An Old School Baptist Evaluation of “Opinions in the Wake of the SBC Essay” (Saantamaria)

An Old School Baptist Evaluation of “Opinions in the Wake of the SBC Essay”

FOREWORD

History is often injured less by open enemies than by careless labels. A false name, repeated long enough, begins to sound like a settled fact. A charge made in heat hardens into tradition. A slander, once printed, grows old and respectable. So it has often been with the early Particular Baptists. They have been treated, too quickly and too lazily, as though they were merely continental Anabaptists transplanted into English soil, wearing a different accent but carrying the same full theological inheritance. Yet the men themselves protested otherwise, and they did so plainly, publicly, and repeatedly.

This matters because names are never neutral little trinkets. They carry worlds inside them. To call a people by the wrong name is often to force them into the wrong story. It is to relocate them into a history they did not claim, attach them to controversies they did not own in the same way, and interpret their confessions through a fog not of their own making. The early Particular Baptists were indeed enemies of infant baptism. They were indeed defenders of a gathered church and of believers’ baptism upon profession of faith. But from there, one must proceed carefully. Shared conclusions do not erase substantial differences in origin, theology, political posture, and doctrinal construction. Resemblance is not identity. A family likeness is not the same thing as a birth certificate.

The issue, then, is not whether the Particular Baptists had anything in common with Anabaptists. Of course they did. The real question is whether they understood themselves to be merely a branch of the continental Anabaptist movement, or whether they consciously distinguished themselves from that world. The answer, when the dust of assumption is brushed away and the old pages are allowed to speak, is remarkably clear. They did distinguish themselves. They denied the justice of the charge. They objected not only to the insult but to the historical and theological confusion hidden inside it. They were not begging for approval from their enemies; they were stating, with sober firmness, who they were and who they were not.

That is why this subject deserves more than a passing remark. It touches the deeper problem of how Baptist history is told. Too often the story has been flattened into slogans, sorted into crude camps, and repeated by men who have inherited conclusions without inheriting the labor of proof. Theological history is full of these strange little tyrannies of shorthand. One side caricatures; the other side reacts; and somewhere under the rubble lies the truth, waiting for someone patient enough to uncover it. This article attempts to do just that. It asks not what later polemicists preferred to say, but what the early Particular Baptists actually confessed, how they defended themselves, and how even some of their opponents recognized that the case was more complex than the label allowed.

There is also something larger here than a dispute over terminology. Beneath it lies the question of honesty. Are we willing to let the dead speak in their own voice? Are we willing to admit distinctions even when those distinctions trouble our tidy categories? Are we willing to resist the temptation to turn history into a weapon for present-day tribal battles? Such work requires humility, and humility is rarely fashionable. The age prefers speed, simplification, and a good, hard label. But truth is more stubborn than fashion. It refuses to be tamed by slogans. It sits in old confessions, neglected prefaces, disputed replies, and forgotten lines that still carry the scent of the age in which they were written.

The early Particular Baptists were not wisps of fog. They were real men in real churches, speaking in a world of fierce controversy, public suspicion, and theological combat. They did not ask to be understood as vague religious independents drifting through the seventeenth century. They spoke with conviction. They drew lines. They confessed doctrines. They defended themselves. And in doing so, they left behind enough evidence to make careless historical reduction a kind of intellectual misdemeanor. This article seeks to gather that evidence and let it bear its own weight.

May the following pages serve not merely to correct a historical misunderstanding, but to remind us that truth often survives under accusation. The record may be bruised, but it is not silent. Let the reader enter with patience, examine the sources with care, and hear again the voice of a people who insisted that they should not be swallowed whole by the judgments of their adversaries. In an age that loves caricature, that is no small service. It is, in fact, a little act of justice.

Guillermo Santamaria

The Original post

The Southern Baptist Convention met and fought this week. Some who lost are talking about “leaving.”One person, seriously or in jest I cannot tell, proposed that Baptists and P&R churches should merge. This is impossible for many reasons:

The words Reformed and Baptist mean something, and they are and always have been mutually exclusive. In the 16th century, the Reformed rejected the Anabaptists as “sects,” and “fanatics” for their reading of redemptive history (denying the unity of the covenant of grace), for their Christology, their soteriology, their view of the church and sacraments (of course), and their views of the Christian’s place in society.

The Reformed churches of the British Isles (and Europe) rejected the Baptist churches in the 17th century for many (not all) of the same reasons. The same problems with the reading of redemptive history remained; the problem of the church and sacraments remained. The initial response by many British Reformed theologians was to denounce the Particular Baptists (i.e., the wing that affirmed some aspects of the Reformed doctrine of salvation) as “Anabaptists.” That was not entirely correct, but it is telling that they responded that way.

No one, certainly not the Particular Baptists, was calling the Particular Baptists (as distinct from the General Baptists) “Reformed.” Neither should we.

No one called the Particular Baptists “Calvinists” either. Neither should we. The expression “Calvinistic Baptist” implies that Calvin’s and Calvinistic theology can be reduced to some aspects of the doctrine of salvation. That would be a shock to Calvin, who confessed a great deal more than the “doctrines of grace.” The historical and theological reality is that the Baptists and the P&R traditions are distinct. They are not essentially one with, as many people assume, some minor differences.

As I compare the differences between the Second London (Baptist) Confession (1689) with the Westminster I realize that I have been mislead by the formal similarities between the two. I am not alone. When we compare them closely we will find there to be significant differences between them, which differences are illuminating of the substantial differences between the two confessions.

We know that both traditions realize that the words Baptist and Reformed are distinct when a Baptist minister seeks admission to the ministry of a P&R church without changing his views on the history of redemption (e.g., he still denies one covenant of grace, multiple administrations, church, and sacraments). He cannot be admitted, and the same would be true of the P&R minister who, because he baptizes hitherto unbaptized converts, wants to call himself a Baptist. The Baptists rightly protest: “But there’s much more to being Baptist.”

Assessing R. Scott Clark’s argument about Baptists, the Reformed tradition, and the impossibility of merger.

The piece under review is R. Scott Clark’s 2021 Heidelblog essay arguing that Baptists are neither Reformed nor Calvinist, and that any proposed merger between Baptists and Presbyterian-and-Reformed churches is impossible.¹ From an Old School Baptist standpoint, his central conclusion is substantially right: a real merger is impossible, because the differences are not cosmetic, procedural, or temperamental, but touch the constitution of the church itself, the subjects and mode of baptism, the meaning of the ordinances, and the rule by which Christ governs his house. Yet an Old School Baptist would not simply borrow Clark’s whole framework and call the job done. He is arguing as a confessional Presbyterian defending the boundaries of the Reformed tradition. The Old School Baptist argues from a different center of gravity: not merely, “We are not Reformed,” but, “We must have a plain thus saith the Lord for the order and practice of the church.”

Where an Old School Baptist would agree

On the main point, Old School Baptists would agree that the words Reformed and Baptist are not interchangeable labels. Historically, the continental Reformed churches did not treat the Anabaptists as a minor branch within the same household. Calvin explicitly wrote against what he called the “frantic proceedings of the Anabaptists,” and the Belgic Confession openly defended infant baptism while saying, in so many words, that it “detest[s] the error of the Anabaptists.”² On that narrow historical point, Clark is standing on real ground, not vapor.

Old School Baptists would also agree that the sacramental and covenantal differences between Presbyterianism and Baptist life are not little pebbles in the shoe. Westminster says there is one covenant of grace “under various dispensations,” identifies the visible church as consisting of professors and their children, and defines baptism as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace that belongs not only to believers but also to the infants of believing parents.³ The Second London Confession, by contrast, says the covenant of grace is revealed progressively until its full disclosure in the New Testament, describes visible church membership in terms of professing “visible saints,” and says that only those who actually profess repentance and faith are proper subjects of baptism, which is to be administered by immersion.⁴ That is not a family quarrel over trim. That is a dispute over who belongs in the church, what baptism is for, and by what authority it is administered.

Clark is likewise right that these differences become immediately obvious the moment ministerial interchange is placed on the table. A Baptist minister who remains committed to believer’s baptism, a gathered church of professing saints, and the rejection of infant membership cannot honestly function as a Presbyterian minister without surrendering matters that are not accidental to Baptist identity. The reverse is also true. A Presbyterian minister who retains infant baptism, covenant succession, and a broader doctrine of the visible church is not merely a Baptist who sprinkles. He is operating from a different doctrine of the church.⁵

Where an Old School Baptist would qualify or correct him

Here the fun begins, because an Old School Baptist would say Clark is right for some reasons, but not for all the right reasons. First, Old School Baptists would resist the idea that Baptist identity is adequately explained by placing it over against continental Anabaptism on the one hand and Presbyterian covenant theology on the other. Early Particular Baptists did, in fact, reject the charge that they were simply continental Anabaptists in English dress;⁶ modern scholarship commonly notes that they arose chiefly out of English Separatist and Puritan nonconformist streams, even while embracing believer’s baptism and gathered-church ecclesiology.⁷ So an Old School Baptist could say: yes, the Reformed rejected Anabaptism; yes, many British divines initially flung that label at Baptists; but that outsider label does not settle the self-understanding of the Baptist churches.

Second, Old School Baptists would not be content merely to say that Baptists are not Reformed. They would press the deeper principle that Christ alone is lawgiver in Zion, and that churches must not move beyond what he has instituted. The Black Rock Address of 1832 said that the ancient Baptists required a “thus saith the Lord,” that is, direct authority from the word of God, for order and practice as well as doctrine.⁸ That sentence is the real hinge. It means that the issue is not whether Baptists fit tidily inside a broader Reformed taxonomy. The issue is whether infant baptism, a church made up of believers and their children, and the sacramental logic behind that system can be shown from the New Testament order of Christ’s house.

Third, Old School Baptists would likely share Clark’s hesitation about the labels Reformed Baptist and Calvinistic Baptist, but not because they are eager to preserve Presbyterian vocabulary from Baptist usage as if the word Reformed were a protected museum artifact. Their objection would be blunter. They would say that a Baptist ought not define himself by attachment to Calvin, any more than by attachment to Luther, Wesley, or any other celebrated theologian. Grace did not begin in Geneva. Election, particular redemption, and effectual calling are biblical doctrines, not the private property of one Reformer. At the same time, Old School Baptists would add that Calvin’s sacramental and covenantal system is no small appendage; it belongs to a whole architecture that Baptists cannot honestly inherit without unbaptizing themselves in principle.

Fourth, an Old School Baptist would probably say that Clark still understates how deep the separation must run. He speaks truly when he says these are substantial confessional differences. But Black Rock language pushes further: once churches make peace with institutions, rites, and arrangements not instituted by Christ, they begin to train believers to tolerate religious authority without scriptural warrant. The Black Rock Address applied that reasoning to tract societies, Sunday Schools, and the Bible Society; the same instinct would certainly distrust modern denominational machinery that treats convention politics as though they were the beating heart of Christ’s kingdom.⁹ From that angle, the very spectacle of Baptist and Presbyterian institutional merger-talk looks like another episode in the old story of men trying to improve the simplicity of the apostolic order with larger machinery and shinier gears.

The confessional differences are not decorative

An Old School Baptist reading of the confessions would therefore say this: Westminster and the Second London are similar in many verbal forms because the Baptists borrowed heavily from existing Reformed and Congregational confessions. But borrowing language is not the same thing as sharing ecclesiology. Westminster teaches one covenant of grace under different administrations; the visible church includes believers and their children; baptism is a sign and seal of covenant grace and is to be applied to the infants of one or both believing parents.¹⁰ The Second London, while warmly monergistic in salvation, moves in a Baptist direction at the decisive pressure points: the covenant of grace comes to full revelation in the New Testament; visible churches are constituted of professing saints; and baptism belongs only to those who actually profess faith and repentance.¹¹ That means Clark is right to warn against being fooled by formal resemblance. The two documents are cousins in places, but they are not twins, and when the conversation reaches church membership and baptism, the family resemblance stops being enough to hide the bones.

There is even a quiet irony here. The Belgic Confession insists that church rulers must guard against deviating from what Christ has ordained, and it rejects “all human innovations” imposed in the worship of God.¹² Old School Baptists would gladly say amen to that sentence. Then they would add, with a raised eyebrow, that the principle is more radical than many Presbyterians allow. If Christ’s ordination is the rule, then neither ancient custom, theological elegance, nor covenantal system-building can legitimize a church constitution that includes unregenerate infants among visible members or gives them the initiating sign of the gospel church. In other words: the Reformed confessions often state a principle that, if driven through to Baptist conclusions, turns against their own sacramental practice. There is the theological gremlin in the machinery.

Overall, Old School Baptist judgment

So the Old School Baptist verdict would be this. Clark is right in conclusion and only partly right in framing. He is right that Baptists and Presbyterian-and-Reformed churches are distinct traditions and cannot be merged without dishonesty. He is right that the differences are substantial, and that the Second London Confession should not be read as Westminster with the baby quietly removed from the baptismal font. He is right that Baptist identity cannot be reduced to a generic fondness for the doctrines of grace.¹³

But an Old School Baptist would go further and say that the whole question must be brought under the direct lordship of Christ over his church. The decisive issue is not whether Baptists may wear the adjective Reformed with sufficient historical permission. The decisive issue is whether Christ has commanded infant baptism, whether he has constituted his visible churches out of believers and their offspring, and whether his apostles founded churches on that pattern. Old School Baptists answer no. Therefore, merger is impossible, not because denominational brands need better trademark enforcement, but because the two systems embody contrary judgments about what the church is, who belongs to it, and how its ordinances are to be administered.

In that sense, the Old School Baptist answer is simpler, sterner, and more scriptural in tone: let every church stand or fall by the word of Christ. Where there is no plain warrant, there should be no ordinance. Where there is no apostolic pattern, there should be no merger. The church does not need theological costume changes. She needs obedience.¹⁴

Endnotes

1. 1. R. Scott Clark, “In The Wake Of The SBC: Baptists Are Neither Reformed Nor Calvinist,” Heidelblog, June 16, 2021. The user’s quoted text matches this article. ↩︎
2. 2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 4, chapter 20, where he describes opposition to the “frantic proceedings of the Anabaptists”; Belgic Confession, article 34, which rejects Anabaptist opposition to infant baptism and says the children of believers ought to be baptized. ↩︎
3. 3. Westminster Confession of Faith 7.3, 7.6; 25.2; 28.1, 28.4. Westminster teaches one covenant of grace under various dispensations, defines the visible church as including professors and their children, and applies baptism to infants of believers. ↩︎
4. 4. Second London Baptist Confession (1689) 7.2–3; 26.2; 29.1–4. The confession speaks of the covenant of grace as revealed progressively to full New Testament disclosure, defines visible saints as the material of particular congregations, and limits baptism to professing believers, by immersion. ↩︎
5. 5. This follows directly from the confessional standards themselves: Westminster Confession of Faith 25 and 28; Second London Baptist Confession 26 and 29. ↩︎
6. 6. The point is not hard to document, and the primary sources are unusually blunt. The earliest London Particular Baptist confession of 1644 identifies the churches as those “commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptists,” and the 1646 enlarged edition repeats the same posture, calling them churches “commonly (though unjustly) called Anabaptists,” published to remove the “aspersions” cast upon them. That is an explicit public rejection of the charge, not a later Baptist myth dressed in historical lace. (Quod Lib.) Their denial was not just a label game. In the 1646 confession, they also affirmed that it is lawful for a Christian to be a magistrate or civil officer, and lawful to take an oath in truth, judgment, and righteousness. Those statements directly answered the kinds of accusations commonly associated with “Anabaptists” in seventeenth-century polemics, especially around civil authority and oaths. In other words, the confession was built to say: we are baptistic, yes, but do not dump us into the whole continental radical stew. (Quod Lib.) Even hostile contemporaries noticed the distinction. Stephen Marshall, who was arguing against Baptist views on baptism, nevertheless admitted that the London confession was “the most Orthodox of any Anabaptist confession” he had read, and he said the usual doctrines of the newer Anabaptists agreed much more with the German Anabaptists than with “this handful who made this confession here in London.” That is a grudging witness from the other side admitting that these London Baptists were not simply German or continental Anabaptists in English costume. (Quod Lib.) Modern scholarship broadly lands in the same place. One summary of the evidence argues that the Particular Baptists arose from English Puritan and Separatist soil, “almost completely to the exclusion” of Anabaptist influence, and says the documented history shows them emerging from Puritan semi-Separatism rather than from demonstrable continental descent. It also notes that beyond believer’s baptism, they differed sharply from Anabaptists on Christology, soteriology, the state, and warfare. (thegospelcoalition.org) So the careful historical statement is this: early Particular Baptists did reject the charge that they were merely continental Anabaptists in English dress. They shared credobaptism with Anabaptists, but they publicly denied that the broader Anabaptist label fairly described their theology, polity, or historical origin. That distinction is not modern spin; it is already visible in their own confessional self-presentation and in the testimony of their opponents. (Quod Lib.) ↩︎
7. 7. See “Origins of the Particular Baptists,” Themelios. The article notes that early Particular Baptists “universally disavowed” continental Anabaptist identity and arose chiefly from English Puritan nonconformity. ↩︎
8. 8. Black Rock Address (1832), adopted by Particular Baptists of the Old School. It says ancient Baptists required a “Thus saith the Lord,” meaning direct authority from the word of God for order and practice as well as doctrine. ↩︎
9. 9. Black Rock Address (1832), sections on tract societies, Sunday Schools, and the Bible Society. The address argues that such institutions were not established by the apostles or commanded by Christ, and therefore must not be treated as instituted means in Christ’s kingdom. ↩︎
10. 10. Westminster Confession of Faith 7.3, 7.6; 25.2; 28.1, 28.4. ↩︎
11. 11. Second London Baptist Confession (1689) 7.2–3; 26.2; 29.2–4. ↩︎
12. 12. Belgic Confession, article 32, which says church rulers must guard against deviating from what Christ has ordained and must reject “all human innovations” imposed in worship. ↩︎
13. 13. Clark’s warning about formal resemblance is justified by comparing the confessions directly; see also Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6 and the 1689 Baptist Confession 1.6 on differing formulations of scriptural inference and church order. ↩︎
14. 14. Black Rock Address (1832), including its note explaining “Old School” as a reference to the school of Christ, distinct from later schools that arose after the apostles. ↩︎