THE DEFECTION WAS UNDERWAY
Editorial. Brother S. F. Stone of Mo. requests my view of Absolute Predestination, and eternal vital Union.
FOREWORD
This article represents the slow decline among Old School Baptists:
Yes, in parts of the Old School / Primitive Baptist world there was a slow, uneven decline of explicit, full-throated Absolute Predestination, but it was always a fight, not a clean surrender, and in some streams—especially the absoluter line you care about—it never really budged. In the early Old School period (roughly 1830–1870, with men like Trott, Beebe, Dudley, Lawrence, Parker, and others), you do not see them hedging around predestination at all. The default assumption is that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, which includes not just salvation in the abstract but all events, good and evil, under His holy, wise decree. They use this pastorally to comfort the afflicted, destroy boasting, and strip all “means” systems of power. They will vehemently reject “fatalism” as a caricature, but they do not back away from saying “all things” are predestinated. In this early period among the core Old School men connected with the Signs of the Times crowd and the Black Rock line, there is no decline: absolute predestination is part of what distinguishes them from Missionary / New School Baptists and from softer Calvinists who want more “free will” language.
You begin to see a slow drift in some places in the later 1800s, especially in certain regional Primitive Baptist circles, where there is pressure and softening. Some want to avoid being labeled “fatalists”; some are influenced by more moderate Calvinistic language about foreknowledge and permission; some are reacting to extremely hard-edged statements from a few absolutists. You start to see men who will readily say that God predestinated His people’s eternal salvation, but who get nervous when you say that He predestinated all things that come to pass. They keep strong language for eternal salvation, but want wiggle room in “time”—human responsibility, time-salvation, contingencies, “if you do this, God will bless you,” and so forth. That is the seedbed for what becomes Conditional Time Salvation. Among the writers you have catalogued as Conditionalists (Cayce, Holder, some of Dalton, and others), you can watch them trying to cordon off predestination: they are strong on election, regeneration, and glorification, but hesitant or hostile toward saying God absolutely decreed every event, including sins and all temporal things.
By the late 19th and early 20th century, this tension becomes explicit as an open absolutist vs. conditionalist split inside the Primitive Baptists. One wing—the people you would identify as your folks—insists that God predestinated all things, that both time and eternity are under the same decree, and that any retreat to mere permission or limited predestination smells Arminian. The other wing (Cayce and company) argues that this sort of universal predestination is “Absolutism,” that it makes God the author of sin, that it destroys “duty faith” and “time salvation” exhortations, and that it must be opposed. This is the context in which you get debates like Oliphant vs. Durand, Dalton vs. Burnett, Cayce vs. Penick, Holder vs. Nichols, pamphlets with titles such as “ABSOLUTISM: What Does It Really Teach?,” and whole associations and regions quietly or loudly tilting one way or the other. From that point on, in the conditionalist regions explicit “all things” predestination language does indeed decline and is replaced with formulas like “God predestinated His people’s salvation, but…” followed by a heavy layer of “if you do this, you’ll be blessed in time,” while in the absoluter regions (the Signs of the Times line, certain northern and western groups, and some deep-south pockets) the old language stays put and, if anything, becomes sharper as a badge of identity.
By the mid- to late-20th century, many people who would still be tagged “Primitive Baptist” in broad overviews are conditionalists of one stripe or another, and in those circles absolutism has declined sharply, sometimes to the point of being caricatured as near-blasphemy. The absoluter lineage, though smaller numerically, has deliberately kept the old Beebe/Trott-style language alive and treats any retreat from it as a betrayal of the original Old School stand. So if you zoom out, numerically, among all who use the PB/OSB label, absolute predestination likely occupies a smaller percentage of the total than it did in 1850. Confessionally, among those who see themselves as the true heirs of Black Rock and Beebe, the doctrine has not declined; it has become a non-negotiable marker of what “Old School” means. The decline, then, is real in the broader Primitive Baptist ecosystem, but inside the hard-line Old School stream you are working in, Absolute Predestination has not merely survived; it has become the line in the sand.
Guillermo Santamaria
ABSOLUTE PREDESTINATION
There is no predestination that is conditional, nor does the bible teach any conditional predestination; hence, there is no need for the word absolute in defining predestination, nor does the bible use that word.1 As to good brethren, as they use it to express their meaning better. Let them do this if they prefer, but I see no need for it. The bible uses the best words, and we do well to hold fast to a faithful form of some words.2
While predestination of God directly concerns the church of Jesus Christ, still it so much embraces and comprehends all events, whether righteous or wicked, that all things work together for good to them that love God, and who are called according to this purpose; still the wickedness of men is condemned, and when men do wrong, they are manifestly guilty.
But how could there be a conditional predestination? How could some things be fixed beforehand, and others not be fixed? Here, we say it is certain that this thing will be, or that that event will transpire, but it is connected with other events, and it is not certain at all that those other events will occur. It is certain that Christ will be betrayed, but it is not certain that anyone will betray him. It is certain that Israel will go into captivity, but it is not predestinated, nor is it certain that Nebuchadnezzar will capture them. It is certain that Israel shall be afflicted in Egypt, but it is not certain that Pharaoh's heart will be hardened so that he shall oppress Israel. Now, how could that be?3 Some brethren have said that I am non-committal or silent on the subject of predestination. I admit that it is a precious doctrine, too deep and high for me to sound or fathom, and therefore, little feeble ones like myself behave better to be silent than to be prating about what we cannot explain.4 God works all things according to the counsel of his will, and “all things” do not exclude anything; but for me to tell how he does all this is a task I am not equal to. My counsel to all is to remember that all true Baptists are predestinarians, as the bible teaches that truth. Let us not strive about it. It is very common for us to say of others who do not believe as we do that they are not sound in the faith or are weak in the faith. That is, as to say that we are sound in the faith or strong in the faith. Whereas it occurs to me that those who are strong in the faith are the very ones that do bear, and should be near, with those who are weak in the faith. Perhaps it is not those who consider themselves strong in the faith that are so strong after all.5 Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
ETERNAL VITAL UNION
As to the other question of eternal vital Union. I have this to say, that such terms and words are not used in the bible, but that the doctrine meant to be taught by them, namely, the unity or oneness of Christ and his church, in the sense that he is their life and righteousness, is true and is taught in the scripture; and that it is not a dead unity, but a vital unity, in the sense that he is our life, and certainly it is vital or very important to us; and this unity existed before we were created in Adam, or before the foundation of the world, and therefore it is eternal. It is not a union, but unity.
P. D. G.
Endnotes
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We have no idea what this means! But it turns out to be a real tell. When someone says, “There is no predestination that is conditional,” and yet spends the very next move distancing himself from “absolute” predestination, what he is really saying is: “I affirm predestination, but not that kind.” The language is trying to have it both ways.
Historically, among Reformed and Old School writers, “conditional predestination” is not just some accidental phrase; it’s a specific attempt to make God’s decree depend on foreseen acts, choices, or conditions in the creature. To say “there is no conditional predestination” is to deny that God’s decree hangs on anything creaturely. But the moment you add, “there is therefore no need for the word ‘absolute,’” you’re quietly opening the door to exactly the thing you just denied. If predestination is not “absolute,” then it must be conditioned in some way—if not by man’s will, then by some other thing that makes the decree less than all-encompassing.
Historically, “absolute predestination” was simply the insistence that God’s decree is not conditioned on foreseen faith, works, choices, or events; it is free, sovereign, and all-comprehensive. The fact that this writer feels the need to stroke the doctrine with one hand (“no conditional predestination!”) and then push away the word “absolute” with the other reveals that he is uneasy with the very absoluteness he claims to uphold. It reads like a man saying, “I am not a semi-Arminian, I’m just against the extremes of predestination.”
In practice, the attempt to drop “absolute” from predestination has almost always led to softening the decree—treating some things as fixed, others as left open, and pretending you can do that without drifting into the very conditionalism you said you rejected. The Old School men you care about understood this, which is why “absolute predestination” is very much a thing—though it’s more of a warning label in your world than a badge of honor. In their usage, “absolute” simply shuts the door on the disease: trying to sneak a creaturely “if” into the decree of God.
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This seems like an escape so as not to deal with the issue. Absoluters didn’t invent the word “absolute” because they were bored with plain predestination. They were pushing back against exactly what this writer is doing—treating God’s decree as if it were somehow partial, segmented, or shy of embracing “whatsoever comes to pass.”
The move here is: “We all believe in predestination; there’s no need for that scary word ‘absolute.’ Let’s just keep the Bible’s words.” On the surface, that sounds pious; in practice, it’s a way of keeping the language while shrinking the content. The Bible absolutely uses the best words, but the church has always coined extra words when heresies forced clarity: “Trinity,” “incarnation,” “hypostatic union,” and so forth. Nobody says, “We should drop ‘Trinity’ and just say ‘God’ because the Bible uses the best words.” We hold on to “Trinity” because it safeguards what the Bible actually teaches.
“Absolute predestination” arose in exactly that way—as a term that guards the doctrine from being hollowed out into a vague, partial, or merely foreknowledge-based scheme. It’s revealing that this writer invokes “a faithful form of sound words” while gently pushing away the word that, historically, has been used precisely to preserve the strong form of the doctrine. You can almost hear a conditionalist whispering, “Yes, yes, God predestinated, but not in that all-encompassing, every-event, no-loose-ends way. Let’s just say He predestinated His people to heaven and leave it at that.”
The Old School men who stood their ground, including Beebe and the stricter line you identify with, would reply: “Fine, throw away the word if you want—but you cannot throw away the reality. A decree that does not absolutely fix all things—whether for eternal salvation or for what happens in time—lands in the same ditch as conditionalism. It just does so with softer language.”
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That paragraph is trying to invent a kind of “Schrödinger’s decree”: events are “certain” and “not certain” at the same time, depending on which part of the sentence you are looking at. “It is certain that this thing will be… but it is connected with other events, and it is not certain that those other events will occur.” That’s not theology; that’s a logical train wreck.
If an event is truly certain, then every necessary condition of that event must also be certain. You cannot truly say “It is certain that Christ will be betrayed,” while also saying “It is not certain that anyone will betray Him.” That’s not piety; that’s nonsense. Scripture never talks this way. When God prophesies that something will occur, He is not gambling on free-floating human choices; He has already fixed the path by which that prophecy will be fulfilled.
The betrayal of Christ is not an abstract event that might or might not find a betrayer; it is bound up with Judas, with the Sanhedrin, with Pilate, with every thread in the tapestry. The same holds with Israel’s captivity and affliction in Egypt. You cannot meaningfully say “It is certain that they will be afflicted” while refusing to admit that Pharaoh, his hardened heart, his decisions, and his oppression are equally certain. To separate the certainty of the event from the certainty of the instruments is to pretend that God decrees shadows without bodies.
This is precisely why absoluters insist that predestination must reach “whatsoever comes to pass,” not just a bare outline of history. If God has predestinated an outcome, He has also predestinated the means, the actors, and the timing. Otherwise, His supposed decree is just a kind of cosmic wish list waiting for creatures to fill in the gaps. A man who insists on such forms of speech is not defending mystery; he is defending incoherence—and that is not theology, it is guessing like the rest of us and only pretending to prophesy.
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This sounds humble, but it quietly smuggles in a very bad habit: using “mystery” as a universal escape hatch instead of as a confession at a very specific edge. There is a huge difference between saying, “I cannot explain how God’s decree and human responsibility coexist, but I believe both because Scripture teaches both,” and saying, “This doctrine is too deep, so I will mostly be silent about it.”
The latter becomes, in practice, a pious-sounding excuse not to preach what God clearly reveals. The New Testament is not shy about predestination: Romans 8–9, Ephesians 1, Acts 2:23, Acts 4:27–28, and many other texts lay it right on the table. Paul doesn’t say, “This is too deep, therefore I will barely mention it, lest the weak be troubled.” He says, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
The statement in the article is especially troubling because it comes right after the writer has already ventured to opine about predestination—setting up carefully what it is not, what it cannot include, how it must not be viewed as “absolute” in certain ways. Having shaped the limits, he then retreats behind a rhetoric of weakness and silence when it comes to the positive assertion of the doctrine. That is not harmless modesty; it functions as a rhetorical shield. He is not too weak to carve away parts of the doctrine; he is only too weak, apparently, to assert its fullness.
The Old School absoluter line would call this out gently but firmly: the “little feeble ones” language here is not honoring to Christ’s office as Teacher. Christ has spoken about His Father’s purpose, the Spirit inspired the apostles to write about the decree, and the church is commanded to teach “whatsoever I have commanded you.” To plead weakness at the precise moment where unpopular truth should be confessed is not reverence; it’s a quiet retreat from the full counsel of God.
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Read in the context of that article, this little move is half-true and half-deadly. On the good side, it’s echoing something real and biblical. Paul does say, “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). There is a genuine, beautiful pattern in which those who are more established in the truth carry, comfort, and forbear with those who are still struggling, uncertain, or confused.
But that is not what is actually happening in the paragraph. The writer has just finished carving out his position, suggesting that those who insist on a fuller form of predestination are the problem-makers, the quarrel-stirrers, the ones who aren’t content to say “we’re all predestinarians.” Then he pivots to this: maybe the people who think they are strong in the faith are not as strong as they suppose. In other words: “Those absoluters who keep pushing this issue should really stop—they aren’t as strong as they imagine; truly strong people wouldn’t make such a fuss.”
That is an inversion of Paul’s teaching. In Romans, the “weak” are those who cannot yet fully grasp their liberty or the breadth of God’s work; the “strong” know the truth more fully but are gentle in how they handle it. Here, the “weak” seem to be the ones who want a narrowed, domesticated version of predestination, and the “strong” are implicitly those who insist on the older, harder line. To say “perhaps those who consider themselves strong are not strong after all” functions, in this context, as a soft rebuke of the absoluters for simply saying what Scripture says more plainly.
It becomes a psychological jab: “If you were really mature, you wouldn’t talk about this so much.” That is not what bearing the weak looks like. To bear with the weak is to carry them along while still teaching the truth, not to flatten out doctrine until nobody is offended. A better application of Paul’s language here would be something like: “I must not despise those who stumble at this doctrine, but neither will I trim it away to make them comfortable. I will speak gently, but I will still confess what God has revealed.”
The logic of the article does almost the reverse: it pleads for mutual forbearance in order to marginalize the very doctrine that once marked Old School Baptists off from others. In that sense, the “strong vs. weak” rhetoric here is not a faithful echo of Paul, but a subtle way of suggesting that those who won’t back off full predestination must not be strong.
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Excellent !
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