Baptists before John Smythe

Yes, there is.

 

But there must be a spiritual linage. And what about baptismal authority. Baptismal authority is given to the local church as an ordinance. A local church is an organized assembly of baptized believers.

So, some people get saved (like Thomas Helwys) but he has never been baptized and there is no church in the area that baptizes scripturally. So he baptized himself. No local church authority.

I will say this for Menno Simons, he did better than the rest of the reformers. He went to an existing local church that practiced scriptural baptism and submitted himself to that church for baptism. Luther didn't. Calvin didn't. Knox didn't. Henry VIII didn't.

John Spillsbury, one of the founders of the Particular Baptists, was baptized by Hansard Knollys who had gone to Holland specifically to be scripturally baptized by Dutch anabaptists, probably Mennonites.

 

The churches between the 4th and 17th centuries were not Baptist churches, but we have inherited from those churches important aspects of what makes us Baptists. This is different from ideas like Landmarkism, which looks for a succession of Baptist churches.

 

What are you defining as a "Baptist" church?

Which are?

Well, neither did Landmarkism teach a succession of Baptist churches but that is a matter for later discussion, Let's focus on the two questions above first.

 

I would define a Baptist church as being a Protestant church that holds to a Baptist distinctive. There have been many points offered as this distinctive, but I could settle with: believers baptism, priesthood of the believer, individual soul liberty, local church autonomy, and a separation of church and state.

The reason this is a spiritual kinship and not a spiritual lineage is that no other existing local church is necessary for a new one to begin. Our kinship is through Christ as revealed through Scripture, not spiritual truths handed down from one church to another. As an example, should a tribe encounter God’s Word and establish a Baptist church (baptizing one another on the authority of Scripture) then that church would be no less a biblical and Baptist church.

 

So, no Baptist churches exist today as they came from churches other than Rome?

Okay.

Okay, I can agree with that. But you believe nobody from the end of the 1st century AD to the beginning of the 17th century AD had these bible truths?

So when you listed baptism as a Baptist distinctive you did not mean it is a local church ordinance but is a universal church ordinance? So, if those in the universal church don't accept believers baptism by immersion do they lose their membership in the universal church?

 

Yes and no. I believe this distinctive has always existed, but the issue is in what points we would depart. Mennonites, for example, hold these distinctive but are not Baptists. That's why I included Protestant in my definition. We ate indebted to the Anabaptist, but we are also indebted to the Reformers.

 

Why not? If they hold to the baptist distinctives doesn't that make them baptists?

Of course, but that is not the point. If there were churches from the 1st through the 17th century who were our spiritual kin, does that not imply a family resemblance?