Thomas Helwys
New Member
When I first read your post, I almost mistook that word in your last line as "disguises". On second thought, it might be more appropriate that way for some -- "disguises" us as Christians.
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Basic question: Are Baptists Protestant?
- Thread starter thisnumbersdisconnected
- Start date
When I first read your post, I almost mistook that word in your last line as "disguises". On second thought, it might be more appropriate that way for some -- "disguises" us as Christians.
thisnumbersdisconnected
New Member
You just said that the doctrines existed prior to Smyth and Helwys, and then claim that they originated them?
Do you see the problem with that comment?
Rippon
There are many who prefer to do a drive by post...say something{attack} and never back it up,then hide like a turtle in a shell.
There are many who prefer to do a drive by post...say something{attack} and never back it up,then hide like a turtle in a shell.
A reasonable request:thumbs:
saturneptune
New Member
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Thomas Helwys
New Member
That is not what I said. You obviously have not only misread my post but have not read enough of my other posts to know what I believe, or to know the historical facts.
OldRegular
Well-Known Member
In the above post I requested: If there is anything in Baptist doctrine that is baggage from Roman Catholicism I wish someone would enlighten all who believe as I do that Baptists are not Protestant.
I may change that a little. The Anabaptists did protest getting dunked, that is drowned, by the Protestants of that time! I don't know whether that happened to Baptists or not. I do know that Baptists in Colonial Virginia could only meet at a given place once a month. That may be the origin of the Old Regular Baptists practice of meeting at a given place one weekend each month!
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thisnumbersdisconnected
New Member
Really? Let's see ...
Hm. Looks to me like that is exactly what you said.
You only have three other posts on the thread, and none of them go into the historical detail of my OP. Your most "definitive" post was stating that Particular Baptists came out of Congregationalism, the Pilgram fathers (my phrase, not yours) which would decidely make them at least an outgrowth of the Protestant movement. My contention is that Baptists cane be traced back to the third century AD, though not in name, so perhaps you'd like to revise that assessment?
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well, since he early church would have been Baptist in doctrines and practices, just not labeled as such, appears Rome owes us for trinity/Bible, as the rest they errored all up!
WOW! What a fine example of an incredibly long run-on sentence. (And atrocious grammar.)Try saying that gibberish in one breath!
I get a kick when someone says our teaching is in "total error" --while his is perfectly sound. How can anyone have the brazen effrontery to challenge him? To do so would mean we are quite arrogant. LOL!
Calvin did not hold to transubstantiation. You have already acknowledged that Calvin's view according to McGrath was at a midway point between Luther and Zwingli. So to charge Calvin with holding to transubstantiation is false.
Where,exactly does Dr. Muller indicate that Calvin "was wrong" about paedobaptism and his view of the Lord's Supper? Dr. Muller is Presbyterian after all.
Where does Dr. Muller say anything resembling what you claim he said? Document --don't merely assert he said this and that.
Didn't calvin hold to there being a spiritual presense of the lord in the communion, but that the items did not change, but the lord was spiritual with us in and thru partaking of them?
While yet a new Christian, I became convinced of the Baptist position after reading the works of Alexander Mack, founder of the "Dunkard" Brethren - a sect which many of my ancestors belonged to, and so I was curious about what they believed.
Mack's defense of credobaptism was simple: that after a diligent search of the Scriptures, not a single member of his study group found evidence of an infant being baptized, nor of anyone being baptized by any means other than immersion - and so a consensus was formed to baptize adult members in water.
I thought that Mack, being something of a zealot, must have been mistaken (even perhaps deliberately so) - and so I set out to search the Scriptures for myself, to discern whether or not his claims were true. And so they were, and so I am.
There can be no doubt that when one argues for believers' baptism from the Scriptures alone, one is indubitably doing so in the Protestant spirit of Sola Scriptura.
Mack thought of himself as something of a primitivist, that he was restoring the church to New Testament practices -- to which we can all say, Amen. However, his teaching that an immersionist remnant has always existed in secret, from the earliest times up to the present day, was met with wide derision.
While there were certainly Baptistic movements existing outside of the church throughout the centuries, and we can look back on them with pride and joy that they had the fortitude to defy the establishment, paying with blood if need be, for the cause of God and truth -- perhaps identifying them as "morning stars" of what was to later come -- but the existence of these movements in history does not at all change the fact that the Baptist faith, being a system of theology, is one received from the further Reformation.
Mack's 'remnant' theory was derided not because it was entirely inconceivable, but because it was entirely unnecessary. There is no shame in our Reformation forefathers having recovered what wicked men usurped from God's people, no need at all to appeal to the notion that Baptist truth can stand only if it has existed in perpetuity; it is sufficient to say that Baptist truth did once exist and, by the grace of God, having been restored to the people, that same truth exists now.
The first generation of Protestants put much stock in the necessity of Apostolic succession. Calvin, for example, took great comfort that his Reformed preachers, having once been ordained Catholic priests, were empowered with Apostolic authority by virtue of once having a Bishop's hands laid upon them - and that when those preachers then ordain others, they pass on the chain of 'legitimate' succession from the Apostles.
Baptists have never been concerned about such superstitions. This is the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It is the historical, linear evolution of Protestantism into Puritanism, of further refining the church by steering it from an entrenched episcopal polity toward congregational and presbyterian governance.
We must remember that Protestantism is not a monolith. The magisterial churches, that is the Reformed and the Lutheran, made way for Puritanism and Pietism, which made way for the Great Awakenings, which made way for frontier revivalism; even now we have, for better or for worse, the 'emerging' church and the Charismatic Movement. The point is, Protestantism and Reformation are not things that have happened -- they are things that are happening.
That these movements, being rooted in and directly descended from the Reformation, have impacted the Baptist faith in the way that they have necessarily leads us to two possible conclusions:
1) That the Baptist faith is the primitive faith come down to us from Apostolic practices in the time of the New Testament, shaped and refined by the Reformation to the point where it fits squarely within the parameters of the definition of a Protestant religion, being divided into Arminian and Calvinist camps, &c.
2) That certain of the later generation of Protestants, though professing a multitude of doctrines, yet all having been influenced by Sola Scriptura and the priesthood of all believers, rediscovered the Apostolic practice of credobaptism.
Yes, Baptists are Protestants.
Mack's defense of credobaptism was simple: that after a diligent search of the Scriptures, not a single member of his study group found evidence of an infant being baptized, nor of anyone being baptized by any means other than immersion - and so a consensus was formed to baptize adult members in water.
I thought that Mack, being something of a zealot, must have been mistaken (even perhaps deliberately so) - and so I set out to search the Scriptures for myself, to discern whether or not his claims were true. And so they were, and so I am.
There can be no doubt that when one argues for believers' baptism from the Scriptures alone, one is indubitably doing so in the Protestant spirit of Sola Scriptura.
Mack thought of himself as something of a primitivist, that he was restoring the church to New Testament practices -- to which we can all say, Amen. However, his teaching that an immersionist remnant has always existed in secret, from the earliest times up to the present day, was met with wide derision.
While there were certainly Baptistic movements existing outside of the church throughout the centuries, and we can look back on them with pride and joy that they had the fortitude to defy the establishment, paying with blood if need be, for the cause of God and truth -- perhaps identifying them as "morning stars" of what was to later come -- but the existence of these movements in history does not at all change the fact that the Baptist faith, being a system of theology, is one received from the further Reformation.
Mack's 'remnant' theory was derided not because it was entirely inconceivable, but because it was entirely unnecessary. There is no shame in our Reformation forefathers having recovered what wicked men usurped from God's people, no need at all to appeal to the notion that Baptist truth can stand only if it has existed in perpetuity; it is sufficient to say that Baptist truth did once exist and, by the grace of God, having been restored to the people, that same truth exists now.
The first generation of Protestants put much stock in the necessity of Apostolic succession. Calvin, for example, took great comfort that his Reformed preachers, having once been ordained Catholic priests, were empowered with Apostolic authority by virtue of once having a Bishop's hands laid upon them - and that when those preachers then ordain others, they pass on the chain of 'legitimate' succession from the Apostles.
Baptists have never been concerned about such superstitions. This is the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It is the historical, linear evolution of Protestantism into Puritanism, of further refining the church by steering it from an entrenched episcopal polity toward congregational and presbyterian governance.
We must remember that Protestantism is not a monolith. The magisterial churches, that is the Reformed and the Lutheran, made way for Puritanism and Pietism, which made way for the Great Awakenings, which made way for frontier revivalism; even now we have, for better or for worse, the 'emerging' church and the Charismatic Movement. The point is, Protestantism and Reformation are not things that have happened -- they are things that are happening.
That these movements, being rooted in and directly descended from the Reformation, have impacted the Baptist faith in the way that they have necessarily leads us to two possible conclusions:
1) That the Baptist faith is the primitive faith come down to us from Apostolic practices in the time of the New Testament, shaped and refined by the Reformation to the point where it fits squarely within the parameters of the definition of a Protestant religion, being divided into Arminian and Calvinist camps, &c.
2) That certain of the later generation of Protestants, though professing a multitude of doctrines, yet all having been influenced by Sola Scriptura and the priesthood of all believers, rediscovered the Apostolic practice of credobaptism.
Yes, Baptists are Protestants.
thisnumbersdisconnected
New Member
As the OP, I simply say "Nope." See others posts for my reasoning.
Reformed Baptists would be thought, right?
thisnumbersdisconnected
New Member
Since it is my contention that Baptists existed in principle and doctrine prior to the Reformation, the Reformed Baptist movement would have to be an outgrowth of Baptists but were heavily influenced by the Reformation. Therefore, no, they also pre-existed the Reformation. So did most of their doctrinal positions.
Aren't our bethrem theology and doctrine though based upon and rooted in those developed form the reformers though, such as Calvin and others?
So would they rightfully been seen as baptist reformers then?
thisnumbersdisconnected
New Member
Not in my opinion, no. They were Baptist first. They adopted Reformed theology, which is much, much younger than the Baptist distinctives.
So they would be baptists who have chosen to adopt reformation doctrines/theologies, correct?
But what keeps them assen a sbaptists is not into infant baptism per say?
Those now known as Reformed Baptists,and earlier as Particular Baptists came out of the Church of England. And among these dissenting brethren some broke off to form Baptistic congregations. Notice I said Baptistic;not Baptist. Upon further study of the Word of God they came to Baptist convictions.These Christians stemmed from the Puritan movement which had begun in the prior century.
So you would view Reformed baptists as being reformed mainly, with baptistic doctrines in some areas?