FOREWORD

There are books written because an author wishes to win an argument. There are others written because something has begun to trouble the conscience so deeply that silence is no longer possible.

This book belongs to the second kind.

The Old School Baptist standpoint. This is, deliberately, an Old School Baptist appeal. That designation is not used as though every Old School or Primitive Baptist church, association, or writer has expressed every question in identical language. The standpoint advanced here is the older insistence that spiritual life is given immediately and sovereignly by God; that the gospel ministry, Scripture, prayer, baptism, the Lord's Supper, fellowship, and the other appointments of Christ serve the instruction, comfort, obedience, and edification of those whom God has made alive; that no ecclesiastical mechanism mediates regeneration; that Christ alone is Head of the church; that Scripture alone may bind the conscience; and that the gathered body, not a clerical class, is to be built up through the gifts Christ supplies.

I have not written these pages because I despise Reformed Baptists. I have written them precisely because I take their claims seriously.

When men declare that Scripture alone is the final authority, I want to believe them.

When churches insist that Christ alone is Lord of the conscience, I want to rejoice with them.

When preachers proclaim the sovereignty of God, the helplessness of fallen man, the finished work of Jesus Christ, justification by grace, the perseverance of the saints, and the absolute sufficiency of divine mercy, I hear truths for which Christians have suffered, struggled, preached, prayed, and died.

There is much in the Reformed Baptist tradition that deserves respect.

There is seriousness there.

There is theological depth.

There is an unwillingness to reduce Christianity to entertainment.

There is a determination to recover doctrines abandoned by much of modern evangelicalism.

There is reverence for Scripture.

There is concern for holiness.

There is appreciation for church discipline.

There is insistence upon doctrinal substance.

There is a refusal, at its best, to make salvation depend upon the unstable will of fallen man.

These are not small things.

And precisely because they are not small things, the questions raised in this book cannot be small questions either.

For somewhere along the way I began asking a question that would not leave me alone:

What if a movement created to defend Scripture has itself accumulated traditions that Scripture never required?

What if a confession intended to summarize the Bible gradually becomes the lens through which the Bible must be interpreted?

What if a theology designed to exalt sovereign grace begins describing the work of God through categories more rigid than Scripture itself provides?

What if a principle intended to remove human invention from worship ends by reproducing a seventeenth-century form of worship and calling that form apostolic?

What if the sermon becomes so exalted that the preacher's exposition begins receiving honors belonging properly to the inspired Word?

What if a church that loudly proclaims the priesthood of all believers gathers every week in a manner that leaves nearly all believers silent?

What if elders who are supposed to equip the saints gradually perform so much of the ministry that the saints become spectators of ministry?

What if a confession intended to protect Christian liberty begins determining the boundaries within which Christians are permitted to interpret Scripture?

What if a theology can become extraordinarily precise while Christians themselves become less prayerful, less tender, less patient, less free, less participatory, and less conscious of their immediate dependence upon the Spirit of God?

And then came the question behind all the other questions:

Have we confused what is Reformed with what is apostolic?

That question is dangerous.

It is dangerous because Christians become attached not only to truth but to systems by which truth has been organized.

We inherit vocabulary.

We inherit categories.

We inherit confessions.

We inherit forms of worship.

We inherit assumptions about ministers, sermons, church buildings, membership, ordinances, conversion, assurance, sanctification, and authority.

After several generations, these things cease to look inherited.

They simply look biblical.

The tradition becomes invisible.

We no longer say, “This is one way our fathers attempted to obey Scripture.”

We begin saying, “This is what Scripture requires.”

And eventually the difference between the apostolic command and our historical application of that command almost disappears.

That is precisely where reexamination becomes necessary.

The great tragedy would be for heirs of the Reformation to become unwilling to reform.

The men of the Reformation challenged inherited ecclesiastical authority because they believed Scripture stood above it.

The early Baptists challenged the dominant Protestant understanding of baptism because they believed Scripture stood above Protestant consensus.

Particular Baptists themselves were willing to borrow language from Presbyterians and Congregationalists where they believed those men were correct and alter that language where they believed Scripture required something different.

Their courage did not consist in possessing a perfect system.

Their courage consisted in their willingness to ask again:

What has God actually said?

That question must never become dangerous in a Baptist church.

It must never become dangerous in a Reformed church.

It must never become dangerous in any church claiming that the Bible is its final authority.

If an elder cannot ask it freely, something has gone wrong.

If an ordinary believer cannot ask it without being regarded as rebellious, something has gone wrong.

If an inherited confession determines beforehand which exegetical conclusions are permissible, something has gone wrong.

If the words “historic Reformed theology” end a discussion that Scripture itself has not ended, something has gone wrong.

And if asking whether something is apostolic is interpreted as hostility toward the church, we have forgotten that the church belongs to Christ.

This book therefore does not ask Reformed Baptists to become less serious about truth.

It asks them to become even more serious.

Do not merely defend sola Scriptura.

Practice it.

Do not merely confess liberty of conscience.

Protect it.

Do not merely preach the sovereignty of the Spirit.

Leave room for his sovereignty.

Do not merely proclaim the priesthood of believers.

Allow believers to function as a priestly people.

Do not merely teach that the saints possess spiritual gifts.

Give those saints meaningful opportunities to use them.

Do not merely say that elders equip the saints for ministry.

Ask whether the structure of the church actually permits those saints to minister.

Do not speak of preaching, Communion, or any other ordinance as a “means of grace” without distinguishing the gracious edification of living believers from the immediate sovereign act by which God gives spiritual life.

Ask why it is so often infrequent.

Do not merely call the church a body.

Ask why most of the body is silent during its principal gathering.

Do not merely call the congregation a family.

Ask whether hundreds of people sitting in rows facing a platform can meaningfully live as one.

Do not merely defend the regulative principle.

Turn that principle upon Reformed tradition itself.

Do not merely say that preaching is subordinate to Scripture.

Make certain that the preacher remains subordinate to Scripture in practice as well as theory.

And above all, do not permit our love for theological precision to become greater than our hunger for the living God.

A man can understand the covenant of works and hardly pray.

He can distinguish active from passive obedience and treat his brethren harshly.

He can explain effectual calling while barely recognizing his own dependence upon the Spirit.

He can defend the perseverance of the saints while leaving tender believers terrified that their failures prove they were never saved.

He can explain the Lord's Supper with exquisite theological accuracy while celebrating it four times a year.

He can preach the priesthood of believers from a pulpit while the believers sit silently beneath him.

He can preach for an hour about the body of Christ while the body itself is permitted almost no voice.

And a congregation can subscribe to the same confession while knowing astonishingly little of the unity of the Spirit, the bearing of one another's burdens, the confession of faults, the sharing of gifts, the breaking of bread, the prayers, the fellowship, and the mutual edification that breathe through the pages of the New Testament.

That is why these pages had to be written.

The question is not whether Reformed Baptist theology contains truth.

It contains much truth.

The question is whether every structure built around that truth deserves the same confidence.

This book recognizes the distinction. It argues that the movement is at its strongest when sovereign grace is magnified, Christ is magnified in preaching, the local congregation is respected, and confessionalism guards biblical truth; its concern arises when the theological system becomes the controlling framework through which the apostolic church is reconstructed.

That distinction is essential.

This is not an attack upon doctrines merely because they are Reformed.

Neither is it an attempt to romanticize every feature of Old School Baptist history.

Old School Baptists were men.

They could be wrong.

They could become traditional.

They could become narrow.

They could mistake their own applications for apostolic commands just as readily as anyone else.

No historical party deserves immunity from Scripture.

Not Presbyterians.

Not Particular Baptists.

Not Primitive Baptists.

Not Old School Baptists.

Not Reformed Baptists.

Not the Puritans.

Not the Reformers.

Not the church fathers.

Not this author.

The moment any Christian tradition becomes incapable of being corrected by Scripture, that tradition has ceased functioning as a servant and has begun functioning as a master.

That is why the questions at the heart of this book are deliberately simple.

Did Christ command it?

Did the apostles institute it?

Can it actually be demonstrated from the New Testament?

Does it preserve the sovereignty of God rather than enclosing divine action within ecclesiastical machinery?

Does it preserve liberty of conscience rather than binding believers through deductions that Scripture itself never makes obligatory?

Does it build the church—or merely strengthen the institution?

Does it equip Christ's people—or gradually replace their ministry with professional ministry?

Those questions summarize the book's final challenge.

But there is one question even deeper than these.

When Christ walks among his churches, what does he see?

He does not see our confessional labels first.

He does not stand impressed before our theological libraries.

He does not tremble before our systematic precision.

He does not measure spiritual life by the length of our sermons.

He does not confuse doctrinal sophistication with holiness.

He sees whether we love.

He sees whether we pray.

He sees whether we forgive.

He sees whether the weak are cared for.

He sees whether the proud are humbled.

He sees whether the wounded are restored.

He sees whether truth has made us more like him.

The Ephesian church could detect false apostles and still hear Christ say:

“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.”

That should terrify every orthodox church.

It means that doctrinal vigilance can survive after spiritual warmth has begun to die.

It means that the ability to recognize error is not proof that everything is well.

It means that one can guard the walls while the fire on the altar is growing cold.

This book identifies this danger precisely: theological knowledge can become identity and status rather than humility, love, edification, and obedience, and doctrinal precision can coexist with the weakening of prayer, tenderness, dependence upon God, and experiential fellowship with Christ.

I therefore offer this book neither as an enemy throwing stones over the wall nor as a partisan defending another denominational fortress.

I offer it as an appeal.

Return again to the text.

Return again to Christ.

Return again to the apostles.

Read Acts without first imagining the church service you have always known.

Read 1 Corinthians 11–14 without assuming that the modern sermon must occupy the place it now occupies.

Read Ephesians 4 and ask who is actually supposed to perform the ministry.

Read Colossians 3 and listen carefully to “one another.”

Read Hebrews 10 and ask what believers are assembling to do for one another.

Read the accounts of the Lord's Supper and ask whether the meal has become a ceremony.

Read the New Testament descriptions of elders and ask whether later pastoral structures have exceeded them.

Read the passages concerning the Spirit and ask whether our doctrine of divine sovereignty has somehow become more predictable than the wind of John 3.

And when Scripture unsettles something we inherited, do not be afraid.

That unsettling may itself be reformation.

There is no dishonor in discovering that our fathers were wrong somewhere.

There is dishonor only in discovering it and refusing to follow the truth because the cost is too great.

The Baptists whose history we honor once stood against immense religious consensus because they became persuaded that baptism belonged to professing believers.

They could have said:

“But the Reformers believed otherwise.”

They could have said:

“But the great confessions say otherwise.”

They could have said:

“But the established churches say otherwise.”

Instead, they asked what Scripture required.

Their descendants should possess enough courage to do the same thing—even when the tradition requiring examination is now their own.

That is the spirit in which this book should be read.

Not with bitterness.

Not with denominational arrogance.

Not with delight in discovering fault.

But with an open Bible and an uncomfortable willingness to allow Christ to contradict us.

Because the church is his.

The sheep are his.

The table is his.

The ministry is his.

The gifts are his.

The Scriptures are his.

And the glory must remain his.

If these pages lead even one congregation to ask whether its traditions have begun speaking more loudly than the apostles, they will have served a purpose.

If they persuade one minister to distinguish more carefully between his sermon and God's Word, they will have served a purpose.

If they persuade one church to make room for the ministry of the whole body, they will have served a purpose.

If they lead one believer away from endless introspection and back toward the sufficiency of Christ, they will have served a purpose.

If they cause Christians to approach the Lord's table more frequently, more joyfully, and more conscious of one another, they will have served a purpose.

And if they compel us all—Reformed Baptist, Old School Baptist, or otherwise—to place every beloved tradition once more beneath the searching light of the New Testament, then perhaps this book will have accomplished something more important than winning an argument.

It will have called us back to the only question that finally matters:

Not, “Is this Reformed?”

Not, “Is this Baptist?”

Not, “Is this confessional?”

But:

Is this truly apostolic?

And behind even that question stands the Lord of the church himself:

Did Christ command it?

If he did, we have no right to neglect it.

If he did not, we have no right to bind it upon his people.

And if our traditions have somehow obscured that distinction, then whatever the cost, whatever the history, whatever the reputation of the men who taught us otherwise, we must return again to the Scriptures.

For the church does not belong to our systems.

The church belongs to Jesus Christ.

Guillermo Santamaria

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