Southern Baptist Calvinism

Jello salads either.

 

Thanks for the explanation, Hardsheller. I thought you meant Calvinists who were not in the SBC, rather than SBCers who weren't Calvinists. After understanding that, the point makes complete sense without the other details.

BTW, no. 3 makes an important historical point that many folks don't realize. The missions controversy was between folks who all held Calvinism. Reading A Public Address to the Baptist Society, and Friends of Religion in General, on the Principle and Practice of the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions for the United States of America (1820) by Daniel Parker (hardshell extraordinaire!) would be a good dose for a lot of folks. They would see that the brunt of Parker's objections in the book are based primarily on ecclesiology, not soteriology.

 

I don't know what that is the answer to -- but my question was about SBC in the 1600's not merely "calvinists".

In Christ,

Bob

 

Harsheller said

I am just trying to get to this progression in the SBC from the 1600's to the 1800's and how man has "gotten better".

What were they doing in the 1600's?

If they were publishing "SBC confessions" or "Baptist confessions" in the 1600's - but also not baptizing infants and rejecting the "real presence" arguments of Luther and the RCC in the 1600's -- I would like to hear about it.

In Christ,

Bob

 

The SBC was not formed until 1845.

 

So you believe

VI. The Church

Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes.

Simply show me one verse in scripture that shows the American democratic process in action. In fact there is a few cases where they drew lots. The church never came up under a democratic process. It was not borne in the midst of it either. The church is a theocracy not a man made democracy. A democracy rules in favor of the majority. The democratic process does not operate under the Lorddship of Christ. In a democratic process the majority rules. At times that can be very ungodly. Lok at the story of Jonathan Edwards. In a theocracy there is one majority--God. Man has no say, just God.

XII. Education

Christianity is the faith of enlightenment and intelligence.

Sounds like gnosticism or enlightenment more than Christianity.

 

The primary reasons non-Calvinists persist in spreading myths like this is because they get their knowledge of Calvinism from Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, Dave Hunt and John R. Rice.

 

Saying that "Calvinism" is anti-missionary is the same thing as saying that "Arminianism" is universalism or that it inevitably leads to "openness of God" theology. (Which it did in Pinnock's case, by the way.)

As to the rise of Calvinistic thinking in the SBC, I tend to think that it has more to do with the teaching of theology in our seminaries than anything else. It seems the net result of seminaries more committed to inerrancy will be a student population better taught in areas of biblcal anthropology, Christology, soteriology, etc. That's why I think it is fair to say that more and more of our seminary grads--if forced by conversations such as this to use some ridiculous "ism" to characterize their biblical positions--would characterize themselves as somewhat Calvinistic as opposed to Arminian or hyper-Calvinistic.

 

If there is historic evidence that early influences from Calvinism caused a negative backlash against missions - surely all can admit to that history!

What I want to know is whether the Arminian group ever considered that OSAS is not consistent with free will. Any SBC history on that?

In Christ,

Bob

 

Anyone who would be strongly opposed to missions (at least to GO to the organizations) ought to have their heads examined (or at least their hearts).

On the rational side...when I was a Calvinist and a buddy debated me saying that no true Baptist can be a Calvinist...somebody else told me that the SBC started out Calvinistic.

 

There is no doubt that a strain of hyper calvinism corrupted both Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and others in the early 1700's. Arminian theology went to extremes within General Baptist work in England that crippled it also.

Calvinists such as George Whitefield, Andrew Fuller and William Carey however would battle the extremist hyper calvinism thanks in part to the writings of Jonathan Edwards in North America.

Hardsheller is right. The founders of the SBC were Calvinists. In my study of Louisiana Baptist history, all the missionaries that founded and built the work here in my State in the late 1700's and early and mid 1800's were Calvinists.