A lack of Baptist scholarship?

You correctly note that the 1689 Baptist Confession had much in common with the Westminister Confession. That being said the essential doctrines of the 1689 Confession were no different than those of the 1644 London [Baptist] Confession, which was published by the Particular Baptists in London before the Westminister Confession.

The first writer I mentioned, John Dagg, was not educated at a Presbyterian school, in fact He had little formal education according to Nettles. It is true that Boyce was educated at Princeton but his theology of the Doctrines of Grace were the same as historic Baptist doctrines. That Presbyterian doctrines were similar to the Baptist doctrines speaks well of the Presbyterians, since as you correctly state the writers of the new Testament were Baptistic.

Conner was not educated at a Presbyterian school. I doubt that Strong or Henry were and Nettles certainly was not. Perhaps the greatest of all Baptist theologians, the Englishman John Gill, was not educated at a Presbyterian school. Certainly the greatest of all Baptist preachers, the Englishman Charles Spurgeon, was not educated at a Presbyterian school.

As for modernism entering the Baptist Churches one might argue that it started with the introduction of the Scofield Reference Bible into Baptist Churches.

 

More of Gill's dripping calvinism...

 

Mark,

Name one Baptist church which existed in Calvin's day. Where did it meet? What language did it use? Just name one.

By Jewish literature, I mean the Old Testament and historical and cultural writings which help us to understand it.

Gill's scholarship was commonly attested by those in his day.

 

You correctly state that John Gill is the only person to write a commentary on every verse of Scripture. He certainly was the greatest Baptist theologian and perhaps as you say the best period.

I have Gill's commentary on the Online Bible program. Also have his book on theology Body of Divinity by sovereign Grace Publishing Co.. I am sorry to say that I have read little of it since the print is so small.

Whether correct or not I don't know but Jay Green, the publisher at Sovereign grace, translator of the Modern KJV, and Greens Interlinear, states in the intro to the above book that Gill wrote over ten million words, and that with a quill pen. I can manage a few with a word processor but then I am no John Gill.

 

I don't have to name any church that existed in that day. I know that the Lord said His churches would exist in all ages and I know that those churches were "Baptist" in character.

If Calvin had really loved the Lord he would have joined one of the Lord's churches, not tried to reform the Devil's or start his own.

So you examined all the Old Testament scholars who lived in Gill's day and found at that none of them excelled him in understanding of it?

Hmmmmm......and here I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the Old Testament and yet I never could muster up enough interest in Maccabees or Josephus to get a good start reading them, much less finish them.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Wow. I must say that this is one of the most amazing and arrogant things I have ever read here on this board. You do not know the man at all, you admit to not reading his work. But yet you are qualified to make this judgement about him? Goodness.

 

Oh, well, this is great fun, but I have to take a two-month vacation from the BB. I have until the last of March to finish my portfolio for National Board Certification for Teachers (which brings with it around a 25% raise next year). So, I will take my leave of all of you until then. All off-duty typing will either be sermon notes or my NBCT stuff.

In the words of that Austrian Baptist Ahhhnold,

I'll be back...

 

A. You are not supposed to make personal attacks. Saying that I am arrogant is a personal attack. Not that I care if you make personal attacks against me, but since the recent fiasco in the Baptist Colleges forum, I intend to make a note of it every time someone personally attacks me.

B. I know enough about Calvin to know He didn't join one of the Lord's churches. People who don't join one of the Lord's churches don't love Him, at least not very much.

C. Add to that the fact that Calvin not only did not join one of the Lord's churches, he actually persecuted the Lord's churches. Do you believe that people who persecute the Lord's people love the Lord?

Mark Osgatharp

 

Amen! I commited a bunch of theology books to the flames when I realized they were useless. I might also add that even "reference" books - though there are some useful ones - are many times only theology books in disquise.

Mark Osgatharp </font>[/QUOTE]Hey Mark, before you throw any more away or burn them, mail them to me, I'll even pay postage. One of my favorite pastimes besides BB, is collecting books (my wife hates it!!!!). So.... just PM me and I'll give you my add.

 

TinyTim,

I wouldn't wish those books on anyone. In fact, a couple of days ago I started to donate a Scofield Bible to the local thrift store. Then I thought, why would I want anyone to have their mind perverted by reading that tripe? So in the trash it went.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Amen to that! But if every followed that advice the theological education and book publishing industries couldn't rape the churches for multiplied millions of dollars annually.

Mark Osgatharp

 

Eccl. 7:20, "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins."

James 2:21-23 "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," and he was called the friend of God."

Abraham did not always do right. Not one of the apostles always did right. Moses killed a man. David did too. Peter cut off a man's ear.

 

Yeah, but none of them were Baptists!

 

That's true they preceded the Baptists. The first Baptist was baptized by a non-Baptist.

 

No, actually it was not a personal attack on you. I did not call you arrogant. I called the reply that you posted as arrogant. And I would venture to say that there are many on here that agreee with me. Your reply was arrogant.

How do you know anything about him? You admitted you had not read his work? Did you know him personally? How do know that the church(es) he was a part of was not one of the Lord's churches?

All are sinners. All do things that are wrong at times. Even Christians do things that do not honor the Lord.

 

"That's true they preceded the Baptists. The first Baptist was baptized by a non-Baptist."

So help me out there, gb9xxxx. Who Did baptize John the baptizer?
Ed

 

Mexdeaf said:

In another Baptist forum, a statement similar to this was made- 'the reason we have so many Protestant/Presbyterian books in our libraries is due to a lack of serious Baptist scholarship.'

This leads me to ask two or three questions-

1. Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

I don't, for two reasons.

One, as I survey the set of books I have on my shelves, it appears to me that the majority of theological authors are, in fact, Baptist: Millard Erickson, John Piper, Timothy George, Richard Longenecker. This is not a truly representative sample of my library, most of which is in storage and inaccessible to me. However, I know that I have a good number of scholarly materials written by Baptists. This is an accident, in that for the most part I was not selecting specifically Baptist authors, excepting those books where I was seeking material on specific Baptist-related issues. It seems to me, therefore, that Baptist scholarship is well represented in the book market.

Second, there are many biblical/theological/moral issues where there isn't a distinctly "Baptist" take. It occurs to me that Baptist scholarship on some issues would be a reinvention of the wheel; hence, in my mind at least, there is no need for Baptists to be represented in those areas.

2. Who would you consider as true Baptist scholars, modern age- say 1900 onward?

Millard Erickson is an excellent systematician. So, for that matter, is Wayne Grudem: the seminary where I have taken some courses has used both their systematic theologies as texts for their theology survey courses. John Piper is better known as a pastor or devotional writer, but works of his such as The Justification of God prove he is more than capable of interacting with "state-of-the-art" technical exegesis. D. A. Carson's commentaries on the Gospels are top-notch, as are his more pastoral-oriented or popular works. Richard Longenecker is a good tecnical exegete, as is Timothy George though the works of his that I have used are somewhat more at the popular level than Longenecker's.

 

Modern day Baptists don't need to write theology books.

I can say that had Calvin really loved the Lord the first thing he would have joined a Baptist church rather than trying to reform the Catholic church and then starting his own church when the Catholics booted him.

Yeesh!

My kingdom for a killfile . . .

 

Over the past 100 years the expression Baptist scholars has become more and more an oxymoron. One obvious reason for this is that Baptist seminaries have not, for the most part, kept up with the best of modern scholarship, and they are not, therefore, producing the caliber of scholars being produced by the best seminaries and universities today. The subject of Greek grammar, however, is still attracting Baptist scholars—perhaps because they find it necessary to write their own grammars in order to make Baptist theology tenable.