Gentlemen,
I am now and have been in/around the Founder's Movement since its inception in the early 1980s. I studied with some of the movement's founders (forgive the pun) in my seminary and grad school work. I am presently involved in a writing project with some of them also.
The SBC had two streams that came together in the beginning. There was the "Charleston Stream" that was Particular Redemption, learned clergy, more academic, etc. that the other stream. It was probably more "head" oriented than "heart" oriented. They were probably influenced by the English Puritans like Bunyan.
The other stream was the "Sandy Creek" stream out of N. Carolina that was more influenced by the 1st & 2nd Awakenings. It was experiential, more emotional, less clergy seminary trained, and brought a segment of the "heart" into the then Baptist life.
The particular redemption, limited atonement, Calvinistic branch represented the major portion of Baptists that formed the SBC in 1845 pre-war. We were one of the last to have our internal scrape over slaves. Out struggle also started in SC and was almost an identical harbinger that would occur at a little fort in SC in 1861. If the documents are considered, the language is even the same.
The first confession of faith put together by the Southern Baptist was "The Abstract of Principles" by the Founders (hence the name of the present movement) of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (now in Louisville, KY). All who are interested should go to sbts.edu and look at the Abstract, it is still the way it was then (1859 and all the profs have to sign it publicly yearly).
All four of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary founders were Calvinists. James Boyce, the first president, trained @ Princeton U. with the great Presbyterian Calvinists of the 19 Century.
The "rub" comes with the fact that SBC Calvinism took its own impetus and direction. We followed after Andrew Fuller who was a "Calvinist with a warm heart for missions and the lost!" We have never seen that the two are mutually exclusive to true evangelism or missions.
"Hyper-calvinistm" is going beyond what Calvin or the SBC Baptists would have taught. The Rev. Dr. John Gill was supposed to have had an aversion to preaching, if he knew anyone in the congregation was not a Christian. I personally believe that this is an apocryphal interpretation of him and his theology.
But, if one looks at JL Dagg, PH Mell, Jesse Mercer, James Boyce, William Williams, John A. Broadus, Luther Rice, Adoniram Judson, etc., et al, that same one would see that the great # of 19th century Baptist were mostly Calvinist or at least Calvinistic.
For what it is worth!
sdg!
rd
I am now and have been in/around the Founder's Movement since its inception in the early 1980s. I studied with some of the movement's founders (forgive the pun) in my seminary and grad school work. I am presently involved in a writing project with some of them also.
The SBC had two streams that came together in the beginning. There was the "Charleston Stream" that was Particular Redemption, learned clergy, more academic, etc. that the other stream. It was probably more "head" oriented than "heart" oriented. They were probably influenced by the English Puritans like Bunyan.
The other stream was the "Sandy Creek" stream out of N. Carolina that was more influenced by the 1st & 2nd Awakenings. It was experiential, more emotional, less clergy seminary trained, and brought a segment of the "heart" into the then Baptist life.
The particular redemption, limited atonement, Calvinistic branch represented the major portion of Baptists that formed the SBC in 1845 pre-war. We were one of the last to have our internal scrape over slaves. Out struggle also started in SC and was almost an identical harbinger that would occur at a little fort in SC in 1861. If the documents are considered, the language is even the same.
The first confession of faith put together by the Southern Baptist was "The Abstract of Principles" by the Founders (hence the name of the present movement) of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (now in Louisville, KY). All who are interested should go to sbts.edu and look at the Abstract, it is still the way it was then (1859 and all the profs have to sign it publicly yearly).
All four of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary founders were Calvinists. James Boyce, the first president, trained @ Princeton U. with the great Presbyterian Calvinists of the 19 Century.
The "rub" comes with the fact that SBC Calvinism took its own impetus and direction. We followed after Andrew Fuller who was a "Calvinist with a warm heart for missions and the lost!" We have never seen that the two are mutually exclusive to true evangelism or missions.
"Hyper-calvinistm" is going beyond what Calvin or the SBC Baptists would have taught. The Rev. Dr. John Gill was supposed to have had an aversion to preaching, if he knew anyone in the congregation was not a Christian. I personally believe that this is an apocryphal interpretation of him and his theology.
But, if one looks at JL Dagg, PH Mell, Jesse Mercer, James Boyce, William Williams, John A. Broadus, Luther Rice, Adoniram Judson, etc., et al, that same one would see that the great # of 19th century Baptist were mostly Calvinist or at least Calvinistic.
For what it is worth!
sdg!
rd
