A fresh look

A reminder to keep the discussion civil. I don't want name calling and vituperation; this is a discussion forum, not a debate forum, and civil discussion is required.

Now, as to the substance of the article:

I think the evidence is overwhelming that calvnistic soteriology was widespread among the Baptists of the the first Great Awakening, though not always in a form amenable to a simple TULIP theology. The Separates came out the calvinistic preaching of Calvinist George Whitefield, after all, and it seems clear that the documentary trail points to calvinistic doctrines among the Separates as they spread through the South and along the frontier.

The author rightly does not set out to prove that Calvinism has been the only soteriology among American Baptists; his point is to prove that Calvinism is not new to Baptists and Calvinists once dominated Baptist life. I think the first is easily provable, and the second is fairly well-established, though "Calvinism" could take various forms among American Baptists.

On the first point, there is some evidence that General Baptist thought was alive among New England Baptists before the first Great Awakening; First Baptist Church of Providence split in 1652 and became a Six-Principle Baptist church (not Calvinist), leading to the formation of the first Baptist association in the English colonies, which also was not Calvinist.

And the Free-Will Baptists predate the rise of the Separates, founding a church in North Carolina in 1727.

As I said, it seems clear that calvinistic Baptists held sway not only in the older Regular churches of New England the Mid-Atlantic, but also in the new churches of the South and the frontier. Otherwise the union of the Separates and Regular would have been unthinkable.

But -- one can wonder how deeply the new churches were committed to calvinistic soteriology. The author credits a new culture set free by the Revolution as leading to more Arminian influence in the Baptist churches. That may well be, although I suspect that cross-pollination with the thriving Methodist evangelists on the frontier contributed to a blurring of theological distinctions.

Circumstantial evidence lies in the rise of Campbellism on the frontier. Alexander Campbell, though not initially anti-Calvinist, had a different understanding of baptism than the Baptists did, which would eventually become clear.

From John Mark Hicks, “‘God’s Sensible Pledge’: The Witness of the Spirit in the Early Baptismal Theology of Alexander Campbell,” Stone-Campbell Journal 1 (Spring 1998) 5-26, as quoted in Hicks' "Mediating the War between Arminians and Calvinists on Election and Security: A Stone-Campbell Perspective," Stone-Campbell Journal 6 (Fall, 2003): 163–184.

And that understanding was rooted in disagreement over the doctrines of grace. The fact that so many churches and associations split or went over to the Restorationists suggests that what we might consider the traditional view of calvinistic theology was not so strong among those churches as their statements of faith and their lineage would lead us to believe.

 

I take it that the response was unsatisfactory.

 

That came out much snarkier than was intended. My apologies.

 

It appears that calvinistic churches existed within the fellowship for a time, but they were a minority. The wording I used was "non-calvinist," in that the Six Principle Baptists did not -- like the later Regulars -- explicitly embrace calvinistic soteriology.

Certainly much depends on the time period being examined. Calvinistic Baptists declined among the Six Principles over time, so that by the First Great Awakening the split was total.