Hillbilly Southern Baptists: Stomp Those TULIPS from Free Will/Yeehah Gardens

The Hillbilly, backwoodsmenish, ever-fighting, pitch and hayfork SBCers are “afighting” and about stomping the TULIPS out of the “Free Will and Revivalistic Gardens.” 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/07/why-cant-southern-baptists-just-get-along/

Why can’t Southern Baptists just get along?

July 8, 2012 By rogereolson Leave a Comment

I’m not a Southern Baptist and never have been one. But you can’t be a Baptist in North America and especially in the South and not feel the tension emanating from that denomination. Even non-Baptists feel it. The “Baptist wars” (almost exclusively a reference to the thirty plus years battles among SBCers) get reported on even in the secular press.

I’ve been an observer of the Baptist wars for years. For the past thirteen years most of my students and many of my colleagues grew up SBC. As I’ve mentioned here before, one of my theological mentors (in my doctoral studies and afterwards) was a leading SBC theologian (moderate John Newport).

I have long predicted that once the conservatives consolidate their control of SBC institutions they will turn on each other with the same vitriol and venom they turned on the so-called “liberals” in SBC seminaries in the 1970s through the 1990s. (I put “liberals” in scare quotes to indicate that I still don’t know of a single SBC seminary professor who was truly liberal in any historical-theological meaning of the word. Not one, for example, appears in Gary Dorrien’s massive three volume history of liberal theology in America! One conservative told me he knew of a theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who denied the virgin birth but he wouldn’t tell me the professor’s name. So, to this day, I have my doubts. John Newport told me in 1979 and many times afterwards that the “take over” was not really about doctrine or theology but about people who felt like “outsiders” wanting power and control.)

Recently a leading Southern Baptist pastor has gone on the attack against fellow conservative Southern Baptists. He says (at his blog) there is “room” in the SBC for all of them, but his rhetoric makes one wonder what he really thinks.

The SBC pastor/blogger in question is Wade Burleson and his questionable post is at www.wadeburleson.org/2012/07/early-london-baptists-and-today-sbc.html

(I apologize that I still have not found the way to turn URLs into live hyperlinks; just copy and paste it into your browser. Don’t take my word for what he says there; read it yourself. I think you’ll find the final paragraph shocking. I do.)

Burleson seems to want his readers to believe that all early Baptists were Calvinists. Well, that’s simply factually wrong. But he appeals to the 1644 London Confession as if it expressed the theology of all early Baptists. Lumpkin, in his authoritative Baptist Confessions of Faith, includes it under “Early English Baptist Associational Confessions.” In other words, like all Baptist confessions, it expressed the consensus of a group of Baptist congregations. It was not like the Westminister Confession of Faith (for Presbyterians) or the Augsburg Confession (for Lutherans). Those expressed the doctrinal standard for all Presbyterians in a national (the UK and Germany) and became binding on all Presbyterians and Lutherans world wide. (Candidates for ordination must swear allegiance to them.)

Like all Baptist confessional statements, the 1644 London Confession was a statement meant to explain the consensus of beliefs of a particular group of Baptist congregations to outsiders. Yes, like many others, it became an instrument of doctrinal accountability over time–for a particular group of Baptists.

What Burleson doesn’t make sufficiently clear is that this statement was largely based on Mennonite statements of faith (Fuller Seminary professor Glen Stassen has demonstrated that in several articles), especially Menno Simons’ Foundations book. Burleson wants to drive a wedge between Anabaptists and Baptists, something Particular Baptists in England came to do to protect themselves from persecution and because they adopted Separatist Puritan views on God’s sovereignty–something foreign to their Anabaptist forebears.

(Glen Stassen, professor of ethics at Fuller Seminary, has proven direct reliance of the 1644 London Confession on Mennos Simons’ book The Foundation of Christian Doctrine. See “Opening Menno Simons’s Foundation-Book and Finding the Father of Baptist Origins alongside the Mother–Calvinist Congregationalism” in Baptist History and Heritage Spring, 1998 pp. 34-54. Burleson is clearly wrong to deny even early London Baptists’ Anabaptist roots.)

Also not made sufficiently clear in Burleson’s post is that during the same time the 1644 London Confession was being written and promulgated, there were older, “General Baptist” congregations in and around London that did NOT endorse that statement because of its Calvinism. In fact, there were Baptist statements of faith before the 1644 London Confession. Why doesn’t Burleson mention them? The first one was the “Short Confession of Faith in XX Articles” by John Smyth in 1609. Burleson complains that some Southern Baptists are denying original sin. (I can only guess who he means, but the authors of the previously here discussed statement about the traditional Southern Baptist doctrine of salvation did NOT, in fact, deny original sin.) John Smyth DID deny original sin: “(5) That there is no original sin….” (Lumpkin, p. 100) That doesn’t make denial of original sin “okay” but it ought at least to be noted in any attempt to trace the history of Baptist doctrinal statements!

Furthermore, Thomas Helwys, the other original founder of the Baptist tradition (as it emerged out of Puritanism and Anabaptism in Holland and England) also wrote a Baptist confessional statement. His was in 1610 (thirty plus years before the 1644 London Confession) and it too denied original sin: “none of [Adam's] posterity…are guilty, sinful, or born in original sin.” (Lumpkin, 103).

Again, just because Smyth and Helwys said it doesn’t make it right or even typical of “right Baptist belief.” My only point is that it would SEEM worthy of mentioning in any diatribe against fellow Baptists ON THE GROUNDS THAT they supposedly go entirely against all of Baptist tradition with regard to original sin.

Now, earlier here I criticized the statement of some Southern Baptists about the “traditional Southern Baptist” view of salvation because it seemed to open the door to semi-Pelagianism. But my criticism was not that semi-Pelagianism has not been part of the Baptist tradition. My criticism was that it is not “the traditional Baptist [or even Southern Baptist]” view of salvation. And it is technically a heresy (in the Great Tradition of Christian teaching). And, of course, most importantly, it is unbiblical.

But I did not accuse them of “flirting with pelagianism” [sic] let alone “flouting [sic] humanism” as Burleson seems to do. (If he’s not talking about them, I don’t know whom he is talking about.)

Here is how Burleson ends his post: “There’s room in the SBC for Baptists who flirt with pelagianism and flout humanism. However, let it not be said they are either historic or traditional in their soteriological and theological views. They are neither.”

“Flout humanism?” (I assume he meant “flaunt” humanism? But even that would be a misuse of language.) I seriously doubt there are any SBCers who flout or flaunt humanism (in the sense Burleson seems to mean). C’mon. Get real. Get civil. (And use words correctly.)

This kind of venomous attack on fellow Christians, God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians, is so uncalled for, so out of line, so indecent and uncivil that it demands censure.

UNLESS, of course, he’s talking about unitarians or atheists or agnostics. In the SBC? I doubt it. I think he’s talking about Arminians or those who don’t call themselves Arminians but, for all practical purposes, are.

The only picture at his post of anyone he might mean is of Paige Patterson whom he criticizes for claiming Baptist roots in Anabaptism. And, of course, Paige is an Arminian who doesn’t call himself one. (I call him one because he denies the U, the L and the I of TULIP which are the three great issues separating Calvinism from Arminianism.)

Burleson also criticizes those who claim Baptist roots in the Anabaptist tradition–on the basis that the 1644 London Baptist Confession and its formulators deny being “Anabaptist.” As I said earlier, however, Glen Stassen and William Estep, among others, have demonstrated quite conclusively strong influence of Mennonites on early Baptists. Yes, the London Baptists were correct to deny being “Anabaptist,” but it is also incorrect to deny Anabaptist roots of the Baptist tradition or Anabaptist influence on the early London Baptists.

But my main point here is to ask why Southern Baptists can’t get along? I’m not surprised, however, that they, the conservatives who took control of the SBC often using scare tactics and venomous, even unchristian, attacks on fellow Southern Baptists are now turning on each other. Is there something in SBC DNA that makes this inevitable? No, I don’t think so. Over the years there have been long periods of relative peace in spite of diversity (e.g., between Calvinists and non-Calvinists) within the SBC. It’s not SBC DNA that’s the problem, it’s fundamentalism.

Here I speak not of fundamentalism in the early, ordinary, garden-variety sense of Protestant orthodoxy–belief in the five or six or seven “fundamentals of the faith.” Here, by “fundamentalism,” I speak of the religious ethos that entered into evangelical Protestant Christianity with the likes of William Bell Riley and J. Frank Norris–the northern and southern partners of aggressive, separatistic fundamentalism that added premillennialism to the list of fundamentals of Christian faith and questioned the very salvation of people who didn’t agree with them on that and much else that has always been secondary doctrine at most. Not that all fundamentalists did or do that particular thing. Some have been and are amillennialists. The one doctrine is not the point. The point is the felt need, the compulsion, to use the rhetoric of exclusion (often couched in some “nice talk”) to marginalize people who disagree with you about secondary and tertiary matters of faith–often misrepresenting their beliefs to cause people to fear them.

Fundamentalism reared its ugly head when some conservative evangelicals reacted to open theism by labeling it “Socinianism.” It reared its ugly head when some conservative evangelicals called SBC seminary professors a “cancer.” It reared its ugly head when some (notably Harold Lindsell) argued that anyone who is not an inerrantist is not an evangelical (something even Carl Henry disputed). It rears its ugly head when people accuse fellow conservative Christians of “flouting humanism” (when what is clearly meant is not “Christian humanism” in the sense in which I described it here earlier).

No, my friends, the problem is not SBC DNA. The problem is fundamentalism–as a spirit of division, of exclusion, of theological narrowness (not as an emphasis on generous orthodox).

I don’t accuse any person, certainly not Wade Burleson, of being a fundamentalist. But even people who aren’t can sometimes express themselves in ways that are. I may have been guilty of it myself and, if so I apologize and repent. It’s a problem swimming around in American evangelical Christianity (that even sometimes appears in liberal circles!). We need to eschew it, repent of it and back away from it. And we need to lovingly expose it wherever we see it.

Dumb Ass Ed Young on Raising Testosterone Levels

H/T: to "The Museum of Idolatry."

http://www.alittleleaven.com/2012/07/ed-young-praising-skinny-jeans-and-testosterone.html

A Southern Baptist Hillbilly and Dumb Ass, "The Rev. Mr. Ed Young," offers his sartorial counsel and advocacy for raising testosterone levels.  Of course, it is public.  It’s the result of ignorance, shamelessness, and assinity. One cannot make this stuff up.   This braying ass just offered a rant about Calvinism a few weeks back.  And…then…this? 

One day, a younger and smarter crowd will wake up and say, “Who is this Dumb Ass?  He offers himself as a public example of leadership, doctrine, thought, wisdom, and an wholesome example to others?  The guy is an idiot and dumb ass.  Away with him.”

 


Pastor Fashion - Brad Stovall from Fellowship Church on Vimeo.

Southern Baptists Concerned about "Encroachment of Calvinism"

The Southern Baptists are concerned about the "presumbable encroachment of Calvinism."  This means TULIP or the "five points of Calvinism" associated with the Dutch Synod of Dordt, 1618-1619.  Reformation Anglicanism, of course, would subscribe to "5-point Calvinism." Such views are so basic to young and maturing Churchmen.  We well remember--with head-scratching--when Dr. Al Mohler burst onto the Baptyerian scene with his new found "Calvinism."  One would have thought the Second Coming occurred as Al, along with John Piper, enthused at a Ligonier Conference, sponsored by R.C. Sproul, Sr.  Bapyterians, like R.C. Sproul, Ligonier Ministries, Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Ligon Duncan, and even James Boice, gave a voice and wide platform to these Baptyerians.  There's much more to "Calvinism" than five points:  covenant and infant baptism, the covenant of grace, consensus Reformed confessions, music, catechisms and memory work for children, doctrinal preaching (e.g. Heidelberg Catechetical instruction at evening services), educated clerics, synodical government, Psalm-singing and theologically-driven hymnals, etc. We would add an Anglican-Reformed liturgy of which the Bapyterians know nothing.  None of the Baptyerians have exposure, skill, or the piety of the  old Prayer Book.  Even the Reformed Seminary professors have little of that. But we briefly digress.  At this point, "predestinarian Baptists," or, as a more historical term, "particular Baptists" like Al Mohler, are giving pause to the revivalist and Arminianized SBC versions, their dominant faction.  Reformation Anglicanism will maintain that level of discernment that transcends these Anabaptists and Baptyerians...what one advisor to Queen Elizabeth the First said, a "faith for men of discerning spirits."  While one might rebut that point as elitist (etc.), we have sustained and substantive rebuttals.  We support Elizabeth's advisor while the Revivalists will object.  The article follows with the URL.

'Encroachment of Calvinism' concerns editor

Posted on Feb 10, 2012 | by Erin Roach

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- Southern Baptists must decide whether they are satisfied with a "presumable encroachment of Calvinism" in their leadership and their seminary graduates, Baptist paper editor Gerald Harris wrote Feb. 9, drawing responses from several SBC entities.

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J. Gerald Harris

In a column titled "The Calvinists are here," Harris, editor of The Christian Index, newsjournal of the Georgia Baptist Convention, set forth statements about Calvinism and quoted Southern Baptists on both sides of the issue.

"... It appears that some of our institutions and agencies are giving, at the least, tacit approval to Reformed theology or are, at the most, actively on a path to honor, if not implement Reformed theology and methodology in their institutions," Harris wrote at ChristianIndex.org.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was cited in the column as "a particular source" of recent graduates espousing Reformed doctrines.

"There is a growing perception that Southern Seminary has become a seedbed for a brand of Calvinism that is quite different from the Reformed theology of its founder, James Petigru Boyce, and also a training ground for Reformed church planters," Harris wrote.

In response, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary, told Baptist Press, "I have no idea what Dr. Harris has in mind with this comment, and only he can explain it. The theological standard at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is the Baptist Faith & Message and the Abstract of Principles, upon which the institution was founded, and on which the first signature is that of James Petigru Boyce."

For more, see:

http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=37156

Founders Ministries | Doctrines Lead to `Dunghill' Prof Warns

Southern Baptist historian spouts off about Calvinism. Helpful as a matter of news, but not of exegesis, theology or history. In fact, for a Professor, not impressive at all.

Founders Ministries Doctrines Lead to `Dunghill' Prof Warns

William R. Estep

[Dr. William R. Estep is professor of church history, emeritus, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth. His article is reprinted with permission from the Texas Baptist Standard, 26 March 1997. Dr. Estep kindly sent the Founders Journal a slightly revised version of this article in which he added "a few bibliographical references and corrected a couple of dates." It should be noted that he originally entitled the article, "Calvinizing Southern Baptists." The editors of the Baptist Standard are responsible for the title which appeared in that publication. Because it is the one which has been widely distributed, the original version of his article which appeared in the Standard is the one which follows. Due to his heavy writing schedule, Dr. Estep is unable to enter into correspondence with readers about his article.]


Only the most out-of-touch Southern Baptist could be unaware of the attempt on the part of some within our ranks to promote a 19th century version of Calvinism among Southern Baptists as a return to the original theology of the first English Baptists.

This newfound fascination with Calvin and the system of theology that bears his name is both intriguing and puzzling, since most of the ardent advocates of this movement have only a slight knowledge of Calvin or his system as set forth in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. They simply borrow that which they assume to be both biblical and baptistic without adequate research. This is essentially what James P. Boyce did, as reflected in his Abstract of Systematic Theology.

Charles Hodge, the most influential of the Princetonian theologians of the 19th century, was Boyce's mentor at Princeton.

Thoroughly enamored with Hodge and his three-volume Systematic Theology, Boyce taught Hodge's version of Calvinism at Southern Seminary, which Basil Manly Jr. also incorporated in the seminary's founding document, the Abstract of Principles (1858).

These works provide the pretense upon which Ernest C. Reisinger has attempted to call Southern Baptists back to what he conceives to have been their Calvinistic roots. This assumption must be challenged on the basis of the original Baptist vision and its theological insights.

John Calvin (1509-1554)

Calvin is best known for his Institutes, which first appeared in 1536. After several revisions, the definitive edition was published in 1559 in four volumes, He also was the reformer of Geneva.

Trained in law, Calvin attempted to form a church-state for which he drew up laws and set up a "consistory," not unlike courts of the inquisition in the medieval Catholic Church. This church court condemned many for "heresy"--spiritual crimes--some of whom were executed by the civil authorities and others were exiled.

Among, those condemned, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for disagreeing with Calvin on the nature of the Trinity and "anabaptism." Jerome Bolsec was exiled for disagreeing with Calvin on the doctrine of predestination.

Admittedly, this was the 16th century and the pressures on Calvin were enormous, but when all of these factors--political, sociological and religious--are considered, Calvin cannot be exonerated.

He was no advocate of religious freedom, but an autocrat who often mistook his own will for the will of God.

Calvin never was able to free himself from his Roman Catholic heritage. The tenacity with which he held to infant baptism, a church-state in which a sin against the church became a crime against the state, and the use of the civil Government to enforce conformity to the Genevan theocracy reflect his adherence to the Codex Justinian.

His Old Testament hermeneutics and his uncontrollable temper acerbated his intolerance of those who disagreed with him. A case in point was his quarrel with Jerome Bolsec over predestination.

Predestination Controversy

While it is difficult to state briefly Calvin's view of predestination, perhaps the best summary is that given by Calvin himself:
"By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation, and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death" (Institutes, 3.21.5).

Bolsec could not accept Calvin's position, which seemed to erect a whole system of theology on "eternal decrees" without any reference to Christ or the love that caused God to offer His Son as a sacrifice for sinful humanity.
Bolsec did not deny man's sinful nature or the need of salvation, but his view of election focused on Christ and the grace made available to believers through faith in Him.

He also recognized the individual's ability to respond in faith or to reject God's gift of salvation. In doing so, there was no room in Geneva for Jerome Bolsec. He was expelled from the city.

Baptists and Calvinism

Baptists arose out of the English Puritan-Separatist movement, which was Calvinistic, but they modified their Calvinistic heritage to a considerable degree.
The first English Baptists of record (1608), came to be known as "General Baptists," since they believed in "general atonement"--that Christ died for all and not just for the elect. Their Calvinism almost completely vanished under Anabaptist-Mennonite influence.

The "Particular Baptists" (1641) were so designated because they held with the English Puritans' belief in "particular atonement"--that Christ died only for the elect.

But they also modified their Calvinism, as Glen Stassen has shown, under the influence of Menno Simons' Foundation Book, which they quoted in the First London Confession of 1644. Its revision in 1646 reveals a further departure from Calvinism in their rejection of the fourfold ministry of Calvin's invention and by greatly enlarging his article on religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

While Baptists never have been doctrinaire Calvinists, as a careful study of the sources reveals, there have been some Baptists from time to time who have advocated such a position.

When John Ryland Sr. called William Carey "a miserable enthusiast" and told him, to sit down that God "would save the heathen without your help or mine," he reflected the hyper-Calvinism of John Gill, who set forth his position in numerous works and prided himself on never extending an invitation for a sinner to trust Christ during his entire London pastorate of more than 50 years.

Andrew Fuller wrote The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation against Gill's Calvinism, concluding: "Had matters gone on but a few years, the Baptists would have become a perfect dunghill in society."

Fuller's modification of Calvinism among the Baptists made possible the foreign mission movement of which Carey became the catalyst.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon often has been cited by Baptists as a staunch Calvinist. At times, the young Spurgeon claimed to be exactly that, but at other times it is clear he was neither a hyper-Calvinist nor even a consistent Calvinist.

A. C. Underwood, in A History of English Baptists, writes that Spurgeon's "rejection of a limited atonement would have horrified John Calvin."

According to Underwood, Spurgeon often prayed, "Hasten to bring in all Thine elect, and then elect some more." The mature Spurgeon confided in Archbishop Benson, "I'm a very bad Calvinist, quite a Calvinist--I look on to the time when the elect will be all the world.

Problems with Calvinism

Apparently Baptists always have had problems with an unmodified Calvinism. Only a few can be mentioned here.

First, it is a system of theology without biblical support.

It assumes to know more about God and the eternal decrees upon which it is based than God has chosen to reveal in scripture or in Christ. To say God created some people for damnation and others for salvation is to deny that all have been created in the image of God.

It also reflects upon both God's holiness and His justice, as portrayed in the Bible.

Further, Calvinism appears to deny John 3:16, John 1:12, Romans 1:16, Romans 10:9-10, Ephesians 2:8-10, and numerous other passages of scripture that indicate, as Baptists confessions have consistently stated, that salvation comes to those who respond to God's grace in faith.

Second, Calvinism's God resembles Allah, the god of Islam, more than the God of grace and redeeming love revealed in Jesus Christ.

Third, Calvinism robs the individual of responsibility for his/her own conduct, making a person into a puppet on a string or a robot programmed from birth to death with no will of his/her own.

Fourth, historically, Calvinism his been marked by intolerance and a haughty spirit. Calvin's Geneva, the Synod of Dort (1618-619) and the Regular Baptists (Hardshells, Primitives and Two Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists) are only some of numerous examples of this Calvinistic blight.

Fifth, logically, Calvinism is anti-missionary. The Great Commission is meaningless if every person is programmed for salvation or damnation, for [then] evangelism and missionary effort are exercises in futility.

Apparently, Calvinism is an excursion into speculative theology with predictable results, which we as Southern Baptists can ill afford.

It also introduces another divisive element in a badly divided denomination.

If the Calvinizing of Southern Baptists continues unabated, we are in danger of becoming "a perfect dunghill" in American society, to borrow a phrase from Andrew Fuller.

"There is no learned man but will confess that he hat much profited by reading controversies -- his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds more firmly established. All controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true." --John Milton, as quoted in The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, compiled by I. D. E. Thomas (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 62-63.