelcast helps me stay grounded, as well as learning more about the Reformed faith. So, no, I don’t think you are making a strawman out of the Baptists – there really is a difference and we need to know what it is. 🙂

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